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How to Kidnap an Executive
3.1k Plays2 years ago
In the latest installment of our new podcast, we sit down with a kidnapping historian and author and an executive protection and kidnap & ransom expert, to discuss the topic of executive kidnappings. Philip Jett is a retired attorney who has represented multinational corporations, CEOs, and celebrities from the music, television, and sports industries. He is the author of The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty, which was named one of the best true crime stories of 2017 by The New York Times. He followed that book with another true crime story titled Taking Mr. Exxon: The Kidnapping of an Oil Giant’s President. His newest book, a work of historical nonfiction, is called Stranded in the Sky and will be released in May 2023. He is joined on the show by Scott Stewart, the Vice President of Intelligence at TorchStone Global, and Stratfor's former VP of Tactical Analysis. Prior to this, Scott was a Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) special agent and Protective Intelligence coordinator for the technology company Dell. He was the lead DSS investigator assigned to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the follow-up New York City bomb plot. As part of the US government's Hostage Locating Taskforce, Scott interviewed a number of high profile kidnapping victims such as Terry Waite, and as the US embassy's deputy regional security officer In Guatemala, Scott investigated numerous kidnappings of American civilians and the kidnapping of Rigoberta Menchu's daughter.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica.
Understanding Historical and Current Threats
00:00:12
Speaker
In each episode, we sit down with leading experts to talk about dangerous acts, organisations and people. We examine historical cases, as well as the risks these subjects currently pose. From assassinations and airline shootdowns, through to kidnappings and coups, we'll examine each of these threats through the lenses of both the dangerous actors behind them and the agencies around the world seeking to stop them.
00:00:38
Speaker
In the interest of operational security, certain tactical details will be omitted from these discussions. However, the cases and threats which we discuss here are very real.
Meet the Experts: Intelligence and Espionage Backgrounds
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm Louis H. Passant, the founder and editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica. I'm also a doctoral researcher at the University of Loughborough in the field of intelligence and espionage in the private sector. In my day job, I provide intelligence to corporate executives on complex geopolitical and security issues. My name is Colin Reed. I am a former US intelligence professional now working in the private sector to bring geopolitical insights and risk analysis to business leaders.
00:01:30
Speaker
Scott Stewart is vice president of intelligence at Torchstone Global and Stratfor's former vice president of tactical analysis. Prior to this, Scott was a diplomatic security service special agent and protective intelligence coordinator for the technology company Dell. He was the lead DSS investigators assigned to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the follow-up New York City bomb plot. As part of the US government's hostage locating task force, Scott interviewed a number of high profile kidnapping victims.
00:01:57
Speaker
such as Terry Waite, and as the U.S. Embassy's deputy regional security officer in Guatemala, Scott investigated numerous kidnappings of American civilians and the kidnapping of Rigoberta Minchu's daughter.
Philip Jett on True Crime and Kidnappings
00:02:09
Speaker
Philip Jett is a retired corporate and tax attorney in the United States who has represented multinational corporations, CEOs and celebrities from the music, television and sports industries.
00:02:19
Speaker
He's the author of Death of an Air, Adolph Kors 3, a murder that rocked an American brewing dynasty, which was named one of the best true crime stories of 2017 by the New York Times. He followed that book with another true crime story, titled Taking Mr. Exxon, the kidnapping of an oil giant's president. His newest book, a work of historical nonfiction, is called Stranded in the Sky, the untold story of pan and luxury airliners trapped on the day of infamy, and will be released in May 2023.
00:02:46
Speaker
So Philip, your books on executive kidnappings and murders are really fascinating. We'll make sure that they get posted in our show notes so our readers can grab a copy of those. But firstly, what made you write them? How did you get into this area of research?
00:03:02
Speaker
When I retired from practicing law, I was not going to play golf. So I needed to find something to do to stimulate my mind. And being a new writer, I had to come up with a good topic. So I accidentally found the kidnapping case of Adolf Kors III when I was out there visiting the brewery in Golden, Colorado. And to my surprise, no one had written a book about that topic.
00:03:29
Speaker
It occurred in 1960, so it was pretty old, and yet no one had written about it. So I jumped on it. I didn't really know what I was doing. But my years practicing law, I did know how to research and investigate and interview and talk to judges and lawyers and that sort of thing. So I got in and took me a while to write it, took me some time to get the research material.
00:03:54
Speaker
And, you know, you're probing the FBI files and records from, you know, at that time, almost 60 years ago. And a lot of the things have been destroyed, but I was able to find them. And so once I wrote the book and I got an agent and a publisher and it was successful,
00:04:16
Speaker
Then my agent said, do another one. So I did. And it's called Taking Mr. Exxon, which was about the kidnapping of Sidney Riso, who was the president of Exxon Company International. And that was in 1992. So that's how I got started. It wasn't anything magical. There's nothing in my background. Kidnapping drove me there. I was just looking for some
Scott Stewart's Security Journey
00:04:40
Speaker
good stories. And I like true crime and mysteries and that sort of thing. So that's what took me there.
