Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Cases of the FBI podcast. We're retired agents
here some of their most incredible cases. Let's begin.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Today.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
We're gonna be talking with a former BSU hostage negotiator,
an FBI agent named doctor Greg Vicky. He's also an
assistant professor of criminal justice at Missouri Western State University
and the founder and principal of the Vecki Group. Today's
going to give us an inside look of how it
is to not only negotiate with hostage takers, but also
(00:35):
how to negotiate with terrorists or better said, maybe interrogate them.
So let's before I screw this up anymore, let's welcome
doctor Vicky to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome doctor, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So we have a lot of stuff to talk about.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Like always, our listeners know it's a very short amount
of time, but we have lots to cover, and we
thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
For being here.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Give us a little bit of insight. I know we
talked before the show. There are some similarities and there
are some distinctions in regards to hostage negotiation and I
guess interrogating terrorists.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Can you give us a little bit of insight?
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Sure? You know.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Constage negotiation is essentially, I mean a communication that's done
under extremely dangerous circumstances where essentially you have a situation
where a guy takes a person captive or hostage. Might
be a crisis situation, might be a hostive situation, and
the determination depends on his motivation. And he's locked himself up,
(01:36):
he's got a gun to the first's head, and he
knows that he's in trouble. The police of surrounding family's trapped,
and I step in and say hi, I'm rid with
the FBI or the UK, and that's my opening line
and then from there we talk. And according to the statistics,
most of those situations are resolved in under two hours
(01:57):
according to fbistic and some can go lager, of course,
typically under two hours. And uh and essentially we're using
influencer persuasion techniques in a very very short, uh, you know,
timeframe essentially to connect with the person and actually convince
that person to drop the gun and come out, even
(02:20):
though he knows that I'm a law enforcement officer. And
here's a key thing on this type of the scenario,
so you can kind of understand how you can apply
it to other areas is that the constant negotiation technique
is the only time in law enforcement when you are
actually communicating with the subject in influence from persuading that
(02:40):
subject during the commission of the crime. You look at
all of the law enforcement activities, it's always after the fact,
after the crime, or they're working in some sort of
undercover capacity and they're pretending to be somebody else.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
That's a good point. Never thought about that interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Let me ask you a quick question in regards to
the hostage taker here. Do you you find that most
of them really want a peaceful ending?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
We find most of them are experiencing, uh, some sort
of conflict. That's the bottom line, and that's the key,
uh to uncovering what's you know, the direction to go
in the negotiation. I mean, there are a lot there
are a lot of things well beyond the scope and
the time that we have together today, but essentially, what
you've got to do is you've got to you've got
to figure out the what the issue is with the person.
(03:29):
Because a person takes somebody against the will's kind of
for either for for for a reason, and it's it
can be based on a number of different things. So
you know, It could be because of an ideology, It
could be because of money, it could be because of ransom,
it could be just because the person feels grieved, the
person feels the trade, like in a situation of a
(03:51):
of a romantic type involvement. But there's a there's always
a reason, there's always a conflict there, and that's the
that's the thing you have to get to this negotiator
and you can actually extrapolate that whole that whole concept
out of the hospice negotiation, you know, capitor or type
of situation, to interviews, the interrogations, to trying to flip
(04:13):
an informant, trying to get somebody to work for you.
You know, any any time where you have to communicate
with someone, you can't make them to or force them
to do what you want them to do. And you've
got to use the influencer persuasion techniques. And that's the
beauty of the system.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
I have to ask you this question. I know some
people are going to ask me eventually, sooner or later.
The movie Negotiator with Samuel Jackson, I think it was.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
You.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Did you ever see that with kN Spacey?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, yeah, it's way far and you never you would
never you would never trade places.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
What come on, all right, so let's go on.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
What are the similarities or distinctions that you noticed between
this and I know you were part of the Saddam
Hussein in interrogation if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, I was over there when it was. I was
not the interrogator at that point. I was over there.
I was part of the Rapid Appointment unit in the
FBI and UH. We were over there during during the war.
