244: Building U.S. Relations: First Contact, Follow-Through, and Complex Engagements by Chris Brewer
September 23, 2025 • 22 mins
🧭 Episode Description
In this episode of the One CA Podcast, we welcome Chris Brewer, author of Old Scroll Ranger and In the Shadows Between Wars. Brewer led special forces operations in over 130 countries, forging U.S. relationships with partner nations through every phase of engagement.
We explore:
- 🟢 First Contact: How to approach populations and leaders with little to no U.S. presence
- 🔵 Follow-On Engagements: Building trust and long-term relationships
- 🔴 Complex Operations: Supporting deep U.S. involvement with local leadership and communities
Chris shares hard-won insights from the field, blending tactical experience with strategic diplomacy.
🔗 Learn More
📚 Chris Brewer’s books and background
🌐 Civil Affairs Association Podcast Hub
📩 Contact: CApodcasting@gmail.com
🏆 Top 10 Foreign Policy Podcast – Feedspot
🎵 Music by New Jazz Underground – “22”
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the ONE CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
ONE CA is a product of the CivilAffairs Association and brings
in people who are current or former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
(00:26):
To contact the show, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com or
look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at
www.civilaffairsassociation.org.I'll have those in the show
notes. Please welcome Chris Brewer,
author of Old Scroll Ranger and In the Shadows Between Wars.
Chris Bad Special Forces operations in the over 130
(00:47):
countries to build US relations with partner nations.
In this episode, we explore how to manage first contact with the
population and its leaders that have little to no US engagement.
We then move on to how to managesecond plus contacts for
building long term relations andthen move on to how to support
complex engagements where the USis deeply involved in the
(01:09):
population and leadership. So let's get started.
This is why Special Forces in particular put such a big
emphasis on doing an area study,reading history books, reading
reports that are available from any different agency, people
who've been there and talk to them.
And all of that's vitally important.
But by the same token, it's it'sreally important to get ground
(01:30):
truth information. So if there's a person who's
from that area, especially someone who's come from there
recently or even know someone who's down there now, that's a
person that you want to bring inan interview, you want to talk
to them. You want to get a sense of what
you're getting into, what's important to the people down
there. And that goes into your mission
planning too, because a lot of times the task and the mission
(01:52):
that you've been assigned is notgoing to be completely
compatible with what the people down there want and expect.
And you need to make those adjustments with your boss
before you go. Do you talk to people?
Who are? From the partner nation embassy
that are attaches or do you try to reach people who are tourists
and that have come from that area coming out would have been
(02:14):
good sources for you. All of the above, the RSO and
the attaches from the embassy, of course they're going to have
some good information. It's good to know.
A lot of times, though, it's compartmented because especially
if it's a relatively hostile area, the folks inside the
embassy don't often get out thatmuch.
I know I went on one job for theState Department to Bangladesh
(02:34):
and they wanted me to go down tothe Sunderbans and the RSO
called me in because I was goingto ask him what's going on down
there. And he says, well, we really
don't know. None of us have ever been there.
We're really looking forward to your report when you get back
off. We went to Mongola and then from
Mongola got on the Coast Guard cutter and we went into the
swamps and the Sunderbans. And that was an experience.
(02:55):
We literally had no idea what we're going into.
And I had one Coast Guard officer who was with me was a
first generation as parents wereimmigrants from India.
And he looked like the people that we were around, but he
didn't speak a word of the language.
And he was horrified. He said, what are we going to
do? We're all alone.
There's nobody here. If there's a riot, they'll kill
(03:15):
us all and said, look, man, you don't have to worry about this.
If there's a big problem and people are ganging up to come
in, you stand in the back, shakeyour fist and yell death to
America because they're going tokill me.
You'll probably be able to get out of here.
But the key thing is just be friendly, be nice and listen
more than you talk. And we'll work our way through
(03:37):
this, and that's basically what we did during that particular
trip. But everybody is a source of
information. And you alluded to the fact that
people will tell you what you want to hear.
I asked directions once and was in Sri Lanka.
We're trying to find a location in a bad neighborhood.
And a guy told me, go down here,turn left and then keep going.
And we did that and we wound up someplace we really did not want
(04:00):
to be and was nowhere near we were trying to get it and came
back and saw the same guys. And I asked him, why did you
tell us to go down there? And he says, well, I don't know
where that is, but I didn't wantto make you unhappy.
So I just told you something so you would go away happy.
I went away, but I wasn't happy.Yeah, I didn't stay happy long,
but that's a cultural thing. There's a lot of places in
(04:22):
Afghanistan where people will instinctively lie to you because
you're not from their family, you're not from their clan,
you're not free even from their tribe.
