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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori

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Speaker 1: with you our special guest tonight. Robert Kirbeck back with us.

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Speaker 1: His latest work is called a Ruse. He's an actor

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Speaker 1: an award winning writer. His essays and short stories have

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Speaker 1: been adapted to film and theater. Malibu Burning. His first book,

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Speaker 1: That's When He Was with Me, back about two and

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Speaker 1: a half years ago. Inspired by real life events, he

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Speaker 1: wrote about the opt for the Los Angeles Times. Robert

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Speaker 1: starred in the film Reconnected, based on one of his

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Speaker 1: own short stories, and he's a three time nominee for

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Speaker 1: the Pushcard Prize, which is a national literary award, and

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Speaker 1: a lifetime member of the Actor's Studio. His newest memoir, Ruse,

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Speaker 1: lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street as

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Speaker 1: a thrilling book and a look into the world of

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Speaker 1: corporate espionage and his career Get This as a secret spy, Robert,

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Speaker 1: Welcome back, Hi George, thanks for having me again. I

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Speaker 1: did not know you were a corporate spy when we

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Speaker 1: last talked. What the heck is that? Well, if I

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Speaker 1: told you, I would have had to take you out

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Speaker 1: back and shoot you, and I like you too much

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Speaker 1: to do that. Thanks, Well, what is a corporate spy? Yeah, So,

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Speaker 1: you know, I was a young guy and I wanted

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Speaker 1: to be an actor. My family was in the car business.

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Speaker 1: My great grandfather sold horse carriages before automobiles were invented.

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Speaker 1: He switched over to selling cars. My grandfather took over

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Speaker 1: the dealership, my father took over the dealship, and I

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Speaker 1: was supposed to take over the dealship, and when I

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Speaker 1: graduated college, I worked there briefly, but the kind of

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Speaker 1: trickery of car sales just didn't feel right to me.

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Speaker 1: Wanted to be an actor. Moved to New York. Of course,

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Speaker 1: I needed a survival job, and my buddy had this

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Speaker 1: job that was very mysterious and he kind of wouldn't

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Speaker 1: tell me about it, but I pressed him to get

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Speaker 1: me an interview because I was desperate for money, and

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Speaker 1: so he got me this interview. And I go to

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Speaker 1: the Upper East Side of Manhattan and there's this doorman

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Speaker 1: building and I take this elevator up to the penthouse

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Speaker 1: and this woman opens the door and you know, it's

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Speaker 1: a penthouse apartment. It's gorgeous, it's fantastic. It looks like

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Speaker 1: a decorator designed it. So right away I knew whatever

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Speaker 1: she did it was lucrative. And so I have this

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Speaker 1: very strange interview where she never asks me a question

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Speaker 1: about my skills. I had a resume. She ever looked

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Speaker 1: at my resume, and after a while she sent me

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Speaker 1: on my way. She basically just asked about my relationship

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Speaker 1: with my father and how he felt about me not

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Speaker 1: taking over the business. Very strange, and I go my

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Speaker 1: merry way. I don't think I've gotten the job. And

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Speaker 1: then next day my buddy calls and he says, you're hired.

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Speaker 1: And I felt pretty proud of myself for about two seconds,

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Speaker 1: and he said, don't don't you know, don't worry about it.

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Speaker 1: She hires everyone because no one can do this job.

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Speaker 1: And the next day I went and started training, and

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Speaker 1: I began to see what we were doing was corporate spine.

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Speaker 1: Now what is corporate spine? So basically, corporate spine is

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Speaker 1: anything that a corporation wants to know about their competitors. Right,

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Speaker 1: do you think about football if you could get the

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Speaker 1: playbook on your opponent, you know, two days before the

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Speaker 1: big game, you think about how valuable that would be.

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Speaker 1: So every project we did was bespoke, was custom and

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Speaker 1: the client would basically say, this is what I want

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Speaker 1: to know. These are the things I'm interested in finding out.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of times we would always start, we

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Speaker 1: do with the organization, Right, Who were the people working

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Speaker 1: at a firm, what they did, what their titles were,

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Speaker 1: how much money they made, what their rankings were. And

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Speaker 1: something that you know, many of your listeners probably don't

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Speaker 1: know is almost every corporation in America actually has internal

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Speaker 1: metrics that they rank their employees using. And so we

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Speaker 1: would determine these metrics so that we could tell our

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Speaker 1: client who the top people were at their rivals. Right,

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Speaker 1: we would find out expansion plans, we would find out

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Speaker 1: deals that were going down, we would find out secret strategies. Oftentimes,

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Speaker 1: of course, we would stumble upon sealacious information. Who was

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Speaker 1: drinking too much, who was having an affair. Again, it

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Speaker 1: was anything and everything that we could find out so

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Speaker 1: that our clients could utilize that to increase their bottom line. Now,

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Speaker 1: is that an ethical is a smart business? Yes? I

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Speaker 1: think the answer to that is yes. And you know, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, and that's I think the thing that I

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Speaker 1: always tell people when when I do interviews, is that

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Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not proud of what I did, but

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Speaker 1: it is a heck of a good story, and I'm

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Speaker 1: able to tell it now only because the statute of

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Speaker 1: limitations for whatever crimes I potentially committed has now passed.

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Speaker 1: And that's the reason I could write the book. Amazing.

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Speaker 1: What kind of things did you uncover? Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: I think the big thing that you know, again, people

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Speaker 1: don't realize is, you know, we all know the Russians

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Speaker 1: spy on the Chinese, and the Chinese spy on us.

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Speaker 1: But what most people don't know is that major American

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Speaker 1: and international corporations are spending forget about millions of dollars,

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Speaker 1: forget about tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions

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Speaker 1: of dollars and on occasion, billions of dollars to spy

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Speaker 1: on each other. Right. So Steve Jobs, the legendary CEO

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Speaker 1: of Apple, he was, you know, vehement about security, and

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Speaker 1: he wouldn't even allow his designers to be listed in

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Speaker 1: the corporate directory because he was a trade. Imagine if

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Speaker 1: you could figure out who the designer was of the

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Speaker 1: original iPad in the very early days. Imagine if you

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Speaker 1: could find out who that individual was and then steal

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Speaker 1: that individual to your firm. You know, that would as

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Speaker 1: you could imagine, that would have been worth tens of

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Speaker 1: billions of dollars. And so that's the type of intelligence

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Speaker 1: that our clients were looking for. How did you get

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Speaker 1: the information that you went after and what kind of

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Speaker 1: information did you look for? Yeah, so you know, basically

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Speaker 1: what we would do is we would create characters, We

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Speaker 1: would create ruses, hence the title of my book. We

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Speaker 1: would create stories that would convince people on the other

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Speaker 1: end of the phone, because most of this stuff was

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Speaker 1: via the phone, that would convince people to tell us

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Speaker 1: things that they definitely should not right. One of the

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Speaker 1: things in corporate America, people were trained to be a

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Speaker 1: good teammate, right, and the importance of corporate culture. Well,

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Speaker 1: we would use that to our advantage and we would

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Speaker 1: impersonate executives that were with the firm. They were off site,

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Speaker 1: there was some sort of emergency, they were meeting with

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Speaker 1: the US regulators, they were at a board meeting. Whatever

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Speaker 1: the story we would do the research on that seemed

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Speaker 1: to be that would make the most sense. We would

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Speaker 1: you know, basically set up this elaborate ruse and that

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Speaker 1: people would, you know, sometimes I would be impersonating the

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Speaker 1: CEO of a firm, or the CEO of a firm

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Speaker 1: I'd heard them on television. Obviously I was a former actor,

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Speaker 1: so I would mimic their voice, and you know, people would,

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Speaker 1: you know, answer the phone and oh my god, you know,

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Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm talking to the CEO of this company.

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Speaker 1: And of course in my head, I would say, you're not.

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Speaker 1: But imagine if you believe you have someone like you know,

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Speaker 1: Elon Muskll on the other end of the line, what

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Speaker 1: are you not going to tell that individual? Exactly? How

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Speaker 1: easy was it, Robert, to get your foot in a

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Speaker 1: corporate door? Very difficult, very difficult. I mean, in all

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Speaker 1: the years I did this job. I mean, obviously I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be a very good spy if I was running

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Speaker 1: around telling people I was a spy. But you know,

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Speaker 1: was an inner circle of family and friends that knew

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Speaker 1: what I did. And of course, you know, every one

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Speaker 1: of them love the idea of, you know, of a

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Speaker 1: job that you could do from home. I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 1: you know, COVID kind of changed that equation, but you know,

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Speaker 1: before COVID, you know, not many people were able to

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Speaker 1: have a job that they could set their own hours

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Speaker 1: and work from home, and so everybody wanted to kind

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Speaker 1: of try this job. And I'm here to tell you

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Speaker 1: that nobody could do it. And in all of the

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Speaker 1: years that I did the job, I was able to

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Speaker 1: train one person to do the job. That's how hard

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Speaker 1: it is. Did your acting career help you, Yeah, for sure,

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Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. I mean, you know, we would do accents,

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Speaker 1: like I said, we would mimic people's voices. You know,

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Speaker 1: we were very good. Obviously, you have to be able

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Speaker 1: to think on your feet because somebody's going to be

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Speaker 1: questioning you about why you need this information. What is

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Speaker 1: the information? Boy, I'm not supposed to tell you this information.