00:04:47
Speaker
And Scott, what about you? You spent many years in the protective security space, both in the government and sort of in the corporate executive world. How did you get into this field in the first place? In some ways, I feel like Forrest Gump, where I've just kind of blundered my way into things. I was commissioned, initially I was commissioned as a military intelligence officer in 1985. I made the transition over to Diplomatic Security Service with the State Department in 88.
00:05:15
Speaker
And then it just so happened that the group at diplomatic security, the counter terrorist investigations branch, was looking for an agent who had an analytical background. And they said, hey, we have this new guy here at the Washington field office, you know, who is former military intelligence. So I got kind of snagged into that, and was kind of brought into this whole world of investigating terrorist attacks, including kidnappings.
00:05:40
Speaker
So, Philip, I suspect you've studied this topic probably about as much as anyone on the planet. So I suppose I'll start with the first question to you. How do you go about kidnapping an executive? The cases you've looked at specifically, how did they go about doing this?
Analyzing Executive Kidnappings: Cases and Consequences
00:05:56
Speaker
The kidnappings that I researched, Adolph Coors III in 1960 and Sidney Riso in 1992 were two of the kind of the old-style kidnappings, and particularly in the United States. I know there's a lot of things that go on that we're not aware of, but those type of kidnappings aren't that frequent in the United States. There are other types of kidnappings that occur frequently in the United States, whether they're
00:06:23
Speaker
part of a domestic dispute or these express kidnappings. Then in foreign areas, people are grabbed for $10,000 or $15,000 and turned over. No big deal. They got the money. They look for the next one. Mine that I researched and wrote about, these were two top-level executives. The people that kidnapped them were looking to get rich.
00:06:50
Speaker
And they viewed it as, you know, almost like a victimless crime. They didn't consider themselves someone that were going to hurt someone else. They just viewed it as, I'll grab this person, get a lot of money, and skip.
00:07:05
Speaker
So what I learned is in both cases, if I'm a kidnapper part of a team, I need to conduct surveillance and I need to be patient about it and I need to watch their daily lives, their patterns, their routines.
00:07:23
Speaker
look for any aberrations in those. And if I'm the executive, I need to be aware that people are doing that. And I cannot let my guard down because in both cases, in the Coors and the Sidney Riso, Sidney Riso was kidnapped at the end of his driveway at home.
00:07:39
Speaker
And here's a man who had worked for Exxon for 35 years, and he had been in several countries. And he kept his guard up there, but when he came back home, he let his guard down. And he actually declined some of the security services they had at the time. He could access a driver at any time who was trained
00:07:58
Speaker
and, you know, kidnap avoidance and that sort of thing, but he declined. And in Korr's case, you know, his father had been – Adolf Korr III, his father Adolf Jr. had – there had been an attempt on his life kidnapping in 1933.
00:08:16
Speaker
And he told his sons, look, guys, you'll be targets as well. But they thought, yeah, that's old gangster kind of stuff. You know, that's not 1960. And in Adolf Kors case, he was kidnapped five miles from his home. So both of those situations were where people let their guard down and they think there's some type of safety
00:08:40
Speaker
near their home in the United States and that sort of thing. And that's the error. And that's where people like Scott come in who help educate them, never let your guard down and take some precautions. So you mentioned a couple of cases there both sort of financially motivated. Are you aware of any other cases that have happened where there's been a different motivation that it hasn't been strictly financial?
00:09:04
Speaker
You know, there are cases that, you know, especially in the 1970s, you had a lot of political type kidnappings and especially in, you know, South America and you had the gorillas that had some type of cause. They were trying to further and they either needed money or they needed publicity.
00:09:25
Speaker
and they needed to leverage. So that happens as well. There are some political kidnappings still, and I'm dealing with a subject right now that there was a kidnapping and it was more or less a subtle grudge from 30 years before.
00:09:43
Speaker
uh someone who held a grudge from something that someone did to him and uh he goes after the person's child so we tend to think and I find myself I tend to think that everybody's reasonable you know everybody's clear thinking everyone but
00:10:00
Speaker
You know, some people doesn't take much of a motive to kidnap someone. If it's not money or political causes or something that makes sense, it could be that they're just deranged. And so as an executive, you cannot always think that, well, a reasonable person wouldn't do this here, you know, kind of thing. And so that's one thing that an executive always has to keep in mind. Don't think everyone thinks as you do.