So they don't want to tell you anything because that could be
information that could be used against the people that are
important to them. You want 345 or six different
sources of information and you want to compare it, and that's
(04:43):
where you start to get the ground truth.
That's where you start to figureout what's really going on.
You have a whole village walkingin front of you going just go
over that bridge. It's OK, Don't worry.
Be happy. Don't worry, just go.
It's fine, all right. Is there anything special about
entering into an area that caught your eye, clothing, the
(05:04):
culture, behaviors you try to blend in?
I know I've gone into it was good for me to a blended in
other places, actually. I needed to look different in
order to get people to actually stand back and go, oh, be
shocked that someone different was coming through in order to
get to where I needed to be. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. Makes sense.
Blending in, of course, depends upon what you look like.
(05:25):
I've been around on the streets of Uzbekistan where I was
working security. One of the guys that we were
providing security for came backand said that he'd been rousted
by the police and they'd taken all his money and he's wearing
Adidas tennis shoes and blue jeans and a baseball cap and a
North Face jacket. So I said, OK.
So after I went out, went down to the local store and I bought
(05:46):
some of the pointed black shoes,pointy toe shoes and black
trousers and big leather jacket with a fur collar on it.
And I went out on the same path that he went through.
And I don't speak Uzbek and I speak very little Russian, but
just enough. That was my cover.
I'm just old Russian. And nobody looked twice at me.
They left me alone. Went back the next day wearing
(06:10):
blue jeans, Adidas baseball cap,North Face jacket, and I had a
cop on me before I got 50 yards down.
So he comes out and you have to come with me.
This is a big problem. Took me into the office, wants
me to put all of my stuff on thetable in front of him.
So I lay all my things out and the guy behind me starts talking
to me. And so if I'm turning and then
(06:31):
the guy behind me says it's veryrude in our culture not to turn
and speak directly to a person, I'm offended.
And the guy in front of me is poised right over my wallet
waiting for me to turn around. So I go, OK, step back so I can
see both of them and said, gentlemen, I am very sorry.
I don't know what I have done tooffend you.
(06:52):
I am a foreigner here. I'm new to your culture.
But the embassy told me that if I did get into a problem with
the police, that I should call them immediately.
And I pulled out my embassy ID and said Officer Kalinked off
badge number 3247, I apologize to you here.
I must call the RSO for the embassy right now and let him
(07:15):
know that I have offended you. So this can be reported to the
Ministry of Interior and then wecan begin to process of
correcting this great wrong thatI have done.
And instantly it was your security, but not, but not no
problem, no problem. And so one blend when you can,
absolutely. But make sure that you've got
(07:36):
the backup and if you know what they're afraid of, for 90% of
the time it's their boss, especially if there's
corruption. And if they get caught by their
boss and participating in corruption that he did not
direct, there's going to be hellto pay.
I have a very similar story. Everybody does.
In Panama it was the opposite, because inside the compound
(07:59):
probably nobody's going to mess with you because there'll be
repercussions. But when you're out on the
street, that's where you're vulnerable and that's where you
could be taken on a non attribution basis.
So we'd make a point of staying in public areas where a lot of
people could see us and we're obviously American even though
we're in civilian clothes. So lots of witnesses and we
(08:19):
didn't have the power to conductintelligence collection that was
against the law for special forces guys.
But there's nothing wrong about walking down the street and
people run up and they want to talk to you sitting down and
have a cup of coffee and listen to what they have to say.
And that's how we got our force protection information without
running what be an illegal intelligence net, volunteer net.
(08:40):
And that's what we learned is that whatever you're doing, just
listen more than you talk. And if you ask any questions
that at all, it's what I didn't quite understand.
I'm not from here because it's important to me to understand
why this is important to you. And in interrogations, it's the
same thing. You got to take yourself out of.
I am demanding, I need, I want. And you've got to turn it into
(09:05):
what is it that you want? What is it you need?
What are you about? Help me to understand and
generally people will tell you what you need to know.
Yeah, that's like Chris Voss calls tactical empathy for him.
He was a former FBI hostage negotiator.
Using tactical empathy helped him to talk down those
conditions so that he could get the hostages released and the
(09:26):
person in custody without violence.
Sometimes even to say I understand may not be the right
way to go because people sometimes will flashback at you
with no, you don't understand. Never been in my shoes.
Yeah. Did you have no idea?
If you give it to them right up front, I want to know, you know,
please tell me. And we want to help, but I'm not
(09:48):
sure this is really being of help to you.
What do you really need? What can I do to help out?
And generally, even somebody that's hostile to you will open
up in that regard. Because if you agree with them
when they say you don't understand, you say, yeah, man,
you're right. I don't, but I want to.
I'm trying to. You got to bridge that gap it.
Makes them willing to talk. Exactly.
OK. And you've also dealt with first
(10:09):
contact or areas that have had little to no US engagement.
Have you ever used proxies? Ever ask someone to go in on
your behalf to set up a meeting?Has that been helpful?
Yeah. In fact, that's the preferred
course of action in a lot of cases.
You want to have somebody out there, but can be a double edged
sword because if you use a proxythat's going to advertise the
(10:33):
factor coming in, that can work to your disadvantage.
But whenever possible, you want to lay the groundwork and get
real time information about what's going on via a proxy.
And you need to know how people there feel about your proxy.
And what kind of agenda that proxy?
Has exactly, because if you're sending out a guy that everybody
considers to be a snake, that's not going to do well to prepare
(10:54):
the ground for you. As a security contractor, I did
this a lot, talked to three or four people, and if there's
somebody that doesn't like that guy, you need to talk to that
person and find out why he doesn't like the other person
that you're talking to and what his logic is.
Because that's where we usually resolved on the security side, a
lot of the problems when we had someone who was involved in
(11:15):
criminal activity. And by the time you get all the
conflicting stories, you're starting to get a pretty good
picture of what's really going on the ground.
They had a problem in Afghanistan where civil affairs
came in and they spent a lot of money building a Rd. between one
of the villages that was deep inthe mountains down into the
valley to another village. Because I thought, all right,
(11:37):
we'll commerce and exchange and we'll help bridge the gap.
And the day the road was finished, the first thing the
guys did that lived in the village up on the mountain was
they jumped in their trucks and went down this beautiful new
road to raid the people in the village in the valley.
And they were very grateful. They were very grateful.
It was so much easier than usinghorses.
(11:58):
But you got to do that groundwork.
You got to figure out how everybody feels about the other
group. Oh boy, yeah, that made friends
that influenced people. Is there anything else about
initial first contacts that you want to hit on?
Prep the ground, make sure that you're aware of the image that
you're presenting and it is the image that you want to present.
(12:21):
And one of the thing that you should mention, for all the
folks that are going out, for heaven's sake, don't try to play
James Bond. Because we'd be in the embassy
and they'd be out restaurant or nightclub.
And someone would ask, what do you do here?
And rather than go with the story that we provided, they try
to make one up. Like, I'm an engineer and I'm
here to work on a new foundationfor the new embassy building.
(12:43):
And the guy you're talking to instantly comes back.
Oh, really? I've got a degree in geology and
all of this. And what do you think about
substrate? And you're busted, man, if you
get a story and you're trying toconceal a little bit of what you
are, just go with the story thatyou've been given because people
have thought it through and they've given consideration that
don't try to make it up on the fly.
(13:05):
Don't ad Lib. And an essential part of it too.
We used to call it the and E or the go to hell plan.
If you do get in there and just everything goes to hell, what
are you going to do? How are you going to get out?
How are you going to break contact?
Where you going to go? And that's that's a critical
part. Sure.
Even if you go into areas that have some engagement over there,
(13:26):
somebody else has already made initial contact and made inroads
and you're just kind of following on.
I'm sure you do the same level of background and planning as
you get ready to go in and do the follow up engagements from
that first contact. Plus you have that first contact
group and they're after actions on what happened.
You can even call them, get a little background on what's been
going on so far and then any kind of opportunities you could
(13:50):
expand that relationship. You want to do all of those
things and optimally you'll do agreat deal more if you have the
technology or if you have the contacts and the resources to do
so. Because when you go in and you
make a first contact and you come back out, we call it the
ripple effect. Dana, what happened after you
left? Who's talking to who?
This particular principal that you met that he immediately go
(14:12):
out to another location and makecontact with someone else?
Or do you have people in the area that you've talked to
before that you can give a call and see if they've heard about
that meeting and what their impression was and what people
are saying? But do you really want to be
able to do a follow up with as much information, as many
resources as possible to see what the impression and the
(14:35):
result was of that first contact?
Is that's when you find out whether that first engagement
offended anybody or if there is any kind of blowback or issues
that might be going on or opportunists that are saying,
hey, I know they're going to come back and we should take
advantage of it if we want to rob them, shoot or push an
agenda on the Americans as they're coming back into this
(14:56):
area. Yeah.
And often there's a positive side because if you come in and
you provide medical support to the locals or there was a sick
child or even the livestock you were able to do something about
that helped correct that situation.
And the people in the other villages in the area are all
talking about it. If you can pick up on that
gossip and you can reinforce that, then that's a huge step
(15:16):
forward. Be sensitive.
Be on the lookout for opportunities that will present
themselves and make sure that all the conversations that you
have, you're trying to elicit information on that.
You may not get any information because they'll be very guarded
in that respect. But if they do give information,
if someone mentions it. My father is very sick and we're
very worried. This person that I have with me
(15:37):
here is a medical person. Would you like to see if we can
help and make the offer right onthe spot?
