Hey there before it gets started. Did you know I've started a YouTube channel? It's right, have life streams that have taken place and some that are coming up And these air with unstructured guests in our flat out. Amazing. I started with Chase use. He's a behavioral engineer, wrote the book Ellipsis Behavior. That book covers everything from him, no sis to negotiation all the way up to Well, Creedy, a Manchurian candidate, followed it up with Viva Fry was a YouTube lawyer, the huge channel in a giant following. Really fun guy. Next up, I'm have Christina linen.

Christina is noted as the world's best tip mentis by CBS, and she's famous for hypnotizing Simon cow with her dog after Kristina. Have Mandy O'Brien, who runs bombards, body language, very famous YouTube ARU view different videos and reacts to them. Next. Jason to Phillipos Coming up Jason to Phillipos answered more questions with Jordan Harbinger than I can even imagine. And after that I will have Scott Rouse, another great body language expert. Now, what is special about this live stream is you get to ask the questions. Everyone of these folks has been a guest on unstructured so you can listen to the episode. And maybe I didn't ask a question you want to hear or you come up with something that you want to know. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to join in. Ask the questions.

So please look for me on YouTube. Eric Hundley. Very easy to find. And while you're looking for me, I'm air calmly on all the socials I hope to hear from you. And I hope you enjoy the show. My name is Eric, and this is unstructured, or we have dynamic and formal conversations with some amazing people today. We're joined by Bob Hammer. Bob Hamer is a retired FBI agent who worked in undercover, and he wrote about his career in the book The last Undercover. How are you doing today? Bomb? Hey, thanks,

Erica. I'm doing well. Well, I'm really excited to have you on. I've mentioned to you earlier, but you will be my eighth FBI agent. And I find it really fascinating that I can get all these different agents and everybody's doing a different job. Well, I think that was one thing that always interested me with the FBI that we weren't really limited to just one particular violation and you could work a violation for for five years. And if you put your time in, you put in some paperwork and you could probably get transferred to a different squad. That would work a completely different violation. So I always found that a great part of the FBI and it kept things new and interesting. And you just didn't kind of get burned out with investigating the same type of cases. Yeah, that's gonna be handing out from what I understand,

and I probably the numbers could have changed that he might have got a messed up, but I understand there's around 10,000 FBI agents, and from what I've heard from you doing research out of that many agents, there's Onley, maybe 100 to 150 who actually are undercover. Yeah, you know, I never knew the rial numbers, but the way the undercover program works in the FBI, it's not like television, where the supervisor walks out in the squad bay and says, Hey, we need it. Contract killer to date is somebody want to play that role and you raise your hand. The FBI has a selection process. You have to apply.

You have to be approved by several different levels of administration. Once you're approved at the local level, then it goes back to headquarters and then they have a two week in service, which is kind of a selection process. They want you to think it's like a Marine Corps officer candidate, school or or buds training for the SEALs. It's not. It's not that hard for that. There still is that selection process. So some guys, not everybody, wants to work undercover. That's one thing I want to make clear. It's not the most sought after position in the FBI, but some of those that apply aren't approved by the different levels of administration. They maybe don't pass a psychological background in terms of being the loan or the self starter,

that type of individual, and then some people can't get through the two weekend service because they can't take the stress of that two weeks and then a lot of guys, once they are approved and they work one or two undercover assignments, they just decide on. This isn't for me that the hours air to their too unpredictable. The cases air too dangerous, and I really don't want to do this anymore. So it turned out that maybe at any one time, there might only be 100 or 150 people within the FBI that are certified toe work undercover. And even amongst those, there were probably just a handful of us that spent much of our career in various undercover assignment. So there were a few. I'm not quite sure who all you've interviewed, but guys like Jack Garcia myself. I mean, we spent most of our career working various undercover assignments,

so it was just We gravitated toward that, and that's what we like to do. You've also kind of mentioned you seem to be sort of an independent spirit. I think you wrote like an apology and your forward that that was the one time you actually followed the rules to the letter. Yeah, when I first wrote the book The Last Undercover, which was my first book, I've actually author the co authored nine books. But the first book, when you're FBI agent and you write about the FBI, you have to submit it for approval from headquarters, and the only the only pushback I got from the bureau was that I couldn't name the names of the agents. So where I put their names in the original manuscript, I had to replace those with my case agent or the surveillance agent or something like that. So that was that was one rule that I followed. Is that because they were still active?

