Here & Now: Agent of Change

Eric Jackson retired from the FBI after making history as the first black special agent to head up the Dallas office. He's recently written a book, The Agent of Change, How a Black Special Agent Overcame a Troubled Youth and Culture of Racial Disparity Within the Ranks of the FBI. Fox 4 Sean Rabb has more in this week's here and now conversation. We're glad to see you, my friend. And let's just start with what the book is about and work backwards from there for a minute. Tell us about the book. Hello, Sean. This is great to be with you again. I just wanted to sit down and just jot down what I thought about my time in the FBI, which led to me just thinking about a memoir that kind of chronicles my life from five years old up to the time that I retired from the FBI in 2019. Much of what you did extended beyond your family, the benefit of it beyond your family to the larger community. Yeah, and also I didn't write the book to make money. I wrote the book to just have a conversation not only with my family but also with the community. Because there are a lot of misnomers about the FBI. There are a lot of things that are being said about current and present members of the FBI. And I just wanted to take a moment to hopefully dispel some of those. But also to just tell the American people that this is how my journey started, where it led to, and all of the incredible things that I had the opportunity to do within the FBI. And I hope that someone sees that and they may see a career in the FBI. But also, hopefully the public looks at this book and says, this is not the FBI that's being portrayed today. It's a totally different FBI. And that's what another one of my hopes is in writing the book. Not only working to stop spies, stop terrorists, stop drug cartels, rescue people from kidnappings and things like that. Those are things that the FBI afforded me the opportunity to do. And I really am proud of my time in the FBI, but I'm also humbled and honored at my time in the FBI. What do you think you changed in the bureau as you came up, Eric Jackson? I think one of the things I changed was just a perception of black special agents in the FBI. There are many who did it before me. There are some incredible black leaders that really stood their ground and achieve even greater levels of success than what I achieved. What I think I brought was I was willing to have the conversation at the highest levels with Director Comey or Director Mueller during this time that there were some things that were wrong with the FBI where black special agents were working hard. They were doing incredible cases, but they were not being afforded the opportunities that their other colleagues were being afforded. And I think that's one of the things that I take away is that I was willing to have that discussion without fear of how it would impact my career. Well, that's a way that you worked to change the bureau, but how did working in the bureau change you? I will tell you working in the bureau changed me because I grew up and I believe in a life of service. My book, The Agent of Change, shows people that as a young boy growing up in Memphis, I had to find myself. I was lost. I was doing a lot of things that if I was this day, it would probably foreshadow that my life would be forfeited and nothing great would come from it. That's what I'm hoping the book shows. The key word in my book's title is change. And if you look at the definition of change in Webster's dictionary, it talks about being something different, becoming something different. And that's what I hope the book, the readers will read and see that it's not where you start, it's where you finish one portion of your life. The Agent of Change, where can we get your book, sir? It's on Amazon. It's published in hardcover, paperback, and also eBooks, and we're working on an audio version of it also. Appreciate you and best with your book, my friend, The Agent of Change.