Fool Me Twice: A 'Russian Spy' and a South Dakotan Operative Fall in Love I Part 1

Campside Media. Welcome to Infinus, a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. I'm Vanessa Grecoiades, and this is a three-part series. It's called Fool Me Twice. This week, we have a story about a man who wanted to be a kind of puppeteer behind powerful people. He became a Washington insider, a Republican operative, and he conned dozens of people out of millions of dollars along the way. He denies any wrongdoing, just so you know. His schemes earned him a heavy prison sentence, but he got out early. His name is Paul Erickson. Now, Paul Erickson, who has given very, very few interviews, is from South Dakota, and so is journalist Paul Glatter, who's known Erickson for decades. I know, it's a lot of guys named Paul. Here's Paul Glatter to tell the story of how Paul Erickson got out of prison so much sooner than anyone expected. It's late one night in Minnesota, in January 2021. The cold winter wind whips around a small, low-rise, brown building covered in snow. The building is a federal prison, FPC Duluth. Club fed, some people call it, because it's minimum security, so it's almost like a college dorm. Inside, one inmate, Paul Erickson, sleeps fitfully in his bunk. Meanwhile, just down the hall, some of Paul's buddies are watching the news. Suddenly, at 1 a.m., one of them is running toward Paul's cell. One of my buddies comes running down the hall and runs into my room, makes me happy. Paul, Paul, wake up. You're on TV. Paul springs awake and rushes back down the hallway to see for himself. He stares at the screen, trying to figure out what's going on. At 8 o'clock, that morning I get paid for the counselor's office, and I walk into his office and normally a very cocky, kind of confident guide. It kind of looks at me and says, I guess you're going home today. Paul Erickson had just been pardoned by the President of the United States. The inveterate con man had somehow conned Donald Trump to let him walk out of a hefty prison sentence. I mean, you couldn't write a more poetic ending, and presidential pardons at Duluth were very rare. He had no idea what was going on. His lawyer had been working contacts, but a pardon seemed a slim possibility. The rumors were that, around Christmas, the President was so angry he was ordering a rubber stamp with a signature on it so he could do a 3,000 in a row. And then going into last week, the number kept falling. Tuesday night I went to bed and the rumor was no beat more than 50, and I just couldn't imagine that I would make the cut. Do you remember the last scene in the movie cast away with Tom Hanks? He was in an SUV driving across Texas, and that's going to be me for the next two or three weeks. So, I've got a thank you tour to do. Yeah. You know, starting in DC, going to New York, and then ultimately wanting up going along and Mar-a-Lago, whatever they require. The thing is, the story of how Paul ended up in prison in the first place is even more interesting than the way he was sprung. My name is Maria Buchina. I am not a spy. What can Michael Flynn, Maria Buchina and Paul Erickson have in common among the long-term others? The Justice Department all threatened them. He did the two things that he claims that he did, and he lied and he stole. I was absolutely convinced he worked for the CIA or the NSA. Anytime you have 76 victims, I mean, that's a lot of people whose lives are affected. So, yes, we just started at the end of the story with Paul Erickson getting pardoned by Donald Trump and sprung out of prison. And that will become a very big plot point later on. But now we're going to go all the way back to the beginning, because Paul Erickson has a crazy story. It's about sketchiness and Russian spies and even John Wayne Bovett, the guy whose wife cut his penis off with a knife. It's a story about a profocateur who went super high in life, and it's also a story of two people who fell in love, found something in each other, and maybe even conned each other. I'm going to let the journalist you just heard from, the other Paul, Paul Glatter, take it from here, because he was close to Erickson before any of this happened. I knew Paul years before he had the pardon. Years before he got into any of the stuff I just mentioned. He's from South Dakota, like me, and we've known each other a long time. He defines his life by his faith in God. He's a Lutheran, and he once told a South Dakota newspaper he bases his whole mission in life on a line from the Bible, for by grace, ye are saved by faith. But was this really Paul Erickson's north star? I knew Erickson had links to the Republican Party and lots of friends in high places, but I never had a clear understanding of what he did for a living. It would take me a long time to find that out. Because for his bold and brazen as Erickson was, he also shied away from the limelight. He preferred to be a puppeteer, pulling the strings offstage out of view. He saw himself as the brains behind the throne. He rarely gave interviews to the press, which made the conversations we had all the more valuable and fascinating. And those conversations started way back in the late 90s, on campus at the University of South Dakota. The first university in the Dakotas. The campus is in a little town called Vermillion. It had two grocery stores, nine bars, and a Democrat voter base, a liberal pocket and a vast sea