August 12, 2025 ā¢ 23 mins
š§ Welcome to the One CA Podcast. Today, host Danny Joseph speaks with Dennis Cosgroveāretired FBI Special Agent who investigated the Russian Mob and the global diamond underworld. In this episode, Cosgrove unpacks how those experiences translate into practical lessons for anyone stepping into law enforcement, diplomacy, or national security.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
This is Dan Joseph. I am your host on the One CA
Podcast and I really appreciate the opportunity to get to be
here and be part of this wonderful group.
Today we have an awesome guest who just jumped on his name is
Dennis Cosgrove. He is a retired special agent
with the FBI mystique and Mystery.
He's been all around the world having amazing adventures.
(00:26):
He's written a couple books, andlet's get to know him a little
more. Dennis, how are you?
Good, Dan. Really great for the opportunity
to talk to you today and I look forward to it and to just
chatting about some of the stuffI've done and hopefully it'll
have relevance for your listeners that are tuning in.
Absolutely. I know it will, and it will for
me personally. I am just now entering into the
world of civil affairs on the Reserve side and just learning
(00:49):
about your background. I jumped on the opportunity to
get to talk to you. I heard just a little bit about
what you've done overseas and around the world, and what
deeply resonated with me was your ability to traverse
multicultural barriers. We're talking from geopolitical
barriers to different ethnic groups, and you're communicating
(01:10):
in a tactical type of environment and situation, not
in the military, not for the DoD, But everything you did
completely coincides with what I've learned personally about
civil affairs. So I wanted to pick your brain
on that and explore how you gained the skill sets you've
had. So I'm done rambling for this
introduction if you want to tellus real quick just about what
(01:32):
it's like being a special agent and kind of color and what you
did. So when I became an agent back
in the mid 80s, believe it or not, there was still a Cold War
rambling on when there was no end insight for that.
And those were the kind of worldthat we were dealing with.
There was the Iron Curtain, thatwas the West, and there was the
rest of the world, essentially. And the Bureau, the FBI, it was
(01:52):
mostly in the United States. We had a few overseas offices in
major cities like London or Paris, but just a handful.
I mean, when you went into the Bureau in those days, there was
no way, no chance you'd ever wind up working overseas.
It was extremely rare. But of course, that changed, and
it changed dramatically when theCold War ended.
(02:12):
But I can get into that a littlebit if something you want to
explore. Frightening.
The types of people you were tracking down.
You want to talk about that a little bit?
Basically, I'm working in KansasCity.
I'd grown up in New York. I have an opportunity to go
study Russian language and the Defense Language Institute, and
I had seen or heard about agentsthat had gone to DLI, the
(02:34):
Defense Language Institute, and I eventually had an opportunity
to go study Russian with the understanding that I'd be
working. Basically, counterintelligence
matters. We had no office overseas at the
time, so when I get transferred to California, I wind up working
organized crime and drugs and the ending of a Cold War.
(02:55):
There's the rise of the Russian mafia.
So it's interesting that Civil Affairs sends a lot of folks up
to DLI. Monterey is beautiful, by the
way. That's got to be the prettiest
Army base ever. I've been up there.
And you going there, you learning Russian, How did you
venture into the crime ring thatyou found out about?
And particularly from a law enforcement perspective, what
was it about your gut reaction to reading people and reading
(03:19):
basically a puzzle in front of you of criminal activity that
led you down the path? What were these crumb trails?
Since growing up in New York, I was around cops, I was a
relatives were detectives and being exposed in that way help
as a child growing up in that environment and then in Kansas
City working organized crime foryour listeners, if they're at
(03:40):
all familiar with several moviesmade by Martin Scorsese such as
Goodfellas or Casino in particular, which some of it was
filmed in Kansas City. In real life it takes place in
Kansas City with the Kansas Citymob.
So from that aspect, I'd been around organizing this crime
type folks. And so when I was dealing with
(04:00):
sources in the San Francisco area that was telling me about
this diamond looting conspiracy,I really thought, OK, there's
something here and this was connected to Russia, obviously.
Now you got to put it in contextbecause at that time there's no
legal attache office in Moscow and Russia, none ever conceived.
We had no relations with Russianlaw enforcement in those days.
(04:23):
The Soviet Union had basically just collapsed.
Now there's 15 separate republics, but there's nothing.
There's no way to reach out to counterpart on the other side
and try to get to the bottom of what could be a huge conspiracy.
The other thing I neglected to mention was I had graduated from
the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, so I had a merchant
(04:44):
officer background and naval background as well.
I was naval reservist, so I had travelled a lot to different
places around the world. I mean, I was in South America,
I was in the Med. So by the time I'm 21 I'm
already have been 2025 countries.
What made you want to specifically learn Russian?
Just talking to fellow agents that some of the best work was
(05:07):
in that side, in that field, thecounterintelligence, because
you're talking about Russian, KGB and very sophisticated
operations globally. Although we did send agents to
study other languages because say Bulgarian or Czech or
whatever, those countries had very active intelligence
services as well. Say the Russian mafia.
