FBI Undercover & Negotiating Career Ft. Melissa Fortunato

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. This is where we look at data, important people, interesting issues, et cetera, from two generations. I'm the old person, as you'll soon detect from my lack of memory, and Paige is the young person. Paige, you may want to introduce yourself.

Paige:

Yes, I'm the millennial.

David:

Okay. Good. And we are very fortunate today to have Melissa Fortunato here who has a phenomenal, phenomenal background starting out as a psychologist, then working for 23 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, both as an undercover agent and then as a chief negotiator. And now, Melissa's chosen to retire and has her own organization called Alchemy now, is that the one, Melissa?

Melissa:

That's correct.

David:

And we'll hear all about that. So without further ado, thank you so much for joining us, Melissa.

Melissa:

I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you both for inviting me. This is exciting.

Paige:

So we always kind of like to start out asking our guests, where did you grow up? What made you choose to study psychology? I'm really interested in psychology. It's what I've been studying. And then how did you end up kind of doing what you're doing now?

Melissa:

Perfect. Well, I realized in, obviously, my training as an FBI agent, I had to look into you guys a little bit before, not at the level I could in the FBI. Paige, I see you went to school in Philadelphia, which is where I'm from.

Paige:

Yes. I'm here now at Drexel.

Melissa:

Oh, so you're in Philly now?

David:

Yeah.

Paige:

Yes.

David:

We're in Philadelphia as we speak right here in...

Melissa:

Oh, great. Yeah, so that's the city I grew up sort of... Not in city, but right outside. I got married in Philadelphia. So yes, I am an East Coast Philly girl.

Paige:

Go Birds.

Melissa:

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Very interested in psychology, even as a kid, always fascinated with people and why they do bad things. So went to school for psychology, got out, became a counselor and worked in that arena, and I thought that that's where I would continue eventually going on to become a psychologist. In the victim advocacy work that I did, I worked at a rape crisis center. We got involved in the court system to help the victims walk through all the different processes that happened, and from that, I really learned more about the justice system and had an interest in it, but I did not think I'd want to be in law enforcement.

So it's funny how your life turns out, now talking as a retired law enforcement officer, but one conversation led to another and someone I worked with said they always wanted to be an FBI agent. It was never on my radar screen, never thought about it in a million years. And I just thought, oh, that'd be interesting because it's like being a detective, but I didn't have to be a street cop. I just didn't see me doing that. And then I talked to some people that I worked with and said... I worked with some police officers and I thought, let me ask them, "What do you think about me being an FBI agent?" And I thought, if they laugh at me, that tells me all I need to know and I should move on to other things. What ended up happening was, one police officer that I asked, he was like, "You have to do it. I know a guy," And it just got a life of its own.

Next thing I know, an FBI agent is calling me and saying, "Come see me, let's sit down and talk about it." And in fairness, I said yes to each next step, maybe not fully understanding where it was going to take me. And then next thing you know, I'm in Quantico saying, "Uh oh, what did I do? How'd I get here?" But the cool part is, now I'm sitting here, 24 years after that and had an amazing career that taught me so much that sort of shaped me into the person I am today. It was the best, maybe not fully conscious, decision I've ever made, so it was great.

David:

Where did you first join? The police force, the people that you talked to and the policemen, were they in Philadelphia or elsewhere?

Melissa:

No, in a suburb outside of... It was actually a county detective that we did a lot of work with on our sexual assault cases.

David:

Oh wow. What county? We got to ask if we know the area.

Melissa:

Delaware County.

David:

Oh yeah.

Paige:

Oh, my boyfriend's from Delco.

David:

Delco, is it not?

Melissa:

Yeah. It's a real thing. That's so funny.

Paige:

Lots of pride out there.

Melissa:

It's the breed, for sure. Yes.

Paige:

Were you nervous the first time you went undercover?

Melissa:

A hundred percent, yeah.

Paige:

Really?

Melissa:

And many times after. And this is why I tell people, because people ask, they go, "Oh, do you ever get nervous?" Yes, I'm a normal human being. But it's just learning, over time, how to manage those fears and understanding why you feel certain ways. And so, you would always be nervous, that forces you to prepare, over prepare as best you can, working a lot with other undercovers and making sure our stories were straight, making sure we really did a good strategic analysis of our targets in our environment and understanding what we were walking into. And then there's a point where you have to say, "Okay, I've done everything I can to mitigate as much concern, but I understand I'm still stepping into an arena that is unknown." And you just kind of have to go with it and hope you can talk yourself out of a bad situation if that occurs.

David:

Wow. Give us an example of what kind of organizations you went undercover into.

Melissa:

The thing I loved about the FBI, which, to me, makes it the best job in the world, was, you could work all different things and your targets are different, how you dress is different, your hours are different, even as an FBI agent, but really as an undercover. So I did drug work, I did weapons trafficking work, I did counterintelligence. What is cool is, you just have to figure out where you can fit. No, I don't look like somebody who would be on the corner of a rough part of town buying small amounts of crack cocaine, but there's a way for me to be in the drug world, it just has to be a story that fits. And the thing that I think is cool that the FBI does is, we can kind of create stories. We can create situations where it works for me looking how I look or maybe dressing how I look.

