NISPOM Central-Working with National Industrial Security Program
Interviews and topics centering on security clearances and National Industrial Security Clearance Operating Manual (NISPOM) compliance.
NISPOM Central-Working with National Industrial Security Program
How to protect anything DICE Man Part II
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Anchor points, counterintelligence, smart security, Defensive Information Countering Everything.
Ray Semko is a security educator and a professional public speaker who is nationally known for his popular and motivating D*I*C*E security awareness briefings which he has been providing to American audiences for over twenty years.
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The Trusted Advisor for Technology Protection, FSO and NISPOM consulting.
After dialing in my craft and many years of honing program protection experiences, I became a trusted advisor. I am currently supporting customers with technology protection and NISPOM compliance topics.
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I partner with executive leadership to design and operate security programs that meet and exceed NISPOM requirements.
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So let me let me pull that thread a little bit because I think that that's a good point. Um we talked last week and you mentioned that um, you know, Jeff, I'm not security, but I'm counterintelligence. Right. And that was a good point because you know things that security people don't know. And all we get are briefings about Walker, Ana Montez, and and all these other people. But how do you get relevant up-to-date information?
SPEAKER_01Is that available to work like a date?
SPEAKER_02And thank you again for joining us today. This is part two of our interview with Ray Dice Man Simcoe. And it's a reminder, um, the DICE stands for its D-I-C-E, and it's an acronym that stands for defensive information to counter everything. And um I may have said it wrong, it is defensive information to counter everything. So it's defensive. Information to counter everything, and this was something called an anchor point, as we got during the first interview that Ray Simcoe came up with when he was giving his counterintelligence and security briefings. And we talked a little about what an anchor point was. Um he brought a word picture and it's called Dice. So um, you know, so it he he was doing this originally to counter espionage. The D would be the word defensive. His first thought was I was instructions, and he didn't like being instructed, and he knew other people wouldn't like it either, so he changed it to information. And now it's been a successful program that Racem Co. Dice Man has been using for many years, and it actually works. And we talked about Anamonte, a high-ranking spy that was in the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was captured immediately after somebody filed a report. So let's get back to the reporting. Um, let's see how effective this was as we get back to our interview. And again, here's the question. So let me let me pull that thread a little bit because I think that that's a good point. Um, we talked last week, and you mentioned that um, you know, Jeff, I'm not security, but I'm counterintelligence. And that was a good point because you know things that security people don't know. And all we get are briefings about Walker, Ana Montez, and and all these other people, but how do you get relevant up-to-date information? Is that available to security managers?
SPEAKER_00Oh, sure. Oh my god. If I could just get security people, just security people to read the worldwide threat assessment every year that comes out the first quarter of every calendar year, they would know so much more. This is something that everybody can get. I put it on my website. Make sure you read this year's Worldwide Threat Assessment. If there's a document that comes out that would help security professionals, I want you to read it. And, you know, there there's there's certain reports that are mandatory that have to be made every year. And people just don't read 'em. I can't tell you how many times I've said who's read uh this year's worldwide threat assessment? And I'm talking about a hundred plus people. Maybe one, maybe two hands might go up.
SPEAKER_02Oh goodness. Yeah. You gotta stay real.
SPEAKER_00And and it's just if you don't know, then you know, it's just like what are you doing? And that's just one document. I try and give people every document that they need to read. And uh you know, tell them when it comes out, what you gotta look for. There's two thousand eighteen report to Congress of the US China Economic and Security Review. It comes out every November. The one for 2019 just came out in November. And it's not an easy read. I would never tell anyone it's an easy read, but at least read the executive summary.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm on your website now and I'm on your website now and it's yeah, see those references there. And I encourage my audience to go there and and pull these down and read them and become knowledgeable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The worldwide threat assessment for 2020 should be coming out any day now. And I can't wait for that to come out. So what I do is I take all of those documents, put it all together, see where everything's going, and then put my new briefing together.