(05:29):
Not too much in those days. Obviously within the Soviet
Union the Russian mafia was pretty darn big, but it was only
with the falling of the Iron Curtain that the Russian mafia
really took off. What did you notice stateside
about what was going on? I mean, what signals were you
seeing? I knew that there was extreme
(05:50):
corruption at all levels in Russia and in Russian society,
from the government to St. levelstuff and just all over the
place. I knew there was big corruption.
And I also knew there was an operating elite within their
society that controlled things. And so when I hear that some
Armenians that were very, very poor are all of a sudden
(06:10):
distributing diamonds that they're getting from Russia and
they're based in California, it's not normal for people that
are limited means are suddenly stepping into a world where they
can open their offices in the Transamerica Pyramid building in
San Francisco. There's something going on
behind the scenes. So obviously that got my
suspicions going and there was other things going on as well
(06:32):
that just didn't make sense. The big mystery was the diamond
business itself, which is very hard to understand.
It's very secretive. Imagine stepping into an area
where you really don't know thatmuch.
And I had to rely on analyst andmy own ability as well to do
some research on this area to try to understand, OK, what's
(06:54):
going on here. And then you think about this,
you've got other stuff going on as an agent, you've got other
cases. And you've got to convince your
superior, your my boss, that, hey, there's something going on
here. And I think I can prove
something. And he would come back at me and
he's a pretty decent guy. And he said, you know, Dennis,
what are you doing here? There's no one in Russia you can
turn to that's reliable law enforcement counterpart.
(07:17):
And who's going to tell you if these diamonds are stolen?
Who are you going to go to? KGB.
Yeah, that's another thing I want to ask you about managing
up and down the chain of command.
Like I said, there's 10 podcastsand one talking to you.
It's amazing. Especially when you're dealing
with a really difficult situation, you have to be
patient with yourself and you'vegot to be patient with the
organization and the people around you.
(07:37):
You know, some people may not buy into what you're trying to
do or what you're spending your time doing, and others come
around eventually and some may push back hard on you.
So you're up against all of thatand it could be all even family
wise. It's not your job to convince
everyone around that what you'redoing is righteous and
worthwhile, but you have to havesome kind of a maturity about
(07:57):
that. I'll be honest, I'm actually in
the middle of my civil affairs triple C course.
I'm on my way from being a firstLieutenant and O2 in the Army.
I'll be at O3 pretty soon. I'll be a captain and the
reserves. Now I was active duty, so I'm
about to go to the field and gettested on reading different
cultures and adjusting and adapting my behavior to not ruin
(08:22):
the relationship. And that's why I wanted to to
meet with you, you is because you did this for a living.
And I imagine in life and death situations yourself as an FBI
agent. So can you give me some examples
of things that caught you off guard or that you had to adjust
to and learn pretty quickly where you realized, oh, OK, they
don't speak like an American would speak or conduct
themselves in that way and the subtleties of that?
(08:45):
Yeah, there's so much with that.You'd like to say, OK, this is a
science, but it's not and it's an art form you're constantly
working at. For instance, I can recall when
we first went to Moscow, I had actually forgotten about the the
distance between people. When you're talking in the US,
believe it or not, next time you're talking to someone on the
(09:05):
street or whatever context, justtake notice of how far they are
from you. So in Russia, for instance, all
of a sudden I'm talking to people and they're close.
I mean, they're not American style distance.
And when it happened the first time, it's a little bit
unsettling, right? And it's distracting, too.
But you have to just be on your feet and realize, OK, this is
(09:28):
normal for them. And if I back up or upset or
that this is rattling me, that won't come across very nice.
It would be kind of rude in a way.
I mean, it's not insurmountable.It's not like 800 cultural
things you must know when you'redealing with people.
There's ways to overcome that too.
You have to talk to folks that are familiar with the culture.
Just sit down with them perhaps before you go and deploy
(09:49):
somewhere and get a little bit of a sense and talk to different
people. Because some people that spend a
couple of weeks there may be dropped in for a quick training
or something. They don't know enough.
Their depth of their knowledge and understanding is not enough.
What helped me a lot, I was teaching part time off and on at
the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest
in Hungary, which had opened in the mid 90s.
(10:11):
And it was really helpful to me because it was such good close
engagement I had for an extendedperiod of time.
But there's no simple science tothis, but it's so critical.
So if you're in a social setting, for instance, do what
you do in that social setting isas important, if not more
important than the work setting.Because if you get invited to
someone's home or you go meet them at a restaurant or you go
(10:34):
hiking with them or fishing or whatever it is, you're going to
be exposed to the culture in a very different way.
Because that's the setting wherebarriers are broken down, where
the real conversation is often times where the level of trust
or non trust develop. So once in the Diamond case, we
(10:55):
had two Russian officers. They'd never been to the United
States. You can imagine they were from
the Soviet Union. You know, they were
investigators during Soviet times.
They'd never been outside of theSoviet Union in their lives.
They come to California. We actually just open up
everything for them file wise. I mean, we shared nearly
everything about the case because it winds up being a
(11:15):
joint investigation. So we just took this leap of
faith from the FBI side that we're going to work with them
and if it works out, great. If it doesn't, Oh well.
So that evening I was to pick them up to take them to a
restaurant for dinner. They had just come from Russia.
They work that day flying in from Moscow to San Francisco,
and we're going to take them to just an easy dinner.
(11:37):
I go to the hotel, knock on the door.