And you'll change that up depending on the case, but you can kind of make it anything that fits for you and just get yourself in. It also comes back to how you're introduced in a certain situation. We use sources and informants a lot, and if you have a good source or informant introducing you, this is probably true, even in business with networking and stuff, if you have the right person making the introduction, there's a lot less questions and pushback on who you are and why you're in the room. And so, we use that a lot, even in the FBI.

Paige:

I read briefly about the fake wedding that you had. I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit about that.

Melissa:

Sure, sure. I mean, what a great experience. I was very lucky in my career that early on, I went through... The FBI does a two week undercover course to help you become not certified, but kind of certified to do undercover work, and then from there, it's up to you to pick and choose what you get involved in. And a lot of it is, people that you work with, if they're involved in a case, they may invite you in because they feel a connection, they're comfortable working with you. So that's what happened. I had met another undercover who was... At the time, I was young... A lot of the time, I was young, 30... That's very young to me now. And the agent that I started working with was a much more senior agent, he was around fifties, mid fifties. He had done, at this point, so much undercover work that that's what he was doing full time.

And he was involved in a case and the targets were introducing him to the next level target, and it was a significant introduction. The potential criminal activity we could have got involved with was a next level involving other countries, maybe not friendly countries and their military and their government officials. And so very significant, obviously something the FBI wants to move forward with, but the undercover was told that... We were supposed to go to a foreign country, Thailand, because that target didn't want to come to the United States for fear of the FBI and being arrested. It's funny how life sort of works on both ends. So they were inviting the undercover to a foreign country, but they said to him, when you come over here, we will set you up with women, which, obviously as FBI agents, you can't do. He was a father and a husband and for a lot of reasons, wouldn't want to get involved in that.

So I really started just as a way for him to avoid an uncomfortable situation. So I went as his girlfriend just to help him be able to have something to say on why he would not engage in that behavior. And from there... It's funny, another couple went with us and by the end of the two weeks that we were there, Lou and I sort of bonded in the awkwardness of this adventure we had taken together where the other couple hated each other. They could not stand each other by the end, which is probably true in personal relationships, right? A vacation could make or break a relationship. And we were just sitting over there and it was going really well. We made the introduction with the next level, a big weapons deal was negotiated, money, drugs.

So very successful, hoping to move forward with it, but the case agent said, "I have no idea how we're going to arrest all the people in this case because now we have overseas targets, now we have targets throughout the country." And I jokingly said, "You should have Lou and I get married and say this vacation solidified our relationship." And I said, "Let's invite them to the wedding." And I was legitimately joking, and to the case agent's credit, he said, "We're totally doing that."

David:

Oh, come on.

Melissa:

And so, for the next year and a half or next little over a year, we planned a fake wedding, we sent invitations, I got a huge four karat diamond ring that I got to wear every time we went, which was amazing, and we got to the point that we invited everybody to come to us for what they thought was going to be our wedding on this fancy yacht.

David:

Oh, come on.

Melissa:

And we had a bachelor bachelorette party, we had a rehearsal dinner, and then on the day of the wedding, we said to the targets, we will have limousines come pick you up at your hotels and they'll drive you to the yacht we were going to get married on, which didn't exist, and they were undercover FBI agents driving the limousines. They picked them up and said we just have to stop at one other guest's office because they had to go to work today, and they drove them to an FBI office and as soon as they pulled in, FBI agents converged on the limousines and they all got arrested in their suits carrying presents for us for the wedding. It was an amazing, amazing experience, and for me to get involved in that early in my undercover career with someone that was so much more senior, it was a wonderful learning experience too.

David:

Oh, that is unbelievable. Wow.

Paige:

Do you feel like, even though they're targets, you find empathy and points of connection with them and it makes it easier or more difficult in some ways?

Melissa:

Yeah, you're right. Both. A hundred percent. I think, in anything, whether my life as a hostage negotiator, my life as an undercover, my life as a human being, you want to make that connection, right? That's the most important thing, and that's where people really trust you. So in undercover work, that is critical, is the ingratiation, the connection that you can make that allows people to feel comfortable to tell you things that they're doing that maybe they're hiding from other people, people like me, from my prior self. And so, yes. And it's important for the work and it does put you in an awkward position sometimes. So with the wedding case, an example of that was, at the arrest, one of the targets that we dealt with the most was like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe you arrested Lou and Melissa on their wedding day." And then the agent said, "Actually, they're undercovers."

And I think it kicked in for him in that moment. And then to his credit, what he said was, "Okay, I get it. This is a game. I understand I'm on one side, you guys are on the other. I lost this one." He had dealt with Lou so much that he wanted to talk to him after the arrest, and I think it was important for him to work through some of that connection, Paige, that you talk about, and how it ended up, and just needed to make it right at the end. But it's happened to me in my life as an agent arresting people too. It's interesting how people reach for connection in crisis moments like that.

David:

Oh, so people reach out to you when you're arresting them?

Melissa:

So for the FBI, we do long-term investigations, so obviously a lot of our targets know we're around when it comes toward the end. And many times, we have conversations with their attorneys to negotiate the arrest or surrender, however that happens. We had a large scale corruption case, and what ended up happening was, by the time we went to arrest one of the targets, we had done search warrants, he knew who we were, and when we knocked on his door at six in the morning, he sends his wife to the door, which I thought was interesting, but once we stepped in his hallway, we could hear him yelling from upstairs, "Melissa and Kirk, is that you?" And I said, "Yeah, it's us. I told you we'd be back." And he was like, "Okay, I'm glad it's you."