00:10:29
Speaker
I think that's a point we'll come back to in a moment. I think that's a really fascinating point. But before we go on to that, Scott, a question for you. Philip talked about old-style kidnappings. But as the technologies evolved, have the risks changed as well?
Technological Influence on Kidnapping Tactics
00:10:42
Speaker
And if so, how? Well, I believe the risks are really the same. It's just the tools have changed.
00:10:49
Speaker
So now today, you think back to 1960 or even 92 in those cases that Philip was talking about, you basically had to mostly perform physical surveillance on your target in order to kidnap them. Today, a lot of that can be short-cutted by things that you can find online. You can do a lot of research and get addresses. By finding someone's social media, you can find out where they eat.
00:11:16
Speaker
Where they golf where the kids go to school you can really identify patterns of life in many cases just based on their twitter feed or their facebook or tiktok or whatever else they're using and you know we've seen several cases where you know
00:11:32
Speaker
Celebrities have been targeted you think of the kim kardashian in paris you put something out there on instagram and the crooks know where you're at what you have we saw that also with the home invasion in l.a. with a rapper who could you put some stuff out there so so really you know it doesn't.
00:11:52
Speaker
eliminate the need to conduct physical surveillance, but it just really provides the kidnappers with a lot of information that they can readily glean at their fingertips, and they don't have to put themselves at risk to get that information. In the old days, to go out and actually conduct surveillance, you have to put yourself in a position where you can be detected. Whereas now using the internet, you can gather a lot of that information and never really have to place yourself at risk of being detected.
00:12:19
Speaker
So that raises a couple of questions for me then, Scott. It seems like with this proliferation of information out there, it would be very easy to conduct one of these kidnappings. How often do these threats actually tend to play out? And then when you're going about investigating them with this proliferation of evidence out there that anybody can pick up and use, how do you go about determining as the investigator if it's a real kidnapping or a hoax kidnapping or an auto kidnapping? Go into that for us if you could.
Security Strategies and Insider Threats
00:12:47
Speaker
Well, no, I mean, one of the things that we do from a defensive standpoint when we get a client is we look at their profiles both physically and online. So one of the first things we do is conduct these assessments. So on the technological side, we conduct what we call a public profile assessment.
00:13:07
Speaker
where we look at their social media, we look at what's available in the OSINT. We even look at these data aggregators that Ben verified, these scopios, these other companies that basically sell information to anybody with a few bucks to pay for a profile. So we gather all that together and then we look at things that can be tightened up. Okay, does your wife's Instagram account have too much information? How about your mom's Facebook?
00:13:33
Speaker
Where can we start to cut down this information to protect you from it? And in addition to that, we're also doing just the traditional old school assessments. So we'll do a baseline threat assessment looking at all the threat actors and potential risks to the executive. We also do a residential security survey, an office security survey,
00:13:54
Speaker
We will look at their travel patterns to see if there's places and patterns where they are vulnerable to a kidnapping. And then we'll even look at routes that they take, say from their home to the office, to identify choke points and potential ambush or attack sites where they would be vulnerable. So we can identify them just to be more aware of activity and potential surveillance at those spots as well.
00:14:18
Speaker
And so as an investigator, after the fact, of course, those are also the types of things that you can look at. You can go back and look at the victim's profile to see what's happened. The interesting thing that we've seen recently is that a lot of the kidnappings that we're seeing are things that are inside our threats. So we had the kidnapping and murder of Tushar Atre,
00:14:46
Speaker
the tech and cannabis entrepreneur in California. He was kidnapped by some of his own employees who then forced him to open one of the warehouses where the cannabis was kept. We're really seeing a lot of the insider threats too.
00:15:02
Speaker
You can't just look at the kidnapping threat from the outsider context, but you also need to consider insider context. And of course, that's what we saw in the Reso kidnapping as well, as Philip wrote. You had an insider from Exxon who had a good head start on targeting Mr. Reso. So Philip, tell us about that case in particular then. I'm really interested in this idea of the insider being involved in the kidnapping. So who was this insider? What advantage did being an insider give them in this case?
00:15:30
Speaker
When he did the kidnapping, he was unemployed. But at one time, he had been in charge of Exxon security within the building in which Sid Riso worked, which is in New Jersey. And before that, he had been a police officer.