SPEAKER_02Nice. Good strategy. Good strategy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, i it's the only way to do it. How else are you if it's good listen, when you do the worldwide threat assessment, you know where it goes to? The House and the Senate. The Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence and the House Senate sub uh House uh Committee for Intelligence. They get briefed by the DNI and it it it's just that's what takes place. So if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um Yeah, the the uh the I'm just typing this down on my computer the the this information that you're giving me, and uh hope everybody else is taking notes. If it's important enough for our national leaders, we need to read it at our level.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, I you know, to me, my problem is I just don't trust anybody.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00My problem is I just do way too much thinking. You know, I'll read the worldwide threat assessment. Like, for instance, for 2015. And the verbiage that they used in 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, we were just like nondescript. You gotta read between the lines, you gotta know that this is what intelligence services do to us. And when you have Russia and you have China listed, and there's only one paragraph pertaining to that, there's a lot more. People with a clearance actually have the right to read the classified one. There's a classified and unclassified. I try and only give unclassified because I want people to talk about what I don't. Anybody can give a classified briefing. Anybody. If you have a clearance and your audience has the need to know, and this is the key, need to know. Well, when I was doing a lot of people, I determined in the beginning when I was doing classified briefings that first off, when I gave a classified briefing, everything that came out of my mouth wasn't classified. So I would tell them what I'm about to tell you is classified and give the classification. And I will tell you when it's the end of the classification. But then I knew people couldn't keep that straight, and I'm telling people, I'm telling people things and I'm going, Did they really need to know that? And that's going, I don't think they really needed to know that. So I just stopped it. I just wouldn't tell them. They didn't have a need to know. What they needed to know, I would be able to calculate in words that they would be able to understand without actually saying anything of any significance. And you you you just have to work at it. So, you know, when I read the worldwide threat assessment, the first time I read it, I just read it to read it. Then I read it the second time, and then I start analyzing what I'm reading. And then when I'm on an airplane, I'll read it again. Because the more you read something, it's just like watching your favorite movie. You watch it the second, third, fourth time, you see things you didn't see the first time.
SPEAKER_02I'd like to think a minute to thank our sponsors. If it wasn't for them, we could not do this podcast. And we have some great sponsors on the show, and I'd like to recognize them one by one. So, our first one I'd like to recognize are my friends at Security First and Associates. Um, they provide facility security officer and the SSO Consulting and Training Services. And they realize that hiring a full-time SSO can be expensive, but you know, a less expensive alternative is their management security services. Security vulnerability that's done by the government. And if we don't see the services that you need, just add. And these are services that are currently provided for clear defense contractors. So if you're looking for security clearances, or to get your facility clearance, or if you already have your facility clearance, security first episode are the one called. Security first episode 44357890. I'd also like to um mention a book that we have coming out at Red Light Publishing. And it's definitively titled The Insider's Guide to Security Clearances. And again, this is for those who are get their security clearances, and um for those businesses who want to be cleared defense contractors. The government can provide facility security clearances and personnel security clearances, and this book walks you through that process. If you already have a facility security clearance and you're hiring cleared employees, uh take a look at another book called DoD Security Clearances and Contracts Guidebook. It's another book published by Red Bike Publishing, and it tells you how to set up your company and be prepared to protect classified information. And both can be found at www.redbike publishing.com. And now back to our show. So Yeah, I read somewhere if you read something three times, you become an expert on it.
SPEAKER_00Well yeah. And and you know, I can actually pull it out of my memory bank.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So yeah, so that's a great piece of reference because if I was an uh an FSO and I wanted to train uh the the uh the people that worked in the company, I would want to know what the potential threat is, and I could talk specifically about that threat as it pertains to our facilities and our employees.
SPEAKER_00Right. And and see one of the most important things to remember is the threat's never threatening. If the threat was threatening, you wouldn't need anybody tell you about it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00You just know it. So when when intelligence services work against us, I mean their job is to become our friend. Not to scare us.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_00Because people love friends, you know. Friends, you'll you'll allow your friends to get closer. You'll tell your friends things you shouldn't tell anybody. And they work on it. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to break people's hearts and go, you know what? It wasn't what you thought it was. And they go, nope, I can't believe that. Well, I'm telling you, you gotta believe it. You were being used and abused. And you know, we have been had so badly in so many areas. What else explains China's rise that they're competing with us? They've been committing economic espionage from the first day, one January 1978, that they came to this country. So most of our young people don't even realize we had nothing to do with China for decades until President Nixon went to China in 1972 and played ping pong games. Then six years later they all came over.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I remember how big of a deal that was, and that was very young.
