**Robert Riggs**
When it comes to understanding human behavior, few people have had more at stake than Robin Dreeke. As a former FBI Special Agent and head of the Bureau’s elite Behavioral Analysis Program, Dreeke’s job in counterespionage wasn’t just about catching spies—it was about recruiting them.
His success depended on reading people with precision, spotting deception, and building trust with individuals trained to lie for a living.
In part one of our conversation, Dreeke pulled back the curtain on his former FBI career and the psychological techniques that allowed him to predict behavior.
**Robert Riggs**
Now, in part two, we dive deeper into how he distilled those hard-won lessons into his book “Sizing People Up.”
Dreeke’s methodology isn’t just for the world of espionage. Whether you’re trying to determine if you can trust a business partner, avoid becoming a victim of fraud, or simply sharpen your instincts about the people around you, his framework offers a blueprint to predict behavior.
In this episode, Dreeke explains how the same behavioral cues that helped him turn foreign operatives into informants can help you make better decisions about who to trust—and who to keep at arm’s length.
**Robert Riggs**
How much should you be influenced by character? This, this person has had a quote, a sterling character in the past, but things might have changed.
**Robin Dreeke**
Yeah, so it's interesting question. So it depends on any so if someone's had a sterling character in the past, it depends on what we're defining as past. So if we've known so let's give an example, a thought experiment. So we grew up with someone, and we grew up with someone, and we lived in same town with them, went to high school with them, maybe went to college with them. So we have maybe 22 years of good character of a behavior arc, and then we lost contact with them for a couple years, two years, four years, and all sudden, they're back in our lives, and now they're asking us to do a behavior that's out of character from that arc they were on before. I'm gonna have some skepticism. I'm gonna look for some transparency. You know, even though they've had a sterling character, we've had a deviation and an ask, and it's not just going to be the ask. That's a deviation I get. I guarantee you there's going to be other behaviors. They're going to be deviating from the behaviors we've seen from them in the past. And so what I'm going to do in that situation is I'm going to be seeking some transparencies. Hey, so tell me what happened when you left college and we lost contact. Tell me about life since then. So I'm gonna be looking for new data points to fill in the gap of time in different situation, if we have someone that's been Sterling character with us in the past, and But the past is only like until, like, a week ago. That behavior arc of time is going to be probably pretty. Congruent, and something is going to happen at that time. But in other words, if I see a deviation in a pattern behavior, I'm going to be looking at that period of time in which I've lost contact to try to explain that behavior away or understand what caused it.
**Robert Riggs**
You know, as an investigative reporter, I interviewed a lot of people that had a lot to hide, didn't want to disclose it. Yet, they've gone on camera. And I can remember one big interview in which the once the person, the government official, figured out that I knew the facts, that I had, documents that he never thought anybody would have. He got what I called cotton mouth. The mouth goes dry, starts smacking the lips. I'm sure you've seen this walk me through, because oftentimes all I really had to go on was, well, I had the record. I knew what was the truth of the record, but the non verbal cues that people should look for in their interpersonal relationships.
**Robin Dreeke**
Stress. What you saw as non verbals for stress, what? What non verbals cannot tell us alone is truth and honesty and deception. You know, my good friend Joe Navarro, one of the greatest non verbal experts in the world, will always tell you, even now, that the greatest non verbal experts in the world are only 50% accurate using non verbals alone to detect deception. What non verbals can tell us is stress, and you just gave a great example of it. When someone is caught in a lie, you're going to have stress response. That's why polygraphs aren't admissible in court, because polygraphs are not truth detectors. They're they measure physiological responses to stimulus into questions. In a physiological response can be a stress response, but remember, stress can be a bad thought or memory. It could be deception, it could just be anything, but it is a stress response. And so what we want to do is, when we see a stress response, which is like you saw, you know, describe, you know, cotton mouth, or, you know, drying to the mouth, blink, eye rate, blinking, blocking, blading, compression, anything coming in, it's a stress response. If we see a stress response, I like to explore, oh, what caused that stress? Let's not guess at it, because if we guess, we could be guessing wrong. So I'll start exploring it. Because what we're going to quickly find when we start exploring it, we're going to see what areas they're not comfortable or stressed and sharing, and then we can make new choice about how to press forward or not, and most of the time, if I see stress response, I back off and say, No, let's come back another day, or let's not engage at all. Or I'm just going to make a decision to back away because we have really unhealthy things going on right here, unless they're willing to be more transparent and open up about what's causing the stress.