00:15:49
Speaker
So from a law enforcement standpoint, as well as the thing I found most interesting is about him, even though he had been terminated from Exxon, and that was a little bit of a grudge, but not his primary motivation. He still had contacts within the security world that he would call up and say, hey,
00:16:12
Speaker
and he would just make it up. Hey, you know, I'm working on a new job and I'd like to know what you guys are doing over there at Exxon, you know, in this regard or that regard. So people unknowingly at Exxon were giving him information about security procedures within the company still, which I found fascinating that even though he had been removed for I think six years, he still had contacts who were still working within the company and the security
00:16:42
Speaker
area. And so that gave him a leg up. But he chose Sid Riso. He had four or five people on his list. And they all lived in the same area, very nice area in Morristown, New Jersey. And so he had Merck and AT&T and all these executives. And the reason he chose Exxon was when he did his surveillance. Sid Riso's house was situated that
00:17:12
Speaker
There were a lot of trees. He was set back from the road, hidden, kind of off the beaten path. So he viewed it simply as, this guy is easier to grab than others who are on busy streets and that sort of thing. But he did have the inside connection. And as I say, he maintained that. I don't know if Scott has run across that where you tell your company people, hey, don't be talking to people outside
00:17:39
Speaker
the company. I mean, it seems common sense, but these people viewed him as an old buddy and like, hey, yeah, I'm glad to help you with what we're doing now. Scott, do you want to weigh in on that? How does that kind of operational security element play in there?
00:17:56
Speaker
No, it really is vital. And that's where I think that we've progressed in recent decades that people understand more importantly, or they understand the importance of protecting that sort of operational information and the threats that can be posed if it's leaked.
00:18:14
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of times you will have very strict non-disclosure agreements and you will really emphasize those points and highlight them with your staff so that they understand that, you know, that kind of information is critical and needs to be protected.
00:18:31
Speaker
So final question from the dangerous actors side of this is, is there an emerging scope for social or climate justice related kidnappings of executives? We've talked a lot about financially motivated kidnappings. Philip mentioned that it's not always the case. We're seeing a lot of aggressive discourse on Twitter and other social media sites around various executives based around inequality, climate change. Are these kind of threats changing the game?
00:19:00
Speaker
Well, I think Scott could speak to that more than I. But in the Sid Riesel case, the kidnappers posed as environmental terrorists because it was Exxon. And there had been the Exxon Valdez spill three years earlier. So they posed as a group that had an axe to grind environmentally.
00:19:22
Speaker
And the FBI initially took that very seriously because it made some sense. And there had been threats against Exxon from different organizations. And there was some factual background that fit. They chose names that were part of Greenpeace, the Greenpeace ship and that sort of thing. So the kidnappers had done their homework to at least throw the investigation toward environmentalists, even though they were like a local mom and pop.
00:19:51
Speaker
just down the street. Even then, the FBI took those type of threats seriously. And today, I'm sure Scott can tell
Diverse Motivations Behind Kidnappings
00:20:00
Speaker
you, I'm not up to date on that sort of thing, but I would think that the FBI and other agencies and corporate security take those kind of threats seriously. Scott, please go ahead if there's anything from the contemporary side there.
00:20:14
Speaker
We need to understand that kidnapping is really a tactic and nobody owns that tactic. It can be exercised by anybody, but certainly when we look at some of the rhetoric that has been used in the grievance narrative that's being put out there by some of these groups such as Extinction Rebellion, it really is scary and they really are starting to put the blame at people.
00:20:37
Speaker
At the same time, you know, here in the United States, we had that case recently where we had a group of militia members that was, you know, plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan. So certainly it is a threat from all sides and all different causes. And it's something that as a security practitioner, I take very, very seriously every day. And so, you know, when we do those baseline assessments on a corporate executive, those are the things we're looking at. You know, in addition to their ethnicity,
00:21:06
Speaker
Is this an African-American executive? Is this a Jewish executive? Is there some other threat that could come in there from another angle, sectarian wise? Is the executive a Shia Muslim and worried about Sunni Muslim extremists? So there's a lot of ethnic things that you worry about, the single issue type causes.
00:21:28
Speaker
So I think the key takeaway from all of this is that the breadth of the threats here is absolutely enormous. So after the break, we'll talk more about how we can protect against these kind of threats, because it certainly sounds like there are a very significant issue.
00:21:50
Speaker
You have been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. If you like this show, don't forget to check out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica, which you can find by going to howtogettontawatchlist.com. We can find our analysis on various geopolitical issues, as well as reading lists covering topics like those discussed in the podcast. Please also consider subscribing to the podcast on your streaming platform of choice, as well as rating as five stars if you enjoyed the discussion.
00:22:29
Speaker
So Scott, in the first half of the show, you've told us quite a bit about how one might investigate a real kidnapping.
Investigating Staged and Virtual Kidnappings
00:22:34
Speaker
But let's talk some more about your experience with auto kidnappings or hoax kidnappings. How did those investigations go and how did they sort of differ from your real kidnapping investigation?
