188: Part II, Mickey Bergman on Diplomacy in the Shadows

Please welcome Mickey Bergman, lead author of the book "In The Shadows," where he discusses his experiences negotiating the release of hostages and people unlawfully imprisoned in some of the most restrictive places on Earth. 

In the book, Mickey takes the reader through his time working with Governor Bill Richardson and, after his death, transforms his legacy into the non-profit Global Reach, where he now brings in a community of people to continue the work. 

This is part two of a two-part episode. Check out last week's episode to hear part one. 

Global Reach Website: https://www.reach.global/

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-High-Stakes-Negotiations-Americans-Captured

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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association 

and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com 

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Today's music is a tribute to James Chance, who passed away this week. The solo is from his album White Cannable. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/vUfcWDHMEQY?si=gPGLKe6_05aFSE24

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Transcript

00:00:01    Introduction

Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Please welcome Mickey Bergman, lead author of the book In the Shadows, where he discusses his experiences negotiating the release of hostages and people unlawfully imprisoned in some of the most restrictive places on earth.

 

00:00:49    JACK GAINES

In the book, Mickey takes the reader through his time working with Governor Bill Richardson, and then after his death, transforming his legacy, into a nonprofit called Global Reach. This is the first of a two -part episode. The second part will air next week. Enjoy. I really appreciate you guys reaching out. I did finish the book. It was great. And in my perception of it, it kind of encapsulates the work and legacy of Governor Richardson and then that transformation that you had to do with his death into Global Reach. So it was kind of both a historical document. and continuing the work through the aggregate of other specialists in the field, and then continuing on with the mission. Is that similar? Am I right on your goals?

 

00:01:36    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, no, you're right. It's interesting because, look, I wrote the book. Obviously, the governor was alive, and he hasn't even read it because I was waiting until the manuscript was final in order to share it with him because the governor referred to him as Gov. He was like my six -year -old father. You know, father figure, but also juvenile as a six -year -old. And I knew for the first time in his life, somebody else was telling the stories and the role that he played and not him. And that's a great thing to have. And I think it comes out really, really well in the book, but I knew that he's going to nitpick and find something and give me hell for it. So I was really, really dreading. point. And so I wanted to give it to him when it's done, when I can't do anything about it. It's already published, boss. What can you say? But then he died. And I'm sad that he didn't get to read it. But after he died, I figured that I can't publish a book and not address his death. So basically, I wrote it in one day. I wrote this section to him and telling the story of how I found out and then touching on the first mission that we did after his death. And that's where Global Reach kind of came in. So it was not intentional in the design of the book, but out of circumstances, it was important to convey that this continues. And not only that, the mission to Venezuela, where the book ends with us going, the book does not cover the actual mission and the fact that 13 Americans came home in December, partially because of that mission. So I like that dynamic. At some point, you have to cut.

 

00:03:13    JACK GAINES

You have to because you're constantly on another mission. Correct.

 

00:03:16    MICHEY BERGMAN

Because they just continue to go.

 

00:03:18    JACK GAINES

Yeah. Reading that last portion, that was my perception is you were focused absolutely on a good ceremony and burial for the governor. But this Venezuela issue was on the back of your neck the whole time. And so to me, reading it, it felt like you were like, all right, the best way to appreciate this is after the ceremony. Get back to work and finish his mission, his goals, and then find a path forward from there.

 

00:03:43    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, and not only that, we had the trip to Venezuela was planned before he died. And we had a whole process. We knew exactly where the deal was stuck. We had an idea for it. We wanted also to make sure that the two Green Berets that were there in Venezuela, Luke Denman and Aaron Berry, are included in it because they were never designated. by the U .S. government as wrongfully detained, we were very worried that they would not be included. So we needed to get that commitment directly from the Venezuelan leadership to lock them into the deal. And we had that all set up to the extent that the day before the governor died, I actually shared with the families that were going. And then when I got the news the next day, and I was like, the first thing, of course, is the personal grief that you have. The second thing is, oh, shoot, he was my access over there. He had a relationship with Maduro. He had a relationship with Jorge Rodriguez. You know, I was like, oh my God. And it took about 24 hours to figure out, oh, he would love me to use his death for one last mission of rescue. In the WhatsApp group of the team and of the mission, we call that group the governor's last rescue.

 

00:04:56    JACK GAINES

Right. Wow. And that brings up an interesting point.

 

00:04:59    JACK GAINES

brings up an interesting point. And that is what in the tech community, they call the founder's curse. And that is the founder starts a movement or an organization and they are so entrenched in the details in the process that it's hard for them to separate the program from themselves. And often if that transformation doesn't happen, the legacy dies with the person. Almost sounds like he brought you in because he was considering his legacy and brought you into the fold and in the details to the point where he didn't predict his death. But he knew that by bringing some people like you and others in to understand the details and the nug work within the negotiations, he was sort of a life preserver to the mission versus passing away and the whole thing just goes flat.

