But for the once a podcast, this is your host Jack gains.
When 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 ground with a partner Nations.
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. Sat see a podcasting at
gmail.com or look us up on the Civil Affairs association
website at www.flcfs.org. I'll have those in the show
notes. One in this guy said, hey, I
want to get some background, he kept asking background stuff and
it's like, okay, they knew where I was raised and what my
favorite food was, but we never talked about anything
substantive. Well, I would love to start with
your conflict, negotiations background.
And then move into your Work as a law enforcement officer and
then go into anti-corruption and illicit networks and Canada.
How about that? Okay, sounds great.
Today, we welcome Calvin Christie, a retired member of
the RCMP who've worked conflict negotiation, with the UN and
Canadian Armed Forces during the Bosnian war.
After the conflict Calvin, used his skills to also conduct
International hostage negotiations and then got into
counter criminal and state-sponsored threat Networks.
In this episode Calvin talks about his experience in conflict
and hostage, negotiation, and shares tips and tricks to help
people in the field with relationship building and
negotiations. So, please join me in welcoming
Calvin to the show, we'll probably where I first
professionally was engaged in Conflict negotiations, other
than the average normal police function or with was was
probably On my first tour with the UN in the former Yugoslavia
at the height of the war in 1993, where I was employed as a
peacekeeper was the mission. But in reality quickly learned
it was peacemaking because there was no peace to keep at that
time, it started off with a Serbian military officer and his
father being abducted and kidnapped by the Croatian
military and then quickly evolve to a Counter Corrections,
military officer, and others being kidnapped, and the warring
parties were looking for people to assist and support.
I was approached by the families of the warring parties and the
families of the hostages and quickly got immersed in the
world of conflict. Negotiations.
And my background on it other than human Source cultivation or
in my other job that I held. I was a drug enforcement at that
time in Vancouver focused at Target team looking at Mother
Ship operations globally and working with the Us and other
International agencies in the early 90s.
So you've learned Hewitt from working, basically, with leads
in, on the ground, to track motherships.
Now, that was part of it, but I have worked significant amount
of human work in a number of criminal settings.
It quickly transformed when I was in there, the former
Yugoslavia to be very useful because of the similar skill
set. IE, Rapport building, trust
building something that was virtually absent in these type
of settings, and probably one of the top skilled probably
required in that, and I did that time know how to spell the word
negotiation. And I learned it from the School
of Hard Knocks. Right.
And you also had experienced some really traumatic moments.
I remember in our last conversation, you're talking
about executions. Front of you and other events
that were happening as you're trying to build trust with these
groups. Yeah, I mean in this particular
setting, there were significant exposure to traumatic situations
because we were being used by the warring parties as a trust
mechanism, in such things as missing persons which equate to
mass Graves. So we were being used in shuttle
diplomacy at that time. I was the first un person
allowed and detention centers in the A war, like the military
Detention Center going into those settings.
Obviously, there was a significant issues farting
torture and other type of situations and then when I
wasn't in the detention centers, we were doing body exchanges
which wasn't the most Pleasant type of negotiations I've ever
done. And that was basically
truckloads of bodies being swapped for truckloads of bodies
on the other side. And I don't mean to drag you.
Through all that, I apologize. No, that's okay.
I'm fine with it. Well, the exposure, though.
I know that's tough. But also, why were they dragging
you into that type of negotiation?
Was it to shock you or to see if you would break or to build
trust what was going on the warring parties.
In this particular case were genuinely interested in looking
for people that could assist them to deal with this very
acute. Lying perpetuating intense
intractable conflict which again I reference the u.s. experience
in. Vietnam, probably the one of the
most aggravating open wounds of a war.
Is that poww issue and the guy we're dealing with.
I think we're genuinely knowing that they needed a third party
to do it. I was a really young guy at that
time. I was 29 years old and I came
into that war of A year into it. There was a tens of thousands of
un folks in it, but there weren't that many people that
were stepping into this Arena full of atrocity and a lot of
unpleasant experience. And so I think there was a
genuine interest from the warring parties.
They realized me that they trusted mechanism for shuttle
diplomacy between the two different sides where they could
build some trust amongst each other by sharing some very dark
secrets that were going to put them in jeopardy.
In terms of an international court and what we're going to
get them jammed up or into a situation politically.
Yeah, that's a tough role to be in the middle of.
Yeah, it was a really tough role in it to be quite honest.
It seems very surreal. I still reflect back on it and
that's 30 years ago and it still seems not a little too, real
completely surreal. Sure somebody growing up in
Canada, the us or otherwise it's really hard to Fathom.
Those type of Situations unless you have lived through them.
And I I still even though I've lived through them I'm still
kind of reflect on. Was that a dream?
Yeah, I can. Imagine that it goes off into
the back corners of your mind as this isn't really real.