of wide open spaces. I imagine I was wearing Doc Martin lace-up shoes, khaki cargo pants, and an oversized flannel shirt. I'm hanging out with my favorite political science professor. We all called him Doc, or Doc Farber. He was a Yoda-like man in his late 80s, just over 5 feet tall, wearing sweater vests and bolo ties and thick glasses that magnified his hourly eyes. He'd spent six decades at the University and mentored legions of students. He was so beloved, they built a statue to honor him while he was still alive. I was Doc Farber's faculty assistant. I'd shovel snow from his sidewalks. I'd drive him to meetings and help him with emails. And maybe in exchange, he asked me hard questions, offered career suggestions, and introduced me to interesting people. I loved going over to Doc Farber's. His living room had a 1970s, textured green carpet, lazy boy swivel chairs, and a clunky console TV, which docked tuned each evening to one of his most famous former mentees at the University. This is NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokal. Good evening from London from Buckingham Palace, where tonight this nation... It was here I met a guy sitting in one of the recliners, wearing a press shirt and jeans one day. He was bald on top with bushy, beauzo the clown hair on the sides. Paul Erickson. We started talking. It turned out that not only had Erickson gone to the University of South Dakota for a time, but he was actually from this same little college town. We had fun conversations like this one about kids in South Dakota listening to radio while they were farming. They were driving in the parents tractor in the field. They're going to the field. All they do is listen to radio in the farm kids. They don't know it, but they have for the same reasons. More than basic knowledge of opera. Because every Saturday on NPR, you know, we're out of the field, they would play like an unedited full broadcast in the Metropolitan Opera House. It was just kind of funny, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade and all that stuff. Somebody would think some casual reference to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or something like that. Oh, yeah. Then the third act and then met him butterflies. He died and I got it. How would you know that? As we talked, he revealed himself as a pretty unusual guy. My multiple corporate venture teams over a career spans almost 40 years, five presidential campaigns, three democratic resistance movements around the world. I've fought in three and a half wars, been wounded, brought down governments, installed, you know, presidents. I was never sure how much of his story to believe, but at the time, I had no reasons to doubt him. It was obvious that Erickson was a firm Republican and he wanted me to know that not only was he a Republican, but he was a prominent Republican whose opinion mattered. We set out exactly 10 years ago last month at the breakers in Palm Beach. And I specifically like convened a discussion about who is the heir apparent to a Russian woman. A decade ago, we've never found one. In a decade of looking, when the woman was a once in a generation kind of talent. I mean, the license plates on Paul's car read RTW ING, right wing. It seemed like it all started when he was in college. He only spent a year at the University of South Dakota before transferring to Yale. This was back in the early 80s. Ronald Reagan was president. We as Americans have the capacity now as we've had in the past to do whatever needs to be done. To preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. Russia was fighting the war in Afghanistan. Nuclear arsenals were bulging. After a nuclear war, the whole of Europe could become a vast and inhabitable desert. No industrial... Cold war was back in full swing and fear of communism was in the air. Against this backdrop, Ericsson Medigay called Jack Abramoff. You guys were part of college Republicans back in the day together, right? Yeah. You was chairman. I was executive director. Abramoff would go on to become a lobbyist, get convicted of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion, and even be immortalized by Kevin Spacey in a movie no one saw called Casino Jack. You were legally allowed to accept money from special interests in order to influence Congress on their behalf. Back in college, Ericsson and Abramoff bonded over their mutual hatred of communism. The two became friends and got up to classic college shenanigans, like burning Soviet flags and breaking down pretend Berlin walls with sledgehammers. Animal House meets Joseph McCarthy. Ericsson soon took the fight against communism more literally. The summer before he graduated, he allegedly traveled to Afghanistan and delivered supplies to insurgents fighting the Soviets. But Ericsson wasn't made to be a foot soldier. He was a wordsmith and a natural provocateur. By the time he graduated from Yale, he'd made a name for himself in conservative circles. And in 1984, he got national attention with a well-timed parody, like the kind you'd see on Saturday Night Live. At an event on the Reagan-Bush campaign trail, Ericsson and the college Republicans were a warm-up act. Ghostbuster is topping the box office, so Ericsson was wearing a tan work suit, goggles and a proton pack. Helping to save America on a private set. Ericsson, full head of hair, speaks earnestly to a crowd of Republicans, a pair of white ski