 

00:05:45    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, well, it's funny because, look, in his mind, he was immoral. Yeah. Of course, like typically they are. And he had a huge personality and a huge presence. And I worked with him for 17 years. You know, he gave me compliments and then he would balance them with punches. That's typically his management style, which was a lot of fun, right? But towards, in the last couple of years, he had these little sessions with me that were just so uncharacteristic to him. We just like to say, Mickey, you're better than everybody else just because you don't have a government title. Don't you realize that you get it better than the high officials? So he was very encouraging from that perspective, but he never spoke to me about what happens after. That is a conversation that we had without him, with his board, not because we expected him to die. Obviously, he died too soon. There was no underlying disease there or something that was expected. It was a surprise, but his mortality was not a surprise. And so we had that conversation. And then with the board immediately after, with the board of directors of the organization, because you're right, it's not the first government organization that I worked with. I've seen the founders curse. I've seen what happened immediately after the founders death, not even stepping away and retiring, just death. There is so much emotions and nostalgia because the board is made of his friends. Right.

 

00:07:10    JACK GAINES

Or chaos because no one knows all of the different things that are going on in the process and they have to rediscover it. Yeah.

 

00:07:16    MICHEY BERGMAN

But emotionally, we were all, including myself, like, oh, my God, we have to create a legacy. We have to continue with this. And everybody's like, no, we'll step in. We'll make sure it happens. And I remember the day after his funeral, breakfast with the board. Just informal. It wasn't a board meeting. It was just breakfast. Just to debrief. And I told him, look, the governor and I actually had a conversation after Kofi Annan passed away. The Kofi Annan Foundation kept the name, and they wanted to keep this because they were. blown in with that kind of emotional response to it. But we talked about how it just feels like all they're doing right now is fundraising full time just to keep the lights on. But there's no substance left. And it's a miserable way for an organization to die out. And so I raised it with the board. I said, look, we can try. We can see if there's sustainability in it just for a couple of months to see where things settle. But I know that despite our very raw emotions right now, life continues. And life happens. And I do not want to spend all of our time just keeping the lights on because that's not what he would love. He wanted to find a way to keep the work going. So if we can't keep it as Richardson's center and there is a law of diminishing returns on the name, let me work and put a proposal in front of the board of what it looks like to do the different pieces of this legacy. One, of course, hostages and prisoners, which is a huge chunk. And that came out to be global reach. Another one was around the program we did with the Rohingyas and humanitarian work that we did. And that we basically have moved it, found a different home for it. It's going to continue at the Stimson Center instead of the Richardson Center with the funder that funded it is moving there with our guy, Steve Ross, who's the director of that program. So he's moving over there as well. And third, I wanted more of a name legacy piece. And that's when we established and announced the... The Bill Richardson Heart of a Patriot Award, which we hope will be known as the Billy. We're trying to make that stick. And that's going to be awarded every year at the Foley Foundation Gala. And the award is going to be given to former political and policy principals that, after leaving government, use their credentials and their gravitas to help bring Americans home.

 

00:09:35    JACK GAINES

Let's just make it stick. Let's just start calling it the Billy Awards. I like the Billy.

 

00:09:37    MICHEY BERGMAN

like the Billy. The Billies. The Oscars, we have the Billies.

 

00:09:43    JACK GAINES

Well, I apologize if I cut you off on your string, but that makes total sense. So how do you guys stay afloat? If it's something sensitive, I won't add it to the show. Oh, no,

 

00:09:52    MICHEY BERGMAN

no, no, absolutely. No, as you can tell, we're an open book. We love that. So we were lucky enough that during the pandemic, because there was just no commercial flights, but we still had hostages and we still needed to go there and get people out. And the governor has met an American businessman named Steve Menzies. He's an insurance guy out of Omaha. He runs a reinsurance company called Applied Underwriters. And he's done very well for himself financially. But he's one of those, you don't see him flying rockets to space. He's a quiet guy. He does his thing. And he and the governor got to this. He said, hey, you can use my jet for some of these missions, especially in places that you can't go commercially. Right. But I'm coming with you.

 

00:10:37    JACK GAINES

Of course, he wants the experience. He wants to feel a part of the cause. Yeah,

 

00:10:41    MICHEY BERGMAN

he came with us in the middle of the pandemic on a mission to Venezuela. Later on, he did a few other missions with us to Russia, including the return and recovery of the Taylor Dudley. That was a month after Brittany Griner came home and we went to Russia and got the former Navy guy, Taylor Dudley, out. That's the one where you're driving through Poland.

 

00:10:59    JACK GAINES

the one where you're driving through Poland. That is correct. And that was Steve's plane.