It was actually it was actually when the Coalition Provisional
Authority the CPA was in charge of the country, is
(05:24):
after Saddami fell and everything like this, and they they
ended up finding him in that spider hole and picked
him up. And what I did was, I was I
worked kind of with j Justin's the logistics and support
of that, so I was not involved in the actual interrogation. However,
I was there, watched everything, saw him face the base
and everything like this, and it was really it was
(05:46):
really interesting because at that point he had been interrogated
by the military and UH and they were not successful
at getting UH information that was that was actionable. He
was also interviewed by number of the intel agencies and
then finally went ahead and had the Bureau go ahead
(06:07):
and interview him, and the reason he cooperated with the
Bureau was for the very same reasons that hostage negotiation works.
Or this what I like to call it and what
I teach and developed over years, is this tactical conflict
resolution concept where you're looking at You're looking at from
the from the from the perspective of how I booked,
(06:27):
how I'm explaining it in terms of, you know, understanding
the conflict, what's driving the conflict, what's driving with the
king there, and things like this, and a lot of
times it's you know, in order in order for someone
to cooperate with you or or or to get what
you want, you've got to generate either accommodating or collaborating
(06:49):
the behavior on the part of the other person. If
you can do that, then you'll get what you want.
And so that breaks down to the fact that if
you can build trust, build a report, or build credibility
with that person, okay, for that group, then you had
the best chance of getting them to accommodate or collaborate
(07:10):
with you to make sure that your needs are met
and uh uh. And so therefore the guy comes out
for the gun guy and comes out the guy uh
uh uh in confess us. The person agrees to cooperate
with you as in the format whatever. And so what
we saw with the what I saw there in the
Saddam uh interviews in recent works so well, as we
(07:33):
had an agent spoke Arabic, they went in there and
talked to him. And initially it wasn't talking to him.
He was an FBI agent.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
It was okay, bring him his medicine.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
But I'm talking about his kids. Oudekhus were probably the
two of the most vile human beings you could even imagine,
in terms of what they did to their own people,
what they did to other people, even what they did
to themselves. But from Saddam's point of view, it was
his kids and that was an important topic to him,
even though they were dead and there were some there
was some grief. There's some greving grieving there and everything
(08:04):
like this. He needed prayer, rugg and his kreen.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
He needed to talk all.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
This other stuff. But that was the approach that the
Bureau used instead of, you know, the more heavy handed
that you kind of would expect law enforcement to use,
especially in the military and insulations. And it wasn't gonna
work with him because you know, Saddan was a tough
guy and he did not you.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Know, he he knows all those tricks.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
But the bottom line is is when you start approaching
somebody from what's important to them, their values and things
like this generate uh empathy, you you you start building
trust and all. That sounds super soft and weird, but
it didn't work to gainst a guy like him.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I completely understand it. I mean, if you look at
it in the how would you say it?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
From a distance, you can see here's a guy who
had all the control and power, and all of a
sudden he is completely powerless.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
That's a huge psychological impact.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
And as you mentioned the two children being killed as
another psychological impact. So I think that this empathy and
empathy approach, it was probably well received, said I was saying, obviously, so.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Well, it wasn't. Actually when you just mentioned something fantastic,
He's the guy that used to be in charge, you know,
the power of the control. I'm giving him power and control,
just in a different way. And up to that point,
I you know, I kind of takes that lost. It's
one of the things we're looking at you when you're
talking to people, especially in you know the situation there
(09:32):
in that or honest, the situation is you'resually looking especially
what you're doing with very high emotions, like you run
into the United States, you know, barricade crisis situations. Guy
gets you know, he gets fired, he gets mad at
his boss, or he takes the boss you know, half
dive or hostage or or or the or the wife.
Hed wife to betrayed him somehow and so he takes
(09:54):
her and you know he's suppressed and he's a lone
barricade suicidal and all this other stuff. You know that
that's the that's the that's the approach and the one
that use is to try, you know, you become to
become the social support network, so to speak. So so essentially,
if you understand crisis and you understand the definition of crisis,
someone goes into crisis rather it's it's to take somebody
(10:17):
hostage or it goes or it's highly emotional. You know,
they go into crisis because number one, they can't cope
the situation opportunity. They don't feel anybody cares anymore. Now
this is not like this isn't like for a ransom
trape situation.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
This is the one. This is the things you run
into all the.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Time that the police are going to run into. Almost
almost every single barricaded situation in the United States is
driven by emotion, is driven by expressive behavior. And when
you have those situations, those people are in crisis. They
can't cope from their perspective. And the second thing is
is that they don't feel anyone can help them. And
if you look at each one of the cases, a
(10:53):
lot of times they try to fix the divorce, fix
the betrayal, get the promotion, Uh, stop the bullying. You know,
they they've actually tried in their own way to stop that.
