Intelligence Analyst Goes From Capture Kill To Survive And Thrive Missions

You can learn more about Kervin Aucoin here. Kervin hosts the intelligence-based geopolitical podcast This Week Explained.

TRANSCRIPT

Secrets Kept

Kervin Aucoin (o-quinn) was raised on a Louisiana farm and steeped in Cajun culture. Every Mardi Gras his grandfather would kill a chicken to make sausage gumbo. 

This is a part of the of Mamou Mardi Gras, what they would call the original Mardi Gras, which is that you go from house to house looking for ingredients for a gumbo for the day. And when you get to the final house, you ask for their chicken, and they throw the chicken out, and everybody goes and chases after it. You catch it, and then, as soon as you catch it, they go to that big house and put all the ingredients together, and they make a gumbo, and everybody has a big feast. 

When Kervin was five years old his dad found out he had lung cancer. The doctor told him he had six months to live, so he quit his job sandblasting, which likely caused the disease. His parents didn’t say anything to Kervin or his brothers. All he remembered was having to move to the shack on his grandparents’ farm.

The shack had one main room and then it had a living room, kitchen area. That was about it. It's probably like four or 500 square feet, three kids and a pregnant woman . And you know, I slept in the living room with my two other brothers during that time. I didn't know what other people had that I didn't have, because I had clothes, I had shoes. They may have come from …secondhand stores, but I had no clue. It's a wild time. I don't know, you know, how my parents got through that without just completely breaking down. I never saw either of them break down, and it's shocking to me. 

As he grew older Kervin realized this was just how they did things. They bottled up emotions.

That was really kept from me and that I think that's something that my family did a lot. We really weren't a talking family.

It wasn’t until Kervin and his brothers were adults that they learned what really happened, why they had to live in a shed on grandpa’s farm.

I really found out when my youngest brother got married, which was I'd say, 10 years ago … and my dad gives a speech as the dad of the groom and he tells the story... The doctor told him he had about six months. He wasn't going to see this baby born. He definitely wasn't going to see any of his kids get married and have their own kids, and he was very proud of that moment that he fought it and beat it, and he got to see all of his grandkids. 

This is a story about how Kervin learned the hard way he had to open up or risk his marriage and his sanity. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales. 

‘Untapped Potential’

As a teenager Kervin Aucoin was the class clown. He didn’t care about learning, just breezed through high school with passing grades.

You could always find me in either a different classroom that I was not supposed to be in, or in the teacher's lounge, or in the principal's office, not because I was called into the principal's office, but just to sit and talk and, you know, tell jokes and things like that. 

Come senior year he was class president and performed in plays. His clothes matched his colorful personality. But he was still letting his grades slide. 

He’d taken a college entrance exam with the rest of his classmates and scored high. As graduation approached the guidance counselor called Kervin into her office. 

And I get in there and she goes, ‘you have so much untapped potential. You are one of the brightest kids here and I look at your grades and I'm just confused.’

But Kervin didn’t care. He thought he’d move to Los Angeles or New York and become an actor or a comedian. 

I worried more about music at the time I was part of counterculture you know beginning the punk rock scene and listening to emo music, which is this is the time frame of like 99 to 2002. So I'm going to concerts and skipping school, things like that, and you know this score is staring me in the face and this wonderful woman is trying to help me and I'm just not accepting to it. 

August 2001

It was August of 2001, and the reality that awaited Kervin after graduation was starting to hit him. One day he decided to tag along with two of his buddies who were meeting with an Army recruiter.

It's a small town, so I knew the recruiter, and he also knew my family pretty well. But I remember telling him to not even contact me. I'm not joining the military. It goes against my morals. 

When Kervin heard the Army would pay for college, he started to think the military didn’t sound so bad. He’d do the training, put in his one year of service, and get college paid for. By the time the recruiter finished his spiel, Kervin was convinced. But the recruiter took one look at his GPA and told him he wouldn’t get past infantry. 

To enter the Army you have to take an aptitude test. So a few days later, Kervin took it and surprised everyone.

He looks at my score, and he's just like, he's like, ‘whoa, wait a second, have you ever thought about getting into intelligence?’ 

The recruiter set him up with a job as a geospatial intelligence analyst. In the days leading up to his enlistment something happened that would not only change Kervin’s future, but the course of history.

I walk into the teacher's lounge. This is a place that I go into a lot and hang out with the teachers, and they're watching the news as they would normally do, and I see you see the twin towers and they’re on fire, or there’s smoke coming out. And I remember going, ‘what movie is this that they're promoting?’ And I believe it was the vice principal was like, ‘this is not a movie.’ …And at that moment, as he said it, the second plane hits. And it's that moment where we realize, oh… this is something on a scale we have never seen in my lifetime… It still did not resonate with me that, oh, I'm getting into something here. I don't think that happened until basic training for me… And that's when it was like, ‘oh, this is very real.’