SPEAKER_00No, it was a big deal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It was a very big deal. I got great stories to tell about you know that uh specific incident and why President Nixon didn't get anything accomplished. And, you know, these are the things that I tell people. See, what I learned a long time ago is you can repeat a story. You can't repeat a bullet. If I just give you bullets, they just all blend together. But if I tell you the story, you'll remember it. And that's why I always tell people they need two hours to do it any justice.
SPEAKER_02Right, because you have to weave a story that they can understand and comprehend and think back on and remember.
SPEAKER_00Um stories you remember.
SPEAKER_02And and stories help build um an application for the information that you just received. Here's how it was used before, and here's how you can use it again. Like you said, the bulls.
SPEAKER_00I mean lessons learned. There's here's the problem with lessons learned. Nobody ever learns a lesson.
SPEAKER_02Right. They just remember what happened.
SPEAKER_00We just keep on making the same dumb mistake.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00Over and over and over. It is unbelievable. And it just gets so frustrating for those of us who have done this our entire life, you know? When when I was drafted, let me tell you the incident that first made me think about security, and I didn't think about it at the time because I was just young and stupid. But I turned nineteen. I'd only been nineteen for a little over a month and a half when I landed in Vietnam. I was wounded my first month.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00It was probably in hindsight a good thing because you know, you go into war. Who prepares anybody to go into war? You know, you could play war if you want, but the real thing. So I go there and you know, you're apprehensive, you're afraid, and all of a sudden I just knew that it was gonna be okay. But one of the things that happened one night, we were in our rear area, and we were located just north of Saigon, and uh one of the guys who was senior, he was a sergeant, a buck sergeant, I was a private. We had to be in charge of quarters, CQ, you know what that is. Oh yeah. So, anyways, he's there, he's reading the book, and what he did is he had a light on.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_00And I'm going, wow. I I thought, you know, you have a light on at night, you can see it forever.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Well, they they lobbed a RPG, rocket papel grenade, and missed that light by three inches. I mean, it was absolutely amazing. And in hindsight, that really was my first inclination is you don't follow security rules, it'll get you killed. There's light night, light discipline. And you better abide by it.
SPEAKER_02Because you see what happens.
SPEAKER_00Somebody's looking for that other person to make a mistake, and that other person made that mistake, and I never trusted that guy until he left. I just avoided him like the plague.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I remember them.
SPEAKER_00He just was in his own little world and he was gonna get other people killed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I remember them uh teaching us in the army if you smoke a cigarette, cut your hand over it, you know, anything you can do to reduce light.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. But see, if somebody really wants to shoot at you and they are shooting at you and they're trying to kill you, you don't want to take that chance that you're just gonna go ahead and and not cover that cigarette ash the way you should.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Because at night you you can see it forever. You have traveled targeted yourself.
SPEAKER_02Sound and light, it goes far at night.
SPEAKER_00Right. So, you know, that taught me something there. Then when I came back, I actually trained troops to go to Vietnam. And that was probably as rewarding a job as anybody could have. Because um I actually had some of the people who came back afterwards and saw me and thanked me for being their drill sergeant.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's a that's a compliment.
SPEAKER_00Like I told 'em. You listen to everything I tell you. I'm not telling you this because I don't have anything better to do. I'm telling you this because I was fortunate enough to go there and come back. I want you to come back.
SPEAKER_02I want you guys to come back too. That's absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00Right. And you know, you don't listen to me. You do something stupid, and it's always the person that does something stupid that gets other people killed.
SPEAKER_02Now we have another great sponsor, and his name is Ron Sixtus, and he sponsors us under the Security Clearance Defense Lawyer.com website. And Ron consults in all areas of security clearance concerns. You can be reached by phone at 256-398-3316 or through the website I gave earlier, securityclearance defense lawyer.com. If you have questions or concerns about your security clearance application, or during the time that you have a clearance and are under review, call Ron. He's available for you. 256-398-3316.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00And they come back, and next thing you know, they're riding on the float in the Veterans Day Parade as if they did something. So, you know, there's just a lot of things. So that was my first thing that told me that security's important. Then when I became a counterintelligence agent, and it was like the best thing that ever happened to me.