Because I think in that moment, your life sort of falls apart in that moment and you just look for some comfort. And at least we were familiar. He knew we would not make the process more difficult than it needed to be. If you are good with me, I'm good with you. We can walk through this process. And so, I think the thing I loved about my job is that humanness that shows up in these strange situations that we found ourselves. Moments like that just makes me laugh. Like, I'm coming to arrest you, but you're happy I'm here?

Paige:

That's so interesting.

David:

That's funny. Yeah. We had a podcast with a guy, he was a Secret Service agent and he was undercover. Secret Service, they're first responsible for counterfeiting and treasury, so they would also do the crypto guys and the hackers. So he had to deal with Russian hackers and he'd have to get to know them online, et cetera, but then to meet them, he can't go to Russia, right? So he had the same thing that you did, he'd have to meet him at a resort in Thailand. And a couple things, one, he said it was hell to get the Secret Service agent to justify him to go to a resort. He said, "I got to go to this resort." They said, "No, you don't need to go to this resort."

Melissa:

I bet.

David:

Then he went to the resort. But then when we started talking to him, it was clear he had so much in common with them. He said, "I had so much fun partying with these guys. I'd stay up late all night drinking, we would have a blast." So you could see there was a lot of empathy between the two. Anyway, it was interesting. It was really interesting.

Melissa:

And I think, obviously being a good undercover, he was always seeking out those areas of, how are we similar? Not how are we different, and it's me against you. It's a different way to approach it than being an investigator, although I would even say as an FBI agent, you should seek areas of connection and a way to ingratiate yourself to the person, because even in interrogation, it gives you the information, right? So yeah,

David:

Well, this guy was like that because the US attorney, that we had as part of our show, he said, "Oh yeah, when I'd go over to Thailand with him, he'd say, 'Come on, the plane leaves at 6:00 AM. Let's just stay up till 6:00 AM drinking and then get on the plane'." He was on the job all the time. Anyway, I'll let you...

Paige:

Do you feel like there's benefits to being a woman in crisis negotiation? Do you think that some people feel like a woman will have a softer touch or are just easier to open up to? Have you found that at all?

Melissa:

I'll say, in my world as an FBI agent, I was in the minority. When I came in, there was probably 13% female agents. By the time I left though, to the credit of the FBI, there was about 20%, but that's still not a lot. I did find that me being a woman helped me in every area that I worked. Even as an agent, many times I would go out, I would be the only female in the room, but it really helped me a lot. We had a search warrant one time, and this would happen often, obviously as you show up on scene, heightened emotions, a lot of strong reactions, which I always anticipated. If you came to my house and potentially the threat of me going to jail or someone I love going to jail, I would expect a lot of strong feelings, panic, and so I'm ready to deal with that. There would be a lot of police officers that would just meet that anger with anger. It doesn't fix anything, it just escalates it.

So many times, my approach with my psychology background, it was easier to do, was just to talk to them about it and learn more about it, and it just softens that and then it would deescalate the situation. So I think that's what led me, also, into crisis negotiations. It's almost like my psychology background, like counseling, it was a way to have that conversation. Now, depending on the type of negotiation you're doing, we did a lot of kidnap for ransom. It's very different than a crisis negotiation, a barricaded subject that doesn't want to go to jail. It's less crisis in a kidnap for ransom because it's like a business. It's planned, it's intentional, there's a purpose, where a crisis response, a lot of times, it's just an emotional response, and then you have to work through that. Both have positive and negatives or things that make it easier or more challenging to deal with.

David:

On the hostage negotiation, is it really just a dollars and cents kind of negotiation where they start high and you start low and you come in the middle? How does it work?

Melissa:

Yeah, many times. On a kidnap for ransom, usually the victim is just leverage to get something. And so, a lot of times, it really gets into just the back and forth. It's managing expectations, it's stalling so you can try to figure out if there's any other options to do. So I got involved in a kidnap for ransom case with the terrorist group, the Taliban, US citizen taken hostage over in Afghanistan.

David:

Wow.

Melissa:

Now some terrorist groups, ISIS started like this or was like this, where it really was just a power play to show how strong and brutal we can be because that's the image we want to portray. Yes, they would want money to continue funding themselves, but a lot of it was really to just send a message, and that's why they had a lot of those brutal videos that you'll see of people in cages and setting them on fire and unfortunately chopping heads off. They really wanted to create the fear. Now, the other case I have with the Taliban, they just wanted money. That's really all they wanted. And so it was just working our way through that, trying to figure out how much or how little we can pay while simultaneously dealing with every other government agency and the military about, could we do a rescue?

 And so there's always a lot of things going on behind the scenes, and that's our job as negotiators to really come in and walk the family through all the options, help them navigate the emotions because highly emotional for them, but you really need someone to come in and say, "Hey, I've seen this 15, 30, a hundred times." Maybe I haven't seen hundreds of them, but the FBI has seen hundreds of them and I can use all of our information, our collective information, to tell you about patterns, practices. I can tell you what to predict, which, for the families, it's, hopefully, one time for them and they need us to come in and say, "We've seen this a lot. This is usually what happens," And as we move through when those things start happening, it builds that trust, that they believe that we do know what we're talking about and that we can help them.

