Robert Eringer

Early life

Eringer is the son of a Disney illustrator and fine artist known as Papa Duke. He spent his first fourteen years in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, California, attending Beverly Hills High School before moving to London, England. Eringer graduated from The American School in London, while his parents created a wholesale dessert business called Kaysens, Eringer and his brother Michael established a business to compliment Kaysens, Tricky Dick’s Coffee House (1974–78).

Education

Eringer's undergraduate status is, some-college. In 1974, Eringer completed a semester at Cape Cod Community College with a curriculum geared to Criminal Justice. In 1975, at American University in Washington, D.C., Eringer studied Government, Law and International Relations and wrote a term-paper on the Bilderberg Group. The following year, "Bilderberg File: The Men Who Rule the World?" was published in the UK magazine, Verdict, commencing Eringer's journalism career in 1976. Research for the book that later followed, The Global Manipulators (1980), led to professional relationship with Dr. Carroll Quigley, the author of Tragedy and Hope (1966), and Eringer sat-in on Quigley's Western Civilizations course at Georgetown University in 1976. In 1978, Eringer completed coursework at the University Southern California (London, UK) in International Relations. The graduate-level program included field-trips to places such as the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany, which led to his writing a feature article, "U.S. agents learn ropes at 'school of spies'" (1986), for the Toronto Star.

Pottker et al. v Feld et al.

As a Washington D. C. based literary agent and book consultant in the 1990s, Eringer found himself working a controversial assignment for Clair George, a former Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA who was convicted on one count and later pardoned in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1990, a celebrity journalist, Janice Pottker, published an 11,000 word article about the Feld family in Regardie's magazine. Upon reading, Kenneth Feld (Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus) took umbrage to her portrayal of his parents and hired Clair George as a consultant to mitigate damages that the proposed book might cause the family and business. George in turn, assigned Eringer (1993–95) to distract the author by encouraging her to write about other topics. Pottker suspects that the unauthorized Feld family biography became an untouchable topic in literary circles, but two of Pottker's books, Crisis in Candyland (1995) and Celebrity Washington (1996), were published during this time period.(p3) In 1999, Pottker sued for $60 million, claiming, "invasion of privacy, fraud and infliction of mental distress." Citing ongoing litigation, Feld Entertainment refrained from commenting for the May 4, 2003, 60 Minutes feature and the outcome of Pottker et al. v. Feld et al. appears to be unresolved or sealed as of October 2014. However, Pottker informed the St. Petersberg Times that she has "no plans to write about Feld or Ringling Bros. ever again."

On January 18, 2004, the St. Petersburg Times retrospectively reported that Janice Pottker had filed a complaint against the Feld family, Clair George, and Robert Eringer in 1999, seeking $120 million for invasion of privacy, interference in business relationships, infliction of emotional distress, fraud, conspiracy and breach of contractual obligations. Pottker filed the lawsuit after discovering that Ken Feld and Clair George paid Eringer to "...to steer her away from stories on Feld..." and prevent Pottker’s proposed book, "Highwire" an unauthorized biography of Irvin Feld and the Feld family from being published. "I interviewed this man once in 1988, and I feel as if he's been stalking me ever since," Pottker said of Kenneth Feld.

Monaco

Eringer vacationed in the Principality of Monaco throughout the 1980s and wrote Monaco Cool (1992), while living in Monaco for two years (1988–89). He returned to reside in Monaco on behalf of a private intelligence client in 1994 and 1995. In late 1999, Prince Albert II, the hereditary prince, commissioned Eringer for a report on a Monaco-based Russian businessman named Alexey Fedorichev; subsequently, the reigning monarch, Prince Rainier III, declined to allow Fedorichev to invest in ASM, Monaco’s football club. While completing ongoing counterintelligence activities for the FBI, Eringer's additional intelligence reports on Russian activities in Monaco led to a full-time retainer on June 16, 2002, as Prince Albert's intelligence adviser.

Power struggle in the Monarchy

Upon ascension in 2005, Prince Albert II announced that Monaco would shed W. Somerset Maugham's moniker of, "a sunny place for shady people." In his accession speech, the Prince declared that he would fight with all of his strength to ensure that money-laundering and Monaco would no longer be synonyms in the common vernacular. The declaration caused an expansion of Eringer's scope of responsibilities, the Prince commissioned Eringer to create and direct Monaco’s first intelligence service. One of the Monaco Intelligence Service's (MIS) early recommendations was to deny the renewal of Sir Mark Thatcher's residency card due to a troubling background check. In addition to investigations, Eringer's MIS established inter-governmental liaison relationships with twenty foreign intelligence services, including the CIA and the (UK) Secret Intelligence Service.

Prince Albert II's original anti-corruption cabinet appointments (December 2005) did not last long. As described by Nice RendezVous, MIS vetted Cabinet Director, Jean-Luc Allavena was dismissed in November 2006, and replaced in favor of the serving General Secretariat, Georges Lisimachio. An attempt to dismiss Eringer was made in 2006; however, Prince Albert asked him to remain, limiting his scope of operations to international intelligence liaison relationships. MIS was funded without incident throughout 2007, but Eringer's invoice for Quarter 1, 2008, went unpaid, calls and correspondence went unanswered for the remainder of the year.

Results of Monaco litigation

Lawyers for the Palace of Monaco publicly called Eringer a shakedown artist when he sued for $60,000 to recover back-wages and expenditures. Eringer however, had already filed a thirty-four page declaration, detailing his duties and findings with the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Barbara (Case No., 1339892), on October 5, 2009. Eringer's disclosure of all of his Monarchy activities to the public record, controversial or not, preempted and nullified shakedown allegations published in Forbes magazine in 2011, Eringer's challenge to criminally charge him went unanswered.

The Superior Court of California ruled that “because all of Eringer’s services were governmental, employing him was not a commercial act exempt from FSIA immunity.” According to a court judgment filed on July 10, 2013, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s original ruling. The court determined that “according to his own attorneys and affidavit, Eringer’s assignments” for the Principality were “not the type of employment private parties can undertake” and therefore fell within the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA).

In 2011, Eringer was ordered by the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris to remove defamatory illustrations, photographs, and blog posts of and about Prince Albert II, lawyer Thierry Lacoste, chief of administration and accountant Claude Palmero, and chief of police André Muhlberger from his blog. In September 2012, the French justice system found Eringer guilty of public defamation and insult.

Ultimately, the two parties sued each other to a standstill, Eringer's suit to recover wages and expenses against the Prince and Principality is moot under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) and Monaco's defamation and insult suit is moot under the SPEECH Act.

Books