This is more of a Dreamscape than actually facing that
reality. So and I apologize again for
dragging you through it. I I just wanted to get some
context about it. They Jackie, it's something.
I think that really important for people to talk about, I talk
about it all the time. Universities when it keeps
negotiations and everybody goes hey how do you do all those real
interesting cool things and that's but I did them through
the School of Hard Knocks and there's no shortcuts doing it
and although probably I would safe to say that probably some
of the darkest moments of my life.
They were probably some of the most rewarding cherished moments
of my life including lifelong friendships that came out of it.
So more positive than good okay. And Do you have any
recommendations for folks that are working in the field on
negotiations? I hope most of the people on
this podcast are not dealing with that level of violence, or
extreme Behavior, but I'm sure you had some takeaways, it's
actually a great question. Probably one that you didn't
think about, but a very good intuitive question, because, as
I mentioned, I didn't know how to spell the negotiation, and
I've spent 30 years trying to figure out what made it so
successful when I didn't know. Know, anything about negotiation
strategies tactics or processes? What made me?
So successful in those moments and during that context, if I
was to go, hey, what's the top three things?
And I'm quick writing a panic in my head.
Go, what are the top three things?
One comes to mind is genuine part driven empathy.
I care for people, I respect people.
I think I learnt that my childhood from two great parents
that instilled Right virtues principle values and belief
systems upon myself. And that drove me through the
adversity of those difficult negotiations.
The second thing I would probably suggest was just being
really humbled in the process. And again, I learnt this from my
family background and I was looking at these people, unlike
other people were looking at them and probably kind of was
Tied into my humans background and that was really looking at
the people as people and not thinking I was smarter than they
were because I realized that, although they were perhaps
Farmers from a war-torn country or they weren't Western
Democratic country. I always was cautious in terms
of thinking They may always be smarter than myself and I kept
that at the back of mine that allowed me to analyze and
anticipate problems and issues and impediments and challenges
and risks within the negotiation process.
And I think the last one would probably be again more about a
principle and value in terms of the negotiation process and I
took that when I was dealing with these people as well.
So those should probably be the creepy thing empathy the
humbleness Us and the respect. And the empathy was my
motivator. The humility was my analyzer and
my respect I think was my report Builder.
Interesting. I've ever heard of dissected
that way. I've never heard it that way.
Till you ask the question and it's really simple is similar to
Chris Voss who was the FBI's hostage negotiator for a long
time until he retired and started his own.
Phone book called Never split the difference.
Yes, I mean Chris and I work together, I met Chris.
After 9/11, coincidentally, the FBI had asked Chris as one of
their negotiators to travel to Phoenix for a meeting after 9/11
to develop best practices, Lessons Learned, better social,
psychological theories to deal with terrorism.
And at the same time, they ask Christy asked.
Myself to attend the meetings, with Chris and we attended and
met with dr. Roberts aldini.
And that really gave us like unbelievable insight to the
social psychology Laboratories and the research that I've done
over several decades in the field of persuasion and
influence, in negotiations with her tangentially, the names of
his books, persuasion and influence.
Yeah. Which I've read but they're
terrific and insightful. The funny thing about it here,
The books to document the practices of influence and
persuasion. But when people read them, they
flipped it to where they became the guidebook for creating
influence and persuasion. Yes.
And I think something that's not talked about those books for
those that are interested in the field of negotiations and
conflict, almost like a curse. Because I had the benefit of
studying it so much, you know, with the interaction with dr.
Gel Deanie, and then subsequently.
You know, traveling down there, taking courses through his
research, more importantly, something that's not talked
about it that much about them, which I think readers and many
others would benefit is the ability to use his research for
defensive purposes. Not only offensive purposes, so
he talks about how to use them to accelerate relationship,
building and Trust building. But when you understand them,
intimately, You can quickly identify and mitigate when
others are using these methods against you in a non-genuine
manipulative way, and try to very good defensive method.
And sometimes it's a bit of a curse because you're having an
interaction with somebody and they start doing it.
And all the sudden you start feeling as you're inside.
Exact person starts going off your like, this guy's trying to
work me. Yeah.
Have you had that moment where you're in negotiations?
And you're like, wait a minute. This guy's this guy's trying to
push a button daily. I've got it.
I've got a 16 year old stepson that tries to use them all the
time. I read robbers books and he
said, I'm going to try that one next.
Yeah. Yeah.
Where has the Walk of it? If you read some of the posts,
you know, in the field of negotiations, there's built-in
tackle. Generations.
And some of the language is, sometimes I find.
Yeah. I see all kinds of trigger words
in posts as well as where they're trying to use emotive
language in order to get you to sway one way or another, on an
issue. Yeah.
Okay. So this is where you were and
now, you've been also working throughout Canada on spotting
foreign malign influence. Yes.