 

00:11:01    MICHEY BERGMAN

is correct. And that was Steve's plane. But it's not only his plane. At that point, he already started integrating his logistics skills into this and helping us really set this up. And so when the governor passed away, Steve and I sat together and he said, Mickey, we have to continue this, not only for the name of his legacy, but for the work that it is. And he says, but. I'm no Governor Richardson. I know that what he did with you was unique. So you tell me, Nicky, if you didn't have budget constraints, how would you build that and structure this in a post -Richardson world to be not only as good as what you did, but better? And so he gave me basically a blank check to put a structure together. And we looked at, A, the piece of what we did with the governor, which was this intergovernmental mediation and negotiations. And on that, I said, well, I'm going to run that part, but I'm not going to replace Governor Richardson with a single person because there isn't such one person.

 

00:11:58    JACK GAINES

Right. You did an aggregate.

 

00:12:00    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah. I wanted a bunch of people that we have worked with over the years, former diplomats, former politicians, Republicans, Democrats, business people. It doesn't matter the people who are actively in this and have the relationships. And just to have them to agree they're not going to get into the organization, they're not going to manage it or run it, but they agree that we can call on them if we need them to be a principal in a case. And that's something that to me, over the years of working with the governor, there were every now and then there would be an occasion in a location in which these relationships were not good. Sure. And there would be somebody else. So whether it's in terms of timing, like actually right now, it would be better to have a Republican do that, something like that, step into it. And I would suggest it to him. And he would say, no, it was the Richardson Center. Every now and then he would let me do that. But that was a little bit of a constraint. And I wanted to make sure that I don't set up an organization with similar constraints. And we're assembling that board. We have about six people on that board already on that advisory board. And they're fantastic. And it's like different elves and different walks of life and different political affiliation. And they're all like, we staff it. We put together the theory of return. We build up the thing. And then we call on them to actually be the face of it and bring their gravitas. And they're working on wood here. It's working up to now pretty well. So that's one Steve told me, actually. He said, but beyond what you did with Richardson, are there other capabilities? in our field that still don't exist outside of government. Because he says, I have the resources and I have the ability to do that. And that's when we realized, wait a minute, there's capabilities around investigative capabilities. There are research capabilities. It's not writing research papers.

 

00:13:45    JACK GAINES

Backgrounders on people you're going to be dealing with, culture, the relationships. Relationship,

 

00:13:49    MICHEY BERGMAN

Relationship, yeah. Relationship mapping,

 

00:13:50    JACK GAINES

yeah. Relationship mapping, absolutely. If we have a hostage,

 

00:13:52    MICHEY BERGMAN

we have a hostage, and I'll give you one example in which both of these came into play. There's a Princeton PhD student, Elizabeth Surkov, and she was kidnapped in Iraq in March of last year, so almost a year and a half ago. And at first, nobody knew where the hell she was. We knew that she was kidnapped, but we didn't know by who in Iraq. You never know which militia, which group. Yes, government, not government, Shia, Sunni, you never know. And everybody was trying to figure out how to do it. And Steve walked into this. And this is before Global Reach was actually established. Steve walks into it and said, wait a minute, I can buy the cell data of the exact area where she knows, the coffee place where we know she was kidnapped. And we knew that she had the emergency back surgery eight days before. So we knew the medicine that her captors will have to pick up in order to keep her healthy. Otherwise, she's not worth anything to them. And so he bought that data too. And then he shared that data with the FBI. Our own people analyze it. And we traced phones that were in the coffee place on the day that she was kidnapped and then phones that picked up that medicine. Right.

 

00:15:03    JACK GAINES

And so you could correlate between the different digital signals and triangulate the location. Absolutely. Exactly. And found her. I've never experienced that in my life.

 

00:15:07    MICHEY BERGMAN

triangulate the

 

00:15:10    MICHEY BERGMAN

experienced that in my life. Of course not. Never. Nobody. And we're able to find her. Not the exact house, but the village where she's being held. And again, our government has the capability to do it.

 

00:15:22    JACK GAINES

But the risk of going in with ground forces or CIA to actually work human and negotiate with people to find her location is way too risky for a government organization.

