True Spies Debriefs: Bob Dougherty on transnational repression
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Hello, True Spies listeners. Welcome back to our new assignment, the True Spies Debrief. Here on the Debrief, we catch up with some of our favorite guests from the True Spies archive for a deeper look at the themes, events, and insights that fascinate them.

Robert Doherty spent 26 years as a CIA undercover operations officer. In the True Spies episode, Justice for Leon Klinghoffer, he recounted his hunt for justice after the killing of an American war veteran aboard a cruise ship in the Mediterranean.

Today, Bob works as an instructor for multiple government agencies. And more and more, he's being asked to speak on the dangers of transnational repression, the intimidation, harassment, or other human rights abuses perpetrated by countries on their own people beyond their borders. True Spies producer Morgan Child sat down with Bob for a crash course in transnational repression and to hear why these abuses are becoming more common around the world.

So Bob, thank you for being here. There are a lot of things that we could talk about today, but this topic is something that's currently quite top of mind for you. I'd like to start by hearing about how you define transnational repression, and also by asking you why it's become a particular area of focus for you. Yeah, so transnational repression is kind of any effort by a government to silence, to harass, to intimidate people

to pressure their citizens that live outside of their country. So in other words, citizens of their country that live in other countries. Transnational repression is an effort to again, get them to stop what they're doing or to get them to issue statements in support of that government or to support that government in some ways or just stop opposing that government.

And so it's kind of always been around. I think we're just paying more attention to it lately because several of these governments that we can legitimately call authoritarian regimes have stepped up their efforts in terms of transnational repression. So that's why I think we're starting to notice it more. And I think here in the US at least, and maybe more generally in the West,

We tend to let things boil over a little bit more before we start paying attention to them. So I think that's probably one of the reasons we're finally starting to pay attention to transnational repression. I got into it actually through the state of California, where I'm also an instructor in

mainly instructing law enforcement and first responders and civilian authority. And the state of California itself was noticing, again, due to our diverse population here, many ethnicities, many different nationalities that live in this state, as in other states as well.

was starting to notice that there was these incidents of transnational repression occurring in California. So the state started a move to start to address this problem, mainly through training and awareness first, training, education and awareness of the problem. And so that's how I was kind of brought into it and was made aware of it. And then I really

latched onto it and said, this is an important issue because transnational repression, as we'll talk about, is just part of a larger issue that we're facing, which I would term is unconventional warfare or hybrid warfare being waged against us. So

That's kind of how I became aware of the issue and how I got involved in it. I wonder if it might be helpful if I asked you to sort of refresh our listeners' memory. I think a lot of people, our listeners in particular, they know Sergei Skripal, they know Jamal Khashoggi, but they might not know the term transnational repression. So I wonder if it would be helpful if I asked you just to give us some, the most famous names. Oh, sure. Sure.

Yeah, the Khashoggi case is a clear case of transnational repression carried out by one country against their national inside another country. There's been probably over 200 assassinations of Iranian dissidents outside of Iran carried out by the Iranian government, by the IRGC or the MIS, MIS, Intelligence Services of Iran, and

including one here in the US in 19 in the mid 1980s. David Belfour was a US citizen who was recruited by Iran, changed his name and assassinated a dissident here in Maryland, an Iranian dissident, and then fled back to Iran. So that's a famous case. We have the case of

the Iranian government trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. Now, although not a citizen of their country, it's them, it's the Iranian regime reaching out and trying to affect the government of another country in a third country's soil. We have...

Numerous examples of the Chinese government reaching out and trying to silence dissidents here in the U.S. I've named a couple of them. There are hundreds of examples of individual Chinese students or businessmen or ethnic Chinese citizens who have decided to settle here in the U.S. and live and work, who may be green card holders or may have become actually naturalized U.S. citizens here.

but are still getting threatened and harassed and intimidated by the Chinese government through online digital methods. Those are some key players. In terms of Russia, we have numerous attempts by Russia to intimidate their own citizens here in this country, to persuade them to support the Russian regime's goals through pressure, through threat to family members that are still resident in Russia.

So there's some there's a lot of cases, some key ones for sure. But a lot of this gets underreported or not reported at all. So I think we're just seeing a little bit of the issue and the problem. And I think the problem obviously is much bigger than than what we see currently. And now you're working with the FBI on a training program. Is that right?