And Corruption, right? Yes, I did some back after
several tours in the war. Or there and got involved with
Community complex. You know what I'm talking about,
the violent kind of blockade, standoffs not as violent as
Waco, but, you know, similar group dynamics, and then
overseas dealing with a lot of terrorist incidents in terms of
kidnappings, which you referred to earlier, in terms of the
negotiations, where people were actually executed during the
course of the negotiations. And then my work back here was
in the investigative world. Essentially the majority of my
career and then from about 2007 onward, involved transnational,
organized crime activities, particularly with a focus on
Chinese networks, Iranian networks, and cartel operations
that continued until working intimately with the u.s.
entities, including Special Operations, Division of the DEA,
but also working with the FBI Homeland Security.
And then In the broader context of the five eyes.
And then in 2018, after working, in that space, I went into the
private sector where I decided I had enough of the public sector.
And I was about to try to Pivot into a new area that I quickly
realized. I wasn't going to get social
support from which was, I wanted to go be a bartender.
And that lasted for about a day you got vetoed on being a
Bartender, I got beat up for being a bartender.
I didn't plan on retiring at all and you know, I thought I'd do
another couple of years and then one day I just walked back to
the office after the week of training with some young guys
and I thought that was pretty enjoyable and then the next
thought that went through my head was that that was fun.
Working with the young guys, I never work with young guys,
always work with these executive then I thought to myself, what
the hell? I joined to have fun.
What I'm doing is not fun anymore, dealing with freakin
drama, and all this. Other stuff, I've done
everything I've wanted to do right then there, I looked at my
computer screen, turned it off. Back to my briefcase, never went
back to work, just like that. I said to my wife, I am quitting
RCMP and she goes, well, when taking a look at your weather,
no, no. I'm sending the email tonight
and it's so she says, well, what are you going to do?
I says I got no fucking idea bartender.
She Goes Over My Dead Body, you're not coming home at 4:00
5:00 at night. You're you're an old bad you're
not going to do that. That's you.
Your boss is sitting at his desk right now.
Looking at his watch going. I'll give him another 10 minutes
on that break, and then I'm really going to call.
Yeah, I wanted something completely different.
I enjoy talking to people. Enjoy meeting new people and I
enjoy Mixology. And Of Mescal and Tequila than
that. But anyway, so I quickly then
got dragged back into National Security, foreign State
activity, transnational networks threats, risk and all of a
sudden, I got out of it and it was back into on the private
side with people being missed or disappearing in Syria.
To then foreign operators, possibly targeting Canadian
businessmen to illicit Finance issues, Etc.
So I got involved in that in the private sector and it continued
to be with the critical risk team, which is a collective
group managed by three of us inclusive of my American
business partner. I Mark far, he's former FBI out
of Miami and the three of us are in this space.
Working in the private sector with c-suite Executives law
firms investing companies ngos. But a lot of our work is in that
space of the Contemporary risks and threats posed for an
actor's, not all. But a fair amount of our work is
in that space and we're very Boutique and we've got people
from our intelligence backgrounds, from military,
backgrounds, and ourselves, and police backgrounds, obviously,
working in that space with our clients.
And from that, you started to see criminality in Canada,
right? I started seeing those State
actors in that high level stuff back in 2007 and continued to
see it. Till the time I left the federal
police force, then I went into the private sector and I
thought, you know, I'm going to miss that Intrigue and insight
relative to what's going on in the after dark, so to speak.
And then I got involved in the private side and I realized
quite quickly. My visibility on the private
side was equal to to what I was seeing on the government side
because so much of as to what was going on in the cities and
the communities in the corporate board rooms in the law, offices
was concerning in terms of foreign State actors and the
illicit activities that were taking place, but nobody was
talking to the government or the police about it because of the
reputational risk issue. So it was this almost
underground track environment. This invisible wall between
government. The private sector in this
space. Yeah, there's definitely a wall
between private practice and the government.
Do you want to talk a little bit about global competition from
your perspective in Canada? Yeah, the lens here is very
clear. We are the fourth largest port
in North America, Long Beach, La New York, then Vancouver.
The reality is in terms of illicit activities, and
Cornbread, actives are equal to Any of those large cities and
maybe even greater than New York greater than LA and greater than
Long Beach. Why?
Because in Long Beach LA and New York, you have the FBI, you've
got the homeland security, you've got DEA, you have all the
other federal agencies you have a very robust legal system and
authorities compared to what We have here and our legal system,
constrains us significantly. So what we see here particularly
in Toronto and Vancouver is the convergence of the threat
activities, and the threat actor was from the Iranian networks,
and from the Chinese that are collaborating with the cartel
and when I watch Netflix, when I push, Just came out the show.
Narcos, yes. Okay.
When I came home to watch it it was like the continuation of my
working day, the same names, the same family.
The people were flying in the people were flying out.
