Marie Yovanovitch
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Ep. No. 66 — Fired by President Donald Trump, a distinguished diplomat helps impeach him and reclaims her narrative / Marie Yovanovitch, Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and author, “Lessons from the Edge”. On April 24, 2019, in the dead of night, with no explanation, Marie Yovanovitch got a call from the U.S State Department, essentially removing her immediately from her post as Ambassador to Ukraine. A few days later, back in Washington DC — a shell-shocked Yovanovitch learned the extraordinary details of why she had been fired from her job and that the man behind it was none other than her boss, President Donald Trump. After the shock wore off, Ambassador Yovanovitch decided to fight back. Pilloried by the right-wing media, she publicly testified in Congress under oath during Trump’s impeachment hearings, resulting in his first of two impeachments. Yovanovitch has written a fascinating new memoir called “Lessons from the Edge,” in which she systematically lays out the months-long attempts by Trump and his cronies to ruin her reputation and subvert democracy using a foreign power, Ukraine. And she describes how she seized back her narrative from the former president. As Congressional hearings cast new light on Trump’s last-ditch efforts to stay in power — culminating in the January 6, 2021 riots in the US Capitol by his supporters — I’m so honored to welcome the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. If you liked this episode, please check out these other episodes: When It Mattered: 60. Putin laid his cards on the table years before Ukraine invasion / Gen. James Jones, USMC 56. Retired cop learns his job has just begun / Thomas Manger, US Capitol Police 15. Big-time political advisor returns to his small-town roots, finds urgent new cause /James Carville Techtopia: 26. Technology is re-wiring Ukraine’s narrative / Alex Deane and Bryan Cunningham
Francisco Santos Calderón
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Ep. No. 63 — Kidnapped and held hostage by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar revealed the best and worst of humanity / Francisco Santos Calderón, former Vice President of Colombia and former Colombian Ambassador to the United States. For months, Pablo Escobar, notorious head of the Medellín drug cartel and journalist Francisco Santos Calderon — one of his fiercest critics in the press, had been playing a dangerous cat and mouse game. Escobar was intent on kidnapping Santos — then the Editor-in-Chief of El Tiempo, Colombia’s largest and most influential publication — and other journalists, as a bargaining chip to prevent extradition to the United States to stand trial for his murderous greed. Santos, tipped off to Escobar’s intentions, had been changing his travel routes and work routines constantly to evade the cartel kingpin’s henchmen. But on September 19, 1990, Santos was riding home from work in his bulletproof vehicle when the unthinkable happened. His car was surrounded by gunmen who killed his driver and kidnapped Santos who was one of 10 journalists and elites held hostage by Escobar that year. He was chained to a bed and held for eight months before being released. Santos was just 30 years old when Escobar snatched him off the streets. He was lucky to be alive. Between 1980 and 2000, nearly 180 journalists were killed for speaking up against the drug cartels. Santos would launch a highly successful campaign to reduce the epidemic of kidnappings in Colombia. He left the country for two years to avoid getting assassinated by the Marxist-Leninist guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), after getting tipped off by the CIA about FARC’s intentions. He worked at El País the most prominent newspaper in Spain. Santos eventually was elected to serve two terms as Colombia’s Vice President under President Álvaro Uribe. He subsequently also served as the Colombian Ambassador to the United States under President Donald J. Trump from 2018 – 2020. Santos is now wearing his journalist hat again. He’s highlighting the precarious political situation in Venezuela, and speaking out about Russia, China, and Iran, which he views as the unholy trifecta threatening the stability of geopolitics today. In 1996, he and his nine kidnapped compatriots became the characters in “News of a Kidnapping,” the English-language non-fiction book by famed Colombian novelist and Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Gabriel García Márquez. The book was originally published in Spanish the year before as “Noticia de un Secuestro.’’ Santos declined to co-author “News of a Kidnapping” with Márquez, which he now says was “a very stupid decision on his part” but he later relented and spoke with Márquez over several days for the book. Apart from Márquez and the journalists Santos spoke with after his release, in the nearly-32 years since his kidnapping, he has not shared his story at all in detail. Don’t miss this riveting episode of “When It Mattered.” Thanks for Listening. If you liked this episode, please check out these other episodes: Ep. 61 – Heroism, activism, reconciliation with nature / Jerry White, Nobel laureate, landmine survivor Ep. 14 – Terrifying robbery and kidnapping reveals what truly matters in life / Stanley Alpert, Attorney Ep. 20 – Brought back to life, undertook new mission / Frank Shankwitz, Make-A-Wish Foundation
Agnieszka Pilat
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Ep. 62: She went from poverty in communist-era Poland to becoming the artist of choice of Silicon Valley billionaires for her renaissance-inspired conceptual art of machines and robots/ Agnieszka Pilat, Conceptual Artist. Born in the shadow of communism, in the grip of poverty, in the cradle of post-industrial Central Poland, Agnieska Pilat acted on her burning desire to leave her homeland and headed to America in 2004. She landed in the Bay Area where a transformative book recommendation from her hairdresser, and her industrial roots in Poland, led to an epiphany which led her to start painting machines. First the traditional kind. Gears and widgets and meters and fire bells. Then — robots. One in particular, her big bright yellow 70 pound cybernetic “pet” if you could call it that / model/assistant/apprentice/Spot, on loan to her from the famed and controversial robot maker Boston Dynamics. Over the past decade, Agnieskza Pilat’s classically-trained, renaissance-inspired, contemporary art around man and machine, technology and automation has gained a big following among Silicon Valley’s elite billionaires. Her works of art have been acquired by collectors including Sotheby’s and tech titans such as Craig McCaw, Richard Branson, Yuri Milner, and Larry Silverstein among others. Several of her paintings are featured in the latest Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections. Pilat has been described as an “artist who brings technology to life,” ‘the darling of Silicon Valley,” and a “technology storyteller.” Her latest exhibition is titled Renaissance 2.0, and is an homage to Silicon Valley’s renaissance. It was such a pleasure to catch up with Agnieszka Pilat about her life and her renaissance-inspired contemporary art of man and machine.