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, probably one of the most high-profile auto kidnapping or self-kidnappings that I investigated was the grand niece of Rigoberto Menchuu, and she was a Nobel Prize laureate from Guatemala. And a lot of people, I guess, may not recognize, but there's a substantial cash prize. It was a million dollars at that time that comes with the Nobel Prize. And we had some members of Rigoberto Menchuu's
00:23:09
Speaker
family, her niece and her niece's husband who decided they deserved a part of that cash prize. So they actually staged a kidnapping of their own little girl in order to try to get the great aunt to cough up some ransom money for her.
00:23:26
Speaker
And really, we cracked that case just by old-fashioned detective work, getting out there, interviewing the victim, the alleged victim, the mom. And that's where we really started, once we started talking to her, talking to the husband, of course, we kept them separated. And once we started interviewing them,
00:23:47
Speaker
Their account of the kidnapping varied. We had different descriptions of how it happened, of what the purple looked like. So there was just a lot of disconnects there where they didn't have their story really synced up well. And that kind of allowed us to go back and say, hey, Ms. Manchu, we really believe that this was your niece. And so we were able to coordinate with the Guatemalan authorities who went
00:24:13
Speaker
to the husband's family's house and they found a little girl there alive and well. So it's just old-fashioned police work a lot of times to get to the bottom of what happened. But in addition to those kind of auto kidnappings, there are a lot of hoax kidnappings going on, what we call virtual kidnapping.
00:24:34
Speaker
And that's where someone will pretend that they have someone and then try to elicit money from the victims. Quite often, this is done by telephone. And in a place like Mexico, there's actually a whole industry of virtual kidnappings that is going on from the prisons.
00:24:52
Speaker
where we have people actually in the prisons that are calling up the families of these victims, pretending they have the victim, and then extorting the money from them. They usually try to use a lot of pressure. They will usually use some sort of screaming, pretend they have the victim. But a lot of times, they don't have a lot of information of the victim. We've actually seen some interesting versions of that, though. There are some gangs that are actually going to malls in Mexico.
00:25:20
Speaker
pretending that they were giving away something like an iPad or something that was kind of exciting. And they would stand outside a movie theater and kind of take information to enter this contest from these young, wealthy kids. And then what they would do is wait till the kids went into the movie and then call the parents. Because they would have their phones off while they're in the movie. Then they would call the parents. They'd have the description of what the child had. They'd have all their contact information. They'd know what they were wearing.
00:25:48
Speaker
And so it was a pretty effective scam at getting these families to cough up money. Yeah, that's a fascinating case. I'm wondering how can someone protect themselves or their family or their kids against express kidnappings? Or express kidnappings of these virtual kidnappings? Either. Both. I would love to know both.
00:26:09
Speaker
Well, obviously, the virtual kidnappings, you need to just keep your head and try to slow things down. Don't send any money immediately. Obviously, you need to communicate with your children about these sorts of threats and make sure that there is a way to communicate with them. So if they're going into the club where there's going to be loud music or if they're going into a movie theater where they can't have their phones on Ring, you can at least have a silent communication there, have it on silent so that you can still communicate with them.
00:26:39
Speaker
And just being aware of the tactic actually is very helpful. Now, of course, those express kidnappings, most frequently we see those late at night on the street. A lot of times it's in connection with an ATM or many times it's in connection with someone who has
00:26:57
Speaker
basically had too much to drink or has been using drugs. So that's usually something that's on the street. So really, not being out at 2.30 at night on the street is a good way to avoid being expressed kidnapped. And obviously, in a lot of environments, not even just in the US, but we're seeing a lot of kidnappings, those short-term kidnappings like that, that involve like a date rape drug or something slipped into a drink or even an injection.
Preventive Measures and Family Safety
00:27:27
Speaker
which is crazy enough but you know we're seeing these dance clubs where kids are being injected with drugs that are being abducted and raped or robbed or both. So really you know awareness though of these things you know being careful where you are and what you're doing can go a long way in protecting you against those kind of kidnappings.
00:27:46
Speaker
So Philip, a question for you. Scott's given us a lot of examples here that it seems like it's not just executives themselves who are at risk. So what about families? Have you ever seen cases where a family of an executive has been targeted specifically because of their link to a wealthy dynasty, a wealthy family? There are some famous ones. Of course, Frank Sinatra Jr., which is interesting, and the one they just made a movie about. Help me here. The gay kidnapping out of Italy.
00:28:15
Speaker
The Getty grandson, that's right. That was another famous one. But you don't have to be that wealthy. It's funny, I spend a lot of time, I'm a snowbird now and I go down to South Florida for the winters and I hang around the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center where riders from all over the world compete during the winter.
00:28:38
Speaker
And you have Bill Gates and all those kind of people down there whose daughters ride and compete. And just looking around, I've spoken with some about their security. And that is something that they of course are aware of in any kind of situation like that.
