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Ep. 47 – A diplomat’s travel forces his psychologist wife to reinvent her career which she does by talking to terrorists / Anne Speckhard, Director, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. When her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus, Anne Speckhard was forced to give up her thriving private counseling practice in Virginia and reinvent her life and work. Some security-related projects led her to begin talking to terrorists and it led to a most unique second career researching terrorists. “When I went into Palestine was the first time I went in and just announced myself. I was very honest about what I wanted. And people told me would be suicide, terrorists are never going to talk to you,” says Speckhard. But they did. To date, Speckhard has interviewed and debriefed nearly 800 terrorists and their family members and supporters — including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. “And I was always looking for literally what makes a suicide bomber tick? Why do they get into it? How do they get on the terrorist trajectory?” says Speckhard, “And since I'm a psychologist, I wanted to know, could it have been prevented or can we take them back off of it?” Speckhard has founded and directs the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. She and her team have converted ISIS terrorist interviews into counter-narrative videos that have been used to deter terrorist recruiting through more than 125 Facebook anti-terrorism campaigns globally. With the advent of Covid-19, Speckhard says there's been chatter from some terrorist leaders urging their followers to protect themselves from the coronavirus but also exhorting those who become infected to spread the disease to their enemies. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Anne Speckhard was thriving in her private counseling and research practice in the Washington D.C. area, when her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus. It threw a curve ball into her clinical work and career trajectory. Speckhard got involved in a variety of security related research projects, and she suddenly found herself in the unusual position of talking to terrorists. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: I'm joined now by Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism or ICSVE. Speckhard is one of the few American national security scholars with substantive access to terrorist groups. She has interviewed and debriefed more than 700 terrorists and their family members and supporters, including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. Chitra Ragavan: Speckhard has used many of those interviews to build the Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project. This unique project consists of counter narrative videos that have been used in more than 125 Facebook antiterrorism campaigns globally, with the goal of deterring terrorist recruiting. Chitra Ragavan: Anne, welcome to the podcast. Anne Speckhard: Thank you, Chitra. Glad to be here. Chitra Ragavan: What was it like to uproot yourself from your practice and to go off to Belarus with your husband, Dan, as he launched his diplomatic career? Anne Speckhard: Well, Daniel and I decided to see it as an adventure, but it was very disorienting because I'm someone that puts my roots down deeply and we had three kids. So I had to close my practice and become entirely dependent upon him and that was not something I'd ever done before. Chitra Ragavan: You're fiercely independent, so that must have been even more difficult. Anne Speckhard: It was difficult. And also we were moving on the other side of what I thought of as the ...