They invite me inside. They had a small table set up
with snacks, zakuski. And I see the vodka bottles.
And they just said, Dennis, sit down.
You're going to become one of us.
Well, becoming one of them entails drinking a water glass
size of vodka in one shot. And I'm thinking, how am I going
(11:58):
to get through this one? And I just did it.
Yeah, that's incredible. What just the pressure and the
insanity of I'm going to drink this alcohol, become potentially
intoxicated. I don't know if incapacitated is
also a possibility, but that volume of alcohol to build trust
and not blow your cover, that's incredible.
That's something out of a doubleO 7 maybe?
(12:18):
It just can happen like that. It depends on the culture you're
in. Or maybe some other thing could
be, I don't know, I mean, going out and trying to ride a camel,
ride a horse, and you've never done it before, well, I'm sorry.
You got to give it a shot. Maybe that's their ritual.
That's what you're going to haveto go through to earn their
trust. Interesting.
Stuff. Well, I mean, a few things that
(12:39):
I had in my favor. One was the FBI director guy
named Louis Freeh at the time. So Louis Freeh was a former
judge, a former assistant US attorney when he was also a
former special agent, the FBI. He spent six years in the FBI
before he was ultimately selected as director.
And he worked a famous case called a Pizza Connection.
And he understood the value of this cop to cop relations in the
(13:02):
international setting because heworked very closely with the
Italian authorities in dismantling this heroin
operation. So I had his support.
And people working overseas or working with the Russians in
this way had the support of the director.
So when he got support of the director, as long as you don't
step out of bounds and you're doing the right thing, that's a
big deal. And that came into play in the
(13:24):
case several times. I mean, the first time when I
was reaching out to the television service of the
Russians at the San Francisco Consulate.
I mean, who else am I going to go to?
The FBI was not very happy. In fact, they were pretty peeved
at me. But at some point, my boss was a
friend of the deputy director ofthe FBI, makes a phone call to
(13:45):
Washington, says, hey, Cosgrove,you know, needs to talk to
people at the Russian consulate in San Francisco.
He's being blocked out here. You got to fix this.
The next day, Louis Free personally green lights my
interaction. And how can you beat that?
Is there better support than theFBI director?
For a treat agent like myself, that was pretty lucky in a way.
(14:06):
Another director maybe would have said no, but he wasn't like
that. I'm not a big supervisor.
I'm not a deputy director. I'm nothing like this.
But because the case was gettingsome notoriety, sooner or later
a Washington comes calling. And this happened about midway
into the case, not all that unusual that somebody in the
(14:27):
field, you might get an inquiry from headquarters, wants to know
what you're doing, why you're doing it, etcetera.
And there's some sensitivity to what you're doing and you're
concerned about the fallout if you just start sharing
everything. So in this case, it was the
prosecutor had received a request directly from the
attorney general's office in Washington.
(14:48):
They needed a summary of the case to that point.
Now, remember, the case involvesa lot of diamonds and theft and
looting and a lot of sensitive stuff because there's corruption
on both sides of the Atlantic. And our Russian guests that just
returned back to Russia to continue their investigation.
So I was basically asked to put together a summary for the vice
(15:09):
president's office, Al Gore at the time, and he wanted to share
this summary with his counterpart, a guy named Victor
Chinamirden that was a Russian Prime Minister at the time.
So there was a Gore Chairnamerdin Commission.
They would meet every six monthsto kind of drum up business
between the US and Russia and discuss other things.
(15:29):
And so Chairnamerdin approached Gore that one of these meetings
or through some channels said, hey, I heard about this case
that's ongoing. Can you tell me more?
So Gore reaches out to the attorney general, says, hey, get
me whatever on that case. I need a summary.
This is a tight spot I'm put into because if I write up a
summary and it goes to attorney general, gives it to the vice
(15:50):
president's office, the vice president goes and hands it over
to Victor Chunamerdin, what happens then?
I mean, my counterparts and the Russian side and the law
enforcement officers work in this.
They could be killed because thecorruption is pretty deep on
that side, and I don't know what's going to happen to them.
But again, I'm told to do this. So what do I do?
(16:10):
First thing I do, it's good advice for anyone, is to kind of
take a few breaths. And I recognize right away that
I didn't have time to formulate a big defense on doing the
summary, not doing the summary, whatever.
But I don't know, sometimes you just get lucky, Dan, and stuff
just comes to you. And what came to me in that
moment was the rules of the federal grand jury.
(16:31):
And it was a federal grand jury case.
So to strict secrecy rules. And if you want access to that
case, whether you're investigator, analyst, whatever,
you got to put your name on that6 E list along with your Social
Security number. And so I told my prosecutor,
hey, I'm happy to do the summary.
No problem. Just tell Jamie Gorlich, who is
(16:52):
deputy attorney general at the time, that Kozwrov just needs
one thing and that is the full official name of the vice
president and his Social Security number.
So we could put him on that 6E list so that when the federal
grand jury meets, they will knowthat the vice president had
access to those files. And you know what happens then?
Nothing. It never happens.
(17:12):
I never do the summary. I never hear from them again.
But did I think that morning I was going to have to deal with
something like that? No.