And then we are coming together with a group of us where we're helping them navigate these other areas of a release or something like that, that obviously they couldn't do on their own. So there's just a lot that goes on, but it is very much a business in a kidnap for ransom, very much.

David:

And we'll talk about ransomware in a little bit, but that the FBI, at least the sort of legend is that the FBI says you shouldn't pay the ransomware or they discouraged you paying the ransomware. And then you hear from others who say, well, you got to pay the ransomware. That's the price of doing business and it's a business. So I just want to get your views on that and what you think you should do.

Melissa:

I think you are right. As a government agency, and we say this in kidnap for ransom cases, we're not going to pay the ransom, the government is not paying the ransom. Now, if the family makes a decision, that is a personal decision. Very much like in a ransomware, if the company makes a decision. It's almost an existential question because you are rewarding bad behavior. And so in a perfect world, we would all love to say, "Well, don't pay. I'm not going to pay you," Because this is feeding bad behavior. The reality is, if you want your family member back or you want your business continuity back up online, you have to face those questions. But the counter to that is, you're also dealing with bad actors that clearly have not shown themselves to be upstanding human beings. And so then there's, can you trust them that, if you pay, are you getting it all back? In a ransomware, are they able to decrypt it? So you could pay and they can't or something happens and now you've lost money and your business?

I don't have the perfect answer for that. I really don't. It's on a case by case basis, and that's why I think it's so important for people to have a really good team to walk through all the possible scenarios that could happen and to just make as best informed decisions as you can. I know in some of the kidnap for ransom cases that we had, there were families willing to pay, and there were other government agencies that were saying, "If you pay it, we're going to arrest you because you're funding a terrorist organization." That is a law, but are we really going to do that? So there were times that the FBI and the State Department were fighting over... The FBI saying, "I know you could arrest them. You're not going to arrest them, is what we're saying. This poor family does not need this over their heads right now. Can we separate ourselves?"

So there were a lot of changes done during Barack Obama's presidency where they had to address this issue with the way the government was handling it and conflicting stories from different government agencies. And so a lot changed after that time. But yes, there is always the constant response of, at least from the government's position, you shouldn't pay. I just think that's a bigger message they're trying to send. And I understand that that is a true statement, but there is a reality that people need to weigh.

David:

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, when those pirates, the Somali pirates, we interviewed a professor in England and she wrote a book on it, but she advised, she said passing a law against paying ransom to them was really not a good idea because it just limited your ability to do anything. Anyway, that's...

Melissa:

And I'm sure that the FBI, at higher levels than I ever was, is always asking themselves, is there a different way we can approach this issue, kidnap for ransom or ransomware, because it's becoming such a big thing now? It really is becoming a national security issue. And we have to be smart in helping people when they are a victim. We have to be doing everything we can to try to stop people from even getting to that point that they're victims. And then is there any other creative ways that we can go after these targets to make this less lucrative for them? It's a game, right? Crime is as old as time, and we're always chasing, they're always evolving, we're always evolving to try to figure different ways to stop them. We figure out one way, they adjust and do something different, but there has to be something that's done. I don't know what it is.

I don't have all the answers, especially from the tech part. I lean much towards you, David, where I'm much more human centered than tech centered. But we have so many smart people that it's like, we have to come together and figure this out because it really is becoming such a big business for all the wrong people.

Paige:

Was that predicted? Did the FBI and other government agencies, did they know that ransomware would be the problem it's now becoming today or is it kind of taken everyone by a surprise?

Melissa:

No, I think they start to see it as it's happening. The hard part is the first time it happens, the second, the third, you're then chasing it, right? And they're always that little bit ahead of you. But I do think the FBI, the government itself, has done some creative things to try to hit them. I know there's times they're able to go in and take the money back. And that's why I think it is so important for people... I get the emotion around it and I get wanting to keep it quiet and in a small circle of people, but I would encourage people, if you are a victim of ransomware, to reach out for help to the FBI, to an instant response company because I think those people coming together can help you manage it better.

You know, there's so much else going on on the larger picture, you are the small part of it and your company, but depending on the size of the company, I guess you could be a big part of it, but it's important, I think, to engage people that look at it from the macro level also, because there may be something they can help you with. Maybe they've seen this group before, and again, like kidnap for ransom, they can tell you the patterns and practices that they've seen, but if you keep it so tight, you're just trying to navigate around it yourself and not maybe knowing what to expect.

David:

Before we say anything, I'm very impressed by the fact that you were in the FBI. It's unbelievable. I've had the opportunity... It's unbelievable. I had the opportunity to go out to Quantico about six months ago or so, and it is astonishing. I mean, the level of the professionalism and the quality of the training and everything is phenomenal. And one of the reasons I was there, I don't think this is secret, the FBI has been very good about encouraging exactly what you're saying because I could think they call it 'don't victimize the victim' because before, companies would be reluctant to call in the law enforcement because they figure, "Well, we're going to get in trouble because we've got the data out," But they say that they give pretty good assurances now that they're not going to go after you if you report it. I don't know, you probably know more about it than I do.

