Francisco Santos Calderón
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS
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
Asra Nomani
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS
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:
Angela Reddock-Wright
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS
Ep. 40 – The granddaughter of a Civil Rights-era healthcare worker and union advocate grows up to become an employment mediator and arbitrator / Angela Reddock-Wright, Founder, Reddock Law Group. For labor lawyer Angela Reddock-Wright, geography was definitely destiny. Moving from Birmingham, Alabama to working-class Compton, California at age nine and then winning a scholarship to the Brentwood School in the exclusive westside of Los Angeles would prove to be the most transformational events of her life. Her dual existence commuting between her blue-color and privileged worlds reminded Reddock-Wright of the importance of honoring one’s roots while being open to new opportunities. As a young girl in Birmingham, Reddock-Wright watched her maternal grandmother, a home healthcare worker active in the Civil Rights movement, take to the picket lines for better wages and conditions. Not surprising then that Reddock-Wright went on to become an employment and workplace mediator, arbitrator and Title IX investigator. She certainly has her hands full with the unprecedented shutdown of the U.S. economy because of #coronavirus and historic layoffs of millions of American workers. Reddock-Wright’s days are consumed with advising employers and employees of their rights, responsibilities, and protections as they struggle with the stunning job losses triggered by #Covid19. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Joining me now is Angela Reddock-Wright, founder of the Reddock Law Group. Angela, welcome to the podcast. Angela Reddock-Wright: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Chitra Ragavan: So where did you grow up, and what was your childhood like before you moved to Compton, California? Angela Reddock-Wright: Well, my father was in the military, so I actually was born in Frankfurt area, Germany, but I don’t remember much about it, because we left there when I was one or two years old, and we went back to my parents’ hometown, which is Birmingham, Alabama. That’s where both my parents and their siblings grew up. Angela Reddock-Wright: So I lived in Birmingham, Alabama until I was nine years old, and from there, my parents divorced when I was young, and my mom, seeking a better life for us post-civil rights Birmingham, Alabama, moved to California as a part of the great migration of Southerners that either moved to the West or moved north, and so some of her siblings had moved west already to California, specifically Compton, California. So we moved there when I was nine years old. Chitra Ragavan: So growing up as a young girl in Birmingham in the black South, how did that initially begin to shape your views? Angela Reddock-Wright: Well, it had a great impact on me. I was born in 1969, and so I was young as the Civil Rights Movement was starting to close out and evolve into a different type of movement than the type that my parents and their parents and so forth experienced, one with Jim Crow and dogs and beatings and so forth. As a child, I was shielded from a lot of that, so I grew up in sort of an idyllic environment, with grandparents on both sides, where you would sit on the porch and you would say hello to people as they passed by. Everyone was referred to as kin folk, because we all knew each other. I remember Southern traditions like sitting with one of my grandmothers and drinking coffee with her, even as a young kid, out the bowl. Angela Reddock-Wright: So, on one level, it was idyllic. It had a lot of Southern traditions, but I do remember, obviously, even though I wasn’t in the heart of marching or anything like that, I have memories of those conversations and of people still being very active in the movement. My maternal grandmother in particular, Frida Gills, she was a home healthcare worker and was very active in the Civil Rights Movement and in her community and in the union that represented the workers. So I remember, as a child, going with her to her union meetings and hearing the discussions about better wages for workers and better conditions for workers, and I also remember being out on the picket lines with her at least two or three times as a child, not quite realizing what it was all about, but understanding that my grandmother and her colleagues and others were fighting for better conditions. Angela Reddock-Wright: So that experience, coupled with being surrounded by the remnants of and the conversations of post-civil rights Alabama, kind of really shaped my understanding and helped me to have a commitment to advocacy and looking out for others and being sensitive to social issues. It really shaped my experience, although I only grew up there until I was nine. But it was significant, even in that short amount of time. Chitra Ragavan: Then so what was your move to Compton like? Then you also had another kind of big change in the school that you began to attend. So tell us about kind of those shifts. Angela Reddock-Wright: Right. So we moved to the famous Compton, California. Many would use the word infamous, and I like to say famous, because I believe there are two Comptons. So we’ve all heard the movie Straight out of Compton and famous rappers, like Ice Cube and others, that are from Compton and made it famous, in a way. I actually grew up … When I watched the movie Straight out of Compton, I realized that I was growing up in Compton during the time that many of the things that we learned about in the movie, but I guess, again, I kind of grew up in an idyllic world and in a side of Compton that people don’t see, which is a working class community of individuals and families that are really just trying to make a better life for themselves. Angela Reddock-Wright: So that’s the part of Compton that I grew up in. So not that I wasn’t surrounded by gangs or knew about gang activity or