goggles rests on his forehead. American people pay that people expect to know is democratic arguments. Ericsson and his crew then led the audience in a chant of Fritz Busters, a dig at democratic nominee Walter Fritz Mondale. But this was just the beginning of Ericsson's career. And what happened next was way crazier. That's coming up after the break. We all have questions that keep us up at night. The self-help industry tells us they have answers. As a journalist and a skeptic, I'm not so sure. So I've set out to talk to people who have gone to radical links to find answers. I'm Katherine Roland. From something else and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Seeking. On season one, we're diving deep into the portal of plant medicine and psychedelics. Listen to Seeking, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Inthmus from campsite media. So, after graduating from college like any good Pravakatour, Ericsson took his passion for fighting communism to Hollywood. Dolph Lundgren is taking off his gloves. In 1987, Paul teamed up with his buddy, Jack Abramoff, to make an anti-communist movie called Red Scorpion. In it, Lundgren plays a Soviet soldier sent to kill an anti-communist rebel leader. But Lundgren turns on communism and ends up siding with the rebels. First he was their weapon. Whaa? Now he's their punishment. Red Scorpion. Red Scorpion was based loosely on the life of an anti-communist guerrilla leader who received millions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight Angola's Russian-backed government. Red Scorpion, Jack was a useless producer, by a relative and an exec produced it. Abramoff filmed the movie in Namibia, which at the time was under the control of South Africa's apartheid government. By making the movie, Abramoff and Ericsson broke a boycott of apartheid South Africa. Ultimately, Red Scorpion was a box office flop, but Ericsson insists it did well at Blockbuster Video. Even so, Ericsson didn't stay in the movie business for long. I am today declaring my candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Oh! Oh! Oh! Ericsson became the National Political Director for Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign. Buchanan was a somewhat fringe candidate, a populist, and a traditional Catholic family values paleo-conservative. The long-term strategy to make America first again in manufacturing industry business the way we once were. Yeah, Buchanan used the slogan, Make America First again, way back in 1992. Anyway, the campaign didn't get far, but it served its purpose for Ericsson. He rubbed elbows with more Republican insiders, he met a lot of ambitious conservatives, like Kellyanne Conway, who would go on years later to become one of President Trump's closest advisers. And I work next to him every single day, you know what I see? I see somebody who's doing his best for this country and the results show it and you know it. Ericsson said that Conway had interned under him on the Buchanan campaign and that he later helped her launch her polling company. But I actually had a chance to speak with Kellyanne after a lecture she gave in New Jersey recently. And when I asked her whether those things were true, she told me she never worked for the Buchanan campaign. She rolled her eyes when I mentioned that Ericsson said he helped her launch her company. She said that all he'd done was give advice. For me, it was a reminder of the tall tales Ericsson had been spinning for years. Ericsson was living like he was in a pinball machine, pinging around from opportunity to opportunity. P.T. Barnum, always hunting for the next spectacle, trying to hitch his wagon. It's one of the most talked about stories of the year. The case has struck a nerve. The sword details of a marriage gone berserk. This wasn't about a politician. The 24-year-old manicurist from Venezuela is accused of severing the penis of her husband, 26-year-old John Bobbit, while he was sleeping. No, Ericsson got a job as John Bobbit's media advisor. Five-man jury heard the story of how Mrs. Bobbit ran from their apartment with Mr. Bobbit's penis in her hand and how the organ was reattached in a nine-and-a-half-hour operation. He capitalized on the attention and booked Bobbit on an international love-hertz tour almost immediately. Bobbit was selling t-shirts, autograph steak knives, and even appearing on Howard Stern. So here was Ericsson, cutting deals, organizing press tours, glad-handing at the Republican National Convention, and organizing youth-republican movements. And he would carry on much the same for decades to come, working behind the scenes in the GOP. Until a new relationship took him back into the limelight. That's after the break. Texas Ranger James Holland is a legendary interrogator. They call him the serial killer whisperer. And that's why they asked me to come in because I'm special. When Ranger Holland persuades Air Force that Larry Driscoll to confess to murdering a woman, it's just another case closed for the supercob. Or so it seems. Law enforcement, I would always talk to Trus to make it there to help you. But now that's an totally different ballgame. Now, shocking interrogation tapes reveal how the Ranger really operates. I've never seen anything like it. It's one of the most troubling interviews I've ever heard. You do something for me? What's that? Say I'm sorry. Oh, why? Just say it. Just say I'm sorry. From something