Melissa:

Yeah. No, I think that that's true and I think that, like anything, has evolved over time and that we are learning that it is much more important for us to get more information because the more people that report, you can create this picture, you can understand the process better, which then helps us be smarter in how we tackle it or how they tackle it, since I'm out. And I think that is important because it's true for any business, right? If you get the right FBI agent, I guess, on the phone, it depends on who you get, but I think most FBI agents do want to help and then they can reach out to the larger FBI. And so, you just may be getting one or two agents in your field office, but they really bring a lot of institutional knowledge and support to that, and it's free because it's government, so why not bring that to your situation to help?

David:

Tell us what caused you to transition. So did you stop being undercover and then transition to being a negotiator or was it sort of a blend of skills over time?

Melissa:

Yes. So I started when I was young and fresh and had energy to do a lot of things. I started undercover when I was fearless and then, well, not fearless, but then I got married, I got pregnant with our first daughter, so I have two daughters now, and as I was going through that process, I just didn't want to be away from them as much as my undercover work prior to my girls was taking me away a lot. And it was fun and amazing and great and it's some of my best stories, you just have to make choices and I didn't want to do that as much. So I stopped doing the majority of undercover work. I have done, over my other years after that, little bits here and there, but it was much more contained, was not longer term and maybe not as dangerous with some of the stuff I had gotten involved in prior to my children.

So a good way for me to still kind of have my excitement and do something different than my investigative work was when I transitioned to be a hostage negotiator. The opportunity presented itself, I absolutely had an interest with my background, and so once I got into that, it was easier for me to do that because I could still be in the mix, but I'm coming with my FBI across my vest and I have a SWAT team with me. It was much safer, in a way, than my undercover work, so it just was kind of a logical transition and that just took up more of my time in my later years.

Paige:

What do you think are the main things to bring to those sorts of hostage negotiations? How do you approach those sorts of people and are they really common, like more common than I would think? When I think of hostage negotiations, I think of just the really big ones that are kind of known that you learn about in history like Iran and things like that, but is it much more common than people would think?

Melissa:

So common, I guess, is a relative term. It's probably not that common. And also, as the FBI, we get involved in different things than our state and local law enforcement partners do. So we do a ton of training for our state and local partners, and they're the ones that when, maybe, there's someone ready to jump off a bridge or there's a domestic situation and the person inside is holding their family hostage, they would get involved in those. The numbers on those are more because they just deal with that stuff more. Now at the FBI level, we do all of the international [inaudible 00:32:12], so any US citizen taken hostage. It does happen a lot more than I would like to admit. You could look at the state department's website, they will tell you about certain areas that you should and shouldn't go, where the risk for that kidnapping elevates.

So we've gotten involved in... There was a bunch of missionaries that were taken hostage in Haiti. They took like 17 people hostage in Haiti. So we would get involved in that. We would work with whomever was back in the states receiving the ransom calls. But in addition to that, we would then have our own targets that we would be doing arrests for. So I worked on a case where the FBI was going to arrest a child pornography subject. He had already been to jail prior for this. They had found out he was doing it again. When they went to arrest him, he shot at law enforcement and barricade himself inside. So then I get called, along with our SWAT team goes out to help negotiate him to come out, to have it be safer for everybody else.

So there's a lot of different ways that we get involved. And you would approach each one of those very differently, right? The barricaded subject, it's a different negotiation than when I am negotiating a kidnapping for ransom with someone overseas and helping the family. My conversation with the barricade subject is me directly with him. In a kidnap for ransom, it's through the family member that's designated as that party to have the conversation.

Paige:

Do you think that's easier or more challenging when you're dealing with the family members?

Melissa:

Sort of back and forth because you want to say it's less pressure if you have to talk through someone, but it's not because sometimes you're like, "Just let me get on there, just let me do it," And so you're trying to work through someone. There's also a lot of dynamics in a family because some people want to pay, some people don't, some people want law enforcement to be involved, some people don't, and everybody has strong emotions and that's hard in a stressful situation for people to make conscious, smart, logical decisions, so you're just navigating all the feelings of that.

The barricaded subject, at that point, the only people on scene is him inside and then me and my team outside. So I get to finally say what I want to say in the way that I want to say it, but then I have a whole SWAT team watching me and waiting and that has its own challenges because one case we had, it was a 15 hour standoff overnight, in a snowstorm. It was probably like eight degrees outside. I'm sitting in a bearcat, everyone's freezing, everybody's annoyed. So each scene just has a lot going on at that time that you have to manage, so there's sort of positive and negatives to both.

Paige:

What tools do you use to stay calm during crisis?

Melissa:

It always helps to have a good team, and that's true for anything. It's never just me doing some great thing and solving the whole problem. We would use a SWAT team to help us apply pressure or lessen pressure to see what impact that had inside the crisis site. There were times where I would have to work in a break in my conversation because I was getting frustrated or I was losing my temper and you would just, "Okay, you have a certain demand, you're giving me a certain deadline. Let me get off the phone right now. Let me check with my team, see if we can do it," Hang up and then unload on my team, get all the feelings out. I hate this guy. This is the worst. I want this to end. Then you get yourself together and you go back in. For us, it was always a big thing so you have to manage your emotions, right? But you have a really important thing to help you get it together.