Kervin enlisted the following month. As soon as he completed his training, President George W. Bush signed the agreement to go to war. Kervin was 20 years old when he deployed to Iraq.

If you're watching CNN at the time, there's a little ticker at the bottom that updates with every death of an American service member. So when you're wearing the uniform and you're going to deploy and you're reading that ticker, it hits, makes it very real. There were plenty of times where I sat and thought, hey, how can I get out of this?

New Perspective

By January of 2005 Kervin had put in three years of service, more than enough to qualify for tuition reimbursement. So he told himself this would be his last deployment. It was at that time Iraq had hit a major milestone. They were holding their first election since Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Kervin was deployed to Baghdad and embedded with the Iraqi police. 

Coming from a small town in Louisiana, you didn't interact. I mean, we didn't, I didn't interact with Muslims at all. 

At the police station an officer showed him around.

There's four rooms, and we sleep in one of the rooms, which was like a conference room for them, and I'm sleeping on this, like, metal table, put a sleeping bag there... And I find out, you know, that one of the police officers, that's where he sleeps on a day-to-day basis, because he's so scared to leave the police station and go to his house, because they're helping the Americans. And he feared for his life. I felt guilty, first of all, because I'm taking this person's bed…And I told him...I don't have to sleep here … And he was like, no, you have to. This is an honor that you would actually take this…and I felt like, well, I want for nothing, and these guys are just... they don't know if they're going to make it to the next day…and they're offering me food…and commander took me to the side, and he was like, you have to eat this food. They are offering it to you. You look like you feel that you're better than them.

The night before the election, Kervin woke up to what sounded like an out of control party.

KERVIN: I wake up because things are blowing up but there’s also cheering going on within the police station, and it's dancing and singing, and what is going on here? And through all the chaos, you know, there was a polling station right across the street that had a suicide bomber go up and kill three people and injure dozens more. And…Red Crescent comes and removes the bodies that have perished, and these injured people get back in line because they want to vote.

LAUREL: Wow.

KERVIN: …and the dichotomy there of US elections versus those elections and how I saw things just really changed me…. and I can't even go to the polling station because it's raining, or there's two people in line and I don't want to wait. You know, it's the minor inconvenience, and I'm not going to vote because of that, but these people were, you know, facing death, and then they would come in, you know, across the street, they come into the police station singing and dancing and just happy, overjoyed that they could actually be in a free democratic election. It moved me.

After that experience, being in that police station being among the Iraqi people it endeared me to them to their language to their culture and said I want to I want to get that language.

At the same time he was in a new relationship. A friend had introduced him to Tiana from afar. They got to know each other through their letters. After months of being pen pals, they decided it was time to meet in person.

And one day we said, ‘hey, when I get back from Iraq, do you wanna meet up?’ We did meet up. We had a full day that I, the whole time, during that entire first date, I said, ‘I have to figure out how to keep her with me for the rest of my life.’

Eight months later they married and made plans to start a family. Kervin told Tiana he wanted to learn Arabic and re-enlist.

The course lasted a year and a half. Then in 2009 he deployed to Iraq again, where Operation Iraqi Freedom was still in full swing. This time Kervin was sent inside interrogation rooms to provide human intelligence or real time analysis of what was being said.

Capture Kill

When he came home a position opened up at Fort Liberty (formerly known as Fort Bragg) in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. With the use of drone cameras Kervin observed high value targets and made critical decisions – life or death decisions. 

You're really making a lot of those decisions on the ground, whether or not you're going to strike a high value target, whether you are going to call off a mission because something just doesn't feel right or something on the ground doesn't look right.So you're doing 12 to 16 hours a day watching everything that's going on and trying to compile enough intelligence to present to the commander so that they can either go out for a capture kill mission or if you just you know do a strike because it's in the middle of the desert.

Right away Kervin said the commander wanted the team to understand what a capture kill mission meant. Kervin said the first time he deployed with special operations in Kirkuk, Iraq, a new team was coming in.

I remember the commander sitting there and he gives his big speech to the team telling them this is what we're going to do this is how we're going to achieve our mission. And he says we are here in a capture kill mission and I'm not looking to capture anybody, which that's the first thing I hear from the team lead is we're just going to kill people here we're going to get to the high value targets and we're gonna go out there and kill them. Now, hindsight, they killed no one, but that was his mindset. I think he said that to get everyone in the mindset of, don't be afraid to pull the trigger. When you're looking the enemy in the eye, you need to, without a doubt, like he said, do not hesitate to pull that trigger.