Yes. Okay, So if everybody was retired, then you could name names, I guess. I think so. I haven't written a book like that. Maybe they would allow that to go through. Okay, I know there's interesting rules from what I understand, and I've house, so have secret Service on and C I A. So that was interesting. Like, I understand that you can't profit while you're in the FBI by writing a book on the side. You need to be retired.

Is that incorrect? I think so. There have been a couple agents that have written books, but they've been almost educational books or technical books. So it hasn't been This is my life as an FBI agent as an undercover agent or this is about the case that I worked. That hasn't been those type. It's been mawr of. I think cyber security, tight books that have been approved. But for the most part, yeah, you have to be. You have to be retired to write it. And the FBI does not allow outside income, so we can't have second jobs. And I'm sure the bureau would view a book that was written for profit to be outside income.

So I find that interesting because I know one act of C I a agent who did write a book, and I interviewed him about it. So obviously the different services have different standards. That actually surprised me. Well, it was funny because I didn't realize, but he got really quiet when I asked a couple questions and oh, I I'm not familiar with that. Oh, you're not. Oh, okay. And I cut the interview. Yeah, I can neither confirm nor deny that type of thing. It was worth it just to get that reaction,

though, that, uh, now back to undercover career for money or send you did apply to be on the CIA at one point. Yeah, I spent four years on active duty in the Marine Corps, and as I was getting out that I was really seeking something interesting, exciting and applied to the C I A. And literally scored a zero on a personality test that they gave. So they they weren't too interested. They had the test they gave. They scored you from a zero to a 10 and a zero could essentially live on a deserted island for the rest of his life and be content. And a 10 had to be constantly surrounded by people. And I admit that I somewhat skewed my answers. I assumed that they were looking for people that they parachuted behind enemy lines and he stayed there for three months. And then he whacked the Third World dictator and they extricated and buy a helicopter or something.

Well, you're a Marine. Yes, they are thinking Rico now, right? But that's not what I did. I am a lawyer. If I recall. Yeah, I don't like to talk about I don't I don't brag about being a judge advocate in the Marine Corps. I brag about being a Marine, but I try to avoid telling everybody what my Mos Waas, but yes. So I thought that's what the CIA was kind of looking for a psychologist when he came back with the results. He looked at me and shook his head, he said.

I've never seen a zero personality and kind of laugh that my wife, she and I have been married for 46 years, and she still occasionally reminds me that I'm the only person declared by the federal government to be a zero personality way When you understand. For the most part, the CIA is role are working at foreign embassies and getting close to a foreign government officials and trying to recruit them to provide us intelligence. So I mean, it makes sense that they were looking for somebody that had a little more personality. But I think that the actual test and the results it is a little different. I guess you could say I don't need people. It's not that I don't I want to be around people. It's like I really don't need people in relationships and therefore that probably skewed a lot of my answers. Yeah, I definitely want to go into that a little bit more later. Going into being undercover, though. What did you think it would be like ahead of time?

You know, before you went into it, you know, when I was going through the academy, we had a couple people, that there were counselors that had done some of undercover work, and I just thought that that sounded exciting. I probably watched a little too much TV thinking that, Wow, this would be really exciting. I'm sort of a vet. Ephraim Zimbalist, the FBI generation where guys were wearing suits and would slice their badge and credentials and say FBI. And that didn't quite interest me as much as being that guy, that nobody knew who he waas. That was playing a role kind.

And I was more of the James Rockford type of guy, and so that just interested me. So I tried to gravitate toward those type of assignments. I mean, once I once I got out of the academy, I guess my goal was to eventually work undercover and seek out those opportunities. And it was everything I expected it to be. And actually, Mawr, let's cool. It's nice when something fulfills the expectations. Now, I didn't ask Oh, yeah, because I did not realize that you as undercover agent and I don't know how all the other services work or local police but you would work multiple cases at the same time. That surprised me.

Yeah, you could. That didn't always happen to me. But toward the end of my career, I always kind of laughed. I was one of the few certified undercover agents on the West Coast, so if they were looking for I did the IOU cases. So if they were looking for somebody that was impotent, old and ugly, they would contact me. So I toward the end, I was working three undercover cases at the same time, and that was that was a little too much. I mean, it was pretty stressful. Quite frankly,

it was stressful from the FBI administrative standpoint, not from the bad guys standpoint. I could have. I think I could have easily worked even mawr undercover cases if I didn't have to fight a lot of the bureaucracy that comes with any undercover assignment. What I'm curious about, how do you maintain an identity on multiple cases, or do you just have one identity and you can be both a right and a thief at the same time, right? Yeah. The three cases that I worked one was a major case called operation Smoking Dragon. And it was a cigarette targeting an Asian criminal syndicate that that lasted three years. So I was undercover for three years on that particular investigation. At the same time, I had infiltrated a group called NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association, which was a group of set of files,

men that were sexually attracted to boys. And then I was actually working a Vietnamese gang case. So I maintained the same backstory for all three of those that I was an older man. I mean, I had the same name. I had the same undercover credit cards and undercover identification. I was an older man. I was handicapped. I had some real estate and I had some financial investments and accounts. I had clients that I worked for. So it was the same with all three of those. So it wasn't like, Oh, my gosh. Today my name is Eric, and I'm in a weapons case and the phone rings.

And wait a minute when this number dials and I'm Charles and I'm a pedophile. So it wasn't It wasn't anything like that. Okay, well, I just I had to clarify that in my head to get around. Then I guess that makes sense. Because you can be a pedophile who runs a warehouse that is allowing cigarettes to go through for a living. Yeah, and I'm guessing that maybe I'm wrong, but maybe the more, um, more of a criminal you are. And the more variety you have, the better each cover Marine forces themselves to a certain extent. Yeah. I mean,

when we worked the Vietnamese gang case, I I was someone that was dealing with counterfeit cigarettes. So I talked about that and could talk about it openly and even at one point provided them with some counterfeit cigarettes. So it added to my credibility when I was dealing with the gang members less awesome. Now I wanted Teoh also check with you, I add on. I guess you'd call it a very different kind of undercover guest, Jack Barsky. And he ultimately had a run in with the FBI himself, but he was a KGB agent. Oh, wow. And he lived here in the United States for 10 years as a fake citizen. He was born in East Germany. Smug came in and establishing identity, and he ultimately quit and He's a citizen now of the U.

S. A great guy. But one of the things we discussed was he's suffering to this day, as he put it, with a near personality split because having to maintain, he literally had a family here in a family in Germany. Oh, wow. Okay, on Children both. Now, I'm not going to say yours is extreme, but I'm I'm wondering, do you have any kind of effects of having to maintain two very distinct identities? No, I maybe my wife if you interviewed her,

she tell you I have issues, but know that that wasn't a problem for me. I I honestly believe that God blessed me with a pretty screwed up brain, and I could very easily compartmentalize so that I could I could be the the contract killer. And then I could go home and be the Little League coach or be the husband, be the father, be the Sunday school teacher. I mean, I I was ableto compartmentalize and never really. It was never that I didn't know who I waas at any particular time. I knew when I went undercover I assumed that identity I was that person and Then as soon as I came home or, uh, got back in to the Bob Hammer life, I was Bob Hammer. So I I didn't I didn't have that was humor tether for you because I know you've talked about having a habit of plain songs on your radio. Oh,

yeah, Yeah, I think that's a lot of that Somewhat kept me saying, I think what happened. And maybe if you talked it sounds like you've talked to some pretty interesting people on your podcast. But the first time I went undercover, it really was. The first meeting was pretty innocuous, but I came away with an adrenaline rush. I mean, this was This was exciting for me. I had actually gone in to it in the meeting. My knees were shaking and it wasn't because I was scared. It was because that adrenaline was just coursing through my veins. And I even said, I God stop the knees from shaking because he sees the knees,