But when you're out there working in the field during
across Cultures or whatever you're doing, even for your
country or whatever, sometimes you've got to think on your feet
and come up with a solution thatmaybe you don't have time.
I do work. In a small team esque job right
(17:35):
now and I can say that your workethic and your reputation is
really what saves you in that regard because if you are doing
something like that and and rolling the dice on following
your gut and going against what people would think you should be
doing in your organization. If you're backed up by people
who can say all vouch for him he's a hard worker he's not here
just trying to create waves. Then when they find out you're
(17:56):
genuinely a good person, you do have good judgement calls.
There's just they need to extendyou some credit to go out on a
limb and execute something that is in a Gray area if.
You're in an overseas environment.
I mean, you're likely attached or have some relations with the
US embassy on whatever sector, region you're working.
And so you have all these parallel chain of commands,
(18:19):
right? So the ambassador or someone on
the staff may feel that they're entitled to know certain things
or be part of certain decision making processes.
And I found myself confronted bythat several times.
And there's a right way to handle it.
And it comes with some experience and some time because
obviously you don't want to set or alienate the chain of command
(18:40):
at the US embassies, particularly the ambassador.
So you're probably be at some point confronted with that as
well. So you're not just dealing with
the locals, your or your counterparts, but your own
chains of command. Funny, you should.
Mention that Any advice for somebody who might find
themselves suddenly given military orders to take that on
as a job? Oh, those are.
(19:01):
Great jobs. I mean nearly all embassies have
attaches, that is official representatives from their
respective agencies. So the FBI term for someone
working overseas is an attache place like Moscow, big time
embassy. You'd have attaches from the Air
Force, from the Army, from the Navy even.
Sometimes there's be someone from even the Coast Guard, and
(19:21):
that's the main representative for that country and underneath
ambassador's authority, of course, and you're meeting with
your counterparts from the respective military agencies
that operate in that country andyou're given a lot of leeway in
terms of what you do reporting. It's a pretty cool job.
(19:41):
And does it require specialized training?
I mean, to some degree, does it require you to be fluent in that
particular language? Not necessarily, but it
certainly helps. But yeah, that's one of the
better jobs, so. There's so much depth in just
the line of work that you've done because you've had to
operate along all of these different rules and playing
(20:03):
fields that are stacked on top of each other.
And again, going back to what wetalked about earlier with these
unspoken rules, the things that aren't said is part of this
context as well. I mean, there's so many tangents
to go down lot here in his. Yeah, one of the things.
When I came into the FBI, what was funny is I never envisioned
working alone, which as I did, and after a while it becomes
(20:24):
kind of comfortable, like just being out there, doing your own
thing, being alone on the street, whatever it is you're
doing. And I realized that just became
something that I kind of liked after a while.
And some agents don't like it. They want to be around the
squad. They want to be with other
agents all the time. They want to be part of a team,
(20:44):
which I get I can be part of a team as well, but I also like
this working alone. Context.
This cult group think it's really fascinating to me, this
whole approach to dealing with things.
So it came up in a big way in a kidnapping case of a guy named
Charles Geschke, who I talk about that in the Diamond Game
(21:05):
in the book. He was founder of Adobe Systems.
Amazing guy. He is kidnapped out of his home
in Mountain View, CA. My partner and I wind up
arresting one of the two kidnappers, but we basically do
our own thing. I mean, we kind of set aside the
groupthink mentality. You had a couple of 100 agents
working this and do that to not fall into a groupthink.
(21:28):
So everyone else is thinking oneway, but you're thinking
something else. Doesn't mean you are wrong.
Doesn't mean you're right either.
But at least you have to recognize sometimes there's a
groupthink tendency when you're working in a tight knit agency.
I got to geek. Out over this in grad school,
writing about naysayers and being a diversion thinker.
(21:50):
Basically disagreeableness increases the intelligence of a
group because it shatters that paradigm of group thing.
There's an optimal way of setting this up where you've got
somebody in the group that says,hey guys, I get it.
This is the way we do things. This is the SOP.
However, look at it from this perspective and that's what gets
the the innovative thought goingand I tell you.
When you're in a dynamic situation, particularly when
(22:12):
you're working outside of the borders of the United States and
you're in that other culture andyou're extreme minority because
you're not around all Americans,this groupthink becomes more
important than ever, right? You have to be able to have this
conversation, have this discussion, even if it's
uncomfortable. So I know if you're a civil
affairs officer, I would overseas in that environment.
(22:35):
This is going to come up 100%. I got a kick.
Out of this, I'm sure the audience had a blast listening
to you and I totally agree we need to have several follow on
discussions with this. I'm entering into a world where
I'm hoping to have a fraction ofa percent of the adventure that
you've had over the past few years of your career.
So you definitely inspired me and I'm really glad I jumped on
(22:57):
this opportunity to getting to talk to you.
It's been a pleasure and I'm pumped for some upcoming talks.
Pleasure on my. Side too Dan, I enjoyed this.
I thank you for the opportunity to talk.
Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, once
again, Dennis Cosgrove, the bookis called The Diamond Game.
It's on Amazon. Go ahead and get it when you
can. Thanks for listening.
(23:19):
If you get a chance, please likeand subscribe and rate the show
on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
episode, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com.