We get all the intel on a specific location that has a high value target, present that to the commander. The commander decides to go on a mission. It's a nighttime mission, a raid, where they'll get into their kit, their kit being all of their gear, get into a helicopter. They will then go from the base on that helicopter to a few kilometers from their actual location, wherever you can find what we would call an HLZ, a Helo Landing Zone. They land, get off the helicopter, go into whatever compound they're going to go into, and then as they enter that compound, they either decide to capture or kill the person that's in that compound.

So you're raiding this compound, if an enemy fires on you, that's the kill. All right, we're going to kill this person. If everybody, everything's calm, everybody surrenders, then you have a capture, and you capture. They detain the individuals, put them on the helicopter with them, and they come back, and then that person goes into a detention facility, and they get interrogated.

LAUREL: I'm wondering if, and you're at Fort Liberty while they're there.

KERVIN: Yep.

LAUREL: Okay. And I'm wondering if it feels like, or if the training was in any way like a video game.

KERVIN: I mean, it very much feels like a video game. And even, like, you look at it today, which I play all of these, you know, Call of Duty, Battlefield, all of these, Modern Warfare, and they've gotten so good that it very much looks like if I'm looking at it on the video game screen or my TV screen for the video game, it's the same as my computer screen when I was watching. 

At first he thought he’d give the job six months, then move on.

So what I thought would be just a pretty short blip in my life became, you know, probably one of the more defining moments of who I am now. And I took it, you know, I took it to heart, and I loved working with those guys, the special operations, those actual operators who are doing the job, some of the most professional people you'll meet, and if you endear yourself to them.

PTSD

Initially Kervin didn’t notice how the work was affecting him.

It didn't resonate much with me. 

What did resonate was how successful the mission was.

So if we're doing a strike, so that means a hellfire from an unmanned aerial vehicle…you would have a hellfire strike on a specific target. It's about 50-50 whether it hits the target sometimes, just because you're a human on the ground, you're seeing this thing coming after you, you're gonna start running. So there are some misses, there are hits. When it hits, you're in a room with this team, you know, whether it's Army Special Forces or the Navy SEALs, things like that. And it's jubilation, right? You know, strikes, you witness someone dying on the screen, somebody who's life you've watched for could be days or weeks or months, and now they're dead and everyone's cheering. And I'm cheering. Because you performed a successful mission. You know, the fact that you killed somebody didn't even resonate with me at that moment.

And then on the misses, it's like the opposite. You know, it's mentally straining because… a mission could take eight hours. Okay, we've got the go ahead to actually do this. So now let's gear up. Let's get all of our air assets where they need to be. And we're getting ready to go for a strike…if it misses… you're crushed. I remember it taking days to come back from something like that…because in my mind… the reason they have to die is because they are going to kill other people. They're going to kill innocent people. So, when you miss, now you're giving that person an opportunity and probably pushing them to go out and commit a terrorist act or something like that. So, it stresses, it's really taxing on the mind. It gets to a point where you go to sleep dreaming about setting up all the air assets and calling in the order. 

The work had taken a toll on him psychologically but Kervin didn’t notice he had changed. His wife on the other hand had noticed.

KERVIN: …I was no longer the easygoing, extroverted, happy guy anymore. I was punching holes in walls. I was yelling. I was being angry for no reason.

LAUREL: Short fuse.

KERVIN: Very short fuse for even the most minuscule thing could set me off. 

LAUREL: What would set you off?

KERVIN: Oh, you know, not... I mean, something as terrible to say as, like, watching a sport sporting event … if we were delayed for something, I'm very much somebody that needs to be early or on time for things because of the so if we are delayed, I get very anxious, and it would set me off, and I would start yelling at my wife and my kids, you know, you need a sense of urgency. We need to do this. We need to get somewhere. We can't be late for this. So, there was things like that just kept setting me off, and so she took, you know, took me aside, and she was like, hey, I know you love what you're doing.but we can't sustain this as a family… when I get back from a deployment, I feel I lose that sense of purpose in my life, I guess. And so I always volunteered. 

Facing The Problem

In 2014 after 15 years in the military Tiana sat him down for a frank conversation.

After my wife was telling me like, you know, there is a problem. You do have an issue. I was like, well, I can fix it. There's nothing too big that your brain can't fix. But it didn't still didn't hit, you know, that I had PTSD or anything like that, because I was the guy that would tell other people to get over it. When they would say, mental health issue… it was, hey, you know, you're the big man, you know, pull your pants up and let's do this, stop complaining. 

After all this was the guy who’d been raised to bottle up and ignore emotions.

KERVIN: So, it wasn't until really I got out of that, you know, I was forced to just, hey, I can't do this anymore. I got out.

LAUREL: What was your reaction when she was telling you this? Like, did you see it too?

KERVIN: I'm... no, I did not. I mean, after, yeah, I can see it now. It did take me some time. But it was just, you know, I respect when she tells me something. And so, she said it, and I was like, okay, I understand what you're saying. I may not think the same way, but, you know,... we're gonna be done with this, and I'm not gonna be doing this anymore, and so we can maybe get me on track.