He's gonna think there's something up. And when I got done with that very first meeting, it was like, Oh my gosh, what a rush and I wanted. It was almost like I was chasing the adrenaline dragon. So every time I'd have a meeting, I was trying to kind of up it a little bit more up the danger a little bit more just to get that same rush that I have from that very first meeting. So I would I would try to do things, but I'd also I want to see how far I could push it. But I want to have fun while doing it. So I mean, you mentioned the music. I'm a country and Western fan. So I ate one of the funniest ones I had was I was involved in a $60 million shoulder fire missile deal. And every time the bad guy got into my car and I turned the ignition on,

it was cute to Charlie Daniels song Uneasy writer, and the first line you hear on every tape is on every undercover tape. The first line you here is don't you know it? This man's just by he's undercover agent for the FBI, and then it's Charlie Daniels finishing up the song, and I would play Jailhouse Rock fulsome prison blues. I mean, I'd have bad guys in the car, literally kind of dancing to the music as we're riding along and I'm I'm playing, playing these songs I did one case. I I always I guess in some ways I kind of viewed it as a TV show so I would have my own soundtracks and I had one guy gave me two kilos of crystal meth and I timed it perfectly. And it wasn't visual cause it was audio. Didn't have a camera, was just the audiotape. But just as he's handing the two kilos of crystal meth, I've got it.

I played Harold Melville, and the blue notes are singing If you don't know me by now, you'll never, ever know me. And I just But yep, that kind of power that Okay, there's a couple of things that I could think it with. That number one. The fact you're so concentrating on getting your soundtrack right has to relieve a lot of stress because you're playing a game, and that takes something away from the situation, probably makes you come across his even calmer. No, I I think so, you know, also, it's so blatantly obvious that it seems unlikely.

And it reminds me I'm gonna reach back to Jack Barsky again. But when he is training, he had to go all over Moscow, etcetera, and pick out people who might be tailing him. So he would do this for days at a time. They have 2030 people and he'd have to give reports, son, who they all were. And he only missed one person. And it was a first year. I was a person that he had seen before, though. But what this guy did is when he's when he saw him kind of metas I the guy walked up to him a bummed, a cigarette. OK,

yeah, and I mean I disarmed him. I think there is a lot of truth to the more obvious you are, the less obvious you appear. I wore gangs for five years of South Central L. A. I'm a white guy and I was buying drugs from Crip members midnight by myself in an old beat up pickup truck. And when we finally broke the case and we arrested 13 members of these various Crip sets and the one guy had sold me rock cocaine on five different occasions and I said, You know, you had to suspect a white guy coming down here to buy drugs. And he looked at me and he shook his head and he said We figured the police would be too stupid to send a white guy down here. Oh, my God, just it would just mean it was just too obvious they didn't They didn't pick up on it. I mean, I've laughed it.