Asra Nomani
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Ep.53 — A journalist upends her life and career to help identify and bring to justice the network of militants who murdered her friend and fellow correspondent at The Wall Street, Daniel Pearl / Asra Nomani, journalist, author, activist and co-founder, The Pearl Project. On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, Daniel Pearl, a correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, to return from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl’s killers and help bring them to justice. In this riveting episode, Nomani describes how Pearl’s murder helped shape her as a journalist, author and a feminist Muslim. And she shares how the tragedy gave her the courage to become an activist challenging the rise of Islamic extremism and what she perceives as the dangerous influence of Islamists in American politics — particularly on the Democratic Party. Nomani also discusses why she is speaking up against the growing influence of “critical race theory,” both in the U.S. public school systems and on American society as a whole. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: On January 23rd, 2002, Asra Nomani was waiting at her home in Karachi, Pakistan, for her dear friend, The Wall Street Journal correspondent, Daniel Pearl to come back from a reporting assignment. Pearl and his wife, Mariane, who was pregnant with their first child were staying with Nomani while he was investigating the Al-Qaeda networks that had conspired to pull off the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil just a few months earlier. But Danny Pearl never returned home. Pakistani militants kidnapped and held Pearl hostage before murdering him a week later. His captors then released a video of the beheading, shocking the world and galvanizing Nomani in her long and difficult quest to identify Pearl’s killers and help bring them to justice. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I’m Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory an advisory firm helping technology startups with strategic brand positioning and narrative. I’m joined now by Asra Nomani. She’s a journalist, author, activist and co-founder of The Pearl Project, a 31,000 word award-winning global investigative journalism report identifying the network of militants who perpetrated the heinous. Asra, welcome to the podcast. Asra Nomani: Oh, thank you so much, Chitra. I feel like I’m with such a good dear friend going into one of the darkest moments of my life, but I hope we can share some light with everyone. Chitra Ragavan: It’s been 19 years, almost exactly two days shy of that fateful day, January 23rd, 2002, when your world and that of Danny Pearl and his whole family turned upside down. Tell me when you found out that something had badly gone wrong. Asra Nomani: Well, that day began like any other day for journalists in, posting overseas. We all wakened, Danny and his wife Mariane were visiting a house that I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan. And Danny, went about the business of all his flurry of interviews he had planned for the day. I found a car for him and we stood outside this home that I’d rented and waved goodbye to Danny. And I said, “See you later, buddy,” because it was just an interview like any other that we go off to do and then come back home and write down our notes and write our dispatches. But that night, Mariane kept calling and calling Danny’s phone number and he never picked up. We just kept hearing this operator that said, “The call couldn’t go through.” Chitra Ragavan: And when did you realize something was wrong? Asra Nomani: So we had a dinner plan that night and we’d gone off to get all of the preparations. I had ordered beer because Danny enjoyed his beer. We’d called a bootlegger whose number I had gotten. And everybody had dinner, the folks that we had invited, but nobody was answering Danny’s phone. He was never answering. So at 10:00 finally, Mariane and I went and sat in front of Danny’s computer, went into his inbox, didn’t password protective it. And there I saw the email from the young man who had set up the interview. That’s when I just knew something was wrong because the email address was nobadmashi@yahoo.com. Chitra Ragavan: And why were you concerned by the email address, “nobadmashi?” Asra Nomani: So Chitra, you know your Bollywood movies? You know what a badmash is, right? Chitra Ragavan: A rascal? Asra Nomani: Yeah. A rascal. So why would anybody in their right mind write, norascal@yahoo.com as they’re setting up a legit interview with a sheikh cleric? And I just knew that something was wrong because nobody would write that. The badmaash is the bad guy in every Bollywood movie. And I just felt and knew in my heart that Danny had walked into trouble. Chitra Ragavan: Now, you yourself were in a foreign land. You’re also an American journalist. You are a writer working on a book project in Karachi. So when this crisis began to unfold, you yourself weren’t really in a great position to know what to do and to respond. I mean, what did you do next and how did you even know what to do? What was that like, that moment? Asra Nomani: Oh my gosh. It was so clarifying. I wish for no one a January 23rd, 2002 moment, but that was the moment when I was trying to find every bit of
Anne Speckhard