 

00:15:34    MICHEY BERGMAN

It's costly. There's a lot of red tape and we're able to move it like that. And so that's the investigative part that we never had before. Richardson, I would never have had that just because of resources. He would have loved it, but we didn't have the resources for this. And so that's something that added. And then in terms of once we realized where she's at, we started researching, we realized which militia has its headquarters over there. So at that point, we had a pretty good confidence of who has her. And once you know who has her, you're able to do different things in order to solicit a proof of life from them. And in November, you know, it took eight months of nobody hearing from her. In November, we got a video with a proof of life from her. And that allows us, I can't go into the details of what happened since because it's an ongoing case. She's still there and we're working really hard on it. But the point is that these are capabilities that we never had before outside of government. And we're not in competition with government. We actually collaborate because we're able to accelerate things. And trust me, there are people at the FBI extremely happy that somebody else is buying this stuff and giving it to them because then it's like we're giving them a bunch of toys. as well to look at. And there's results. And we all have the same exact intention is getting people back home. Sure. So that's kind of the birth of global reach. And so for the first time, it's not just the governor and me and the advisor. I actually have a team of executives. Right. I have Rob Saleh, who is the director of the hostage recovery infusion set at the FBI. I think I kind of dragged him out of retirement just to help us set it up. Would you take pictures with his kids at the ice cream store saying,

 

00:17:07    JACK GAINES

you take pictures with his kids at the ice cream store saying, hey, come on down and get a scoop and we'll talk about it.

 

00:17:12    MICHEY BERGMAN

He's a great guy and he's a good friend. And we worked together while he was in service. And so we were able to convince him to come in at least to help us set it up. I don't think he'll say he's set up for retirement. He's done. But he helps us set it up. And then until we find a permanent person to run it. So there is that kind of caliber. that we didn't have before. And one of the first decisions we made when we established Global Reach and Steve Menzies is the co -founder of it and the chairman and the CEO was to look at the other organizations in our field, namely the Foley Foundation and Hostage US. Each of them are unique and effective organizations, but they do things that we don't do. Advocates in government. They give a government report card every year. They change policies. They work with families in the general advocacy. Hostage US, they help families physically and with taxes, with social work, with therapists, a bunch of volunteers going and helping because these families need it while their loved ones in captivity and when they come back. And that's Hostage US. We don't do that. They do that and they're damn good at it. And so we looked at who is their biggest donor and each of these organizations and we matched that because we had the resources. So we became funders of them. And that's how you... create within an environment of non -for -profits the competition over resources, which prohibits you from collaborating even if you really need to, we completely dismantle that. So we're working extremely closely. The three large non -for -profit entities in this field are working extremely closely in supporting each other. So when I have a case, I immediately bring in Foley Foundation for the functions that they can serve for the families, and I immediately bring Hostage US for the part that they serve that we can't do.

 

00:18:54    JACK GAINES

And actually it saves from building those specific functions within global reach because then you're just competing with the same skills and people to do the job. So it makes sense that you would have built a network of networks that is an umbrella of all of the hostage support services that are out there.

 

00:19:11    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, and they're very good at it. All we do is provide them additional funding so they can be even better. And Nizar sits with the CSIS Commission. on wrongful detention and hostages. And again, it's another government commission. John Alterman is running it with Jason Rezaian, who's a former prisoner, and Robert O 'Brien, Donald Trump's former national security advisor. And it's a bunch of us. Nizar sits on that commission with me and with a lot of other leaders in this field. But that commission is looking at ways to recommend to the next administration, whoever that is. Get a report on how to do deterrence policies. What are the parameters of how to look at these kind of negotiations? And what are the best practices on this? And what are the things that can do better? Because we do know this is a national security crisis. Have you heard of hostage aid? Hostage aid worldwide. Yes, of course. Zalzaka is the head of it. And that organization is made of former hostages and volunteers. And their niche of what they're trying to get beyond the advocacy that they're doing, mainly online, they're trying to build data. Right.

 

00:20:16    JACK GAINES

And the thing is, by doing that, I think that the State Department's notices on travel advisories would be more effective. Because if they could put in there that there is a steady increase or there's a predicted increase of hostage taking in a country, American citizens will read that and say, well, now I know I've got to either stay in the hotel or not go.

 

00:20:37    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, it's true. I have to tell you, Americans, they don't... Look, I'll give you an example. But Turks and Caicos wanted to crack down on the fact that Americans were traveling into the island for some reason with ammunition, not with guns, not with arms, but with ammunition. Some of it was just careless, but it became a big issue politically in Turks and Caicos. And so all policy is domestic. And there was kind of a fight of who's going to be stronger on crime, on American crime of bringing ammunition into the island. So they put a law in that. A required sentence for anybody who's bringing ammunition into the island is 12 years. Right. And then they had to implement it. And before we knew it, there was a whole bunch of Americans who were detained and on trial on their shore way to have 12 years of imprisonment.

 

00:01:13    MICHEY BERGMAN

Turks and Caicos wanted to crack down on the fact that Americans were traveling into the island for some reason with ammunition. Not with guns, not with arms, but with ammunition. Some of it was just careless, but it became a big issue politically in Turks and Caicos. And so all policy is domestic. And there was kind of a fight that who's going to be stronger on crime, on American crime of bringing ammunition into the island. So they put a law in that a required sentence for anybody who's bringing ammunition into the island is 12 years. Right. And then they had to implement it. And before we knew it, there was a whole bunch of Americans who were detained. and on trial on their sure way to have 12 years of imprisonment. Now, it's not political imprisonment. It's not wrongful detention. These Americans violated. It's law enforcement, so it's not something that Global Reach does. But one of those incidents that did go to us was a young couple who went there on vacation, two kids back at home.