00:28:58
Speaker
You have Bloomberg, Gates, all these type of people down there whose daughters ride horses and compete and people walk about freely and you don't have to have a ticket. Usually you can come in and look from afar or what have you. So I do know from a peripheral standpoint, I've not been involved, that that is something that is of great concern, particularly in those circles that
00:29:28
Speaker
You know, I may not be able to grab Bill Gates, but his daughter, after she gets off a horse and goes into the restroom, you know, she's a target and they're prepared for that. So, Scott, as a kind of countermeasure to this, then, in the first half of the show, you talked a little bit about some of the measures you can use to assess the vulnerability of executives and their family members. But what about the actual physical protection? Are there special measures you would have to take to protect the family member of an executive that would perhaps differ to the executive themselves?
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's certainly true. One of the things that I think is important as we look at kidnappings is that we understand that they don't just happen
00:30:07
Speaker
They're the result of a process. There is an attack cycle there, and it's a process that can be identified and it can be detected if you're looking for it. And the problem happens when people don't realize that they're just not looking. And quite frankly, one of the big vulnerable points during a kidnapping is that surveillance time. Basically, a kidnapper has to make themselves vulnerable to detection.
00:30:34
Speaker
when they're conducting the surveillance. And traditionally, they are very bad at surveillance, but they get away with conducting that surveillance because no one's looking for it. They're really ham-fisted. To be a good surveillance operative, it takes many, many hours, hundreds and hundreds of hours on the street learning the techniques because conducting surveillance is really an unnatural act. Because of this, most hostile surveillance, especially from criminals or terrorists, is very ham-fisted.
00:31:04
Speaker
But they're allowed to get away with it because nobody's looking for it so i mean one of the things that we really work on doing with our clients even the clients that don't want protection per se but we can educate them and really equipped them to spot hostile surveillance and then obviously if that happens we can start rapping things up.
00:31:24
Speaker
At the other side, we have the higher end clients who do have either an active threat or a more legitimate concern and we will protect them. You can either do that with an actual physical bodyguard detail or you can do it a little more subtly by putting a protective bubble around them looking for surveillance and looking for signs of hostile behavior.
00:31:49
Speaker
So you don't always need a guy who's six, six, 300 pounds walking next to the child to protect them. There's a lot of things that you can do as far as providing that invisible bubble, looking for hostile activity. So while we're on that subject, talking about close protection teams, how do those typically fit in in the corporate world? Is that something that's being paid for by the company? Are these company employees, or are these more likely to be people that are retained specifically by the leadership, by the boss to protect him and his family?
00:32:19
Speaker
Well, that's all going to depend on kind of the company and the situation. Quite frankly, in many cases, it's viewed as a necessity from the board and they're going to kind of demand it. Many times it can be a split. So the company may pay for the protection of the executive and then he will pay for extra protection for his children and wife or something like that.
00:32:41
Speaker
One of the things that's important, though, is that those services will be counted as income for the executive unless there is deemed to be a credible threat by an outside advisor. In my company, we actually do a lot of those surveys where we'll go out and just do a baseline threat assessment, look at all the threat actors, and determine whether or not there is legitimate
00:33:03
Speaker
business-oriented threat against the executive that necessitates the current protection. And then we do an assessment of whether or not the current level protection is adequate or not. And many times that will involve things like using private aviation, a car and driver, or even up to a protective detail, all depending on what the threat there and what's considered appropriate.
00:33:26
Speaker
Okay, so it sounds like surveillance plays a quite important part in this world of keeping executives and their families safe. So talk a little bit about that. How does that work?
00:33:36
Speaker
No, yeah, the surveillance and detecting surveillance is key. And that's one of the things that I've really enjoyed so much about Philip's books is that he's one of the few authors that's actually focused on that, the kind of the how-to aspect of the kidnapping. And one of the reasons why I so highly recommend his books to clients and others who want to understand kidnappings and how to protect themselves from kidnappings.
00:34:01
Speaker
We'll make sure links to the book get dropped in the show notes there. But Philip, please, tell us a little bit about that then. How does the surveillance element fit in in your research? It's funny because both cases, the surveillance section was fascinating to me because they were so different. In 1960, this was kind of a lesson of how not to conduct surveillance. Joe Corbett, who was watching Adolf Kors III, at one point,
00:34:30
Speaker
The Coors family lived in Denver within the city limits on a city street. And so it was easy for him to conduct surveillance. He could park on the street with other cars and blend in and walk around, that sort of thing. But then the Coors family moved far away and bought a ranch south of Denver in very secluded areas. So he starts driving around the countryside in a yellow car.