If you made a movie of my life, people wouldn't believe it because you wouldn't cast Bruce Willis to be buying drugs in South Central L. A. You wouldn't cast Bruce Willis to be working an Asian criminal syndicate. I mean, you'd get, you know, Jackie Chan, and you'd get Chris Rock or somebody like that play those different roles. But yeah, I was able to do it. I was ableto to pull it off and sell whatever backstory that I developed. Well, can you describe the one back story? I feel like if the story makes sense, you know,

then everybody will fill in details. Now, with the operation was a smoking dragon. You established yourself as, ah, property owner. Right? And you happen to have a warehouse, Something like that, right? Yeah. I had I had a warehouse. We found out through a source that one of the top, well, the top importer of counterfeit cigarettes on the West Coast was looking for one. He wanted to try to make sure that he could get his cigarettes in through the Port of Los Angeles or Long Beach to the biggest ports in the world,

and then he needed a place to store them, and then he wanted the ability to have them transported anywhere in the in the nation. So we came up with a back story that we would have a warehouse, that I had access for long haul truck drivers and that occasionally I might be able to help get this stuff, get his containers through the ports without being seized, because I had a few guys that worked a poured, but only if they work the same days could I get their containers through. So we I mean, obviously we were working with customs and immigration, and they knew what we were doing, and they had a limit on how many containers they were going to allow us to bring through. And for the bad guys, a container of counterfeit cigarettes they were investing about 1/4 of a $1,000,000. So if those containers did get sees, they were out quite a bit of money. So they were willing to pay me to guarantee that that would go through so occasionally we would help them get a container in,

and then we were using those cigarettes. Once they got in to track them, the bureau was really This was sort of a twofold investigation. One. We were very concerned about what was getting into the port and how it was getting in and those people that were bringing it in to avoid taxes committing crimes. But also ah, lot of these counterfeit goods, particularly the counterfeit cigarettes, were filtering down to the mom and pop grocery stores, some of which were owned by Middle Easterners, who were using the proceeds to finance terrorism. So it was kind of, Ah, two pronged investigation. Let's get to people that are bringing in the counterfeit cigarettes and let's identify those people that own the stores that air using the cigarettes than to finance terrorism. Out of curiosity,

you mentioned something before about always being very focused on how Juries are going to accept you as a witness. How do you look ahead while you're building a case and cover entrapment concerns? Well, I think that's that's a great question, because as an undercover agent, actually, as a police officer, as any investigator, you've got to think like a defense counsel. You have to recognize how are they going to be able to break down this case? You are required as the FBI agent as the investigator to prove each element of the offence beyond a reasonable doubt. So you got to think like a defense counsel and think, OK, I can't give them this line of attack on this case. I've got to fill fill in all the elements and then I can't give them a defense. So on the entrapment issue,

you always have to make sure that it's really initiated by the defendant, that they're the ones that that air talking about it, that you're not You're not asking them to commit a crime that they're not predisposed to commit. So it's, you know, it just it varies with each investigation. But I good example, in the counterfeit cigarette case, one of the one of the targets was a female, and he worked very hard to move these cigarettes. And more than on more than one occasion, I would just say, Hey, why don't you get a real job? You could, you know,

part of your work. And you get a real job. No, no, no. I like to party too much. You know, that is why I do this. And so you tried to dissuade her and could actually use exactly. Yeah, I think you also did that in your later case with NAMBLA at the last minute, didn't you say, Look, the weather's horrible. Why don't we just stall a week? We're trying another time.

I'm impressed. You read the book. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, that was a little different situation in that case because we had set up a phony boat that was going to take them down into Mexico, where they thought they were gonna have sex with little boys and the weather was horrible. And I was afraid they were gonna back out because of the weather. So I was offering them the alternative not to back out of the trip, But we could take a car and I could drive across the border and we wouldn't have any problems by driving across the border rather than getting on the boat. But they they all chose to get on the boat, and thus you were covered in the sense because look, Hey, they really, really want to go, right?

Yes, in that particular case and eh, nambla I was able to establish pretty early on that they had all had sex with little boys in the past that they had traveled ab sex, that they had a desire to do this. So we were able to cover that element fairly quickly. And you had to, though, because if I recall, you weren't being supported initially because there was a First Amendment issue by it being a register organization. Is that right? Yes. We really weren't targeting NAMBLA, the organization we were targeting the individuals that were committing crimes. I think one of the a U S. A's assistant United States attorney said it best when he said NAMBLA is barnyard defecation. We're not going after the defecation.