 

00:02:19    JACK GAINES

And a P9 submachine gun.

 

00:02:21    MICHEY BERGMAN

They flew from Oklahoma. On the way in, nobody noticed anything. On the way out... In the carry -on bag, they saw two of hunting rounds. And the husband said, oh, shit, I completely forgot he was there. It's for my hunting thing. So sorry. No, I don't use it. Yeah,

 

00:02:38    JACK GAINES

surrendered it at probably Visa or inspections.

 

00:02:40    MICHEY BERGMAN

inspections. But no, they took both of them into custody. Now, their kids are at home. Young kids. That got to my attention. I said, wait a minute. Look, I get it. He made a mistake. That's fine. That's a legal thing. They'll figure it out. They'll have lawyers. But why the hell did you detain the wife? It's not hers. It wasn't her bag. You have no right to do that. She needs to go back to her kids.

 

00:03:02    JACK GAINES

And he stated that it was his rounds. Correct. Yeah, he said. So she's indemnified. Yeah.

 

00:03:07    MICHEY BERGMAN

But it took time. And I actually have a good colleague of mine, John Franks, who also steps into this. And he works on this. He's a fantastic tactician, a very creative young guy.

 

00:03:16    JACK GAINES

Now it's not John Franks, the Star Trek guy. No.

 

00:03:19    MICHEY BERGMAN

And John Frank, yeah, I worked with him on political. I worked with him on Trevor Reed. I worked with him on Taylor Dudley. I worked with him on cases in Mexico. So he took that on because it was on the global reach. We actually brought us in to try and help him a little bit. And the first thing that we did when we researched it, when we do our due diligence, we looked at the State Department warning. You put State Department Turks and Caicos in it. You see red flags. All Americans, please notice. It's mandatory 12 years imprisonment for taking ammunition. Right. Please don't do it. Nobody's looking at that. Now, John Franks, I have to give him credit. He seems to be on the route to fixing the law and making exemptions on the law in terms of chaos. Again, he's a dog with a bone on this one. He's fantastic. It's not political detainment, but it is something that needed to be fixed. But it's a long story. Right.

 

00:04:10    JACK GAINES

There needs to be some form of amnesty as your entry to the nation.

 

00:04:13    MICHEY BERGMAN

It's a long way of answering a very short question you asked me that those. warnings from the State Department, unless we're able to work with the airlines, that when you book a flight, you get a notice and saying, yeah, we don't want to scare you from this, but here's information that you should know. Here are some of the things you need to be aware. Hey, you should register with the embassy just so there's a tracking. You should sign a Privacy Act waiver in case something happens. All these places that are high risk, that needs to happen. But that's putting the burden on the travelers. Part of what we do with CSIS Commission is actually looking at how do we put the burden on the governments that are in those places. And that's not more complicated, but doable.

 

00:04:57    JACK GAINES

It's kind of like when you fly into Sri Lanka and there's that big sign as you go up to visa passports that says, if you're carrying drugs, punishment's death.

 

00:05:05    JACK GAINES

Yeah. And I'm sure that's a fantastic deterrent.

 

00:05:09    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah. You know, it's another problem that we're facing. When I'm telling these stories, it's not to ridicule the people who do it and, oh, they're careless and stuff like that. People are people and they make mistakes. It's just that sometimes there's no recourse in these mistakes. But there's a lot of former American military people. So these are servicemen, people who serve our country. And they serve in the Middle East and in places like Kuwait is one of the examples.

 

00:05:31    JACK GAINES

Right. So they're used to traveling internationally armed. Correct. But they're also used to having the protections of the U .S.

 

00:05:34    MICHEY BERGMAN

they're also used to having the protections of the U .S. uniform. and then leave their service. And some of them go back into contracting, private security, stuff like that. And they forget that the same protections don't apply anymore. And so sometimes in places, look, Kuwait is very clear in its laws. Bringing drugs into Kuwait or having drugs in Kuwait is a major, major crime punishable by life in prison or death. And we have a whole chunk. of American former military people in prison in Kuwait for life and some of them on death sentence because of some drugs. And for the Kuwaitis, we're thinking about it, well, you know, it's just like pot, let them go. But for the Kuwaitis, it's not like you're being disrespectful of our laws. So we need to make an example out of it. But there was a time when we had 15 of those during the pandemic. And there's a lot of articles written and some of them have come home. It's been worked diligently, but we have an American. There was no drugs on him. He actually, we believe, never did anything wrong there, but he was by association wrapped in with a group of them. A guy named Tony Holden, he needs to come home. He has a family here at home. He actually didn't do the crime.