SPEAKER_02I imagine that was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you you can't even begin to imagine. I mean, 10 September 1971, I graduated second class out of Fort Wachuca because they moved the intelligence school to Arizona in the middle of nowhere, Arizona, Fort Wachuca.
SPEAKER_02I love that place.
SPEAKER_00And um back then in 1971, they actually put us in condemned buildings. Oh, did they? Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02It was better when I went.
SPEAKER_00Oh. Yeah. In nineteen seventy-one the barracks had big red X's on them because they were condemned.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00They had no place to put us.
SPEAKER_02Well, I put us in there. I was there in 71 as far. My dad went to Vietnam himself, and uh it was 70 or 71, and we lived in the um I can barely remember, lived in the housing, and I remember they had a big patch on the mountain. Uh I don't know if you can remember that far back, but uh yeah. Oh yeah. And we used to re he I used to ride on the back of his motorcycle up to that thing. That was a good time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, I mean it's it's uh it was the wild, wild west.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was. You know. And had old Tucson out there. Yep.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But uh, you know, so from there, my career just uh it was fantastic. I was very fortunate and truly blessed to be able to do this, and I keep doing it today.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think we're truly blessed to have you on our show today. Um yeah, I I pleasure. Yeah, I think that we've got a lot of stuff that that you've put out there that FSOs and security managers and young people can use and and to think about to uh like you say make their security training more relevant so we can catch more spies, so we can report more information, and maybe even somebody can figure out what to do with the information we re that we report.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know one of the other things I knew that I was doing by doing what I what I did? If you do have a bad person in your organization and you do give briefings like this, you will scare them.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00You will actually stop them or slow them down, and they might even leave your organization. I tried to convince a lot of people, like you know, I'd be talking to the army and I'd say, you know, if you change your attitude a little bit and really paid attention to what's going on, if you do have a spy here, I want you to scare the crap out of them. I want them to leave the army and go to the air force.
SPEAKER_02Or you scare them bad enough you prevent them from being a spy.
SPEAKER_00Right. You know, but I I wanted to let them know. I'm telling you. I tell people the behavior patterns, I I tell people the espionage indicators, and you know, it it's just like I I just try and be real with them. And you know, you you actually use the acronym that I started with defensive information to counter espionage, but now I had to change it over the years because now I call it defensive information to counter everything because I'm threat driven and you need to understand all threats, and if you don't understand all threats, there's a there's a chance you're gonna die from something that you shouldn't die from because you just didn't know it. And I want you to be a player for a long time. So I try and keep families safe. I mean, I I've had people who bring their children to dice briefings.
SPEAKER_02I like what you did. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Seven, the the youngest I ever had was I want to say this guy told me he was five years old. And I'm like, There's no I said, Have you ever heard my briefing? And he goes, Yeah, that's why we brought our kids. So I'm watching this kid, he's like in the tenth row from the front at a big movie theater and he's in Hawaii. And I know this kid's gonna disrupt this, all right? He at the beginning got up from where he was next to his mother, went over to his father, sat on his father's lap, and for the next two hours, every time I looked at that boy, he was looking at me.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow. Two hours with a fire?
SPEAKER_00Okay. He did make a sound.
SPEAKER_02You held his attention.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and I actually know young children who were brought to my briefings that actually grew up to be security officers.
SPEAKER_02Yes, so you you Oh, they actually became security officers? Yes. As a result, because of my briefing. That is so good. And I like how you've made it applicable to everything, not just espionage. I can use it to protect my personal information, I can use it to protect my family.
SPEAKER_00Personal information. It just just understanding diseases.
SPEAKER_02Right? Diseases will kill you. They will kill you.
SPEAKER_00It's like you you want you honestly think everybody understands about all diseases and everything they could do to try and keep themselves from getting sick and all that. Most people can't even wash their hands.
SPEAKER_02Can't even wash your hands. You're absolutely right. So ends part two of our interview with Ray Dice Man Simcoe. We really hope you enjoyed it as much as I did interviewing him. Stay tuned for part three when we talk about what's more dangerous than the coronavirus, and find out more about how DICE defensive information countering everything can be applied to your lives. Again, we'd like to thank our sponsors, Security First and Associates, and Ron Sixtus at SecurityClearance DefenseLawwier.com, and of course, Red Bike Publishing. Join us again next time for part three, the final part of our interview with Ray Diceman Cinco.