else, The Marshall Project and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smoke Screen. Just say you're sorry. Coming May 1st, subscribe on Apple Podcast to binge all episodes or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. This is Infamous from Campside Media. So when I knew Paul Erickson, I knew him to be a bachelor. Long-term relationships, those didn't seem to be his MO, at least until 2016. When I talked to him then, he kept referring to we as in we are helping Trump's transition team. The woman who allegedly turned this fervent anti-communist, this eternal bachelor from an eye to a we was from Russia. A petite, red-haired woman who looked like a Slavic Lindsay Lohan, her name was Maria Butina. I was born in Siberia, such places like Siberia or Farista, Russia. This is a question of survival. Everyone has a gun. This is very important. And it's not only just about criminals, it's about wild animals. So my father taught me in my sister how to shoot. She grew up in a small town closer to Kazakhstan and Mongolia than Moscow. A real frontier town sort of place. We have few policemen. This is a big issue. So in the small villages in Siberia, if you call the police, it could take an hour for them to get to the place. So you will be killed three, ten times or even more. Maria says she had opened a furniture store and got nervous handling large amounts of cash unarmed. Because in Russia, citizens aren't allowed to carry guns for self-defense. So Maria linked up with other people interested in gun rights. We made our organization believe a not in Russian version of McDonald's, which is said together and decided that we have to defend our gun rights. They called the organization the Right to Bear Arms. Now, gun rights aren't a mainstream issue in Russia like they are here. But within a few years of that first gathering, Maria would be at an NRA meeting. The NRA for us has always been an example because there is no more powerful, law-based gun group in the world than the NRA. And it would be through the NRA that Maria would meet Paul Erickson. It was October 2013 in Moscow. Erickson was in town with his pal, NRA President David Keene. But they weren't there to visit the Kremlin or Gazel Vodka in Caviar. Keene had come to speak to the gun rights group run by Maria Butina. I think that freedom is very important and basically any freedom is of gun rights, economy, and I would like to bring this knowledge to Russia. Maria was in her 20s and she caught Paul's eye right away. A week after they met, Paul was already helping Maria apply for a visa to the United States. They exchanged emails. Soon, the pair got together again. They were falling in love. They hit it off. They kind of had a relationship. Here's Bob Driscoll, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who knows Maria well. They started her magic relationship and that's what kicked off her coming more to the U.S. They did long distance for a while and in some ways they were like any couple doing the sort of cheesy things you do when you're in the honeymoon phase of a new relationship. Like when Paul went to visit Maria in Moscow, they recorded a duet of Beauty and the Beast. Oh, the little scared, neither one prepared, Beauty and the Beast. Apparently it was Maria's gift to Ericsson for his birthday. Some haters said this was a little on the nose. All the while, Paul started helping Maria make contacts through the NRA and in U.S. politics. By 2015, Paul was mining new social networks at Yale alumni events and introducing Maria as his girlfriend. I didn't think that she was necessarily using him or anything. I think she was generally of the view, not to stereotype that the American men treated women better than Russian men treated Russian women. I think she was very happy that Paul treated her well and was a good guy. They were a high-powered couple making waves in Republican circles. When Paul Ericsson, it must have felt like a dream come true. Which is why the red flags may have been easy to overlook. Like the fact that Paul Ericsson was in his 50s with that side-sprout bozo that clown hair. And Maria was in her 20s with lush clocks and fashion model features. Not to mention that she was from a country that Ericsson had once despised to the point of burning its flag. In this case, did love conquer all? Uh, maybe. But if you took all that into account, could it have looked less like puppy love and more like Maria was a red sparrow? Was she seducing Paul Ericsson in return for access to powerful Republicans in America? Tune in next week to find out. Thanks for listening to our story on Infamous this week. We'll see you next week with more about Paul Ericsson. I think Paul always was seduced by power. They pretty much took the view that she was a spy. And now I guess I'm a new inmate. Infamous is a production of campsite media and Sony Music Entertainment. It's created, executive produced and hosted by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa Gregoriatus. Shoshish Malvets is our managing producer and editor, Gary Graham, Grace Herriman and Lily Houston Smith are our associate producers. This episode was written by Natalie Robemond, Paul Glatter and Mary Kudhihi, and edited by me and Rajiv Gola. Fact checking by Marilla Gish, sound designed by David Devereaux and recording by Ewan Lai Trumulen. This episode is based on public records and court records. See you next week. ♪ ♪ ♪