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Ep. 47 – A diplomat’s travel forces his psychologist wife to reinvent her career which she does by talking to terrorists / Anne Speckhard, Director, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. When her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus, Anne Speckhard was forced to give up her thriving private counseling practice in Virginia and reinvent her life and work. Some security-related projects led her to begin talking to terrorists and it led to a most unique second career researching terrorists. “When I went into Palestine was the first time I went in and just announced myself. I was very honest about what I wanted. And people told me would be suicide, terrorists are never going to talk to you,” says Speckhard. But they did. To date, Speckhard has interviewed and debriefed nearly 800 terrorists and their family members and supporters — including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. “And I was always looking for literally what makes a suicide bomber tick? Why do they get into it? How do they get on the terrorist trajectory?” says Speckhard, “And since I’m a psychologist, I wanted to know, could it have been prevented or can we take them back off of it?” Speckhard has founded and directs the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. She and her team have converted ISIS terrorist interviews into counter-narrative videos that have been used to deter terrorist recruiting through more than 125 Facebook anti-terrorism campaigns globally. With the advent of Covid-19, Speckhard says there’s been chatter from some terrorist leaders urging their followers to protect themselves from the coronavirus but also exhorting those who become infected to spread the disease to their enemies. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Anne Speckhard was thriving in her private counseling and research practice in the Washington D.C. area, when her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus. It threw a curve ball into her clinical work and career trajectory. Speckhard got involved in a variety of security related research projects, and she suddenly found herself in the unusual position of talking to terrorists. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I’m Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: I’m joined now by Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism or ICSVE. Speckhard is one of the few American national security scholars with substantive access to terrorist groups. She has interviewed and debriefed more than 700 terrorists and their family members and supporters, including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. Chitra Ragavan: Speckhard has used many of those interviews to build the Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project. This unique project consists of counter narrative videos that have been used in more than 125 Facebook antiterrorism campaigns globally, with the goal of deterring terrorist recruiting. Chitra Ragavan: Anne, welcome to the podcast. Anne Speckhard: Thank you, Chitra. Glad to be here. Chitra Ragavan: What was it like to uproot yourself from your practice and to go off to Belarus with your husband, Dan, as he launched his diplomatic career? Anne Speckhard: Well, Daniel and I decided to see it as an adventure, but it was very disorienting because I’m someone that puts my roots down deeply and we had three kids. So I had to close my practice and become entirely dependent upon him and that was not something I’d ever done before. Chitra Ragavan: You’re fiercely independent, so that must have been even more difficult. Anne Speckhard: It was difficult. And also we were moving on the other side of what I thought of as the Iron Curtain. I’m old enough that I remember the Iron Curtain. And it was strange to think, when we had the Cold War, we had all these targets and Minsk was one of them. Well, we were going to live in a city that would be targeted by our missiles if there ever was an outbreak of nuclear war. Which actually came back to haunt me when 9/11 happened. Because when I saw the Twin Towers being attacked, I thought that’s exactly what was happening. Chitra Ragavan: And you know, most people don’t accompany their husbands on diplomatic missions and end up talking to terrorists. Tell me how that first began to evolve in Belarus. Anne Speckhard: Well, it didn’t happen in Belarus. In Belarus I was doing research, so I talked to Chernobyl liquidators about the trauma and post-traumatic stress that they had, which was an interesting variant because it was an invisible stressor, a lot like Coronavirus is now, and I also worked with Holocaust survivors. So I was building myself much more as a researcher than a therapist, but then we moved to Brussels and that’s when I became involved in talking to terrorists. Because I was asked by NATO if I would look at the intersection between religion and terrorism. And this is pre 9/11. So at that time you could read all the books and articles about religion and terrorism. It was a very small body of literature. Chitra Ragavan: And so, how did that evolve into talking to terrorists, that work that you were doing on religion and terrorism? Anne Speckhard: Well, first, 9/11 happened and at first the embassy told all of us to stay home and then they militarized all the workplaces. And Al-Qaeda named NATO as its next target. They even said it would happen in October, which was only a month away. So a lot of the diplomats were having stress reactions and the expats were having stress reactions. So the embassy asked me if I would run stress debriefings, which I did. And then I studied the reactions of people and how they did in response to the stress debriefings. Anne Speckhard: