FBI AGENT DISCUSSES INTERROGATING

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From where we are around the world. Welcome to the
Circle of Insight Briefings. I'm your host, Doctor Carlos. Today
we're going to take a look at Jihati interrogations and investigations.
We're gonna get into the real world. You can kind
of say, we're going on boots on the ground to
see how a former counter terrorism FBI agent did some
investigations and did interrogations with jihatis. We're gonna really learn

(00:25):
a little bit about what was going on in the
minds of these jihatists. With a man by the name
of mister Brigg Barker. He's the president's CEO of Red
Rock Red Rock Global Security Group. That's Red Rock Global
Security Group. He recently retired after twenty years as a
counter terrorism agent with the FBI. During his career, he
spent the majority of his time on a JTTF, the

(00:46):
Joint Terrorism Task Force, with extensive overseas deployments. He originally
spent five years working as a case agent on a
JTTF where he was a SWAT operator and an FBI
certified sniper. Well, it's not waste any more time and
bring up on to the show. Welcome mister Barker.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Good afternoon, doctor Carlos.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So incredible career. Obviously, not too many people who know
more about counter terrorism than you. Tell us a little
bit about your twenty year career.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, you know, I started out as a criminal agent,
working bank robberies and fugitives, and you know, gaining a
lot of experience there in court and trials and things
like that and just basic investigations. And then nineteen ninety
eight I traveled over to Nairobi, Kenya after the embassy
bombings there. As your listeners are probably familiar in Nairobi,

(01:39):
Kenya and Daruslom, Tanzania. So I went over there as
an investigator and was involved in the investigation of bombings
by al Qaeda. And at that point I was I
was in. I was committed to this fight and whatever
I could contribute against these jihadis terrorists. So but during
this time I was on an office sign to join

(02:01):
tearors and task forces and UH and then periodically would
would travel over deployed to Middle Eastern Africa. Nine to eleven,
I went over to Cairo, Egypt and worked on the
case from there and then kind of continued with that
UH that cycle and again mostly Middle East and Africa,

(02:22):
some in Europe, but while in the US focused on
you know, domestic investigations of UH terrorists and interrogating them
and UH just wrapped up last year. Wow, just last year.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, thank you so much for your service, mister Barkerby
truly appreciate it, or brig, thank you very much. So Brigg,
let's start getting into the two. I guess the meat
of it on the interrogations, uh.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Or the end.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, I guess interrogations be the first one. I would
like to kind of discuss a little bit. Can you
give us some of the things that really surprised you
as you interrogated some of these because you said you
well before the show, you interrogated over four hundred or
five hundreds.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, and I never counted them before until someone asked
me recently and I started thinking about it. But yeah,
when I started down this road, really after nine to eleven,
you know, there wasn't a lot of training on you know,
the nuances of interrogation of you know, radical believer that
we understand a lot more now. But essentially I was

(03:28):
trying to apply kind of the criminal template of interrogation
into the counter terrorism investigations, and honestly, it took some
time to kind of evolve where I felt comfortable starting
to gain some successes. And it was all for me
based on really rapport building with them and then essentially

(03:49):
getting them to talk to me and then from there assessing,
you know, their words, their nonverbal behavior to try to
discern is this person, you know, intending to carry out
an attack or what are their intentions specifically. So it
was really an evolution into getting to the point where
I felt that I could be effective in this and

(04:10):
and you know, I learned something new every day and
continue to to this day. But that that's essentially how
it went. Let me ask you.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I can't remember the author and I hate this. I
hate Maybe it's Peter Bergy and I can't remember. Anyway,
one of the authors wrote a book and he mentions
where he was or wasn't. It was Ali's soufan, That's
what it was. I think I FBI agent and he
was talking about it. I think an interview he did
with uh Gendaal, the bodyguard of Ben Laden, one of

(04:39):
the bodyguards. Yeah, right, are you familiar at all with that?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
I'm not, I mean somewhat familiar with it, but not
with the specifics I guess.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
My My point, My point would be he was interesting
because he mentioned in the book that the developing rapport,
as you mentioned here, was really difficult initially because especially
had a lot of mistrust and it took a lot
of time. But once you develop rapport with one, it
kind of broke the ice for the others. Would you
agree with that if you can't elaborate.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, I would concur. I mean, I to me, the
rapport concept, it certainly works on the criminal side, but
I found it to really work on the counter terrorism
side as well. And once you know, kind of develop
a preamble and a kind of an approach and gain
that rapport. Once once you have rapport, then you're really
heading toward success as far as again being able to