That conflict got to the point where it was overbearying.
It was more than they could handle. They they couldn't
cope with it anymore, and they feel no one can
(11:14):
help them.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So what do they do.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
They go into crisis, and they go into crisis. You
can't help you to feel the one that's helping you
and you can't cope with it. Then you can you
can either deal with that maw adaptably by taking someone hot.
There's more adaptively. Let's they go get counseling or whatever.
But the police, you know, if people are listening to
your show, are the ones that are going to show up?
Are they're going to study these people? Are the ones
(11:36):
that were deplete? Doesn't show up? It's not a happy time.
So they may respond to crisis val adaptively and that
is what gives us the opening then to become that
social support piece. And that's how we get about a crisis.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
And that's that's why negotiation works.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
That's a fabulous explanation. I like that being their social
support network. That's that's really fascinating stuff, Doctor Vicky. We
have about do what we got still about eight minutes
ago to go, so we got a pretty good time
left here.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Question.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
You mentioned something before the show as well that I
found interesting in regards to suicide bombers. You said, a
lot of people have asked you about that. How do
you work with them?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Can you give us some insight on that?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You know, Yeah, absolutely happy, happy.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
To talk about it.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Back up just a second, you know, before I answer,
that is the way the way I look at this,
the way I the way I approach this tactical confic
resolution approach. Rather it's in a hostile situation or an interigation,
I'm talking to uh, your potentially talking to a terrorist
or something like this is you know, I spent my
whole career in the issue in able science unit in
my last part of my career and focusing on the
(12:44):
fender behavior and a center motivation and how does that
center think and so in other words, kind of like
you still say, Carl, we'd like to crawl in the
mind center when you look at a terrorist. You know,
I can always say when I when I when I
teach classes, least training and things like this, is that
all terrorists are criminals, but not all criminals are terrorists.
(13:08):
And I let them sit with that for a while
because because terrorism obviously is a crime, and.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
You're talking about law enforcement, you know, it's.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
You're gonna at the end of the day, it's a
they're violating to the law. But what makes uh, what
makes that statement true is if there's understanding of motivations.
A criminal activity is strictly self driven. It's motivated by profit,
by power and control, and and a a terrorist is
(13:39):
driven by an ideology or a cause or something that's group.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Bigger than them.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
That's kind of looking at the low context versus high context.
You know, for those academics they're listening, we'll understand what
I'm talking about. Where low context is the individual uh
perspective in the high context as a group or tribe perspectives. Okay,
and so so understanding that going in helps you in negotiating.
But the other thing that helps you negotiating, and the
(14:06):
point I want to get to that you just asked
us about, is people come up and say, hey, you know,
you know, you know the United States.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
You know, I don't know way you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
This because the United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Well,
that's simply not true. We don't give concessions the terrorists,
but we negotiate all the time, and we do it
through various channels and directly and indirectly. That's just simply
a wrong assumption on that policy. We don't give concessions,
but we certainly negotiate. Of course, we're going to communicate,
(14:35):
and when I communicate, I want to listen very very
carefully to the words that they choose, because that gives
me an indication of my threat assessment. Okay, And of
course you're dealing with, you know, the topic of a
suicide bomber or someone that has a gun. You know
everyone is thinking about, you know, the bad consequences that
could result from that, and so part of this whole
(14:57):
conversation and this whole community, Jasonson is incorporating a threat
assessment piece in there. So I listened really, really careful
and try to determine, Okay, is the threat is there
is a a is it a threat that is really
not a threat? Or really is a threat or something
that I can negotiate, or is something I have to
run away from? And I listen to what they say.