And if you can't, if it's withinyour capability to do so, let
them know that we have medical personnel.
Would you like me to invite one to come here on the next trip?
Try and lay that groundwork, tryand identify their needs, their
wants, and start building the plan right from the first
(15:59):
contact on how you can be usefulto them.
And we had the team that went into Honduras and poor guy came
up and he had three bad teeth and just driving them crazy.
So they pulled the teeth for himand he was so happy.
He said please pull all my teeth.
So I said, no, you don't want meto do that.
So yes, I do. I don't know if you'll ever come
back again. So as we get into more complex
(16:21):
environments where there's already been an established
relationship between the embassyor the military and a
population, you're coming in to do a mission.
So what were the things to help build the conditions and prepare
the environment so you could be successful without blowing up
U.S. policy in that area? Yeah, and that can be a real
difficult path to navigate in a lot of different respects.
(16:44):
Politics are one of the sensitive areas.
I know in Panama, when they're holding their first elections,
the American government perceived one of the candidates
as being the perfect guy. He was a graduate of Yale and we
spoke flawless English at a wellorganized political party.
And they're thinking that, man, this is the guy.
(17:05):
And we're talking to the people out in the provinces.
They come up and tell us, hey, we just heard that United States
supports this particular guy. Why are you doing that?
He's going to be worse than Noriega.
He's going to be a dictator. He's got his people everywhere.
It's a network that's ready to seize control.
And now your boss is back in therear.
Are convinced this guy's best saying since sliced bread.
(17:27):
And he may well be. But the people out here think
that he's the devil on earth. And now you're in the middle.
And so we would go back and we would brief our boss to say,
look, just so you know, I know nothing about this gentleman.
I'm sure he's a great person. But this is the perception of
the people in this particular district.
I don't know if that's countrywide, but I thought you
(17:47):
needed to be aware. This is what we're hearing, and
they kind of blew it off a bit. And then when you're talking to
the people out there, you have to talk to them and go look,
it's a democratic election. You're going to choose who your
leaders will be. We won't.
And yes, I've told my bosses of what your fears and concerns
are. They're taking that into the
(18:08):
account. But there's nothing that we can
do either way on this because this is your election and you
will choose what your governmentis.
And let me know what you're concerned about by all means,
and I'll communicate it to my boss back in the rear.
But this is your show, and you've kind of got to walk the
line on a whole host of issues, especially if you're in support
(18:29):
of a government that's not well perceived in the area by the
local population. And that gets back into
Bangladesh is a good example on that, where some of the security
forces there are really rough for whatever reason, and they're
not well received by a lot of the people in the local
population. 1 You don't want to be tied too closely to them in
(18:51):
the mind of the population. But by the same token, until you
can bridge that gap with local leaders, whatever else may be
going on, to where they have some trust and confidence in you
that you're not just an agent for the host nation government,
you got to be very careful aboutwhere you go and what you do.
And you have to have a reason why it's to their advantage not
(19:11):
to kill you and to work with you.
And, and quite often money is the driving motivation because I
bring food, I bring resources, Ibring concrete, I bring all of
these things. And if you don't kill me, I can
go back and bring more and come back again.
And that's a card that you may have to play with more than one
group. Is there anything else about
(19:33):
prepping and going into an environment to do an engagement
or older relations or a Med cap that you'd like to talk about?
Is there any advice you can giveto people as they prepare to go
on a mission? Just keep in mind, the
abbreviated version of the Powell Doctrine is that we're
not going to go unless we reallyneed to #1 and there's a good
(19:54):
overriding reason for us to go there.
That's not personal. That's national policy level.
It is important, needs to be done.
We've got a specific objective that we want to accomplish and
it may just be to gather information on the area, but you
know why you're going before you're going to go so that you
can adjust your efforts to accomplish that goal.
We're not going to stay forever.Or you have a set time that
(20:17):
we're going to be there and thenwe're going to come back out,
whether it's one day or six months.
And our plan is organized to support that stay while we're
there. And we have a plan on how we're
going to get back out, not only how we're going to leave, but
how we're going to leave the area better than it was when we
came. So there aren't negative
feelings about our withdrawal, if that's at all possible.
(20:39):
Well, I think that wraps it up. Do you have a closing comment by
my book In the Shadows Between the Wars?
No, usually what I close up withis just a general comment that
listen more than you talk. I don't care what group it is, I
don't care what the point of contention is.
If there's 2 Warren camps, it's important to sit down and listen
(21:01):
to the people in the other camp because they have a point.
If you open your mind and listento what they're really concerned
about, somewhere in there there's something that you
really need to know, if nothing else, why they're angry.
That's how we can bridge the gap, and that's true here in the
US or overseas, but you've got to open that door in your mind
before you can get there. All right.
(21:22):
Well, Chris, thank you very muchfor coming on the show and I
appreciate your time. Thank you for giving me the
opportunity. Thanks for listening.
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.
(21:43):
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
those currently out in the field, working with a partner
nation's people or leadership toforward US relations.
Thank you all for what you're doing.
This is Jack, your host Tay tuned for more great eisodes. 1
California podcast.
Welcome to the ONE CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
ONE CA is a product of the CivilAffairs Association and brings
in people who are current or former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
(00:26):
To contact the show, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com or
look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at
www.civilaffairsassociation.org.I'll have those in the show
notes. Please welcome Chris Brewer,
author of Old Scroll Ranger and In the Shadows Between Wars.
Chris Bad Special Forces operations in the over 130
(00:47):
countries to build US relations with partner nations.
In this episode, we explore how to manage first contact with the
population and its leaders that have little to no US engagement.
We then move on to how to managesecond plus contacts for
building long term relations andthen move on to how to support
complex engagements where the USis deeply involved in the
(01:09):
population and leadership. So let's get started.
This is why Special Forces in particular put such a big
emphasis on doing an area study,reading history books, reading
reports that are available from any different agency, people
who've been there and talk to them.
And all of that's vitally important.
But by the same token, it's it'sreally important to get ground
(01:30):
truth information. So if there's a person who's
from that area, especially someone who's come from there
recently or even know someone who's down there now, that's a
person that you want to bring inan interview, you want to talk
to them. You want to get a sense of what
you're getting into, what's important to the people down
there. And that goes into your mission
planning too, because a lot of times the task and the mission
(01:52):
that you've been assigned is notgoing to be completely
compatible with what the people down there want and expect.
And you need to make those adjustments with your boss
before you go. Do you talk to people?
Who are? From the partner nation embassy
that are attaches or do you try to reach people who are tourists
and that have come from that area coming out would have been
(02:14):
good sources for you. All of the above, the RSO and
the attaches from the embassy, of course they're going to have
some good information. It's good to know.
A lot of times, though, it's compartmented because especially
if it's a relatively hostile area, the folks inside the
embassy don't often get out thatmuch.
I know I went on one job for theState Department to Bangladesh
(02:34):
and they wanted me to go down tothe Sunderbans and the RSO
called me in because I was goingto ask him what's going on down
there. And he says, well, we really
don't know. None of us have ever been there.
We're really looking forward to your report when you get back
off. We went to Mongola and then from
Mongola got on the Coast Guard cutter and we went into the
swamps and the Sunderbans. And that was an experience.
(02:55):
We literally had no idea what we're going into.
And I had one Coast Guard officer who was with me was a
first generation as parents wereimmigrants from India.
And he looked like the people that we were around, but he
didn't speak a word of the language.
And he was horrified. He said, what are we going to
do? We're all alone.
There's nobody here. If there's a riot, they'll kill
(03:15):
us all and said, look, man, you don't have to worry about this.
If there's a big problem and people are ganging up to come
in, you stand in the back, shakeyour fist and yell death to
America because they're going tokill me.
You'll probably be able to get out of here.
But the key thing is just be friendly, be nice and listen
more than you talk. And we'll work our way through
(03:37):
this, and that's basically what we did during that particular
trip. But everybody is a source of
information. And you alluded to the fact that
people will tell you what you want to hear.
I asked directions once and was in Sri Lanka.
We're trying to find a location in a bad neighborhood.
And a guy told me, go down here,turn left and then keep going.
And we did that and we wound up someplace we really did not want
(04:00):
to be and was nowhere near we were trying to get it and came
back and saw the same guys. And I asked him, why did you
tell us to go down there? And he says, well, I don't know
where that is, but I didn't wantto make you unhappy.
So I just told you something so you would go away happy.
I went away, but I wasn't happy.Yeah, I didn't stay happy long,
but that's a cultural thing. There's a lot of places in
(04:22):
Afghanistan where people will instinctively lie to you because
you're not from their family, you're not from their clan,
you're not free even from their tribe.
So they don't want to tell you anything because that could be
information that could be used against the people that are
important to them. You want 345 or six different
sources of information and you want to compare it, and that's
(04:43):
where you start to get the ground truth.
That's where you start to figureout what's really going on.
You have a whole village walkingin front of you going just go
over that bridge. It's OK, Don't worry.
Be happy. Don't worry, just go.
It's fine, all right. Is there anything special about
entering into an area that caught your eye, clothing, the
(05:04):
culture, behaviors you try to blend in?
I know I've gone into it was good for me to a blended in
other places, actually. I needed to look different in
order to get people to actually stand back and go, oh, be
shocked that someone different was coming through in order to
get to where I needed to be. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. Makes sense.
Blending in, of course, depends upon what you look like.
(05:25):
I've been around on the streets of Uzbekistan where I was
working security. One of the guys that we were
providing security for came backand said that he'd been rousted
by the police and they'd taken all his money and he's wearing
Adidas tennis shoes and blue jeans and a baseball cap and a
North Face jacket. So I said, OK.
So after I went out, went down to the local store and I bought
(05:46):
some of the pointed black shoes,pointy toe shoes and black
trousers and big leather jacket with a fur collar on it.
And I went out on the same path that he went through.
And I don't speak Uzbek and I speak very little Russian, but
just enough. That was my cover.
I'm just old Russian. And nobody looked twice at me.
They left me alone. Went back the next day wearing
(06:10):
blue jeans, Adidas baseball cap,North Face jacket, and I had a
cop on me before I got 50 yards down.
So he comes out and you have to come with me.
This is a big problem. Took me into the office, wants
me to put all of my stuff on thetable in front of him.
So I lay all my things out and the guy behind me starts talking
to me. And so if I'm turning and then
(06:31):
the guy behind me says it's veryrude in our culture not to turn
and speak directly to a person, I'm offended.
And the guy in front of me is poised right over my wallet
waiting for me to turn around. So I go, OK, step back so I can
see both of them and said, gentlemen, I am very sorry.
I don't know what I have done tooffend you.
(06:52):
I am a foreigner here. I'm new to your culture.
But the embassy told me that if I did get into a problem with
the police, that I should call them immediately.
And I pulled out my embassy ID and said Officer Kalinked off
badge number 3247, I apologize to you here.
I must call the RSO for the embassy right now and let him
(07:15):
know that I have offended you. So this can be reported to the
Ministry of Interior and then wecan begin to process of
correcting this great wrong thatI have done.
And instantly it was your security, but not, but not no
problem, no problem. And so one blend when you can,
absolutely. But make sure that you've got
(07:36):
the backup and if you know what they're afraid of, for 90% of
the time it's their boss, especially if there's
corruption. And if they get caught by their
boss and participating in corruption that he did not
direct, there's going to be hellto pay.
I have a very similar story. Everybody does.
In Panama it was the opposite, because inside the compound
(07:59):
probably nobody's going to mess with you because there'll be
repercussions. But when you're out on the
street, that's where you're vulnerable and that's where you
could be taken on a non attribution basis.
So we'd make a point of staying in public areas where a lot of
people could see us and we're obviously American even though
we're in civilian clothes. So lots of witnesses and we
(08:19):
didn't have the power to conductintelligence collection that was
against the law for special forces guys.
But there's nothing wrong about walking down the street and
people run up and they want to talk to you sitting down and
have a cup of coffee and listen to what they have to say.
And that's how we got our force protection information without
running what be an illegal intelligence net, volunteer net.
(08:40):
And that's what we learned is that whatever you're doing, just
listen more than you talk. And if you ask any questions
that at all, it's what I didn't quite understand.
I'm not from here because it's important to me to understand
why this is important to you. And in interrogations, it's the
same thing. You got to take yourself out of.
I am demanding, I need, I want. And you've got to turn it into
(09:05):
what is it that you want? What is it you need?
What are you about? Help me to understand and
generally people will tell you what you need to know.
Yeah, that's like Chris Voss calls tactical empathy for him.
He was a former FBI hostage negotiator.
Using tactical empathy helped him to talk down those
conditions so that he could get the hostages released and the
(09:26):
person in custody without violence.
Sometimes even to say I understand may not be the right
way to go because people sometimes will flashback at you
with no, you don't understand. Never been in my shoes.
Yeah. Did you have no idea?
If you give it to them right up front, I want to know, you know,
please tell me. And we want to help, but I'm not
(09:48):
sure this is really being of help to you.
What do you really need? What can I do to help out?
And generally, even somebody that's hostile to you will open
up in that regard. Because if you agree with them
when they say you don't understand, you say, yeah, man,
you're right. I don't, but I want to.
I'm trying to. You got to bridge that gap it.
Makes them willing to talk. Exactly.
OK. And you've also dealt with first
(10:09):
contact or areas that have had little to no US engagement.
Have you ever used proxies? Ever ask someone to go in on
your behalf to set up a meeting?Has that been helpful?
Yeah. In fact, that's the preferred
course of action in a lot of cases.
You want to have somebody out there, but can be a double edged
sword because if you use a proxythat's going to advertise the
(10:33):
factor coming in, that can work to your disadvantage.
But whenever possible, you want to lay the groundwork and get
real time information about what's going on via a proxy.
And you need to know how people there feel about your proxy.