(05:35):
assess how radical is this person, what is their trajectory,
what are the potential triggers you know, into you know,
them actually carrying out an attack. So yeah, I would
I would concur with that.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Any interrogations that stood out for you at all that
you thought, well, I'm getting nowhere or what this is
a lot easier than I expected. Anything like that at all.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, sometimes the
defeats are the ones that stand out, at least for me.
Where in the beginning, I you know, I found people
very defensive, and I wasn't able to gain much information.
But you know, I interviewed folks, a lot of folks
in the US, and again, you know, sometimes you determine

(06:17):
that the allegations were false and the person's not radical
and has you know, no bad intentions. But I also
interviewed folks overseas and and and found overall, you know,
as far as salient you know, issues with this, that
the ideology amongst these folks really was the same as
far as the absolute you know, radical folks. And so

(06:40):
I would say that really stood out to me as
a pattern. If we were looking at someone that was
very radical and had intentions to do something, the ideology
was the same and there were very few variations in it.
So I would say, overall, without going into specific cases,
that that's what kind of lingers.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
With me interesting some of the differences I'm looking for here,
sat if you can provide the distinctions, obviously with whatever
you can in regards to confidentiality, But did you notice
any distinctions between Middle Eastern Jihatis and North African Jihatis
anything like that.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, I mean, great question. I you know, for me,
of course, there's twenty two Arab countries that spread from
the Middle East and over North Africa. It kind of
you know, i'd say, ten years into this, I had
really kind of a mural built out for each country.
So if I was going to interview someone from from Morocco,
there were certain things that I was going to thread

(07:38):
into that interview to build report, to get them to
relax their shoulders to drop so that they would be
honest with me. So I did see again the commonality
was the ideology. But of course with each of the
countries there's you know, a lot of different nuances with
the culture, the language, their background and experience. And I

(07:58):
really tried to takeler, you know, my my interrogations to
that specific country. Now you do have, of course, the
cluster of countries like the Collegia, the Gulf Area, the Levant,
you know, the the Magreb, you know, Morocco, Tunisi, Algeria,
where you do see you know, common allies amongst them.
But boy, just each each interrogation was very different along

(08:21):
the way.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, I could imagine somebody from the Syria or Iraq
compared to somebody from Tunisia or Morocco has to be
a little bit different, no doubt. Yeah, absolutely, And the
ideology I guess their exposure to to we we talked
a little bit before the show some other the people
that they had admire, such as even Tiamia or Kuta.

(08:43):
I mean, I don't know if they all follow the
same pattern or do they have different allegiances to different
what should call them preachers?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean as far as the some of the
I'll call them jihadist scholars. You know, for me, the
the the deeper the radicalization that the deeper the followers
that they that they delved into. So for instance, if
I interviewed someone that was very very radical, a lot
of times they were uh, you know, digging into Ipentymia

(09:14):
and Psighthab and these folks. But the ones that just
came into it maybe were you know, kind of mentored
a month into radicalization. They would be focused on on
folks like on Wall Locke, you know, American speaking, uh
you know, yeah, kind of easier to understand. The concepts
were a little bit more basic. So yeah, completely, it's

(09:34):
a it's a very deep ocean. Uh, and there's a
lot of nuances with it. But yeah, the more radical
for me, the more in depth. As far as the
Jihada scholars, let.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Me ask you this, brig, did it help that you
knew that the names are a little bit about them
for these for these Jihatas, I mean, did they did
they respect you more? Was a little bit easier developer
poor if they well, this guy knows about time. That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, I mean I you know, first I the FBI
sent me to a six different Arabic schools, so I
had some of the language you know that could use
in the in the interrogations, but I mixed everything into
the cauldron with some of these scholars, you know, if
I was trying to I at some point, as about
two thousand and six, I developed an interrogation technique called

(10:22):
the record technique, which I ended up using and teaching
at the FBI Academy. And essentially I would use that
to assess essentially how how radical they were, what the again,
what their direction was, and things like that. So for me,
it was a tool and it was something that you know,
I tried to apply as I went along.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Fascinating, fascinating, stuff, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, this is
Brig Barker. He is the CEO of Red Rock Global
Security Group, and he's a former FBI agent twenty years
in counter terrorism, and he's giving us some inside looks
and investigations, interrogations. We're gonna talk a little bit more.
We have another ten minutes with Brig here. Brigg, did

(11:06):
you notice any differences between ISIS and al Qaeda Jihannists?