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
those currently out in the fieldworking with a partner nation's
(23:41):
people or leadership to forward US relations, thank you all for
what you're doing. This is Jack, your host.
Stay tuned for more great episodes. 1 California podcast.
This is Dan Joseph. I am your host on the One CA
Podcast and I really appreciate the opportunity to get to be
here and be part of this wonderful group.
Today we have an awesome guest who just jumped on his name is
Dennis Cosgrove. He is a retired special agent
with the FBI mystique and Mystery.
He's been all around the world having amazing adventures.
(00:26):
He's written a couple books, andlet's get to know him a little
more. Dennis, how are you?
Good, Dan. Really great for the opportunity
to talk to you today and I look forward to it and to just
chatting about some of the stuffI've done and hopefully it'll
have relevance for your listeners that are tuning in.
Absolutely. I know it will, and it will for
me personally. I am just now entering into the
world of civil affairs on the Reserve side and just learning
(00:49):
about your background. I jumped on the opportunity to
get to talk to you. I heard just a little bit about
what you've done overseas and around the world, and what
deeply resonated with me was your ability to traverse
multicultural barriers. We're talking from geopolitical
barriers to different ethnic groups, and you're communicating
(01:10):
in a tactical type of environment and situation, not
in the military, not for the DoD, But everything you did
completely coincides with what I've learned personally about
civil affairs. So I wanted to pick your brain
on that and explore how you gained the skill sets you've
had. So I'm done rambling for this
introduction if you want to tellus real quick just about what
(01:32):
it's like being a special agent and kind of color and what you
did. So when I became an agent back
in the mid 80s, believe it or not, there was still a Cold War
rambling on when there was no end insight for that.
And those were the kind of worldthat we were dealing with.
There was the Iron Curtain, thatwas the West, and there was the
rest of the world, essentially. And the Bureau, the FBI, it was
(01:52):
mostly in the United States. We had a few overseas offices in
major cities like London or Paris, but just a handful.
I mean, when you went into the Bureau in those days, there was
no way, no chance you'd ever wind up working overseas.
It was extremely rare. But of course, that changed, and
it changed dramatically when theCold War ended.
(02:12):
But I can get into that a littlebit if something you want to
explore. Frightening.
The types of people you were tracking down.
You want to talk about that a little bit?
Basically, I'm working in KansasCity.
I'd grown up in New York. I have an opportunity to go
study Russian language and the Defense Language Institute, and
I had seen or heard about agentsthat had gone to DLI, the
(02:34):
Defense Language Institute, and I eventually had an opportunity
to go study Russian with the understanding that I'd be
working. Basically, counterintelligence
matters. We had no office overseas at the
time, so when I get transferred to California, I wind up working
organized crime and drugs and the ending of a Cold War.
(02:55):
There's the rise of the Russian mafia.
So it's interesting that Civil Affairs sends a lot of folks up
to DLI. Monterey is beautiful, by the
way. That's got to be the prettiest
Army base ever. I've been up there.
And you going there, you learning Russian, How did you
venture into the crime ring thatyou found out about?
And particularly from a law enforcement perspective, what
was it about your gut reaction to reading people and reading
(03:19):
basically a puzzle in front of you of criminal activity that
led you down the path? What were these crumb trails?
Since growing up in New York, I was around cops, I was a
relatives were detectives and being exposed in that way help
as a child growing up in that environment and then in Kansas
City working organized crime foryour listeners, if they're at
(03:40):
all familiar with several moviesmade by Martin Scorsese such as
Goodfellas or Casino in particular, which some of it was
filmed in Kansas City. In real life it takes place in
Kansas City with the Kansas Citymob.
So from that aspect, I'd been around organizing this crime
type folks. And so when I was dealing with
(04:00):
sources in the San Francisco area that was telling me about
this diamond looting conspiracy,I really thought, OK, there's
something here and this was connected to Russia, obviously.
Now you got to put it in contextbecause at that time there's no
legal attache office in Moscow and Russia, none ever conceived.
We had no relations with Russianlaw enforcement in those days.
(04:23):
The Soviet Union had basically just collapsed.
Now there's 15 separate republics, but there's nothing.
There's no way to reach out to counterpart on the other side
and try to get to the bottom of what could be a huge conspiracy.
The other thing I neglected to mention was I had graduated from
the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, so I had a merchant
(04:44):
officer background and naval background as well.
I was naval reservist, so I had travelled a lot to different
places around the world. I mean, I was in South America,
I was in the Med. So by the time I'm 21 I'm
already have been 2025 countries.
What made you want to specifically learn Russian?
Just talking to fellow agents that some of the best work was
(05:07):
in that side, in that field, thecounterintelligence, because
you're talking about Russian, KGB and very sophisticated
operations globally. Although we did send agents to
study other languages because say Bulgarian or Czech or
whatever, those countries had very active intelligence
services as well. Say the Russian mafia.
(05:29):
Not too much in those days. Obviously within the Soviet
Union the Russian mafia was pretty darn big, but it was only
with the falling of the Iron Curtain that the Russian mafia
really took off. What did you notice stateside
about what was going on? I mean, what signals were you
seeing? I knew that there was extreme
(05:50):
corruption at all levels in Russia and in Russian society,
from the government to St. levelstuff and just all over the
place. I knew there was big corruption.