00:35:00
Speaker
Having grown up in a rural area, when you see cars you're not familiar with, you just automatically start to suspect they're up to something. And that was the case in the Coors case. Unfortunately, they didn't take too much notice beforehand, but after he was kidnapped, everyone said, yeah, you know, there was this guy in this yellow car that kept driving around. In fact, I got like three of the numbers off the license plate because he was hanging around my ranch.
00:35:28
Speaker
kind of thing. So that was an example of a poor way to do it. In the RISO case, they were more sophisticated, even though this was just a husband and wife living nearby, the RISO's lived in a very nice suburban neighborhood. So the wife
00:35:47
Speaker
of the kidnapping team. She would dress in nice jogging attire, expensive attire, and jog up and down the street in the morning and at night and different times.
00:35:59
Speaker
And the other thing they did was because this was a new neighborhood, there was some construction of houses going on. So Hartzil, who was the husband, he would go over to the construction site at night or early in the morning before the worker team got there and watch. And they found different ways to watch Sid Riso, but yet no one really noticed because, you know, particularly the jogger, I thought was ingenious.
00:36:29
Speaker
People jog by my house every day. I don't know where they come from or where they go. And as long as they kind of fit in, I mean, who would know? So in my two books, I found that fascinating. And of course, as an author, you want to create this ominous
00:36:50
Speaker
sense of doom that's coming, and surveillance allows you to do that. It's like, okay, it's kind of like the Jaws music. They're getting closer and closer with the surveillance they're conducting, and something's going to happen. And unfortunately, that's the real life situation. But a lot of executives, they don't hear the Jaws music. They don't know that's happening.
00:37:17
Speaker
So we've talked quite a bit now about the surveillance, counter surveillance part of this. We're all intelligence nerds at Encyclopedia Geopolitica. So I have to ask, is there a role for intelligence to play here in playing defense and sort of identifying the surveillance and helping to prevent these kidnappings sort of before they take place?
00:37:35
Speaker
If I can answer that, I'd say 100%. And that's one of the things that we really focus on in protective intelligence is looking for that hostile surveillance. And we also recommend to our clients and teach them ways that they can manipulate surveillance.
00:37:52
Speaker
So by going out around, whether it's a residential area, looking for what we call the perches or places where surveillance would have to be in order to conduct surveillance on the target. So we're trying to help them identify the perches, figure out ways that you can heat up certain perches by maybe putting CCTV coverage there or maybe a uniform guard attention or something. And then a lot of times what we'll do is kind of leave a honeypot perch.
00:38:17
Speaker
a place where we want them to go, where it's less obvious. So we want to try to drive surveillance to that place where that we can then capture them and identify them and start to figure out what's up and who they are. So there's a lot of things that you can do to really mess with the minds of people conducting surveillance.
00:38:35
Speaker
If you're cognizant of the threat and have a little bit of understanding about how surveillance works, that then allows you to understand the constraints that people conducting surveillance are under and how you can take advantage of those constraints to really force them to show their cards.
Careers in Executive Protection
00:38:52
Speaker
I've got to say, Scott, what you're describing here sounds like a fascinating line of work. So I suppose the obvious question is, how does someone get into the world of executive protection? What advice would you give any of our listeners who are thinking, hey, this sounds like a really cool job. I'd like to do it.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things, you know, for traditionally for, you know, many years, it was, you know, people like me coming out of a government background, you know, you'd have a lot of people who were, you know, former Secret Service, former State Department, you know, a lot of former military guys, you know, sometimes that tradition, that transition could be difficult coming into the corporate world, though, because, you know, generally working under the government label, you have, you know, statutory authorities, and, you know, certain expectations and rules of engagement, and you have to be a lot more flexible in the corporate world.
00:39:37
Speaker
But certainly we're seeing a lot of transition from people coming out of the military or law enforcement to get a little bit of demilitarization if you will. And it really helps them step into the corporate world. We're also kind of seeing the emergence of some of these schools.
00:39:54
Speaker
where people can go to get an education in executive protection. But I mean, I've worked with people throughout the years who have just a wide array of backgrounds, you know, people who were former EMTs or people who were lawyers, you know, just coming from other backgrounds. So not everybody's, you know, a former agent or, you know, former Navy SEAL or something. And certainly we're also seeing a lot more diversification gender wise.
00:40:21
Speaker
into the executive protection realm. So we're seeing a lot more women come in, which I think is a good thing, to be honest, for EP programs. Not only because there's a lot of places where women can go that guys can't, especially if you have a female protector or a child, but also just for things like in a surveillance detection role. A lot of times women can be, I guess, fit in more than a fit military-looking guy.