We're going after the flies that are hovering around it. And I think that was very true. That's what we were that color for doing. Yeah. Yeah. And for your podcasts. I cleaned up his language. Oh, thank you. Thank you. And what is the most interesting thing that you have encountered? Being undercover? Oh, um, well, clearly the most bizarre.

There's a lot of things that are interesting, but the most bizarre waas a case that we worked was female circumcision, and I was even unaware that it was a federal violation until I was approached to be the undercover agent. But it's a violation, I think, was in 1996. The federal government passed the female circumcision law, and it prevents anyone from performing female circumcision on a person under 18 years of age, except for medical reasons. And the FBI had learned of a person that was doing this and almost killed a child after performing the surgery. And so we were targeting that particular person. Now, interestingly enough, even if you read the legislative intent, it was essentially to go after these somebody from the Middle East who was practicing medicine over in the Middle East and perform these procedures and now has moved the United States and is probably driving a taxi cab or something. I was thinking we immediately more First Amendment questions that may be popping up around that case.

Well, not really. Because of it, because it was a law. In essence, it was practicing medicine without a degree or certification. So the person that we ended up targeting the first person ever convicted under that female circumcision act was actually a white guy. That was a tattoo artists and body modification expert. And the first meeting I had at his house, we were talking. He presented me with a, showed me a bunch of pictures of procedures. He performed all kinds of Jenna Tail, Yeah, type of procedures. And he had eight by 10 color photographs of all this stuff that he had done.

Many escorted me into his back room, where he performed the procedures and we walked into the bathroom and in the bathroom. There were two people sitting in a bathtub of blood. One was a female that had purple hair, and another was skinny white guy on a laptop computer. Ah, typing away on a laptop computer and Todd, who was performing the procedures he didn't believe in suits. Hering. So after he performed whatever procedures he did, he had you sit in this herbal bath tub for weeks until you healed. So I walk in and I see two people sitting in a bath of a blood and there was no way to prepare for anything like that. I mean, I would I didn't sleep well at night because I think okay, if they find my says this to me, how do I respond?

So in my mind, I had rehearsed all these different scenarios for every undercover investigation that I perform so that sometimes when they catch me off guard in my mind, I had already rehearsed that seen 100 times, and it just was able to spit out what what almost sounds to be extemporaneous exclamation. In fact, it was something that I had been rehearsing in my mind for days. But in this case, when you see two people in a bathtub of blood a woman with purple hair and a guy pounding away on his laptop computer, there really wasn't anyway to prepare. And I just asked the woman, May I ask what procedure you had done? And she had just had the female circumcision, and I said, Oh, that's, you know,

interesting, willingly asking tried to do this on procedure on my stepdaughter's. And then when I turned to the guy and I asked what procedure he had had done, he had actually had his urethra rerouted through his scrotum. Um, charming. So there was just I mean, no way to prepare for the for those responses. So clearly was the most bizarre encounter that I had in my undercover career. Wow. You had mentioned also in the book that sometimes you had more knowledge because of, obviously briefings and surveillance and things like that sort. And if you were to reveal that knowledge without, you know, actually finding it out in person, you are very severe danger.

Did you ever have any close calls? No, But you're right. I mean, that is you have to You have to be able to separate what you've learned in a briefing and what you've learned as the undercover agent. I never had the close call where I made a mistake, but there was one case where I was with a couple of the targets. This was an organized crime case. And the one guy his given name was Craig. But he went by Anthony and we had another FBI agent did I had a little too much to drink that was supposed to be my surveillance team. And he referred to the guy in the company of everyone as Craig. But everyone knew him is Anthony. Oh, and I had to quickly come up with an excuse at the time I was posing as a screenwriter, and I said that I had recognized the guy. He was an old character actor.