Yeah, so we provide training. My company, Tartarus Intel, I'm just a private contractor, so I provide training to the FBI. I provide training to the state of California. I provide training to the US Military Special Operations Unit and also to the private sector itself. So we've designed a course, and I think it's one of the first of its kind that talks about transnational repression, that educates people on what it is, some signs of it. We look at some case studies.

And then we go into a little bit of how do you try to mitigate this kind of growing problem that we haven't focused on before.

It's interesting what you say about us noticing the problem more. Of course, it's gone on for quite a long time. We do have some numbers. I know that a Freedom House report says that 25 countries carried out 125 physical attacks on individuals in just 2023 alone. And that the top offenders around the world are Russia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Turkmenistan, and China.

I'm curious what role technology might play and also if the sort of rise of autocrats may play a part in the proliferation of these stories that we're reading more and more in the news. I think you're right on the mark, Morgan, and technology plays a huge role in that, right? And it also is linked to, as you say, these autocratic regimes. So that's why I think we're noticing it more often.

And as you probably know and agree with in a lot of issues like this, whether they're criminal issues or civil issues or societal issues, the numbers we have are probably severely underreported, right? So it's not a true estimation of the magnitude of the issue that we're facing. So I'll say that first of all. But yes, a lot of this transnational repression is indeed carried out digitally through emails, through text messages, through phone calls, right?

through other type of cyber activities where these governments, these regimes are again, threatening, harassing, intimidating citizens of their countries overseas through the internet or online or through some social media platform. And it's a very effective way for these regimes to carry it out because they can carry it out anonymously if they want to. They can carry it out from afar. You know, it's hard to trace back those efforts online.

So that is probably the majority of transnational repression, I believe, is being carried out online through technology. What other tactics are we seeing regularly? Maybe we could zero in on one or two sort of national case studies. I understand there are certain patterns that we see in certain corners of the world. Yeah, I think there's some interesting ones right here in the U.S. that are kind of shocking if you think about it in terms of the brazenness or the aggressiveness of it.

For example, the Chinese government actually opened physically opened several police stations inside the United States of America. And these weren't just, you know, Internet spots you could go to. These were actually physical locations where you had real Chinese state police officers, obviously not in uniform. They were in civilian clothes.

But they were here in this country and setting up these police stations inside major U.S. cities, San Francisco, L.A., New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis, I think had one, even in the Midwest. And we're using these police stations and their physical presence there to go out and carry out transnational repression. In other words, to coerce, to pressure people.

manipulate the Chinese citizens here in the U.S. either to stop opposing the regime or to start issuing propaganda in favor of the regime. And in some of these cases, we had these Chinese police officers physically assault

Chinese citizens here in the U.S. and threatened to kidnap them and take them back to China. So it got to be very serious in terms of the physicality of this transnational repression. And in another very interesting case, the Chinese leader Xi came to San Francisco last year. And of course, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco and the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. were very

in his visit, making sure everything went right. But after the fact, we determined that they had actually hired protesters. They had hired security people to physically attack and harass and intimidate the anti-Chinese regime protesters that were there during Xi's visit in San Francisco. So we clearly had a case going.

where we saw physical manifestation of the transnational repression on our soil being carried out by another regime. So those were some of the more kind of in-your-face type of cases or the more brazen cases that we've seen. Obviously, with three of the governments we're talking about, Iran, China, and Russia, all three have been involved in extrajudicial, extralegal activities.

assassinations of opponents of their governments overseas, outside their countries. In other words, finding citizens of their own countries that violent, that oppose those countries and are very vigorous in opposing those regimes and then reaching out through the state organs, through covert intelligence operations and silencing them by actually murdering them.

So transnational repression can run that whole gamut, that whole spectrum of activities from digital online harassment and coercion all the way up to, you know, someone getting killed.

And you've mentioned hybrid or unconventional warfare. Tell me a little bit about what you mean by that and how you feel it falls on that spectrum. That's the real danger of this, Morgan, I feel like, and kind of something that I kind of analyzed. I said, look, we can look at transnational repression as an issue on its own, and it certainly stands as an issue on its own.

Again, these authoritarian regimes. And we're not just talking about Iran, Russia and China. Those are the major players. You mentioned some other countries in the Freedom House list and lots of countries have done this, right? So we're not just talking about those three, but we're talking about these countries. And if we talk about Iran, Russia and China, they have really used transnational repression as part of a larger effort.

And we have called that larger effort many different things in the press. We've called it hybrid warfare. We've called it cognitive warfare. I think you've heard. We've called it information warfare. We've called it the net war for network warfare. Really what it all boils down to, Morgan, is it's unconventional warfare. It's warfare by a nontraditional means. And so I like the term unconventional warfare. And transnational repression is pretty

part of unconventional warfare. So where you would have, you know, the Chinese government trying to interfere in the national election of the US, that's part of unconventional warfare. You have them carrying out transnational repression of their own citizens here in this country or the West. That's part of unconventional warfare. You have them engaging in stealing military secrets

or innovation in technology from the West. That's part of unconventional warfare. So it all kind of fits in the minds of these regimes that are carrying this out. They really don't think, I think, make the distinction that, okay, we're just doing transnational repression today. It's all a part of their broad spectrum, their larger effort to promote their own governments and

and to try to win economically and politically on the world stage against the US, against the West, against the NATO and the European coalitions. And so that's why I think transnational repression is even more important because not only are we trying to protect the human rights and the dignity of these people, these citizens of other countries that are resident and working in our countries,

We're also trying to protect our own country's larger interests from some of these big authoritarian regimes who are using transnational repression as part of the bigger spectrum of waging unconventional warfare against us. We are just starting to wake up in the West, in the US, to the fact that these regimes, again, principally Iran, Russia and China,

have carried out transnational repression in a lethal manner. In other words, they have murdered and assassinated what they would call dissidents of their regime in countries outside their own country, in Europe, in the U.S. They have carried out lethal operations. That's a big deal. What we're seeing now also, Morgan, across Europe, and I'm sure you're aware of it,

is Russia in particular, because of the war in the Ukraine, is now engaging in what we would call World War II era-like sabotage operations. That is deliberate acts of arson carried out against the infrastructure of European countries, against the rail system of Europe, against the military munitions plant in the UK, against German manufacturing plants.

If you change that from Russian operatives to the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda, how much more of a splash would it have been on the headlines, Al-Qaeda places bombs on DHL cargo flights in Europe? It would have been huge, right? And yet we have a regime doing that, and it kind of flies underneath the radar. So we need to wake up to the fact that Russia is engaging in

and sabotage and potentially lethal operations in Europe and in the U.S. in support of their war in the Ukraine. And I don't think a lot of us, one, are aware of that, or two, understand the significance of that, of what is happening. So that's one point I really wanted to make. And whoever listens to this, make them aware of that and to pay attention to that.

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I'm reminded, I was reporting a story a couple of years ago about a particularly cruel way that a number of countries were treating their refugee populations. And one of the experts I spoke with told me, she said, countries learn bad things from one another.

Talk to me a little bit about how transnational repression can be a kind of contagion. Do you see particularly autocratic regimes adopting one another's tactics or maybe even democratic ones borrowing from this kind of dangerous playbook? Sure, I think that is definitely a possibility. I think they do not only borrow from each other's tactics, Morgan, I think they share information with each other.

For example, we know in the past three years again, I hate going back to the big three, but they are kind of the big three. We know that Iran, Russia and China, Iran and Russia particularly have gotten very close to close politically, economically. They have drawn closer together.

Russia and China have come a little bit closer together. Russia and North Korea have become much closer together. So we're kind of seeing this amalgamation of, you know, I hate to use the axis of evil. We're kind of seeing this amalgamation of these authoritarian regimes that are coming closer together, that are joining and linking together across a wide spectrum, economically, politically, militarily. You know, we have North Korean soldiers on the ground, you know,

for fighting for Russia in Ukraine. I mean, that's kind of crazy if you think about it. So those links between those authoritarian regimes have really strengthened over the past several years. And I would assume and I would have a high degree of confidence that they are sharing information on how they carry out transnational repression, better ways of doing it, maybe even combining efforts. I'm almost certain that is going on for sure.

Tell me a little bit about the technology. And we're seeing more and more Western countries, democratic countries use spyware in new ways. And I wonder, as somebody who's teaching on this topic, how that influences your thinking about the future of how these technologies are used sort of across the map. This is a great question, and it goes to the heart of a lot of issues, Morgan.