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Speaker 1: This is really valuable information. I could get in trouble

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Speaker 1: for telling you this information. And so we had to

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Speaker 1: do a lot of improvisation to convince people that it

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Speaker 1: was okay for them to reveal these corporate secrets to us.

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Speaker 1: Did you do much computer hacking? You know? It's funny, um,

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Speaker 1: you know. Uh. Frank abcnail, who wrote Catch Me If

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Speaker 1: You Can, has been a really great and kind supporter

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Speaker 1: of the book. And he gave me a blurb for

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Speaker 1: the book, and he talks about he's on the coverage

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Speaker 1: a matter of fact. Yes, yeah, yes, he's He's a

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Speaker 1: wonderful guy, great guy, and he you know, as you know,

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Speaker 1: he did all these scams when he was a young guy,

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Speaker 1: and then he switched and began working with the FBI

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Speaker 1: to prevent the exact same type of scams that he perpetrated. Right,

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Speaker 1: And so he constantly drills in at all the speeches

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Speaker 1: he does, and even you know, even in some of

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Speaker 1: my interactions with him, that the weakest link in cybersecurity

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Speaker 1: is always the human being. Yeah, and so what we

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Speaker 1: would do is we would not hack using the computer.

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Speaker 1: We would hack the human being and get them to

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Speaker 1: access the computers for us and then just pass on

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Speaker 1: the information. Correct. Wow, is it illegal doing what you did?

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Speaker 1: You know, that's a great question. I mean, it's certainly

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Speaker 1: you know, in the dark gray Um. You know, I

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Speaker 1: was lucky I never was arrested. But there was a

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Speaker 1: moment in time where a laundry list of authorities thought

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Speaker 1: that I was the most famous hacker in the world.

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Speaker 1: And that was you know, I'm here to tell you

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Speaker 1: pretty frightening I was just an actor with the gift

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Speaker 1: of gab and they thought this hacker was trying to

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Speaker 1: shut down the Internet, and they thought that I was

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Speaker 1: this individual. So that was pretty scary and UM, and

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Speaker 1: that individual ended up going to jail, being arrested as

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Speaker 1: a domestic terrorist in spending. I forget exactly how long

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Speaker 1: in prison, four or five years, So, you know, I

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Speaker 1: always I always felt like it was in the dark gray,

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Speaker 1: but the legal threat certainly was real. Former CIA a

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Speaker 1: member Valerie Play is quoted in your book. Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: know Valerie Play and I, you know, Valerie was the

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Speaker 1: CIA agent that was outed by the US government, and

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Speaker 1: to my knowledge, I think she's the only CIA agent

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Speaker 1: ever outed by their own government. And Valerie and I

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Speaker 1: actually went to high school together, which is pretty crazy.

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Speaker 1: The two spies graduated from the small, same small high school. UM.

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Speaker 1: Somebody once asked me, did they did they have like

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Speaker 1: lying classes? Was there spycraft instead of homemaker you know,

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Speaker 1: wood shop? But yeah, Valerie, UM and I've done a

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Speaker 1: couple of events together. We're doing a book festival this

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Speaker 1: summer in Vermont bookstock. UM, if you happen to be

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Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of Woodstock, Vermont the summer, beautiful little town,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to do an event together talking about

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Speaker 1: the intersection of political spying and corporate spying and what

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Speaker 1: happens when those two worlds collide, and is that ongoing

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Speaker 1: if we really knew, Robert, what was going on, I mean,

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Speaker 1: is it rampant? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: here to tell you corporate spying has done every single day,

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Speaker 1: you know, and I I can't say by every single

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Speaker 1: major corporation, but I'm going to say every single major corporation.

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Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm here to tell you that I

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Speaker 1: personally presented my you know, let's call it extracted data

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Speaker 1: to two individuals who today are the CEOs of some

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Speaker 1: of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. Listen

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Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

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Speaker 1: am Eastern, and go to Coast to Coast am dot

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Speaker 1: com for more