It's very different when I'm at home with my two teenage daughters and it's the 17th time we've had the same conversation and you just lose it, right? They're just different. That was my job, you're less emotionally involved, so it's a little bit easier to manage your emotions than the personal side.

David:

What skill sets are important, on the latter kind, not the business type negotiation or the hostage for ransom, but the alternative kind, what skills are important, and what techniques or anything, but what things do you think about and how do you do it?

Melissa:

So this is probably true in everything, in humanness, is sort of the emotional intelligence, is really being self-aware about why you think what you think, why you feel the way you feel, and that that doesn't have to be everything. Sometimes I feel a certain way with my kids because I'm frustrated, I'm tired. I can understand that, and so maybe I say to them, "Hey, you know what? I'm not my best self today. That was not the best way to have that conversation, but I need you to do this," Or, "I'm trying to get this accomplished."

And so, I really think that's where the emotional control comes in is, I'm fairly aware of my strengths and my weaknesses, I have them both. I have good days and bad days. I understand where I'm at in the world. I always ask myself questions. I think it should go a certain way. Am I right? What if I'm wrong? How am I not seeing this? How can I see it from your perspective? I do that with my children, I do that with the child pornographer barricaded inside. I get it. If you've been to jail for child pornography and you're about to go back, I get why you're fighting us. That makes complete sense to me.

David:

Did you tell him that? Did you...

Melissa:

No, we've had that. I totally understand that. And I've also said, "And I think you're smart enough to know we're not just going to go away." I wish, I don't really, but I wish we could just go away and that would happen but there's a series of decisions and we're here now. So we do have to deal with it, but I completely understand why you don't want to do that. And so then I can say to myself, or I can say to my team, my supervisors, "Hey, he doesn't want to come out the front door because all his neighbors are watching." Is there a way that we can help him come out a different way? Help him save face a little bit in that moment? It gives him a win. We get what we want. So it's just working out, how can I try to help you be happier in this situation and then still get what we need to do? That is our job. So a lot of times, it's balancing all those things, but that's probably true for...

You guys probably do that in your lives and your business and your relationships all the time is, how can we both get something? It's just really understanding, what do we really want? The big picture, not the first thing out of your mouth, but what's behind that.

Paige:

Did you have those skills already or did it take time to develop more of a big picture perspective? Because for me, sometimes, that can be very difficult. I can get very caught up on a small detail in a situation, and so I'm just wondering if that's kind of something that's always been in you or it just took time over your career to develop?

Melissa:

I think I probably, having always had an interest in people and studying them, and I loved crime shows, I was always a watcher. As a counselor, I'm much happier listening than talking, and so I really take it all in. So I think there were some innate things that probably just is my personality, but absolutely, Paige, over time, and I think you'll see life experiences, age, all of that stuff, it just really comes with seeing things play out and that you can just say, "Oh, I've seen this before. I see how this happens." So it's easier to get the bigger picture, I think, sometimes, because I can sit back and be like, "Oh, I've watched this happen before." And in my negotiation work, kind of having that balcony perspective on issues is really important to help navigate it, right? Because if you're too in the weeds, you can't see the big picture, you can't see a process. And sometimes in crisis, you need a process. You need to know how to walk through those steps and that's why it's easier to have someone that's less emotionally involved help you walk through that.

David:

Do you think being a woman gives you, not because of the gender, but just because of women being not as egocentric and stuff like that... I'm not trying to be sexist, but that sort of...

Melissa:

You said it, not me.

David:

Does that help? I mean, do you think women would be sort of more suited to what you do than a tough guy?

Melissa:

Here's what I'll say, yes to some of what you said. I do think women have different abilities than men do, and I think we need both, especially in my prior life as an FBI agent, we needed both. I don't know if you had an entire team of women SWAT people coming in if that would be effective, as much as an entire team of male SWAT operators, could escalate a situation, but we do need both. And that's what was so helpful at times where I would work with my partners, whatever gender they were, but if it was, maybe my male counterpart was having a more challenging ego fight, because it does happen, it really does happen, and that's much more important to men, I think, than women. And so, when they would get stuck, then I could come in and try to help diffuse it. But a lot of times, I could get stuck in certain things and then it helps to have someone else come in. And so, it really is much more of a team approach.

I think that's why I think diversity is important, diversity of age and backgrounds and gender, all of it, because it's just really a different look, a different approach. It allows you to try different things, and I think the culmination of all those things tends to have you be more creative and innovative and successful.

David:

On specifics, are there, I hate to use this word, the heuristics, whatever it is, but are there some techniques that you sort of like, he just said this, that's why I'm going to say this, or I'm going to say, "Why do you think that?" Are there just some things that you've learned over time, some skills that are teachable? Like if someone says, "Hey, this is a drop dead number. This is drop dead. Take it or leave. It's done." What do you do, for example? I'll shut up, but what do you do when someone says that? Like if it is a take it or leave it situation?