**Robert Riggs**
Well, of course, in my situation, I had one shot, one interview, they weren't going to do another one. They were kind of caught. But what I would get at is I would find they would start changing the story. They couldn't remember the facts, the story they had before, and really would start to build on the lies and and just dig a hole.
**Robin Dreeke**
Yeah it gets hard with when people start lying, because you can't remember when you're not remembering truth and remember and you're trying to create a lie on the fly, or even even not on the fly. Lies don't hold up because there's no congruency to the especially timelines. Timelines and lies generally are the things that undo them rapidly, especially like Statement Analysis experts. What they'll do is they'll have them recount what happened in reverse order. That's one thing that'll do. And also they'll have them write it down. And if they write it down, you're to see time gaps, because generally people, when they're writing and sharing a story, they're generally following a sequence of time. They'll talk in like, five or 10 minute increments, like I got like, Tell me what happened this morning, you know, and we know a bad thing happened in the morning that where we think this person might have actually committed a murder, they could have committed a crime or did something that they don't want to share. And happen in the morning. So tell me. Walk me through your morning. Well, I got up this morning, and what happened next, I brushed my teeth, and what happened next? I had breakfast, and then what happened next? Um, I got in the car and went to work. Well, we seem to have a time gap there, and so we have a tempo of sharing that ship. And so in other words, we've identified time period in which something happened. So tell me more. And then we say, well, tell me more about what happened between time you had breakfast and you got in the car. Well, then they're using words like, well, they're trying to word use, word modifiers, and so as well, as well. Well, let's do this hypothetically. What would you go when you throw that word hypothetically out there? It allows people to imagine without committing it themselves. And then you can start using the rationalizations, projections and minimizes. Well, you know, rationally. You know, bad things happen everyone. It's not a big deal. You know, the way we can do things is, you know, it's not nearly as bad as probably this is probably only as bad as this. And then, you know, people that commit this, well, they're not really bad people. They're just trying to overcome something that's been a challenge in their own lives, you know. So that's so, that's how we kind of zero in that area. We help people, we bring them up to the cliff without pushing them off the cliff. This. What I mean, that's what you did as a profession, is you inspired people to tell you inspired people to tell the truth before they had an opportunity to lie by inspiring to feel safe with you.
**Robert Riggs**
Absolutely yes. Now that you look at criminal cases, do you find any similarities to your work when you were recruiting spies and doing counter intelligence?
**Robin Dreeke**
There's a lot of similar there's more similarities than I thought there was. The similarity is this, everyone has a story, everyone has a life arc, and everyone has challenges, priorities, pain points and friction points in life. Everyone has predictable behavior when you take the time to do a deeper dive to understand what inspired them to be who they are today, because that's my first question I ask in every situation, whether I'm trying to recruit a spy or I'm trying to understand why someone would commit a murder, I'm asking what inspired them to be who they are today. Where was that starting point. What were decision points? Who was in their lives? What relationships do they have, healthy, unhealthy, and what is always this is a truism of human behavior. Everyone is always acting in what they think is their best interest, in terms of their safety, their security and their prosperity. From their point of view, all you have to do is figure out what they think that is, and you can now predict their behavior. The challenge is, is to get do a deep dive with deep empathy, deep context, without judging it, and you can actually predict what's going to happen next.
**Robert Riggs**
I posed the question often asked by listeners about the causal behavior of serial killers.
Is it nature or nurture?