00:40:47
Speaker
So sometimes they can be a lot less attention grabbing and more effective as surveillance detection assets than a military age guy. Well, that's really interesting. The stories you've both told here, the kind of insight to the field you've given us is really fascinating. There's a question we like to end the show on, which is, what keeps someone like you up at night? When you think about these risks, when you think about these dangers, what is it that worries you about this field?
00:41:14
Speaker
As an author, I sleep pretty well. Because I've written two kidnapping books. I've written another book, and I'm on my fourth book. I am not a kidnapping expert, though I have gained a lot of knowledge in the area. And I've made a lot of friends, like Scott and a lot of former FBI agents. In fact, in April, I'll throw this in, I was invited to Morristown, New Jersey
00:41:42
Speaker
April 29th of this year, which was the 30th anniversary of the Sid Riso kidnapping. And the former FBI agents and prosecutors had a kind of reunion party, which was odd. But they invited me up. And so I've made a lot of friends in that respect. And I certainly respect those who work. And just to touch on something Scott said, there were some female FBI agents involved in the Riso case that were instrumental.
00:42:12
Speaker
to solving that case. And that was pretty early on when female agents were a rare thing. And two of the most instrumental agents were females in that case. So as Scott said, they can go and do things that the man can't. And so it's, you know,
00:42:35
Speaker
I sleep well, but it's been an education for me. For instance, when I go to South Florida and watch these folks with lots of money, it makes me think on their behalf.
00:42:50
Speaker
what they're doing and if they're aware, which I know they are, but it's been, kidnappings are something that keep Scott busy and I'll turn it over to him because he can certainly enlighten you more.
00:43:06
Speaker
I think from my perspective, unfortunately, it's many things. Although I do tend to sleep well both days, but there are things that really keep me up and they concern me. One is when I have a client and there's an operational security problem, an information leak problem that we can't shut down. The wife will not stop posting on Instagram.
00:43:29
Speaker
that's just, that's a nightmare issue flat refuses. And, you know, I've had clients where that's happened. The insider threat is always terrifying just because they have so much access and they have so much opportunity to view the security program in place if there is one. So they understand what you have in place. And that gives them a lot of opportunity to kind of plan and scheme of how to defeat your security program. So the insider threat is terrifying. I guess the other one that I would say is just the fear of the unknown.
00:43:58
Speaker
especially as we kind of get these new technologies coming into play right now. Thinking about things like remote cameras now. They have these cell phone type cameras that you can place on a tree somewhere to help with surveillance. Things like drones that can be used for surveillance. So it's becoming more and more difficult to detect surveillance because of some of these technical tools that can be used in surveilling your clients for kidnapping.
00:44:27
Speaker
I'll finish with one more question for either of you. What's a question that you wish we had asked you today that we didn't get to? What's something that maybe you should bring up for us? I guess we hit on it a little bit at the beginning or hinted at it, but just really looking at the range of kidnapping threats and different kinds of kidnappings. I mean, we talked a little bit about the express kidnappings, the virtual kidnappings, but we've seen kind of this eruption of tiger kidnappings.
00:44:54
Speaker
which is something we haven't really talked about here, where members of the family are kept at the home. Basically, the home is invaded. And then they'll send a member of the family, generally it'll be a husband, but in to do something, open the bank vault. We've seen those used very frequently in places like Northern Ireland. But in recent years, we're kind of seeing them emerge more and more in the US.
00:45:20
Speaker
where they'll grab a family and then force the husband to do something. Those kind of kidnappings are also something I think people need to be aware of and that threat of tiger kidnapping as well. That's interesting, Scott. I didn't realize that was going on now because there's a famous movie, I can't recall the name, with Humphrey Bogart.
00:45:43
Speaker
where they do the exact thing they go in and they're requiring the family members to do certain things and they keep the daughter or the wife hostage while they do that. And that's an old movie. I didn't realize that was still going on today.
00:46:00
Speaker
Well, actually it also recently appeared in Jack Carr's terminal list book and the show that came out where they forced the guy to become a suicide bomber. But certainly it is a tactic that we're seeing and it is something of concern. So many families just don't think of that concept or protecting themselves against that kind of threat. But certainly when it comes to residential security and thinking about how you secure your home, the threat of tiger kidnapping is something that executives really need to be concerned about.
00:46:30
Speaker
I think you've both made some really interesting points there, which is that this is a topic I think people often associate with being something limited to Hollywood. But as you've both shown, this is a case and a threat that's very, very real. So I think all there is to say is thank you very much for joining us. This has been a really fascinating discussion. And I'll make sure that the links to the books we've discussed get put in the show notes so that our listeners can grab a copy of those. So gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us.
00:46:58
Speaker
Our producer for this episode was Edwin Tran, and our research was conducted by the entire Encyclopedia Geopolitica team.