I'm not the techie guy, but I've certainly been around it. And with my work with Special Operations Forces, I'm kind of at the cutting edge of it. So I kind of know what's going on out there in terms of their use of tech and how they're employing it. And obviously, we're not going to talk about any of that classified stuff. But my assessment is technology has enabled these authoritarian regimes and some democratic governments to

better to be better able to monitor to access to maybe manipulate their populations and and that's not a good thing in my mind certainly you know the way iran russia china and the others do it we can see the damaging effects of that but even here in the us you know over the past five six seven eight years we've had this national discussion on

how much power should we give the government in terms of the technological tools that they have to monitor the population, you know, to find criminals and terrorists to be sure,

But we have absolutely seen in my country an abuse of that and a corruption of that by the government. There is no doubt about that. You may argue about the level of it and the frequency of it. You cannot argue if you're a rational person that the government of the United States has overstepped the regulatory bounds, their legislative bounds in the employment of technology to monitor certain people in this country. And that's really scary.

And from someone who worked in the government for 26 years with the CIA that used some of that technology to go after terrorist groups, to go after violent extremist organizations, that scares me. And I'm not happy or at peace with the fact that elements of my own government overstepped what they should have been doing and kind of broke their professional oaths and their professional codes of conduct.

and did some of the things they did. And that's a very scary trend. I tell people, Morgan, and here's kind of my Rubicon, right? My red line, my litmus test. I say, six, seven, even eight years ago, if the U.S. government

Any element, the FBI, the CIA, NSA, DOJ, the DOD, any element comes out with some report or some finding or some statement on a major issue. You could take that to the bank. You could have a high degree of confidence that that was well done. The methodology was there. There were no biases there.

You know, there were no opinions inserted. It was all done legal and it was as factual as they can make it. You can't say that now. The FBI, the DOJ, CIA, DOD, NSA come out with some major finding or report or they make a statement. Now I have doubt. Now I have doubt in terms of how much of this is actually true. Is there politics inserted in this? Was this done in a biased manner?

And you can say, maybe I have 5% doubt about the legitimacy of this finding or this report, or I have 50% doubt. That is not the issue. The tragedy is I have doubt to begin with where I had no doubt before.

And that's really how the U.S. government has damaged itself. Only a few individuals, of course, usually at the top or near the top, have really, through their illegal, illicit, immoral, unprofessional actions, have really given the U.S. government a bad name with a lot of the population here. And that's not a good thing.

I'm curious about the measures that are necessary to protect foreign nationals on U.S. soil. And speaking of Freedom House, I know that they're in their report on transnational repression, they have called for a migration policy that respects the right to asylum and confers permanent legal status on refugees.

We also know that the Department of Homeland Security recently signed a deal with the Israeli spyware company Paragon. All of this seems to me a perfect storm for setting an entirely new precedent in the way that the U.S. uses spyware and other sort of powerful surveillance technologies.

I suppose I wonder if you think that the proliferation of all of these technologies could stand in the way of America's being a leader in putting an end to some of these dangerous, devastating, murderous measures. Yeah, I do agree. And again, I've seen the good and the bad side of technology. Technology is only as good as the human being that uses it, right? And so we're going to be governed by the morals and the ethics of

of each human being that uses technology, whether they're in the government or without. But I worry about my government having so much power, technological power, and if it's not constrained like it always has been. It's always been constrained. I sat on a Joint Terrorism Task Force before 9/11 and after 9/11. We had technological tools. We had the FISA courts, which is where you go and get the authorization from judges

to conduct a wiretap on someone's phone, right? I know how onerous and rigorous that process was, and rightly so. You don't want to let the government just go around tapping whoever phone, whosever phone they want to without ample justification. So the process was set up by very smart people. The process worked.

And I feel us that we've drifted away from that in the last six, seven, eight years. We've drifted away from those constraints. And we've certainly seen in the press and reporting that the government has blatantly disregarded their own guidelines, their own regulations in the use of technology to spy on people, whether they're opponents of the administration, whether they're political partisans, whether they're foreigners.

they've overstepped their bounds and that's not a good sign. So I'm always a little skeptical about the use of new technology, especially the Israeli technology, which that particular one has been shown to be very effective in getting into people's phones and getting information on personal phones. Tell me what you think that the U.S. should be doing in order to protect people on U.S. soil, both foreigners and U.S. citizens.