 

00:06:50    JACK GAINES

Well, in some countries, your association and behavior being next to the criminal act is just as important. If you're offensive or you're rude or if you're aggressive towards the police or... not cooperative in the judicial system, they'll be like, you know what? You need to have a day in jail.

 

00:07:06    MICHEY BERGMAN

Well, you're lucky if it's a day because then you rack up charges very quickly.

 

00:07:11    JACK GAINES

Right. It's difficult. And that gets into a very key point that you bring up, and that is what you call fringe diplomacy or diplomatic advocacy or citizen advocacy. Yeah. And what I call cocktail diplomacy because working around D .C., having drinks with people on the hill or from the house. Oh, you're giving us a bad rap.

 

00:07:34    MICHEY BERGMAN

you're giving us a bad rap. Cocktail diplomacy. That's what I call myself, a cocktail diplomat. What do you mean?

 

00:07:40    JACK GAINES

cocktail diplomat.

 

00:07:40    MICHEY BERGMAN

What do you mean? No, I know. It's great. But then you think about it when you go to North Korea or you go to Russia, there's no cocktails in it. Yeah. Even if somebody gives you a cocktail, you don't drink it.

 

00:07:50    JACK GAINES

That's true. All right. That might be true. But when I was working with some issues in Myanmar, I don't want to get into any country. Because I know your relationships with these countries is critical, and I don't want to smirch them or have them taint their relationship with you through these comments. I appreciate that. I was trying to help with peace negotiations and a resolution to the conflict between the rebels and the military government. And that's where I came up with the idea of cocktail diplomacy.

 

00:08:02    MICHEY BERGMAN

I don't

 

00:08:08    MICHEY BERGMAN

I appreciate that.

 

00:08:18    JACK GAINES

where I came up with the idea of cocktail diplomacy. And then when Ukraine cleared up, I was using it in civil affairs to assess. what the post -conflict reconstruction will look like.

 

00:08:30    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, these are so critical. And I don't think people realize how critical they are. Because at the end of the day, the government and the formal relationships are important. Obviously, they say national interest, the policy and all of that. But at the end of the day, we're looking at the scale of communities that are not only one community. I mean, Ukraine is not one country. There's different communities, different regions, different sections of Ukraine. They will need different things. They will have different visions for themselves. those communities, what it is that they want. And the governments are typically not nuanced enough to be able to do that. And one of the biggest traps that we always have, the people in the world, they can very quickly be angry with U .S. policy. But they like the way the U .S. does business. And so our ability and the part of fringe diplomacy that I don't write about in the book, but it is a huge part of fringe, is the engagement level. is when we go to these countries, to these places, whether they're in conflict or post -conflict, or they might be in a pre -conflict thing and we identify and we want to mitigate that. And we go not to the president of the country or to the prime minister of the country. We actually go to the local community, whether it's local government or whether it's the local community organizations. And we say, what is your vision and your priorities for your own community? And then we try to curate groups that can respond to that. Not by, oh, yeah, here we are, Americans. We tell you how to do things. We don't do that. We never do that. No, but as a way of saying, hey, these are people in this field. You're just peer -to -peer sharing stories, creating relationships, knowing that when you build those relationships, good things will come out of it. And we've done this kind of work in Cuba. We've done this kind of work in Lebanon. We've done this kind of work in Myanmar for years. I know we don't want to go into all the details, but one of the reasons why we were able to help get Danny Fenster out of jail in Myanmar and I'm all out of Myanmar and a couple others was because of the years that we have done this type of work in Myanmar of bringing investment delegations and social entrepreneurs and trainers and things. And I was there 11 times. before Danny Fenster was even taken. And this is the part of the engagement and relationships because when you have a crisis, it's really hard to go cold into somebody you never know and build trust. That trust and that familiarity gets built before or at the time when they really need you, which is one of the things, I digress a little bit here, but one of the things that is really painful to me now is the Cuban people. are going now through one of the hardest periods in their history. They had the special period back when the Soviet Union fell. This is harsher for them than that. And as their neighbors, we should find a way to be there for them right now. But because of policy or lack of bandwidth in policy in the U .S., we're ignoring this. On the positive side, it's a historic opportunity. for us to be a good neighbor, regardless to whether we agree with the structure of government and the people in government, that's irrelevant to that. It's people to people. As people to people, we can be really, really good friends to the Cubans right now. That will buy us so much goodwill, and then we can solve all of our political problems later. And the negative side of it is that they're going to survive this because they're Cubans. They figure out how to survive really bad periods, and we were the ones that were not there for them.

 

00:12:03    JACK GAINES

And that's what it's all about, right? What you talk about here with fringe diplomacy and tactical empathy are the building blocks. And we've had people on here that study and talk about that a lot, building the first layer of a relationship, which is that contractual relationship where you learn trust through the give and take of services. And then it goes into building that second layer that you've been describing. And that is that personal relationship you have. with those people on ground in those partner nations. And it's through that speed dial contacts and past experiences of trust that allow you access back into these countries so that you can do things. Correct. Yeah, and it's that. And a second point you brought up, that is self -actualization. You talk about realizing that you don't need to hide behind a banner of an organization the government in order to get things done. Yes. I just finished an interview with Scott Mann, who is an ex -Green Beret. He goes on TED. He's got a film called Last Man Out. And he promotes veterans recovery after coming out of their service because he finds that there's a lot of depression and suicide. And his biggest argument, and I think this is something you're talking about, is having a cause, being something you're tied to that's important. that you can throw your mind, your body, your interest into so that you are achieving something that's greater than your own. We're all cause addicts. It's a new term I'm building. I like that. Cause addiction. Yeah. We're going to make that stick. That's in the belly. Yeah. And just like anything that when someone is over vested in an emotional tie that gives them pleasure, without it. they become depressed, they become listless, and they're lost until they find that new thing that refills that space. By your discussion on self -actualization, it gives other people strength to strike out on their own and pursue those causes that they thought formerly were only the purview of the government.

 

00:14:13    MICHEY BERGMAN

Every time I would take these delegations, these fringe missions, let's do Cuba, for example. I would brief with the people. Typically, it's not big groups. It's like between 13 and 20. We don't do too big. We go for about a week. And when we get together, before we depart, I do this little thing with them. I say, guys, here's the thing. You need to understand. You're not going as observers of history. This is not about you going to observe Cuba. This is you as active participants in history. Every single meeting, every single conversation we have over there is a building block. You have to realize that that's the case. And then I do this silly analogy that hopefully will not be canceled on air here. But I say it's like when you're in college and a group of your friends decide to play a game of strip poker. Nobody gets to just say, oh, I'm going to be in the room as an observer. You're either out of the room or you're an active participant. And we need to figure out that that's not a choice we have. That's the reality. So when we travel, when we talk, every single conversation like that is a certain building block. We never know how and if it will play out in the future. But we have to own the fact that we're active participants in these relationships and in the way that our world is developing. And that's what I encourage. And when you realize that that's the case, start realizing how much impact individuals can have without a title, without an affiliation or a government position. I've never served in government. I don't think any government will ever take me. But I've never served in government. And I'm able to do things because of that. And I think it's not unique to me. It's not like, oh, yeah, I figured out something. It's all of us. It's all of us. And on your term, you know, it's true. It resonated with me when you said it because also I lived with a lot of returning hostages and political prisoners. When they're in the situation, it becomes their identity. It's who they are, especially if they're there for years. And when they come back and they're heroes for a while and they do their special on CNN and everybody's applauding them justfully, like they just survived the whole ordeal. And guess what happens after a week?

 

00:16:23    JACK GAINES

They go into depression because it all quiets down.

 

00:16:25    MICHEY BERGMAN

America moves on. Yeah. And suddenly they look at themselves and they say, well, who am I? Who am I? And that's when their brains, our brains, they trick on us. And we get into spirals. And some of them, it's not uncommon for returned hostages or political prisoners to find themselves at risk again very quickly after returning. And it's because they're people who want to get into risk. It's because their brains are playing tricks on them and they're not dealing with it from that perspective. And that has occurred and reoccurred, which is one of the things why at least the U .S. government has a reintegration program. That every time we have a family comes home, we beg the family to use that program to the extent until they throw them out of that program. Because think about it. You come back after five years from Iran. Never had a choice. In five years, couldn't make a choice. A single choice. Never was given a choice. What to eat, what not to do. When to sleep. None of it is a choice. Suddenly, they come back and everything is a choice.

 

00:17:31    JACK GAINES

That's overwhelming.

 

00:17:32    MICHEY BERGMAN

And as an example, you say, hey, Don't ask them what they want to eat for dinner. You ask them, do you want chicken or do you want pasta? You give them two options because they can't cope with overwhelming opportunities. You need to kind of ease them into it. And this is just a silly example, but it's real. And so when people come back because of that, it's kind of like I took it a little bit away from your term, but it is almost like you need to go.

 

00:17:59    JACK GAINES

Deprogramming.

 

00:18:00    MICHEY BERGMAN

Deprogramming. of taking away that addiction that you just had as a part of your personality because that was your experience for so long. It's overwhelming and deconstruct it so you can build yourself back again as a free person.

 

00:18:14    JACK GAINES

Does that program include counseling for like post -traumatic stress?