And I also knew there was an operating elite within their
society that controlled things. And so when I hear that some
Armenians that were very, very poor are all of a sudden
(06:10):
distributing diamonds that they're getting from Russia and
they're based in California, it's not normal for people that
are limited means are suddenly stepping into a world where they
can open their offices in the Transamerica Pyramid building in
San Francisco. There's something going on
behind the scenes. So obviously that got my
suspicions going and there was other things going on as well
(06:32):
that just didn't make sense. The big mystery was the diamond
business itself, which is very hard to understand.
It's very secretive. Imagine stepping into an area
where you really don't know thatmuch.
And I had to rely on analyst andmy own ability as well to do
some research on this area to try to understand, OK, what's
(06:54):
going on here. And then you think about this,
you've got other stuff going on as an agent, you've got other
cases. And you've got to convince your
superior, your my boss, that, hey, there's something going on
here. And I think I can prove
something. And he would come back at me and
he's a pretty decent guy. And he said, you know, Dennis,
what are you doing here? There's no one in Russia you can
turn to that's reliable law enforcement counterpart.
(07:17):
And who's going to tell you if these diamonds are stolen?
Who are you going to go to? KGB.
Yeah, that's another thing I want to ask you about managing
up and down the chain of command.
Like I said, there's 10 podcastsand one talking to you.
It's amazing. Especially when you're dealing
with a really difficult situation, you have to be
patient with yourself and you'vegot to be patient with the
organization and the people around you.
(07:37):
You know, some people may not buy into what you're trying to
do or what you're spending your time doing, and others come
around eventually and some may push back hard on you.
So you're up against all of thatand it could be all even family
wise. It's not your job to convince
everyone around that what you'redoing is righteous and
worthwhile, but you have to havesome kind of a maturity about
(07:57):
that. I'll be honest, I'm actually in
the middle of my civil affairs triple C course.
I'm on my way from being a firstLieutenant and O2 in the Army.
I'll be at O3 pretty soon. I'll be a captain and the
reserves. Now I was active duty, so I'm
about to go to the field and gettested on reading different
cultures and adjusting and adapting my behavior to not ruin
(08:22):
the relationship. And that's why I wanted to to
meet with you, you is because you did this for a living.
And I imagine in life and death situations yourself as an FBI
agent. So can you give me some examples
of things that caught you off guard or that you had to adjust
to and learn pretty quickly where you realized, oh, OK, they
don't speak like an American would speak or conduct
themselves in that way and the subtleties of that?
(08:45):
Yeah, there's so much with that.You'd like to say, OK, this is a
science, but it's not and it's an art form you're constantly
working at. For instance, I can recall when
we first went to Moscow, I had actually forgotten about the the
distance between people. When you're talking in the US,
believe it or not, next time you're talking to someone on the
(09:05):
street or whatever context, justtake notice of how far they are
from you. So in Russia, for instance, all
of a sudden I'm talking to people and they're close.
I mean, they're not American style distance.
And when it happened the first time, it's a little bit
unsettling, right? And it's distracting, too.
But you have to just be on your feet and realize, OK, this is
(09:28):
normal for them. And if I back up or upset or
that this is rattling me, that won't come across very nice.
It would be kind of rude in a way.
I mean, it's not insurmountable.It's not like 800 cultural
things you must know when you'redealing with people.
There's ways to overcome that too.
You have to talk to folks that are familiar with the culture.
Just sit down with them perhaps before you go and deploy
(09:49):
somewhere and get a little bit of a sense and talk to different
people. Because some people that spend a
couple of weeks there may be dropped in for a quick training
or something. They don't know enough.
Their depth of their knowledge and understanding is not enough.
What helped me a lot, I was teaching part time off and on at
the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest
in Hungary, which had opened in the mid 90s.
(10:11):
And it was really helpful to me because it was such good close
engagement I had for an extendedperiod of time.
But there's no simple science tothis, but it's so critical.
So if you're in a social setting, for instance, do what
you do in that social setting isas important, if not more
important than the work setting.Because if you get invited to
someone's home or you go meet them at a restaurant or you go
(10:34):
hiking with them or fishing or whatever it is, you're going to
be exposed to the culture in a very different way.
Because that's the setting wherebarriers are broken down, where
the real conversation is often times where the level of trust
or non trust develop. So once in the Diamond case, we
(10:55):
had two Russian officers. They'd never been to the United
States. You can imagine they were from
the Soviet Union. You know, they were
investigators during Soviet times.
They'd never been outside of theSoviet Union in their lives.
They come to California. We actually just open up
everything for them file wise. I mean, we shared nearly
everything about the case because it winds up being a
(11:15):
joint investigation. So we just took this leap of
faith from the FBI side that we're going to work with them
and if it works out, great. If it doesn't, Oh well.
So that evening I was to pick them up to take them to a
restaurant for dinner. They had just come from Russia.
They work that day flying in from Moscow to San Francisco,
and we're going to take them to just an easy dinner.
(11:37):
I go to the hotel, knock on the door.
They invite me inside. They had a small table set up
with snacks, zakuski. And I see the vodka bottles.
And they just said, Dennis, sit down.
You're going to become one of us.