If I hear a guy say I want to die
(15:21):
versus I'm willing to die, I'm going to run from
the first conversation, right, But the second conversation is the
way it is completely open to negotiation because that person
is telling me that he's experiencing a conflict and he's
given me an opening to talk because he doesn't really
want to he doesn't really want to die, he's willing
(15:43):
to die. And that opens up a huge amount of
opportunity to negotiate and to connect and to get that
person to engage in either collaborative or accommodating behavior, because
that's my strategy on this. If you collact, operate, or
accommodate to me, I win.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Only a switch of a verb changes the whole ball game.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It certainly does. You know.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It's just like if someone you're listening to.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Someone and he's try and do a dread assessment again,
I listen to the words. If you're listening to if
you're listening to someone says, let's say yes, someone who
lost the job, okay, And one guy who loses the
job says, well, you know what, you know, I'm not
too happy about it. Lost my job. You know, kondomy
turned really bad in my town and they basically there's
all my department and so they laid me off.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's one guy lostening to his job. And then the
other guy said, well I lost that job because that
s ob fired me.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, just by listening to the words, and if you
look at it and you know, contrasting it, you.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Can easily tell.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I mean, someone with no training knows where the problem is. Right,
So the threat assessment the on that same scenario will
drive me in a different direction on the conversation. So
the guy guy just lost his job because you know,
he's bad economy and all this other stuff that's we
just talked through that. You know, we just talked.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
We talked that out.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I feel trust with him and hopefully get to the
point where I can give him some help or direction.
The other guy is angry at the boss. So my
next thing is good be using good active listening skills
as I simply say, well, tell me a lot about
your boss, and I just stay quiet because he's going
to tell me everything about his boss, and that gives
(17:33):
me an opportunity to do a threat assessment. At the
same time, he's venting his anger, and I'm the cause
of him killing better because no one likes to be angry, right,
And so that's how you start im Just by doing that,
I'm generating U empathy and.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Trust and report.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And this is why this guy's going to come out
after less than two hours for the most part.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Because of that fascinating stuff. We're going to do a
rapid round. We got about two minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Great stuff. Everybody. This is doctor Greg ve double c Hi.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You can find them at the Founder he's the founder
and principal of Vecky Group internationally.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Can find them there.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
You can also he's also Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
at Missouri Western State University, Doctor Vicky. We have a
two minute left, two minutes left, and I want to
see we can do a rapid round.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Is that possible? Do we lose you?
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I'm something.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I guess what you just said.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Oh, we have about two minutes left and we're we're
gonna try to do a rapid round.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is that possible?
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
All right?
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So did you does it make a difference in regards
to the age, the culture, or the education of the
individual you're negotiating with.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
If you know that, it helps that The answer is
absolutely not enough. It makes it so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Oh wow, that's great, and that is fast faster than
we thought. All right, well, we have about a minute left.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
What's the main.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Message you want to get across to people in regards
to what you teach the tactical conflict resolution?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
If I'm corrected, I.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Would probably say that you have to go in with
a plan. You've got to You've got to know why
you're engaging in that conversation. So if you're going in
to try to do an interrogation, you got to understand that, Look,
I am trying to get an admission or a confession
of this person. If I'm going into the interview witness
or a victim I want to make I want to
(19:19):
do more of a cognitive interviews. So because they're going
to they might have trouble remembering things, and I want
to make it. You know, uh, you know, take that
that approach, knowing knowing those pitfalls up into a host's negotiation.
And I've got a guy, you know, holding the gun
to a person's head and barricaded. You know, I want
to go in there, you know, knowing what I want done.
I wanted to drop the gun.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I want to.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I don't want anybody to get hurt, don't want us
to get hurt, houses get hurt, and I sort I
don't want him to get hurt. And so by doing that,
I want to I'm going to do it from the
perspective of understanding what the conflict is and becoming that
social support network for that person to help them deal
(19:58):
effectively with what's driving the bad behavior. But what's driving
the bad motivation and so that would probably be the crooks.
And in the purcess of doing that, that's why you
don't here to necessarily know the culture or the background,
because this process is completely elucidative. And so therefore they
(20:18):
tell you what you need to know, and they can
never ever ever cure you that that you put words
in their mouth because it's all it's all about them,
and you stay in their frame and you do everything
based on their perception.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Fascinating stuff, Doctor Veki. Where can we get more information
about you?
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, I can be reached our website at www dot
dekiegroup dot com or email of course info at Veki
Group dot com.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Thank you dot com. Well there you go.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Thank you so much, doctor Vek for being here. We
truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
And thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Every one pleasure is that I really enjoyed it. Thank
you so much.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Thank you, and thank you everyone for joining us once again.
The Vekigroup dot com.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
You can find them there, Doctor Greg, Vicky V E
C C h I.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, thank you all for listening. Re member.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
You can find more of our shows at behavior Analysisgroup
dot com. It's behavior Analysisgroup dot com. Let's not get
that confused with the BSU Behavioral Science Unit. Thank you
everyone for listening. We'll catch you all next time.