Melissa:

I probably am ingrained, as a negotiator, that my answer will always be, "It depends." I say that only because I really believe strongly in coming up to a situation and really strategically looking at it, and it really does depend. People are so different. Every situation is so different. And so in all my training, I've trained hundreds of law enforcement officers on how to be negotiators, I wish I could tell you if you say this, it will work. It doesn't. But what I can tell you is finding connection, being empathetic, and not empathetic in the, my counselor touchy feely way, but really just saying like, "Okay, David, I see your perspective. I actually had never thought about it like that. Okay, let me think of how we can work with what you see, work with what I see and figure something out." I always came at a team approach, even to a person that may have taken an entire kindergarten hostage, right? I'm not going to shame you, it doesn't work. I'm not going to bully you, it doesn't work.

I'm sure you guys see it in your own lives. When the egos come out, when two people are just fighting, you can't meet anger with anger, it gets you nowhere. And so, it really is listening, conceding a point if someone makes a point on the other side and be like, "Yeah, I get you have a job to do," Right? Because I'm sure, David, for you as a lawyer in your negotiations, there's two sides, right? I'm sure you've said to other lawyers, "I know you have a client and you have to answer to them, so do I, so how can we figure this out?" And that's just digging deeper into the problem and seeing what's important to you, what's important to me and how can we work this out to, ultimately, everyone feels somewhat happy with what they got.

It works all the time, but you have to show that you're willing to see it from the other side, right? I'm never so locked in on my side, so when I listen to you and you tell me something, I have to be open enough that you may tell me something that changes my perspective. But if I'm not willing to move off of what I'm doing, I'm not really listening, I'm just constantly repeating my side. So I feel like in our world today, we could use a lot of that. You seem to have encouraged behavior of, it makes you cooler, better, stronger if you just run to your side and scream your stance over and over. It doesn't work. So I get you're solid in your opinion, but to what purpose? I'm much more about action and results and let's do something. So I don't have an ego around, it has to be my way. It doesn't, I'm open. I mean, that's probably that one little tip and technique, but that's what I would love people to try.

Paige:

This is kind of more of a broad question, but I feel like, particularly today, a lot of people have mistrust of government organizations like the FBI, and there's a lot of different opinions that people have started to have and I feel like it's gotten much more polarized in the past couple of years in terms of government agencies. What would you say to those people to kind of explain what the importance of the FBI is?

Melissa:

Yeah. I mean, you have to understand why certain people hold that belief. Maybe they've had a bit of experience, maybe they're surrounded by people that say certain things and they believe that, right? It's interesting for me, over my 23 years... I was in New York City on nine 11. We did a ton of stuff at that time. We would be knocking on people's doors at two in the morning to get information to help move the investigation along. People were so welcoming. People would line the streets in New York City and clap as we drove by. You would knock on someone's door at 2:00 AM they would say, "It's not a problem. No worry. I know what you're trying to do. It's fine," So supportive. To where we are now, where you would walk up and it is like a stream of obscenities as soon as you would walk up to the door.

Now, back then, it was sort of the old adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." We had a common enemy that we were against. The problem now, is we're against each other. And so, I will tell you, in my experience in the FBI, we are not targeting any certain type of person. We are not. They're doing an investigation, they have a job to do and they're looking for the evidence. We are an organization of human beings, so things could happen, maybe someone doesn't do it perfectly. I just always tried, when I would show up as an FBI agent at your door, to bring the humanness to the FBI and to just keep it to that investigation and the merits of that because that's all I can talk to. I think sometimes when you engage with people that have these beliefs, they have either never dealt with the FBI or there's some reason that they have that belief, I just would like to engage in that conversation to see if you could find out what's behind that. I don't know how you solve it. I feel like it's gotten so bad.

Paige:

Yeah. And I mean, also, I don't feel like I see FBI agents every day. It's not like police officers. They're not in your neighborhood, you know what I'm saying? So I feel like it is, a lot of times, people have never dealt with the FBI before.

Melissa:

Right. And so you hear something and you hear it from people that you like and you respect and you align with. And so we all do this in our lives where you tend to say those things, even if maybe you didn't always critically think them through or have all of the facts to back that up, but it makes you feel good because you're saying things that other people are saying and you feel smart or engaged in the conversation. I don't always know what's behind it. I think there's a lot of things behind depending on who's saying it, but that's just what I always try to do is sort of one-on-one. If I was faced with a lot, I just really kind of challenge what's behind that and ask a lot of open-ended questions, which eventually got the person to say, "Well, I'm not saying you, you're fine, but it's everybody else." This is human beings. I think we tend to do that, probably.

David:

We have to talk about what you're doing now and why you decided to leave government and start your own company and what you're doing. We have to hear about that.

Melissa:

So I got to the point that I was eligible to retire, and for me, everybody's different, for me, it's a younger person's game. I was getting more tired than I used to be, my brain was not firing as fast as it used to, and it's a big job and it needs someone with full focus and attention, and I was ready, after 23 years, to try something different, something new. So I did choose to retire last year, but I love negotiations and so I wasn't ready to be done. I did want to be home more and be more engaged as my kids are now teenagers and will be leaving us soon, I wanted to be more available, and this has been perfect. It lets me still be involved in the idea of negotiations, it's challenging me because I have to learn, in business negotiations, it's different than law enforcement, and so I'm learning to take all of my skills and experience and figure out a new way to apply it. And then I've gotten a little involved in the ransomware space and bringing my hostage negotiation skills to ransomware. And so it's been fun.