 

00:18:18    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yes. It's actually, it's a DOD program originally, I believe. It's called PAISA and it happens mainly in Texas, but sometimes they do it in other places. I think it was designed for turned POWs. So it's with therapy and it's with a lot of debriefings, that integration. Of course, in recent years, we don't have many POWs. We do have hostages. We do have political prisoners. So the government adapted it. And so now DOD is sharing it with the Department of State. And so when people come back, they go through that program. You can opt out of it if you're a prisoner. Nobody can force you into it. And some of them are so eager to just spend time with their families and be free of all of this. And we constantly encourage them and we tell their families, please, please, please, to the extent possible, tell them just one more week. Take your time. We're here. We'll see you like we can talk. We're just outside the base. You need this.

 

00:19:11    JACK GAINES

Absolutely. I'm sure that the emotions and the trauma would cause all kinds of harm if they are not given time to recover and get their senses back. Absolutely. Yeah. And the last thing I wanted to bring up. is that your book expertly describes that fine line between public diplomacy and or French diplomacy, excuse me. I'm going to stick to the brand. And also not crossing the Logan Act. And I think a lot of people who have a desire for doing international relations or building a cause like this, they worry about the Logan Act because people hear, oh, this person. was working and the United States slapped him down for doing something that was crossing the Logan Act. What you describe, Spley, is that don't negotiate on behalf of the U .S. government and then form a contract. You negotiate and then you create an opportunity. You deliver to the United States and then they choose whether to order or not.

 

00:20:15    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, and that is correct. And of course, also, it's a non -for -profit. Families never pay us. We don't take donations from families or hostages, and certainly not from foreign governments.

 

00:20:25    JACK GAINES

Which builds constraints if you had done that. Yeah.

 

00:20:28    MICHEY BERGMAN

And we don't provide any material assistance to anybody. These are conversations in a way to do it. And there are times that we can bring people home like we did with Taylor Dudley from Russia, like we did with Danny Fenster from Myanmar. But most of the time, we do exactly what you said. Because we are not the government, because we don't have an authority or a mandate from the government, they can talk to us about policy. There's nothing we can do about it.

 

00:20:51    JACK GAINES

Right. But you probably relay those back with your discussions of the negotiation.

 

00:20:55    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah. But in the course of the conversation, they can't say, oh, we want this or that. It's irrelevant to raise it with us. Give that example. Let's say the Americans and the Russians decide, OK, let's meet together. Little group. We're going to only talk about our prisoners, Evan Gershowitz and Paul Willen and the Russians that are here. We'll just talk about that. And that group decides to meet together at the hotel. And they sit there before they even say one word to each other. The weight of the war in Ukraine, the weight of nuclear stability, the weight of world order and the fights that we have all around weighs on this. It makes it almost impossible for people with the authority of our policy from government to actually keep the issue of the prisoners insulated.

 

00:21:43    JACK GAINES

Because they have to protect all of those positions that the United States has set or Russia has set.

 

00:21:46    MICHEY BERGMAN

States has set or Russia has set. And their conversations basically devolve very quickly. But with us, because I'm not a formal diplomat, I can sit and a foreign diplomat official or unofficial can tell me all the shit that they think the U .S. is responsible for. If I were a diplomat, I would have to protest, stand up and walk away or say something. I don't. For me, it's actually a value because I hear the authentic narrative, venting, story that they tell themselves about how they see the world and how they see their role in it. It helps me. And I understand it. I don't justify it, but I understand it. And it goes over my head in terms of emotionally speaking. Then I can say, okay, well, that is very interesting. Thank you. You know, there's nothing I can do about that.

 

00:22:36    JACK GAINES

That's the tactical empathy.

 

00:22:37    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah, but we can talk about the humanitarian. It's an issue that we can do. And then we were able to actually bounce back and forth ideas with them. They know, you know, I don't represent the US government here. I'm here. They have the families. But I can say, well, this, what you're suggesting here, I can take it to the White House. I'm not going to win. There's just no way they're going to do it. Let's talk about something else, something that for me, I can conceive a bit as feasible. It's never pretty, but it's feasible enough that I can go and try and convince the government to do it. It's not an easy task to convince the government to do any of these because, again, they have a complex set of interests. Again, it's not because they're bad. It's not because they don't want people back. They do. But it's really complicated. But I'm able to refine and define what a pathway to bring somebody home is. Then it will be our government's decision to whether to do it or not.

 

00:23:31    JACK GAINES

Great. Okay. Thank you.

 

00:23:33    MICHEY BERGMAN

Yeah. And don't forget to tell them to buy the book.

 

00:23:37    JACK GAINES

I'll tell them to buy the book. All right. Thank you, Mickey. You have a great day. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you.

 

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Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an episode, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com. I'll have the email 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 to forward U .S. relations. Thank you all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host. Stay tuned for more great episodes, 1CA Podcast.