Welcome to Cases of the FBI podcast. We're retired agents
here some of their most incredible cases. Let's begin.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Today.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
We're gonna be talking with a former BSU hostage negotiator,
an FBI agent named doctor Greg Vicky. He's also an
assistant professor of criminal justice at Missouri Western State University
and the founder and principal of the Vecki Group. Today's
going to give us an inside look of how it
is to not only negotiate with hostage takers, but also
(00:35):
how to negotiate with terrorists or better said, maybe interrogate them.
So let's before I screw this up anymore, let's welcome
doctor Vicky to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome doctor, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So we have a lot of stuff to talk about.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Like always, our listeners know it's a very short amount
of time, but we have lots to cover, and we
thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
For being here.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Give us a little bit of insight. I know we
talked before the show. There are some similarities and there
are some distinctions in regards to hostage negotiation and I
guess interrogating terrorists.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Can you give us a little bit of insight?
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Sure? You know.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Constage negotiation is essentially, I mean a communication that's done
under extremely dangerous circumstances where essentially you have a situation
where a guy takes a person captive or hostage. Might
be a crisis situation, might be a hostive situation, and
the determination depends on his motivation. And he's locked himself up,
(01:36):
he's got a gun to the first's head, and he
knows that he's in trouble. The police of surrounding family's trapped,
and I step in and say hi, I'm rid with
the FBI or the UK, and that's my opening line
and then from there we talk. And according to the statistics,
most of those situations are resolved in under two hours
(01:57):
according to fbistic and some can go lager, of course,
typically under two hours. And uh and essentially we're using
influencer persuasion techniques in a very very short, uh, you know,
timeframe essentially to connect with the person and actually convince
that person to drop the gun and come out, even
(02:20):
though he knows that I'm a law enforcement officer. And
here's a key thing on this type of the scenario,
so you can kind of understand how you can apply
it to other areas is that the constant negotiation technique
is the only time in law enforcement when you are
actually communicating with the subject in influence from persuading that
(02:40):
subject during the commission of the crime. You look at
all of the law enforcement activities, it's always after the fact,
after the crime, or they're working in some sort of
undercover capacity and they're pretending to be somebody else.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
That's a good point. Never thought about that interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Let me ask you a quick question in regards to
the hostage taker here. Do you you find that most
of them really want a peaceful ending?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
We find most of them are experiencing, uh, some sort
of conflict. That's the bottom line, and that's the key,
uh to uncovering what's you know, the direction to go
in the negotiation. I mean, there are a lot there
are a lot of things well beyond the scope and
the time that we have together today, but essentially, what
you've got to do is you've got to you've got
to figure out the what the issue is with the person.
(03:29):
Because a person takes somebody against the will's kind of
for either for for for a reason, and it's it
can be based on a number of different things. So
you know, It could be because of an ideology, It
could be because of money, it could be because of ransom,
it could be just because the person feels grieved, the
person feels the trade, like in a situation of a
(03:51):
of a romantic type involvement. But there's a there's always
a reason, there's always a conflict there, and that's the
that's the thing you have to get to this negotiator
and you can actually extrapolate that whole that whole concept
out of the hospice negotiation, you know, capitor or type
of situation, to interviews, the interrogations, to trying to flip
(04:13):
an informant, trying to get somebody to work for you.
You know, any any time where you have to communicate
with someone, you can't make them to or force them
to do what you want them to do. And you've
got to use the influencer persuasion techniques. And that's the
beauty of the system.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
I have to ask you this question. I know some
people are going to ask me eventually, sooner or later.
The movie Negotiator with Samuel Jackson, I think it was.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
You.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Did you ever see that with kN Spacey?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, yeah, it's way far and you never you would
never you would never trade places.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
What come on, all right, so let's go on.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
What are the similarities or distinctions that you noticed between
this and I know you were part of the Saddam
Hussein in interrogation if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, I was over there when it was. I was
not the interrogator at that point. I was over there.
I was part of the Rapid Appointment unit in the
FBI and UH. We were over there during during the war.