**Robin Dreeke**
and what I say that is so there's aspects of both. I think I've seen cases where you have. Most cases, I've seen people are born with psychopathy. You know, they have a lack of empathy. There's something that's not turned on. They are born with a broken brain, as a good friend of mine, Dr Chris Mahoney, has said, and now what they do with that broken brain will vary according to Nate, to nurture. I've seen some people that are, that are great CIA case officers, that have a lack of empathy, that have that have then gone off the rails. And then, instead of killing people, they've built people and old people out of billions of dollars, using their psychopathy and no empathy to take advantage of of those that they can take advantage of. Instead of killing people, they've built people out of millions. And then you have the other side that they're going to kill people, to get their rise and rush. And so how it manifests itself is a large part of the the nurture part. But then, I mean, I have heard again, I don't, I don't, I believe it, just because I've heard it from other professionals that, you know, psychopathy can evolve in someone as well. So I think human beings are complex things. I think it's always going to be a little bit of both in there.
**Robert Riggs**
I have heard these stories from people in psychiatry profession who study serial killers that in terms of psychopaths, there are CEOs that are great CEOs because they're psychopaths.
**Robin Dreeke**
100% Yeah, because they're all amongst us. Matter of fact, there's a great book, Robert Green's book, The 48 Laws of Power. It's basically a psychopath manual, because it is all it is a narcissist guidebook, because power and psychopathy tend to want to go hand in hand sometimes. So because, again, I think it's the extreme of the focus of self gets to such an extreme. And some of these CEOs, if they're so focused on self, they're ruthless, they'll take advantage of others. They'll Yeah, it happens.
**Robert Riggs**
Yet we find people like that in politics and business that receive great admiration. It's like a lot of people cannot see it. They can't see the the evil behind the genius.
**Robin Dreeke**
It's hard pure pure psychopaths are great chameleons. They'll give people what it is they want to hear. Remember, people will consume things that will validate their own self opinion, because it to invalidate our own self opinion goes against who we are, again, as a species. And so what psychopaths are good at is giving you what it is you want to hear, so you feel good about them and what you and you. And so they feed into that, that own sense of self by what it is they're sharing.
**Robert Riggs**
How do you personally do that so you don't fall into it?
**Robin Dreeke**
I take in as much data as possible. I worked with some of the world's greatest psychologists when I was on the behavior team, and I remember we were working one of fact, one of them is Dr Reed Malloy, world renowned in in violence and trauma and all things in this area. And I remember my first behavioral assessment. We went out because my team, we would always do a behavioral assessment. We'd assemble three to five case agents that were active, operationally, that were really good, and then we'd always bring in one operational psychologist to ensure our science was sound with our operations. Remember, we're assessing a video of of an individual that was a suspect that had done some espionage, and we didn't have much to go on, and we're just watching this one video we had. It's about a 20 or 30 minute video, and I remember we're us as operations folks. We're trying to come to conclusions on things, and we're starting to jump ahead and making some some assumptions and some conjecture. And I remember he said something I always held with me, goes, we don't have enough data points for that. It's like, but we're seeing it because, yeah, but there's not enough data points. It's too small of a period of time. We need more data. Need more data. And so I always kind of default to more data. More behavior is always good behavior. You can
never have too much.
**Robert Riggs**
Do the CIA also do the same kind of analysis for counter espionage and counter intelligence recruiting their case and did their case officers also do that? You did it domestically? They did it internationally.
**Robin Dreeke**
Yeah, everyone's doing the same thing there. So their behaviors, the way they do their behavior stuff, is a little bit different than ours. Their operational psychologists will be a little more in the field than ours generally are, from what I understand, everything ebbs and flows with time, but we're all doing exactly the same thing. We're all looking for key motivations of human behavior to inspire someone to feel safe with us, to to assess who might be willing to, you know, do quid pro quo on the information they give that something they need in their life is so critical that they're willing to use something so risky to risk, you know, to to an exchange. And so that's always the thing. It's the toughest thing in the world to do is to assess what is so critical in one's person's life that they're willing to do it. In the same other person next to him could have the same critical life stressor, but not make the same choice.