And what kind of agenda that proxy?
Has exactly, because if you're sending out a guy that everybody
considers to be a snake, that's not going to do well to prepare
(10:54):
the ground for you. As a security contractor, I did
this a lot, talked to three or four people, and if there's
somebody that doesn't like that guy, you need to talk to that
person and find out why he doesn't like the other person
that you're talking to and what his logic is.
Because that's where we usually resolved on the security side, a
lot of the problems when we had someone who was involved in
(11:15):
criminal activity. And by the time you get all the
conflicting stories, you're starting to get a pretty good
picture of what's really going on the ground.
They had a problem in Afghanistan where civil affairs
came in and they spent a lot of money building a Rd. between one
of the villages that was deep inthe mountains down into the
valley to another village. Because I thought, all right,
(11:37):
we'll commerce and exchange and we'll help bridge the gap.
And the day the road was finished, the first thing the
guys did that lived in the village up on the mountain was
they jumped in their trucks and went down this beautiful new
road to raid the people in the village in the valley.
And they were very grateful. They were very grateful.
It was so much easier than usinghorses.
(11:58):
But you got to do that groundwork.
You got to figure out how everybody feels about the other
group. Oh boy, yeah, that made friends
that influenced people. Is there anything else about
initial first contacts that you want to hit on?
Prep the ground, make sure that you're aware of the image that
you're presenting and it is the image that you want to present.
(12:21):
And one of the thing that you should mention, for all the
folks that are going out, for heaven's sake, don't try to play
James Bond. Because we'd be in the embassy
and they'd be out restaurant or nightclub.
And someone would ask, what do you do here?
And rather than go with the story that we provided, they try
to make one up. Like, I'm an engineer and I'm
here to work on a new foundationfor the new embassy building.
(12:43):
And the guy you're talking to instantly comes back.
Oh, really? I've got a degree in geology and
all of this. And what do you think about
substrate? And you're busted, man, if you
get a story and you're trying toconceal a little bit of what you
are, just go with the story thatyou've been given because people
have thought it through and they've given consideration that
don't try to make it up on the fly.
(13:05):
Don't ad Lib. And an essential part of it too.
We used to call it the and E or the go to hell plan.
If you do get in there and just everything goes to hell, what
are you going to do? How are you going to get out?
How are you going to break contact?
Where you going to go? And that's that's a critical
part. Sure.
Even if you go into areas that have some engagement over there,
(13:26):
somebody else has already made initial contact and made inroads
and you're just kind of following on.
I'm sure you do the same level of background and planning as
you get ready to go in and do the follow up engagements from
that first contact. Plus you have that first contact
group and they're after actions on what happened.
You can even call them, get a little background on what's been
going on so far and then any kind of opportunities you could
(13:50):
expand that relationship. You want to do all of those
things and optimally you'll do agreat deal more if you have the
technology or if you have the contacts and the resources to do
so. Because when you go in and you
make a first contact and you come back out, we call it the
ripple effect. Dana, what happened after you
left? Who's talking to who?
This particular principal that you met that he immediately go
(14:12):
out to another location and makecontact with someone else?
Or do you have people in the area that you've talked to
before that you can give a call and see if they've heard about
that meeting and what their impression was and what people
are saying? But do you really want to be
able to do a follow up with as much information, as many
resources as possible to see what the impression and the
(14:35):
result was of that first contact?
Is that's when you find out whether that first engagement
offended anybody or if there is any kind of blowback or issues
that might be going on or opportunists that are saying,
hey, I know they're going to come back and we should take
advantage of it if we want to rob them, shoot or push an
agenda on the Americans as they're coming back into this
(14:56):
area. Yeah.
And often there's a positive side because if you come in and
you provide medical support to the locals or there was a sick
child or even the livestock you were able to do something about
that helped correct that situation.
And the people in the other villages in the area are all
talking about it. If you can pick up on that
gossip and you can reinforce that, then that's a huge step
(15:16):
forward. Be sensitive.
Be on the lookout for opportunities that will present
themselves and make sure that all the conversations that you
have, you're trying to elicit information on that.
You may not get any information because they'll be very guarded
in that respect. But if they do give information,
if someone mentions it. My father is very sick and we're
very worried. This person that I have with me
(15:37):
here is a medical person. Would you like to see if we can
help and make the offer right onthe spot?
And if you can't, if it's withinyour capability to do so, let
them know that we have medical personnel.
Would you like me to invite one to come here on the next trip?
Try and lay that groundwork, tryand identify their needs, their
wants, and start building the plan right from the first
(15:59):
contact on how you can be usefulto them.
And we had the team that went into Honduras and poor guy came
up and he had three bad teeth and just driving them crazy.
So they pulled the teeth for himand he was so happy.
He said please pull all my teeth.