I said, I think somebody did refer to you as Craig, you know, talking to the group of bad guys. And they kind of bought that. I said, That guy's just a drunk He's a character actor. In fact, I think he's having trouble even getting hired anymore because of his drinking, and so they kind of they kind of bought it, But it somewhat, Eric, this comes back to the zero personality. I prefer to work by myself. I didn't I usually didn't like to work with another undercover agent. I was too busy trying to protect my story and to protect myself and not have to worry about covering for somebody else.

Tight head, a couple bad instances with surveillance teams, so I prefer not to have a surveillance team because I didn't want to get burned. So it was just It was just so much easier to be out there by myself. Did you go by eventually? Also, while you are there, Just users. Yes, they always always used. Bob is my first thing. Now. I had my middle name was always There was always a method to my man. And my first undercover name was was Robert J. Born. So that was long before the movies.

But that was Robert Ludlum. And then my second undercover name was Robert William Wallace from Braveheart. And then my third undercover name was Robert David Webb. Which David Webb is. Jason Borns. Real name, if you've read really three books. Yeah. So there was again. That was just kind of in another way, too screw with people, really? Just trying to give hints. But I always kept Bob because I didn't want you coming up to me and in in public. And go on. Hey,

Bob, you know, it's great having you on there on the podcast and the bad guy turns me is that I thought you said your name was George, so I always always kept the same first name, just in case I in case I ran into someone that I knew and and another read from a practical standpoint, this happened to me a couple times when I was dealing with other undercover agents where there named Maybe Eric. And I knew them as Eric and I talked to them Is Eric and they're undercover. Name was Willie. And now I've got to think. Okay, I've been calling you Eric for two weeks as we prepared for this case. And now when we were at the bad guys, I I got to remember that your name is Willie and and so I didn't want to cause any more anxiety for another undercover agent, so I just I always kept it. Is Bob Fortunately for me, Bob was a fairly common name.

An innocuous bob. Yeah, yeah, Bob. But, you know, I didn't have I didn't have some kind of strange name that just didn't quite fit, Whatever the character I was trying to play. Now, does that also help In terms of And I believe you. I have mentioned it that you keep your fake identity as close to your real identity. In some ways, like? Like a really skilled liar is gonna be telling about 80% of the truth. Exactly. Yeah,

You You lie as little a possible I mean, and I'm being a little melodramatic here, but if you're going to get killed, you want to get killed because of a big life. Not because you've been playing like you're single, and all of a sudden you you talk about your wife and they said, Hey, I thought you were You know, I didn't think you were married. And they end up shooting over the stupid little lie. Not too big lie. So I, for the most part, I tried to keep as much of it as true without sharing that much. So it wasn't like I sat around with the bad guys and I talked about my kids and my wife and my dog and, uh,

all of that. Do you? You didn't. You didn't. I tried not to get that personal When I think about running, for example. Yeah, you and I think your first case, you did actually use your wife being pregnant to say, Hey, I got to go to another town because of a doctor and medical stuff, right? Yeah, She was pregnant, and and we used I used that as as a reason that we were gonna be leaving the area. Okay,

well, reaching back. And I know we're getting tight on time. I am curious. How did you live? A normal life in the community. And by that I mean, couldn't you run into these people? Home Depot? You know, for the most part, most of my career was spent in L. A. L A is a large town. A lot of my undercover work was out of town. That didn't become an issue,

but there was one time that it had hit very close to home. I was the undercover agent in the L A Mafia family case in in the mid eighties. And you that week a guy had threatened to break my legs and run me over with the car because I had been late with some payments and my daughter, who was about six or seven at the time we were shopping at Kmart. Now FBI agents shop at Kmart because they don't make that much money. But I didn't think that Tony Soprano shopped at Kmart and all of a sudden I am. I'm with my daughter in Kmart holding her hand and I look up And here comes the guy that has threatened to break my legs and run me over with the car. And I I grabbed my daughter and we kind of hustled out the back of Kmart through the warehouse area. And it was a month or two later. We were actually it, uh, parent teacher conference in my that my daughter's teacher mentioned that my daughter said that her dad was very special, that he could take her to the place for the regular customers weren't allowed to go to K Markets from the mountain baby. Yeah, yeah, she didn't.