Well, becoming one of them entails drinking a water glass
size of vodka in one shot. And I'm thinking, how am I going
(11:58):
to get through this one? And I just did it.
Yeah, that's incredible. What just the pressure and the
insanity of I'm going to drink this alcohol, become potentially
intoxicated. I don't know if incapacitated is
also a possibility, but that volume of alcohol to build trust
and not blow your cover, that's incredible.
That's something out of a doubleO 7 maybe?
(12:18):
It just can happen like that. It depends on the culture you're
in. Or maybe some other thing could
be, I don't know, I mean, going out and trying to ride a camel,
ride a horse, and you've never done it before, well, I'm sorry.
You got to give it a shot. Maybe that's their ritual.
That's what you're going to haveto go through to earn their
trust. Interesting.
Stuff. Well, I mean, a few things that
(12:39):
I had in my favor. One was the FBI director guy
named Louis Freeh at the time. So Louis Freeh was a former
judge, a former assistant US attorney when he was also a
former special agent, the FBI. He spent six years in the FBI
before he was ultimately selected as director.
And he worked a famous case called a Pizza Connection.
And he understood the value of this cop to cop relations in the
(13:02):
international setting because heworked very closely with the
Italian authorities in dismantling this heroin
operation. So I had his support.
And people working overseas or working with the Russians in
this way had the support of the director.
So when he got support of the director, as long as you don't
step out of bounds and you're doing the right thing, that's a
big deal. And that came into play in the
(13:24):
case several times. I mean, the first time when I
was reaching out to the television service of the
Russians at the San Francisco Consulate.
I mean, who else am I going to go to?
The FBI was not very happy. In fact, they were pretty peeved
at me. But at some point, my boss was a
friend of the deputy director ofthe FBI, makes a phone call to
(13:45):
Washington, says, hey, Cosgrove,you know, needs to talk to
people at the Russian consulate in San Francisco.
He's being blocked out here. You got to fix this.
The next day, Louis Free personally green lights my
interaction. And how can you beat that?
Is there better support than theFBI director?
For a treat agent like myself, that was pretty lucky in a way.
(14:06):
Another director maybe would have said no, but he wasn't like
that. I'm not a big supervisor.
I'm not a deputy director. I'm nothing like this.
But because the case was gettingsome notoriety, sooner or later
a Washington comes calling. And this happened about midway
into the case, not all that unusual that somebody in the
(14:27):
field, you might get an inquiry from headquarters, wants to know
what you're doing, why you're doing it, etcetera.
And there's some sensitivity to what you're doing and you're
concerned about the fallout if you just start sharing
everything. So in this case, it was the
prosecutor had received a request directly from the
attorney general's office in Washington.
(14:48):
They needed a summary of the case to that point.
Now, remember, the case involvesa lot of diamonds and theft and
looting and a lot of sensitive stuff because there's corruption
on both sides of the Atlantic. And our Russian guests that just
returned back to Russia to continue their investigation.
So I was basically asked to put together a summary for the vice
(15:09):
president's office, Al Gore at the time, and he wanted to share
this summary with his counterpart, a guy named Victor
Chinamirden that was a Russian Prime Minister at the time.
So there was a Gore Chairnamerdin Commission.
They would meet every six monthsto kind of drum up business
between the US and Russia and discuss other things.
(15:29):
And so Chairnamerdin approached Gore that one of these meetings
or through some channels said, hey, I heard about this case
that's ongoing. Can you tell me more?
So Gore reaches out to the attorney general, says, hey, get
me whatever on that case. I need a summary.
This is a tight spot I'm put into because if I write up a
summary and it goes to attorney general, gives it to the vice
(15:50):
president's office, the vice president goes and hands it over
to Victor Chunamerdin, what happens then?
I mean, my counterparts and the Russian side and the law
enforcement officers work in this.
They could be killed because thecorruption is pretty deep on
that side, and I don't know what's going to happen to them.
But again, I'm told to do this. So what do I do?
(16:10):
First thing I do, it's good advice for anyone, is to kind of
take a few breaths. And I recognize right away that
I didn't have time to formulate a big defense on doing the
summary, not doing the summary, whatever.
But I don't know, sometimes you just get lucky, Dan, and stuff
just comes to you. And what came to me in that
moment was the rules of the federal grand jury.
(16:31):
And it was a federal grand jury case.
So to strict secrecy rules. And if you want access to that
case, whether you're investigator, analyst, whatever,
you got to put your name on that6 E list along with your Social
Security number. And so I told my prosecutor,
hey, I'm happy to do the summary.
No problem. Just tell Jamie Gorlich, who is
(16:52):
deputy attorney general at the time, that Kozwrov just needs
one thing and that is the full official name of the vice
president and his Social Security number.
So we could put him on that 6E list so that when the federal
grand jury meets, they will knowthat the vice president had
access to those files. And you know what happens then?
Nothing. It never happens.
(17:12):
I never do the summary. I never hear from them again.
But did I think that morning I was going to have to deal with
something like that? No.
But when you're out there working in the field during
across Cultures or whatever you're doing, even for your
country or whatever, sometimes you've got to think on your feet
and come up with a solution thatmaybe you don't have time.