It's very challenging and I'm still trying to balance it and figure out my sort of new space in the world, but it's been great and I've loved it. I don't regret leaving, I think it was the right decision and I've enjoyed what I'm involved in now.

David:

Tell our listeners what your company does, if you don't mind.

Melissa:

Yeah, so I did start my own company called the Alchemy Team, but really, out of that, I am almost a subcontractor for a few companies. So I work for a company out of Canada called the Negotiations Collective that does business training and consulting. I do work with Mindful Negotiating, which is out of Boston area with Max Bevilacqua, and we are working with, I think you know Curtis Minder of Group Sense. Oh

David:

Oh yeah, sure. He was on our show. Yeah.

Melissa:

Yeah, he was on your other show. So Curtis, Max and I have kind of partnered together where you have an instant response tech company that knows all the things you need to know for ransomware. Max comes from the academic Harvard area, very smart in his approach to negotiations, and then my law enforcement background, having us all come together to do training around ransomware, to do awareness around ransomware, and if you find yourself in that situation, to maybe help you navigate that process. And then the third thing is, I also work for another company that does deescalation training. So it's around workplace violence and mass shootings. So it's a collective of retired FBI law enforcement that show up in that space. And so I do some deescalation training, which comes with my background.

Paige:

I'm just curious, what made you decide to name your company Alchemy?

Melissa:

So, I don't know if you ever read the book, The Alchemist?

Paige:

I have. I was thinking that.

Melissa:

There was two books in my life that hit me in my heart, that is one of them, and I've read it at different stages of my life and it still hits me every time so that was part of it. The word alchemy really talks about a transformative process of really taking, it's an old chemistry term, but taking old base metals and transforming them into shiny gold, fancy, and I really believe effective communication, really good listening, really good communication can be transformative in relationships and business and everything, so that's why I came to ultimately naming my company Alchemy Team for that reason because I do think if you can work on that, it can change all areas of your life.

David:

As we conclude... Well, there's obviously that book, Never Split the Difference, which probably you hear that a lot, but what books, if any, would you recommend people read if they want to improve in your area? I mean, they may not even be about negotiation, it may just be about another subject, but curious.

Melissa:

You're right. Everyone knows Chris Voss and Never Split the Difference. And I will say, Chris did an amazing job taking what we learned and do as FBI negotiators, and he really brought it to the business world. Everywhere I go and talk or people I meet, they're like, "Oh, do you know the book?" I do know the book, yeah. There is another sort of famous FBI hostage negotiator who started the crisis negotiation unit that we have. His name's Gary Noesner. He wrote a book called Stalling for Time. It's much more story-based, but Gary has unbelievable experience. He was involved in Waco.

David:

Oh, wow.

Melissa:

I don't know if you guys saw that. A new documentary out that just came out on Waco. It's amazing. It's so good. It just came out this year. It's really good. I apologize, I don't actually know the full title. Gary is in that and just the way that he talks about it and the process that he goes through. If you want to learn from a host negotiator, Gary's amazing and his book details stories that I think you take out the teaching points, where Chris Voss's book is very technical. He kind of says, "Do this, do that. Say this, say that." I don't know if I agree with all of that. To me, it's a little more tips and tricks, and I think people want a quick answer and people are like, "Just give me something fast to solve it." It's like, that's not the reality. But everybody loves Chris's book, and I do think what he says, I don't disagree with some of the points, that's all the way that I talked as a hostage negotiator so I get it.

But even the Harvard program on negotiation has a book and those are amazing. There's a difficult conversations one and getting to yes, all of those just talk around the topics that I think are so important for people to really stress collaborative negotiations. It sounds Pollyanna, but if we could have more people modeling this behavior, I think we would see it more. I think everyone's so afraid of the competer and everyone's so afraid that I have to win and I have to dominate first, that we just keep repeating that and I don't know that it's effective. And so, I would love to change the game around being much more collaborative and having more people do that so it shows up more.

David:

I was going to put you on the spot and ask you what you thought about that book, but I appreciate you giving those insights.

Melissa:

Everybody asks, and so... I don't know Chris personally, I really don't. When I went through my negotiation certification course for two weeks, he was an instructor there. I respect his experience and I respect that he's brought negotiations to the business world, so that I appreciate. I think we're different personality types, but there's a need for all of that, right? Like I said before, all types show up and it helps. Maybe his style works in certain situations.

David:

Well, that's very helpful. Well, listen... Paige, anything else we should talk about? We don't...

Paige:

No, and I thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

Melissa:

Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I'm always amazed if anybody cares about what I have to say, so thank you so much. It was really nice to meet both of you.

David:

It was great.

Paige:

It was lovely to meet you.

David:

Yeah. Thank you for your service to the country too. I mean, we forget about that and I think that's really important.

Melissa:

Thank you for that.

David:

That's really important.

Melissa:

I'll tell you, my husband is an FBI agent. He retires today.

Paige:

Oh, yay. That's exciting.

Melissa:

He's coming home shortly so that was a...

David:

All right. Well, have a glass of wine.

Melissa:

Exactly. Yeah.

Paige:

Thank you again.

David:

Thank you all. Very nice to meet you.