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, I mean I I people ask me this and
I teach you conferences and things, and we do spend
some time in it because I think it's important. I
look at ISIS and again I not taking away from
any of the you know, how barbaric they are anything
like that, but I see them more as a gang,
where I would say al Qaeda is more of an

(11:33):
organized crime group as you know, La Coos and Ostra
type thing, because you know, Kaita still has that that
that far look, long range targets and things like that.
Where isis even though they're you know, committing these horrific atrocities,
they they tend to look you know, directly in front
of them. They're not looking out on the horizon as

(11:53):
much as al Kaida with their planning and targeting and
things like that. So again though, I would also say
same ideology, same ideology that you know with the Boston bombers,
or Lando's Sam Bernadino. It's all threaded to the same
connected to the same ideology. So that makes it easier
in the law enforcement realm and military to to understand it.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
I think it just made some enemies in Italy by.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
The way, but well, I don't want to do that.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Did you notice anything, This is always my question to
almost every expert apocalyptic visions. Did you notice that any
of them really believed that this was the end times?

Speaker 2 (12:37):
I did? Uh, some you know again, you know, I
ended up looking at the most radical folks, you know,
with the worst intentions, and so some of them, you know,
they really do. They're they're kind of connected to this
apocalyptic view of the world. And that's of course why
isis you know, started their online magazine topic because that
was going to be the final battle place near a

(12:59):
Leppa in Syria. Once they lost you know, Dobic, then
they changed the name to Remia or Rome. But they
some of them are very focused, hyper focused on on
the eschatology of this Islamic jiehttist perspective. So people come
into radicalization and join ISIS and al Qaeda for different reasons.

(13:22):
Some are very interested in that view and so they
do kind of glom onto it.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Fascinating, fascinating. Yeah, they definitely have that niche I guess
you can call it that for ISIS. It doesn't seem
like al Kaita seems to hear too much to the
apocalyptic vision. The homegrown terrorists you said you think you've
interviewed some of those as well.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, we get a lot of calls, you know, into
the FBI of course, folks, you know, alleging that you know,
their neighbor is a terrorist or they saw something suspicious,
which is good and we want that so you know,
in the end we try to sift through, you know,
all the allegations and all the callings to figure out,
you know, are there anybody, is there anybody that you

(14:08):
know is a radical carase in the US, you know,
intending to carry out an attack. So that's really what
we call the homegrown by On extremists or h VEE.
They're definitely here. You know, we've seen it again with
as I mentioned, you know, Boston Orlando and Salmon, you know,
and others Fort Lauderdale even as of late. So they're

(14:29):
here and I have interview to number those folks.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
They are they if you can tell us, ay different
from Middle Eastern UH jihattes or North African jihatties or
even European jihatties. Do you notice any distinctions there at all?
Or I know you might just be able to say yes,
but that's fine.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, I mean I would say in general, you know,
the hvees UH probably have a little bit more of
a superficial understanding of the hottest ideology. Now some you know,
delve deep. I won't take away from them, but some
of them have just recently come into it and their
neighbor calls in about them, and so you know, we
get word early on. Uh. But again the ideology is

(15:10):
the same. Now what you mix into it with each
interrogation is uh, you know, the cultural side of it,
so you know, country specific or continent specific. But the
US a lot of folks you know, are more superficial
in their understanding. Yet they still you know, may feel
this this call to action, this uh you know as

(15:31):
we call it, kind of the salafichi hottest. You know,
someone that believes in a particular ideology but feels like
I need to do something about it. I need to
carry out some activity and furtherance of it.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, let me ask you this. We're gonna we're heading
towards the end, which is amazing, such a fun conversation,
brig Can you tell us. I know we've talked a
little bit before and it was sad. It sounds like
a really interesting story. I didn't get to hear the
whole thing in regards to Sirius the early one and
all Kaida. What was that all about?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, and two thousand and six, there was a book
written right before that about Blood Diamonds, if your listeners
will call about money from the Blood Diamonds in essentially
Sierra Leone and Liberia being siphoned off to terrorist groups
like al Qaeda. And so through the journey of it