**Robert Riggs**
Yeah. I mean, I've always said, look, the mistake you'd make as a reporter is thinking you can't think like a criminal. You know, they don't act the way Robert would act, you know,
**Robin Dreeke**
Right. Well, because everyone can, you and I could be twins, going through exactly the same upbringing and do exactly the same thing, but how we perceived and how we interacted with the world around us is going to be different. How we're going to respond to the stimulus is going to be different. I often because I was in the same field office. I was actually Robert Hansaen, the notorious spy for the FBI, was on my squad before I got there in New York. I mean, I was the people I worked with, worked with him and this and his rationale for what he did and Earl Pitts and other spies inside the FBI, they were in New York, and they said New York was horrible. The Bureau didn't pay us enough money in their wine and bitching and planning because they had the victim, their wound collecting mindset. Meanwhile, I knew everyone else on a squad that didn't make the same choices, yet they're dealing with same stressors. And so that's the thing you can't predict in everyone else. There's no doubt,
**Robert Riggs**
Robert Hanssen and Earl Pitts, both former FBI agents, betrayed their country by engaging in espionage activities for Soviet and Russian intelligence services.
Robert Hanssen's espionage activities began in 1979, just three years after joining the FBI.
Operating under aliases such as "Ramon Garcia," Hansen provided the KGB with thousands of classified documents, including U.S. nuclear war strategies, military weapon developments, and counterintelligence details.
His actions led to the compromise of several KGB agents working secretly for the United States, some of whom were executed.
Hanssen's motivations were primarily financial, as he received over $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over two decades.
He was arrested in 2001.
**Robert Riggs**
Earl Pitts, another FBI agent, began his espionage activities in 1987 while assigned to the FBI's New York office.
Unlike Hanssen, Pitts initiated contact with the KGB, offering his services due to grievances with the FBI and financial difficulties.
Over five years, he provided high-quality intelligence to the Soviets, including a list of all KGB agents in the United States known to the FBI.
Pitts received payments totaling over $224,000. His espionage was uncovered when his former KGB handler defected to the United States and identified him as a mole.
The FBI conducted a sting operation, leading to Pitts's arrest in 1996.
**Robin Dreeke**
It's interesting in the world, in that world, in typically, like the Russians and most spy organizations, don't have to be proactive in trying to find someone to recruit. People will self recruit because of these feelings of victimization, of wound collecting, they're going to get reciprocity. So that's generally who they're going to get.
**Robert Riggs**
Sounds like the management of these agencies needed to read your book.
**Robin Dreeke**
You know, the easiest thing when preventing insider threat is not to create an environment where you create one.
**Robert Riggs**
Now that you look at criminal cases, do you see any trends, or do you see any common denominators?
**Robin Dreeke**
Trends and common denominator. Common denominators is unhealthy behavior that is always a common denominator, sure. Um, and I think the trend I saw, it'll be interesting. I think it's kind of ebbing away a little bit, uh, COVID had a major effect on crime and and mental health, because some of these things, not not all crimes are committed by mental health issues or challenges, but what I saw as a major trend, because of COVID and also because of the time period we're living in, we're seeing, especially with younger kids, or kids people that are younger, maybe in their 20s, sometimes 30s, their set of problem solving skills is not what it used to be. And so because they didn't grow up with great problem solving skills, they're going from zero to violence more rapidly, I think, than other generations have in the past. Because like when you and I are growing up, if you faced a problem as in your 20s or in your 30s? Well, hell, I grew up when I'm my teenagers. I was going to work when I was, you know, 12, 1314, years old, I was working with people at work. And some people are great. Some people were jerks. You know, I had problem solving skills dealing with society at large at a much younger age. So I had life reps that brought me up to that point. So we had problem solving skills. Now, what's happening in not on all situations, but I'm seeing a lot of these violent crimes that are happening. They're happening and being perpetrated, sometimes by people that have had zero problem solving life skills, up until the point they faced a major crisis. And so they went from zero to major crisis. They don't know what to do. They see other things that are happening, that people do in society. They get copycat things or they or behavior has been highlighted to them as a way to solve this problem is violence, and they go from zero to 100 in a snap.
**Robert Riggs**
You and I share similar backgrounds. Same thing started working at 12 agricultural region. And you know, by I had a lot of experience working for with adults, yeah, so it was adult supervision, but also learning how to talk and get along with adults.