I don't mean that just the same part tells I'm not talking about
just the Sinaloa, not just the Guadalajara, not just the Zetas,
or whatever. I'm talking about.
The real people and characters and leaders of the cartel, or
their brother, or their wife, or their daughter, or whatever
else, right they can. Urgency of for transshipment.
So the world's largest New Market.
So what are you gonna do? Throw it on a whole bunch of
trucks. 2,000 trucks, a day coming across the border and
three or four them, or five of them.
Are going to have something on it.
That was the whole strategy rather than doing a large
shipments. Guzman took the answer mentality
and sent 2010. If we pick off, you know, one
answer to answer every couple of weeks or a month, it really
wasn't going to have any negative impact in terms of risk
considerations. Options for himself and his
operations in the both. The load is a lot more but it's
very similar to smurfing. Yeah, cool.
Very, very wise intelligence risk management strategy, on
behalf of the cartels and then it had the two networks that
were desperately interested in collaborating, and that was the
Chinese networks and the Iranian networks.
So the illicit criminal networks, the Chinese mobs, your
rainy ins and probably the North Answer sounds like have some
connection with the cartels. Yeah, we saw in Vancouver and
Toronto, significant Iranian networks, and Chinese networks
with the cartels. And we saw that in the narcos,
fear the money laundering domain and now, the interconnectivity,
between these Narco issues and illicit Finance issues and I
reference a book that squinted at least being in front of me
called willful blindness written by Sam Cooper.
A documented this and then it got into the political foreign
interference, the corruption, the Espionage, the fentanyl
issues on and on and on and a lot of people don't realize the
fentanyl to actually took place on the streets of Vancouver
before anywhere else. When we first started seeing it,
there was hardly anything in the US.
And when you look at the main players globally in the world,
you'll see that a lot. Them have ties to Vancouver in
terms of the top Triads. And coincidentally, we were
seeing a lot of family members of the top cartel folks hanging
out here regularly, the approach is incongruent with the needs to
deal with the threats, right? So do you see it as a risk to
them? Being in the five eyes?
Yeah, the conversations I've had inside and now, I can safely say
I'm sorry. There has been in a growing
increasing concern with Canada within the five eyes.
And I think we saw, you know, the response to that with the
security pact. Because this.
Yeah, and, you know, there was a lot of suggesting that it was
just a, some packed when most other people already anticipated
in suspected. It was much more and then as its
evolved in a very short time in the last whatever it is year or
less, you know, Quantum came into being another technology.
These are going to have huge huge impact on National
Security. I think Canada sadly got pendant
on China, not only financially but politically right it becomes
undeniable to the infrastructure.
I really don't think that there's a real good public
dialogue in Canada from anyone everybody I look at that's
engaged in this seems to be influence and compromise.
We based on where their funding sources are, you know, and
that's that that includes even the ngos and there's an
increasing concern with, in some Circles of Academia and think
tanks that. Even some of the ngos have been
influenced to take a term out there.
I don't think there is such a term, but I'll make it up today
to vanilla lie. The Narrative on the degree of
concerns and thread activities in Canada.
Sure. This is one of the challenges we
promote interdependency because we're trying to keep a global
economic system afloat, but we do it in a way to where we try
to leverage Partners in order to gain foreign policy goals.
But it's a double-edged sword because countries like China and
Russia. They also know the skill of
diplomacy and inner tangling of economics and politics and it
can be just as impactful to us. And it's a challenge to try to
keep that balance. It is a particularly, with our
political systems, you know where we're on these 4-year
cycles and these other people are on these 10, 15 years
Cycles. They just let themselves in the
power for as long as they want. Yeah.
And they're in the game of chess and we're in the game of 52
Pickup. Everything that we're doing is
reactionary. Extremely concerned about it.
Yeah, I can see why. Good strategy, you can't compete
with another person strategy. I was explaining to a friend of
mine about Taiwan and that is, if their narrative only focuses
on their relationship to China, then China has already won until
Taiwan builds. Its own Narrative of how it
positions itself in the world and its relationship to the
International Community. It will never overcome the
conditions that it's in right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we are almost up to an
hour. Is there any last thoughts?
Well, I don't know if it fits. I can make it fit, but I guess
I'm the editor. Throw it out and probably
because it ties back to the original part of the
conversation. You know, if that we all take
the time to reflect and ensure that we're doing our due
diligence and making efforts to do the right thing to protect
the interest of the Next Generation like others before us
did. I said, that's an excellent
close. I appreciate that.
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 see a
podcasting at gmail.com? I'll have the email and see
association website in the show notes.
And now most importantly to those currently out in the
field, working with a partner Nations, people or leadership to
forward us relations. Thank you all for what you're
doing. This is Jack your host, stay
tuned for more great episodes. 1, c a podcast.
Jack your host, stay tuned for more great episodes. 1, c a
podcast.