I do work. In a small team esque job right
(17:35):
now and I can say that your workethic and your reputation is
really what saves you in that regard because if you are doing
something like that and and rolling the dice on following
your gut and going against what people would think you should be
doing in your organization. If you're backed up by people
who can say all vouch for him he's a hard worker he's not here
just trying to create waves. Then when they find out you're
(17:56):
genuinely a good person, you do have good judgement calls.
There's just they need to extendyou some credit to go out on a
limb and execute something that is in a Gray area if.
You're in an overseas environment.
I mean, you're likely attached or have some relations with the
US embassy on whatever sector, region you're working.
And so you have all these parallel chain of commands,
(18:19):
right? So the ambassador or someone on
the staff may feel that they're entitled to know certain things
or be part of certain decision making processes.
And I found myself confronted bythat several times.
And there's a right way to handle it.
And it comes with some experience and some time because
obviously you don't want to set or alienate the chain of command
(18:40):
at the US embassies, particularly the ambassador.
So you're probably be at some point confronted with that as
well. So you're not just dealing with
the locals, your or your counterparts, but your own
chains of command. Funny, you should.
Mention that Any advice for somebody who might find
themselves suddenly given military orders to take that on
as a job? Oh, those are.
(19:01):
Great jobs. I mean nearly all embassies have
attaches, that is official representatives from their
respective agencies. So the FBI term for someone
working overseas is an attache place like Moscow, big time
embassy. You'd have attaches from the Air
Force, from the Army, from the Navy even.
Sometimes there's be someone from even the Coast Guard, and
(19:21):
that's the main representative for that country and underneath
ambassador's authority, of course, and you're meeting with
your counterparts from the respective military agencies
that operate in that country andyou're given a lot of leeway in
terms of what you do reporting. It's a pretty cool job.
(19:41):
And does it require specialized training?
I mean, to some degree, does it require you to be fluent in that
particular language? Not necessarily, but it
certainly helps. But yeah, that's one of the
better jobs, so. There's so much depth in just
the line of work that you've done because you've had to
operate along all of these different rules and playing
(20:03):
fields that are stacked on top of each other.
And again, going back to what wetalked about earlier with these
unspoken rules, the things that aren't said is part of this
context as well. I mean, there's so many tangents
to go down lot here in his. Yeah, one of the things.
When I came into the FBI, what was funny is I never envisioned
working alone, which as I did, and after a while it becomes
(20:24):
kind of comfortable, like just being out there, doing your own
thing, being alone on the street, whatever it is you're
doing. And I realized that just became
something that I kind of liked after a while.
And some agents don't like it. They want to be around the
squad. They want to be with other
agents all the time. They want to be part of a team,
(20:44):
which I get I can be part of a team as well, but I also like
this working alone. Context.
This cult group think it's really fascinating to me, this
whole approach to dealing with things.
So it came up in a big way in a kidnapping case of a guy named
Charles Geschke, who I talk about that in the Diamond Game
(21:05):
in the book. He was founder of Adobe Systems.
Amazing guy. He is kidnapped out of his home
in Mountain View, CA. My partner and I wind up
arresting one of the two kidnappers, but we basically do
our own thing. I mean, we kind of set aside the
groupthink mentality. You had a couple of 100 agents
working this and do that to not fall into a groupthink.
(21:28):
So everyone else is thinking oneway, but you're thinking
something else. Doesn't mean you are wrong.
Doesn't mean you're right either.
But at least you have to recognize sometimes there's a
groupthink tendency when you're working in a tight knit agency.
I got to geek. Out over this in grad school,
writing about naysayers and being a diversion thinker.
(21:50):
Basically disagreeableness increases the intelligence of a
group because it shatters that paradigm of group thing.
There's an optimal way of setting this up where you've got
somebody in the group that says,hey guys, I get it.
This is the way we do things. This is the SOP.
However, look at it from this perspective and that's what gets
the the innovative thought goingand I tell you.
When you're in a dynamic situation, particularly when
(22:12):
you're working outside of the borders of the United States and
you're in that other culture andyou're extreme minority because
you're not around all Americans,this groupthink becomes more
important than ever, right? You have to be able to have this
conversation, have this discussion, even if it's
uncomfortable. So I know if you're a civil
affairs officer, I would overseas in that environment.
(22:35):
This is going to come up 100%. I got a kick.
Out of this, I'm sure the audience had a blast listening
to you and I totally agree we need to have several follow on
discussions with this. I'm entering into a world where
I'm hoping to have a fraction ofa percent of the adventure that
you've had over the past few years of your career.
So you definitely inspired me and I'm really glad I jumped on
(22:57):
this opportunity to getting to talk to you.
It's been a pleasure and I'm pumped for some upcoming talks.
Pleasure on my. Side too Dan, I enjoyed this.
I thank you for the opportunity to talk.
Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, once
again, Dennis Cosgrove, the bookis called The Diamond Game.
It's on Amazon. Go ahead and get it when you
can. Thanks for listening.
(23:19):
If you get a chance, please likeand subscribe and rate the show
on your favorite podcast platform.
Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an
episode, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com.
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
those currently out in the fieldworking with a partner nation's
(23:41):
people or leadership to forward US relations, thank you all for
what you're doing. This is Jack, your host.
Stay tuned for more great episodes. 1 California podcast.
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