**Robin Dreeke**
Get along with everyone. Get along with good people. Bad people is just get along and there was no one to save you except yourself. It's an interesting balance. I talk about this a lot too. You know, it creates a very greedy, resilient, self reliant individual that can problem solve. But what happens is, is that, you know, like I learned how to solve my problems, and it did take a bit of time in my professional career to realize that in order to be successful, I had to move from being able to solve my problems to figure out how to be a resource for you solving your problems. So you could actually move that next level of engagement, because you're recruiting spies or if you're trying to solve crimes, heinous crimes, not just solving your problem. You got to learn how to solve other people's problems, and so you have. Shift that focus from self to others. And I think that's also what's missing from a lot of you know, when we're talking about trends from people today, is they don't know how to solve or be, or even be interested in solving other people's problems.
**Robert Riggs**
Robin, what do you think the state of trust in America is?
**Robin Dreeke**
Oh, it's at a low right now, but that's okay. And you know why it's okay? Because I'm a study of history, one way I maintain a calm, a calm presence. Because most important thing, I think, when you're assessing True Crime behavior recruiting spies, is you're you're trying to recognize chaos, because you need to diagnose it, you need to be a resource for you need to solve crimes, and that's chaotic, and the only way you can be a resource in those situations is if you don't live in chaos, and you need to have a calm presence yourself. And so I don't do chaos. I don't do crazy brain. And the way I do that, especially in a world right now which is full of chaos, I read a lot of history. History history is very common to me, because as bad, as chaotic as a day today can seem go back 50, 100, 200, 300 years, and you will feel extremely grateful for today and how calm it is by comparison. So I'm always keeping a calm brain, because, yeah, trust is at a low right now, because nation states, what they'll do against us, any adversary, and the Russians are great at is the number one thing the Russians and the Chinese, to an extent, as well, but the number one thing the Russians have always tried to do because, as it was, my career, was against the Russians. Was so distrust in the. In the United States, in the populations, trust, in our organizations, institutions and our government. There you go. That's their number one goal, and they've been pretty effective in the last bunch of years.
**Robert Riggs**
Well with the internet, it's much, much easier to do that.
**Robin Dreeke**
It is. So we had a thing in New York when I was there. As I was in New York in the Manhattan field office of the FBI, working counter intelligence from 97 till my transfer in like 2006 or seven. And they Russians for always, even before I got there and after I left with they had a thing, and we've heard it in news, called active measures. And active measures is when they intentionally put information out there to sow distrust, and they use things for active measures, like in New York at the time before the internet really took hold, was novarusque slova, which is the Russian newspaper based in Brighton Beach. They had other on, you know, not online forums, but they had newspapers. They take out ads, and they'd use active measures in that. They'd use synagogues. They'd use churches, Russian Orthodox churches. They'd use Russian cultural centers to throw this trust using that medium for active measures. Well, the internet age and cyber world and online forums are using the same technique of active measures, just with new a new trade craft because of the online presence they can have now.
**Robert Riggs**
you know, when people ask me why they do that and everything, I take it back, as I said, Well, let me tell you, when I was a young wet behind the ears kid from East Texas on a defense committee in Congress with the top secret security clearance, I figured out real quick they want our stuff.
**Robin Dreeke**
They fear they fear our they fear our freedom and my good. I have a good friend who's retired CIA case officer, who was chief of station in Moscow, and he was a high executive and agency for a while. And Russian expert speaks fluent Russian, and he says pretty simple. He said, they fear what we have. And when you fear something, you'll go anything again, reverse context. If you fear something so bad, and you have all the resources you can, you're going to pour every resource you have to counter that fear. And then since, since they fear the freedom we have in the West and the Liberty we have, they're going to do everything they can undermine it.
**Robert Riggs**
So what we've discussed here in terms of tells and as it applies to criminal behavior, anything else you want to add?
**Robin Dreeke**
No, I just just reiterate, it's all about that congruency. We're looking for congruence of behavior, looking for congruence of language, and we're looking for patterns of behavior over time. If we're seeing patterns that are all sudden spiking out of a norm, that's a point we need to be concerned about. And if we're seeing an escalation of negative, unhealthy behavior, it's time to extricate yourself, or get that person some help, or both.
**Robert Riggs**
Yet, many people stay in it.