(16:24):
the book and then into kind of the political realm,
the ambassador in Cierri Leone wanted the FBI to to
come over to Sierra Leone established presence and look into this.
So I had the privilege of going over to open
our office, our attache office there and freetown Sierra Leone
in two thousand and six, and so that was an adventure,

(16:45):
very austere country, very interesting. But yeah, that was one
of I guess my adventures along the way that really
stood out for me.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
That sounds like an amazing adventure. We got a couple
of questions before we wrap up, and then we want
definitely want to know more about your organization and what
they do and what you do. But before I do that,
how important do you think is it for army and
law enforcement to know some of the things that you
teach in your organization and some of the things we've

(17:15):
talked about already such as Kutev and Tiamia and some
of the cultural distinctions and ideologies. How important do you
think that is?

Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think it's absolutely critical. You know. I go back
to when I was a young army officer. The first
thing the Army did was spend about a year helping
me understand the enemy. And I think that's missing right now.
I think there's a gap there at all levels law enforcement, military,
you know, citizens and so red Rock Global Security. You
get very focused on that education for those warriors that

(17:50):
are out there protecting us every day and the citizens
that are you know, kind of in that you know,
see something, say something mode. So we think it's critical
to understand the mind set, the pre attack flax and indicators,
those kind of things. So we have a small group
and we are out trying to equip and educate folks.

(18:10):
You know, we're going to continue to do it till
we can't do it any longer.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
And where can we people get a hold of of you?

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Red Rock?

Speaker 1 (18:18):
You have a website, I think correct.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, we have a website for Red Rock Global Security
Group REDROCKGSG dot com and all of our contact informations
on there. And we're staffed with a small group of
former law enforcement and military folks with a lot of
overseas experience and a lot of folks that have you know,
experienced working counter terrorism overseas and domestically.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Great stuff, great stuff. We appreciate that, ll Brig. We
got a couple of minutes left. Anything you want to
any stories or interrogations or interview or investigations besides serial
leone that popped up that you think might be important
for us to know about.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, I mean I wouldn't mention that, you know, going
back to nineteen ninety eight, I was standing at the
base of the rubble of the US embassy there in
that robe with Kenya, and I realized that there is
evil in the world. There are people that want to
kill in the name of their ideology, their religion, and we,
I think we have to be careful about putting our

(19:21):
head in the sand and saying, you know, kind of
in that mode of naivete, that nothing's ever going to
happen to us. And so, you know, as you look
at the statistics currently, you know the increase in the
number of Salafiji Haatis groups, you know, all these foreign
fighters in Iraq and Syria, they're going to probably return somewhere.

(19:42):
This is going to continue this problem set and so
I would just say we all need to be in
this together and keep our eyes open, be situational awhere
and call out whatever you see.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Actually read my mind's exactly. My last question was going
to be for you. I just saw an article, shoot,
I can't remember it was the Guardian. They came out
a couple of days ago talking about how Isis is losing.
Foreign fighters are all leaving, and my first thought was,
exactly what juj just said. When they started heading home,
what are they up to when they get back.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah. I mean it's a great point, and I don't
know that we've really discussed it yet too much because
we're focused on MOSL and Rock UP. But what we
have the profile that foreign fighter is someone who's kind
of become an electrical engineer, knows how to build an
IED device, put it in a vehicle, and now has
this poisonous ideology coming back to a western country like

(20:36):
the US. So we've got to keep our radar up
for that and just anticipate that we're going.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
To see some of this incredible stuff. Well, thank you
so much for all your work, Grig. We truly appreciate
it and thank you for being on the show.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Thank you very much for the time and anything we
can do at Red Rock.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Please let us know absolutely. Thanks again. It's Brig Barker. Everybody.
The group was Red Rock Global Security Group. You can
get Red Rock Global Security Group. You can find them
at red ROCKGSG dot com, REDROCKGSG dot com. We thank
you everybody for listening like you always do. We appreciate it.
Remember you can find us at Behavior Analysisgroup dot com.

(21:16):
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great weekend.