She didn't She didn't blow. My cover is an undercover agent, but we kind of laughed and thought that was funny. But that was in terms of being with the family. That's the closest it ever came. I Clive been when I was actually undercover, I had a couple pretty close calls with civilians. You said civilians. Civilians is a known family or non criminal. Yeah, nine criminals. I mean, I talk about in the book in the last undercover, but I was literally sitting in the lobby of the hotel with 1/2 $1,000,000 awaiting two kilos of China white heroin, talking with an international heroin dealer who had just told me that his partner was in the lobby with the gun and if anything went wrong, I was going to be the first person that they'd kill.

And in walked a couple that I had lived with when I was going to school before I got married and they were older. Couple. This is in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was in Los Angeles. So we're talking 2000 miles away, and they walked right into the lobby of the hotel and the wife saw me, and I kind of shook my head very subtly that this is not the time for grips and grins. And she realized something was wrong and ushered her husband toward the elevators away from the main lobby. And within about 10 minutes, the two kilos show up and we arrested three international heroin dealers. But it's kind of one of those things again. If you saw that on a movie, he wouldn't believe it. That doesn't happen 2000 miles away a decade earlier. If it wasn't the hotel.

That would be less likely, but it's a hotel. People travel. I could totally see that happening. Well, it did. Wow. And thank God she was sharp. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, because they were They were. They were a great couple. They were, uh, okay.

I don't know who your audience is. No, no offense. Tupperware people. But they were the Tupperware distributor's Cincinnati, and they were They were vivacious. He would be the guy that would come up and slap you on the back. And, you know, Hey, Bob, how's the FBI type of greeting? Okay, so at least they knew what you did. So when you give that sidelong glances Oh. Oh,

All right, well, I want to pull out on a happy note. You've been on Oprah. Yeah. Yeah. How did that come about? When we when we finished up with the NAMBLA investigation in the case and we we indicted eight members of the groups inner circle and one of those members was a ph. D psychologist that worked a two Chicago area hospitals. So it made the Chicago Tribune Ah, pretty big article in the Chicago Tribune about about this guy. And it was right when Chris Hansen was renewing was going on for another season of Catch A Predator. So she was having Chris Hansen on. And I think I won't speak for Oprah and are producing staff. But I think they didn't want to devote the entire show to Chris Hansen. So they were looking for some other filler,

but still along the lines of the child predators and credibility, they reached out for me. Awesome. Now, where can people find out more? Bob hammer dot net Yeah, bob humor dot Net Bill B h a M e r dot net And there will be access to my books. So you get to see those there, some sample chapters and some quick links if if you're interested in buying them. And if you want to get a hold of Meteo, come and speak to your group. I would I would love to do that for a fee. I'm not Well, I'm I'm not easy, but I'm cheap. But e thank you so much for taking the time.

Thanks. Very, for having me. I appreciate very much. So there you have Bob Hammer. Fantastic guest. Great story. And if you want to hear more guests, Please subscribe. Tell a friend and don't forget to check out the YouTube channel, where you can interact with instructor guests personally. Now, in the spirit of sharing, I'd like to present you a couple other shows. You may want to check out AM Studio Steve and Ann Veronica Way have a podcast all about podcasting. We cover everything related to the craft,

how to start a podcast to prove a podcast, how to promote a podcast and how to reach a bigger audience. So come check out our podcast pot Sound School were on all of the podcast players or on our website Pottstown school dot com. We are dedicated to provide our pots keys with up to date, easy and actionable information sometimes are rages and always fund. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming. What was that like? Might just be the most intriguing podcast you'll ever hear. Each episode is a conversation with a regular person who's been through an extremely unusual situation, like Jeremy, who was bitten by a rattlesnake, or Jennifer who accidentally killed someone or Luke who got caught smuggling cocaine.