It was actually it was actually when the Coalition Provisional
Authority the CPA was in charge of the country, is
(05:24):
after Saddami fell and everything like this, and they they
ended up finding him in that spider hole and picked
him up. And what I did was, I was I
worked kind of with j Justin's the logistics and support
of that, so I was not involved in the actual interrogation. However,
I was there, watched everything, saw him face the base
and everything like this, and it was really it was
(05:46):
really interesting because at that point he had been interrogated
by the military and UH and they were not successful
at getting UH information that was that was actionable. He
was also interviewed by number of the intel agencies and
then finally went ahead and had the Bureau go ahead
(06:07):
and interview him, and the reason he cooperated with the
Bureau was for the very same reasons that hostage negotiation works.
Or this what I like to call it and what
I teach and developed over years, is this tactical conflict
resolution concept where you're looking at You're looking at from
the from the from the perspective of how I booked,
(06:27):
how I'm explaining it in terms of, you know, understanding
the conflict, what's driving the conflict, what's driving with the
king there, and things like this, and a lot of
times it's you know, in order in order for someone
to cooperate with you or or or to get what
you want, you've got to generate either accommodating or collaborating
(06:49):
the behavior on the part of the other person. If
you can do that, then you'll get what you want.
And so that breaks down to the fact that if
you can build trust, build a report, or build credibility
with that person, okay, for that group, then you had
the best chance of getting them to accommodate or collaborate
(07:10):
with you to make sure that your needs are met
and uh uh. And so therefore the guy comes out
for the gun guy and comes out the guy uh
uh uh in confess us. The person agrees to cooperate
with you as in the format whatever. And so what
we saw with the what I saw there in the
Saddam uh interviews in recent works so well, as we
(07:33):
had an agent spoke Arabic, they went in there and
talked to him. And initially it wasn't talking to him.
He was an FBI agent.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
It was okay, bring him his medicine.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
But I'm talking about his kids. Oudekhus were probably the
two of the most vile human beings you could even imagine,
in terms of what they did to their own people,
what they did to other people, even what they did
to themselves. But from Saddam's point of view, it was
his kids and that was an important topic to him,
even though they were dead and there were some there
was some grief. There's some greving grieving there and everything
(08:04):
like this. He needed prayer, rugg and his kreen.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
He needed to talk all.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
This other stuff. But that was the approach that the
Bureau used instead of, you know, the more heavy handed
that you kind of would expect law enforcement to use,
especially in the military and insulations. And it wasn't gonna
work with him because you know, Saddan was a tough
guy and he did not you.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Know, he he knows all those tricks.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
But the bottom line is is when you start approaching
somebody from what's important to them, their values and things
like this generate uh empathy, you you you start building
trust and all. That sounds super soft and weird, but
it didn't work to gainst a guy like him.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I completely understand it. I mean, if you look at
it in the how would you say it?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
From a distance, you can see here's a guy who
had all the control and power, and all of a
sudden he is completely powerless.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
That's a huge psychological impact.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
And as you mentioned the two children being killed as
another psychological impact. So I think that this empathy and
empathy approach, it was probably well received, said I was saying, obviously, so.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Well, it wasn't. Actually when you just mentioned something fantastic,
He's the guy that used to be in charge, you know,
the power of the control. I'm giving him power and control,
just in a different way. And up to that point,
I you know, I kind of takes that lost. It's
one of the things we're looking at you when you're
talking to people, especially in you know the situation there
(09:32):
in that or honest, the situation is you'resually looking especially
what you're doing with very high emotions, like you run
into the United States, you know, barricade crisis situations. Guy
gets you know, he gets fired, he gets mad at
his boss, or he takes the boss you know, half
dive or hostage or or or the or the wife.
Hed wife to betrayed him somehow and so he takes
(09:54):
her and you know he's suppressed and he's a lone
barricade suicidal and all this other stuff. You know that
that's the that's the that's the approach and the one
that use is to try, you know, you become to
become the social support network, so to speak. So so essentially,
if you understand crisis and you understand the definition of crisis,
someone goes into crisis rather it's it's to take somebody
(10:17):
hostage or it goes or it's highly emotional. You know,
they go into crisis because number one, they can't cope
the situation opportunity. They don't feel anybody cares anymore. Now
this is not like this isn't like for a ransom
trape situation.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
This is the one. This is the things you run
into all the.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Time that the police are going to run into. Almost
almost every single barricaded situation in the United States is
driven by emotion, is driven by expressive behavior. And when
you have those situations, those people are in crisis. They
can't cope from their perspective. And the second thing is
is that they don't feel anyone can help them. And
if you look at each one of the cases, a
(10:53):
lot of times they try to fix the divorce, fix
the betrayal, get the promotion, Uh, stop the bullying. You know,
they they've actually tried in their own way to stop that.