Yeah, there's a law that's before Congress right now. They're trying to get passed, which I think would be a great thing, which kind of defines transnational repression a little bit more, probably strengthen some of the penalties.

In terms of allowing law enforcement, both at the local, state, and federal level to go after perpetrators of transnational repression here in the U.S., that needs to get past Congress, and hopefully that will happen soon. Training, education, and awareness are always huge in any issue. The more people know about an issue, the more aware they're going to be and more willing to report it when it happens so we can get a grip on it.

I think in terms of migration policy, some of the some of the asylum policies we have, for example, with Cuba, any Cuban that reaches, you know, U.S. international waters or reaches the shore of the U.S. is automatically granted asylum in this country.

And it's a good program that's worked very well to protect some of those refugees from a very autocratic, very murderous regime, quite frankly, in Cuba. Maybe we should implement those with some other nationalities coming from other countries, those type of one-off policies based on the country itself.

And I think overall, if you want immigration policy, look, we all know the system is broke. The system is desperately broke. It needs to be fixed. I don't have an answer on how it can be fixed, but it absolutely needs to be fixed. And we need to have a lawful, easy way for people who want to come to this country or other Western countries to get here.

and to be a part of our societies. That's what makes us thrive as liberal democracies. It absolutely is our lifeblood, but we have to have a good system to handle that, to deal with it. And then also maybe as like I say, with the Cuban model, with countries that are really

autocratic and are really repressing their citizens or threatening them, maybe we have a special policy for them that allows them to come here and seek asylum in a much easier manner than it is for most normal people. That's what I would suggest are some of the near-term solutions.

If I can take a little bit of a left turn and ask you about Julian Assange. In his first public remarks after his release, he claimed that he was a victim of transnational repression carried out by the CIA. I'm curious what you would say to that claim.

Yeah, look, he's got his rights like everyone else. I don't know him personally, obviously. I just know what's been reported on the press. So there's my bias. I'm going to have a bias in anything I say to you about that. Does not appear to me that he has a leg to stand on in terms of that claim.

He certainly was given access to what the US government would consider as classified information. And then he released that information publicly in a variety of means. So that in and of itself is a violation of US law. I think there were some other things in his background. And again, I don't know the particulars, but I know there was some other criminal stuff not related to the WikiLeaks in his background as well.

So I tend to think that if there are a lot of markers like that, it's more than likely in my experience that that person has been engaged in some sort of nefarious activities in the past. So, yeah, it's a tough one on him, right? What?

He certainly paid a price, I think, over these last several years being holed up in the embassy. I don't know on him, Morgan. On Assange, in a way, I kind of feel like he's paid a price already. I don't know what more we can do to him. But yeah, that's a tough one. Was transnational repression used against him? I certainly saw the U.S. government go after him in a way that was very aggressive.

So to me, that indicated the U.S. government thought that he had caused them a lot of damage. I will make this interesting point, though. If you actually read a lot of the WikiLeaks documents from the U.S. that Assange and his organization released, it's kind of interesting to me because although they were classified and maybe they were embarrassing to certain people or certain aspects, they were

Much of it was U.S. diplomats overseas, whether they work for the CIA or the State Department,

calling the shots as it were, talking about the countries that they were based in and those countries' governments and regimes and politics very truthfully and very honestly. So to me, I kind of took an alternative view and I said, it's kind of refreshing in a way to know that a lot of American diplomats out there based in the countries that they are in

actually have a very good, honest, authentic viewpoint of that country, the good and the bad of it. So I took it as kind of a validation of American statecraft rather than there's this huge blow to our national security by releasing all these classified documents.

So anyways, that's just an interesting side point. I don't think a lot of those documents that were released internally showed us lying about other countries to ourselves internally. I think it showed us being brutally honest with ourselves, again, about the positives and the negatives of each of the countries that were mentioned. So that was my little side take on it. Thank you. I hadn't primed you to answer that, but I'm glad to hear your perspective.

Bob, thank you. This is a really chilling subject, but you've given us a fascinating primer. I'm very grateful. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for tuning in for The Debrief. We hope you enjoyed that conversation between Robert Doherty and True Spies producer Morgan Childs. More Debriefs are available exclusively to Spyscape Plus subscribers.

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