So I said, no, you don't want meto do that.
So yes, I do. I don't know if you'll ever come
back again. So as we get into more complex
(16:21):
environments where there's already been an established
relationship between the embassyor the military and a
population, you're coming in to do a mission.
So what were the things to help build the conditions and prepare
the environment so you could be successful without blowing up
U.S. policy in that area? Yeah, and that can be a real
difficult path to navigate in a lot of different respects.
(16:44):
Politics are one of the sensitive areas.
I know in Panama, when they're holding their first elections,
the American government perceived one of the candidates
as being the perfect guy. He was a graduate of Yale and we
spoke flawless English at a wellorganized political party.
And they're thinking that, man, this is the guy.
(17:05):
And we're talking to the people out in the provinces.
They come up and tell us, hey, we just heard that United States
supports this particular guy. Why are you doing that?
He's going to be worse than Noriega.
He's going to be a dictator. He's got his people everywhere.
It's a network that's ready to seize control.
And now your boss is back in therear.
Are convinced this guy's best saying since sliced bread.
(17:27):
And he may well be. But the people out here think
that he's the devil on earth. And now you're in the middle.
And so we would go back and we would brief our boss to say,
look, just so you know, I know nothing about this gentleman.
I'm sure he's a great person. But this is the perception of
the people in this particular district.
I don't know if that's countrywide, but I thought you
(17:47):
needed to be aware. This is what we're hearing, and
they kind of blew it off a bit. And then when you're talking to
the people out there, you have to talk to them and go look,
it's a democratic election. You're going to choose who your
leaders will be. We won't.
And yes, I've told my bosses of what your fears and concerns
are. They're taking that into the
(18:08):
account. But there's nothing that we can
do either way on this because this is your election and you
will choose what your governmentis.
And let me know what you're concerned about by all means,
and I'll communicate it to my boss back in the rear.
But this is your show, and you've kind of got to walk the
line on a whole host of issues, especially if you're in support
(18:29):
of a government that's not well perceived in the area by the
local population. And that gets back into
Bangladesh is a good example on that, where some of the security
forces there are really rough for whatever reason, and they're
not well received by a lot of the people in the local
population. 1 You don't want to be tied too closely to them in
(18:51):
the mind of the population. But by the same token, until you
can bridge that gap with local leaders, whatever else may be
going on, to where they have some trust and confidence in you
that you're not just an agent for the host nation government,
you got to be very careful aboutwhere you go and what you do.
And you have to have a reason why it's to their advantage not
(19:11):
to kill you and to work with you.
And, and quite often money is the driving motivation because I
bring food, I bring resources, Ibring concrete, I bring all of
these things. And if you don't kill me, I can
go back and bring more and come back again.
And that's a card that you may have to play with more than one
group. Is there anything else about
(19:33):
prepping and going into an environment to do an engagement
or older relations or a Med cap that you'd like to talk about?
Is there any advice you can giveto people as they prepare to go
on a mission? Just keep in mind, the
abbreviated version of the Powell Doctrine is that we're
not going to go unless we reallyneed to #1 and there's a good
(19:54):
overriding reason for us to go there.
That's not personal. That's national policy level.
It is important, needs to be done.
We've got a specific objective that we want to accomplish and
it may just be to gather information on the area, but you
know why you're going before you're going to go so that you
can adjust your efforts to accomplish that goal.
We're not going to stay forever.Or you have a set time that
(20:17):
we're going to be there and thenwe're going to come back out,
whether it's one day or six months.
And our plan is organized to support that stay while we're
there. And we have a plan on how we're
going to get back out, not only how we're going to leave, but
how we're going to leave the area better than it was when we
came. So there aren't negative
feelings about our withdrawal, if that's at all possible.
(20:39):
Well, I think that wraps it up. Do you have a closing comment by
my book In the Shadows Between the Wars?
No, usually what I close up withis just a general comment that
listen more than you talk. I don't care what group it is, I
don't care what the point of contention is.
If there's 2 Warren camps, it's important to sit down and listen
(21:01):
to the people in the other camp because they have a point.
If you open your mind and listento what they're really concerned
about, somewhere in there there's something that you
really need to know, if nothing else, why they're angry.
That's how we can bridge the gap, and that's true here in the
US or overseas, but you've got to open that door in your mind
before you can get there. All right.
(21:22):
Well, Chris, thank you very muchfor coming on the show and I
appreciate your time. Thank you for giving me the
opportunity. Thanks for listening.
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.
(21:43):
I'll have the e-mail and CA Association website in the show
notes. And now, most importantly, to
those currently out in the field, working with a partner
nation's people or leadership toforward US relations.
Thank you all for what you're doing.
This is Jack, your host Tay tuned for more great eisodes. 1
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