That conflict got to the point where it was overbearying.
It was more than they could handle. They they couldn't
cope with it anymore, and they feel no one can
(11:14):
help them.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
So what do they do.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
They go into crisis, and they go into crisis. You
can't help you to feel the one that's helping you
and you can't cope with it. Then you can you
can either deal with that maw adaptably by taking someone hot.
There's more adaptively. Let's they go get counseling or whatever.
But the police, you know, if people are listening to
your show, are the ones that are going to show up?
Are they're going to study these people? Are the ones
(11:36):
that were deplete? Doesn't show up? It's not a happy time.
So they may respond to crisis val adaptively and that
is what gives us the opening then to become that
social support piece. And that's how we get about a crisis.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
And that's that's why negotiation works.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
That's a fabulous explanation. I like that being their social
support network. That's that's really fascinating stuff, Doctor Vicky. We
have about do what we got still about eight minutes
ago to go, so we got a pretty good time
left here.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Question.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
You mentioned something before the show as well that I
found interesting in regards to suicide bombers. You said, a
lot of people have asked you about that. How do
you work with them?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Can you give us some insight on that?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You know, Yeah, absolutely happy, happy.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
To talk about it.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Back up just a second, you know, before I answer,
that is the way the way I look at this,
the way I the way I approach this tactical confic
resolution approach. Rather it's in a hostile situation or an interigation,
I'm talking to uh, your potentially talking to a terrorist
or something like this is you know, I spent my
whole career in the issue in able science unit in
my last part of my career and focusing on the
(12:44):
fender behavior and a center motivation and how does that
center think and so in other words, kind of like
you still say, Carl, we'd like to crawl in the
mind center when you look at a terrorist. You know,
I can always say when I when I when I
teach classes, least training and things like this, is that
all terrorists are criminals, but not all criminals are terrorists.
(13:08):
And I let them sit with that for a while
because because terrorism obviously is a crime, and.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
You're talking about law enforcement, you know, it's.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
You're gonna at the end of the day, it's a
they're violating to the law. But what makes uh, what
makes that statement true is if there's understanding of motivations.
A criminal activity is strictly self driven. It's motivated by profit,
by power and control, and and a a terrorist is
(13:39):
driven by an ideology or a cause or something that's group.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Bigger than them.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
That's kind of looking at the low context versus high context.
You know, for those academics they're listening, we'll understand what
I'm talking about. Where low context is the individual uh
perspective in the high context as a group or tribe perspectives. Okay,
and so so understanding that going in helps you in negotiating.
But the other thing that helps you negotiating, and the
(14:06):
point I want to get to that you just asked
us about, is people come up and say, hey, you know,
you know, you know the United States.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
You know, I don't know way you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
This because the United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists. Well,
that's simply not true. We don't give concessions the terrorists,
but we negotiate all the time, and we do it
through various channels and directly and indirectly. That's just simply
a wrong assumption on that policy. We don't give concessions,
but we certainly negotiate. Of course, we're going to communicate,
(14:35):
and when I communicate, I want to listen very very
carefully to the words that they choose, because that gives
me an indication of my threat assessment. Okay, And of
course you're dealing with, you know, the topic of a
suicide bomber or someone that has a gun. You know
everyone is thinking about, you know, the bad consequences that
could result from that, and so part of this whole
(14:57):
conversation and this whole community, Jasonson is incorporating a threat
assessment piece in there. So I listened really, really careful
and try to determine, Okay, is the threat is there
is a a is it a threat that is really
not a threat? Or really is a threat or something
that I can negotiate, or is something I have to
run away from? And I listen to what they say.