**Robin Dreeke**
Yeah, they're addicted to the trauma. They get trauma bonded. A lot of times. I've seen that in in the cases that where we see someone that is, they're they're groomed into negative behavior so they get, you know, it's almost like a cult mentality, where a cult will love bomb you at the very end, very beginning, kind of like you're giving the example of this pedophile. He had a book on how to groom someone. Well, it's the same thing in most of these unhealthy relationships. People are groomed into unhealthy. People don't want to be an unhealthy relationship. People know how to avoid it. If it goes from zero to unhealthy. But all of a sudden you meet someone. This person identifies quickly early on, what your what your trauma responses are, and what your insecurities are, and they're going to validate you in those insecurities by by love bombing you, as it's called, you know, in those areas, that they're going to make you feel very special in those areas, then they're going to slowly escalate it to unhealthy behavior, where the shift is going to go from you to them. And then they're going to dole out that validation in those insecurities less and less, but they're going to make it so that you would you get a. Addicted to the little bit they're giving you as they're traumatizing you in every other aspect.
**Robert Riggs**
And do they consciously know they're doing this? Is there like a plan or or they've learned it, or
**Robin Dreeke**
it's part of the it becomes part of who they are, and it's very unhealthy, and it's, it's and it's hard to recognize it when you're in it. That's why loving critics in your life, if they're the ones that need to really step in and intercede for you, the ones that you know, if you have at least one halfway healthy person that can try to extricate them, that's really key and critical.
**Robert Riggs**
So as a reporter, this is what I've seen that's most common.
**Robin Dreeke**
It really is. It's most common everywhere. So if things are going to go sideways in someone's life. Again, it doesn't go from zero to 100 it goes from zero to a little bit of unhealthy to a lot of bit of unhealthy.
**Robert Riggs**
one final thing I did want to ask you about the alleged assassin of The Healthcare Executive. Yeah, you know, I think there was a news report that maybe he's he's gotten a half million dollars in donations for his fund. There's just been this huge upswing in support for him. Of so many people feel they've got a grievance. What do you make of this?
**Robin Dreeke**
Those are a bunch of misled people. I've covered this case pretty extensively, so it's so social media, when he first assassinated that executive social media portrayed him as a social justice warrior. You know, he's going against the system. He's doing this because he's kind of this Robin Hood kind of guy. He's not this guy is a narcissistic maniac that was self serving. So if you look at his arc, so he was portrayed as this individual that might have had a back problem, who didn't have healthcare coverage, and all these things. He then goes out to Hawaii, whereas his back injury gets exasperated, and so maybe sitting around with his buddies out there and say, we need to do something against the system. Well, go further back in his arc, and he comes from an extremely wealthy family that's very philanthropic. They give a lot of money to the healthcare system, and he had all he could have easily. Had health care. He went off the grid from his parents. His mother couldn't find him. And so here's someone that had all the tension played on him. He went to the best schools he was he was top of his class. And so here's someone that had all nothing but positive attention on him. He then falls off the grid. He then gets potentially, I I've heard, you know, on painkillers or whatever. You know, it's all conjecture. But He then gets involved with the group of people that are anti government, anarchists. I've seen a couple of them that that part of the group is part of in Hawaii, interviewed that were that, you know, were, I wouldn't say, idolizing. They're doing book studies on TED, Kaczynski, the Unabomber, you know, people that were anti society and anti this. And so you can do a thought experiment about how he missed the attention he was getting. And he said, I can do this. I'll get some attention doing this. People will look at me. People will care about me because he didn't need the money his parents had the money for health care. So even though, say, he was 26 year olds coming off his parents health care. So they are billionaires. So again, social media portrayed him as a social justice warrior. He's nothing but a narcissistic killer.
**Robert Riggs**
In a world that often feels threatening and unpredictable, Robin Dreeke’s insights offer a roadmap to navigating human behavior with awareness.
The same skills that allowed him to turn Russian adversaries into spies can empower you to detect deception, build trust with the right people, and avoid those who might do you harm.
I highly recommend reading and studying Dreeke’s book, “Sizing People Up”.
My copy is filled with highlighted takeaways.
And I suggest his short edition, “It’s not all about me. The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone.”
In the end, staying safe isn’t about living in fear. It’s about being prepared, staying observant, and thinking like a behavioral analyst in your own life.
Stop. Pause. And Observe.