If I hear a guy say I want to die
(15:21):
versus I'm willing to die, I'm going to run from
the first conversation, right, But the second conversation is the
way it is completely open to negotiation because that person
is telling me that he's experiencing a conflict and he's
given me an opening to talk because he doesn't really
want to he doesn't really want to die, he's willing
(15:43):
to die. And that opens up a huge amount of
opportunity to negotiate and to connect and to get that
person to engage in either collaborative or accommodating behavior, because
that's my strategy on this. If you collact, operate, or
accommodate to me, I win.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Only a switch of a verb changes the whole ball game.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It certainly does. You know.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It's just like if someone you're listening to.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Someone and he's try and do a dread assessment again,
I listen to the words. If you're listening to if
you're listening to someone says, let's say yes, someone who
lost the job, okay, And one guy who loses the
job says, well, you know what, you know, I'm not
too happy about it. Lost my job. You know, kondomy
turned really bad in my town and they basically there's
all my department and so they laid me off.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's one guy lostening to his job. And then the
other guy said, well I lost that job because that
s ob fired me.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, just by listening to the words, and if you
look at it and you know, contrasting it, you.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Can easily tell.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I mean, someone with no training knows where the problem is. Right,
So the threat assessment the on that same scenario will
drive me in a different direction on the conversation. So
the guy guy just lost his job because you know,
he's bad economy and all this other stuff that's we
just talked through that. You know, we just talked.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
We talked that out.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I feel trust with him and hopefully get to the
point where I can give him some help or direction.
The other guy is angry at the boss. So my
next thing is good be using good active listening skills
as I simply say, well, tell me a lot about
your boss, and I just stay quiet because he's going
to tell me everything about his boss, and that gives
(17:33):
me an opportunity to do a threat assessment. At the
same time, he's venting his anger, and I'm the cause
of him killing better because no one likes to be angry, right,
And so that's how you start im Just by doing that,
I'm generating U empathy and.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Trust and report.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And this is why this guy's going to come out
after less than two hours for the most part.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Because of that fascinating stuff. We're going to do a
rapid round. We got about two minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Great stuff. Everybody. This is doctor Greg ve double c Hi.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You can find them at the Founder he's the founder
and principal of Vecky Group internationally.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Can find them there.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
You can also he's also Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
at Missouri Western State University, Doctor Vicky. We have a
two minute left, two minutes left, and I want to
see we can do a rapid round.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Is that possible? Do we lose you?
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I'm something.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I guess what you just said.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Oh, we have about two minutes left and we're we're
gonna try to do a rapid round.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is that possible?
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
All right?
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So did you does it make a difference in regards
to the age, the culture, or the education of the
individual you're negotiating with.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
If you know that, it helps that The answer is
absolutely not enough. It makes it so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Oh wow, that's great, and that is fast faster than
we thought. All right, well, we have about a minute left.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
What's the main.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Message you want to get across to people in regards
to what you teach the tactical conflict resolution?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
If I'm corrected, I.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Would probably say that you have to go in with
a plan. You've got to You've got to know why
you're engaging in that conversation. So if you're going in
to try to do an interrogation, you got to understand that, Look,
I am trying to get an admission or a confession
of this person. If I'm going into the interview witness
or a victim I want to make I want to
(19:19):
do more of a cognitive interviews. So because they're going
to they might have trouble remembering things, and I want
to make it. You know, uh, you know, take that
that approach, knowing knowing those pitfalls up into a host's negotiation.
And I've got a guy, you know, holding the gun
to a person's head and barricaded. You know, I want
to go in there, you know, knowing what I want done.
I wanted to drop the gun.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I want to.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I don't want anybody to get hurt, don't want us
to get hurt, houses get hurt, and I sort I
don't want him to get hurt. And so by doing that,
I want to I'm going to do it from the
perspective of understanding what the conflict is and becoming that
social support network for that person to help them deal
(19:58):
effectively with what's driving the bad behavior. But what's driving
the bad motivation and so that would probably be the crooks.
And in the purcess of doing that, that's why you
don't here to necessarily know the culture or the background,
because this process is completely elucidative. And so therefore they
(20:18):
tell you what you need to know, and they can
never ever ever cure you that that you put words
in their mouth because it's all it's all about them,
and you stay in their frame and you do everything
based on their perception.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Fascinating stuff, Doctor Veki. Where can we get more information
about you?
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, I can be reached our website at www dot
dekiegroup dot com or email of course info at Veki
Group dot com.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Thank you dot com. Well there you go.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Thank you so much, doctor Vek for being here. We
truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
And thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Every one pleasure is that I really enjoyed it. Thank
you so much.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Thank you, and thank you everyone for joining us once again.
The Vekigroup dot com.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
You can find them there, Doctor Greg, Vicky V E
C C h I.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, thank you all for listening. Re member.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
You can find more of our shows at behavior Analysisgroup
dot com. It's behavior Analysisgroup dot com. Let's not get
that confused with the BSU Behavioral Science Unit. Thank you
everyone for listening. We'll catch you all next time.
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