Kervin requested a non violent surveillance mission and was sent to Africa.

And I began, you know, to talk to Tiana about things, you know, how she saw her life during that time while I was doing those special operations missions.

“If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going.”

When he came home he went to the VA, where they confirmed Kervin had post traumatic stress disorder.

 It was really the first time I was able to retell my story, and that's when I identified it. Once he took me through the entire process of, you saw this, you know, you did this, how do you feel about doing that? And I was like, well, right now, not really good. 

So, I did not get professional treatment. Like, I still don't see a therapist, even though I should, and I am a proponent of that. But I was given by the therapist books to read in order to identify it, in order to help me through the process. And I'm very lucky to have a support group within my family of people who have gone through their own traumas. and have come out of it. And we support each other and we sit and my wife has told me and told my kids, you can be open and honest about anything. You could tell me anything. It's not gonna change how I feel about you and we can talk through it. If you don't tell me, I don't know that there's a problem. So one of the ways I've been able to come through this is by talking about it, is by opening up and it's not easy. It's not easy for other people to hear, you know, I killed someone, and I don't know how I feel about that.

Kervin has come a long way from the boy in Louisiana who shut down his feelings.

My wife and I both wear our emotions on our sleeves. We're what they would call elder emos, you know? We wear our heart on our sleeve and let those emotions out. So, there's a little dichotomy there between how I was raised and how I'm raising my kids now, but I didn't want for anything. She's very good at asking questions and so she'll always say, what is triggering this?

Kervin likes to quote Winston Churchill who said, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.” This was his family’s philosophy.

What he doesn't tell you is, you can keep going, but you're not going to get out until you have somebody pull you out. And so, you have to find that person that can pull you out. … and there is no judgment, only grace, that when you call them up and say, ‘hey, I'm having a very difficult time,’ they stop everything and they figure it out and they come to your aid. And you have to have that person. You can't just keep going through hell by yourself. I think sometimes I tried to do that on my own because that's my kind of personality of I don't want to give up. I don't want to ask for help. I don't want to give up, you know, especially in my work. It's like I have to have my hands in this. No one else can work on this but me…Like you have to have somebody there, somebody that you trust to pull you out of it. And I had that. Tiana was that. And I wouldn't be alive today if she had not noticed the difference and pulled me out of hell.

LAUREL: What do you think has been the most helpful as you work through your PTSD?

KERVIN: Telling the stories, honestly. Like right now, I will be, I'll feel so much happier after this, because I was able to tell the stories. And you know, you can have those emotions, you can cry through those and break down. And I will feel better because I identified, you know, an issue, I identified a trauma, and I was able to talk about it. Now you have to do that within a safe space…And going from my childhood of not talking about anything, holding in all this hurt or pain or trauma, and hopefully it's so far deep down in the recesses of your brain that you never think of it again. That was not the right way to go about it. So I'm still pulling these things even from my childhood that I will remember. Just the way my brain works, it has to trigger into my brain in order for me to tell the story because I have forgotten it, because I hid it away. So every time I tell a story or tell the same story, something new pops up and I remember something else and it helps me. And you know, it's a continuous journey and it's never going to be completely healed. But as long as I can keep telling the stories, I can keep feeling better.

Leaving The Military

LAUREL: What was it like to leave the military?

KERVIN: Difficult. I think that was another moment where, you know, my mental health went down. Once you take the uniform off, I talk about sense of purpose. I feel like everybody needs to have a sense of purpose. It's one of the reasons why, you know, I watched my father-in-law and my father pass away because they retired and didn't do anything, and they lost a sense of purpose, and they just, you know, became a shell of the men that they were.

But Kervin found a new sense of purpose using the skills he learned in the military to help people thrive. 

They recover individuals who are, you know, maybe illegally detained overseas or individuals who've been captured or taken hostage, and they what they say is, to return with honor. So, not just to hand back, here's this person. No, you're going to do it with honor because that's what that person deserves. That's what their family deserves. And I found that was very, that was the purpose that I needed. 

He has since started his own business Aucoin (oh-quinn) Analytics, a private intelligence company that focuses on security trends using data and predictive analysis. 

Using my experience traveling all over the world, seeing all kinds of things to now provide intelligence to the layman, the common person, your regular civilian who does not have access to all this information. Maybe they can finally get access to understanding how to stay safe while they're traveling. You know, you take your family to Paris, and you don't understand that there are certain geopolitical events that can happen that could totally turn, you know, turn what was this sort of joyful protest into something that becomes violent, and how to identify that stuff to get your family out and keep them safe. 

LAUREL: So you are able to use your military training, but sort of flip it on its head.

KERVIN: Yes.

Today Kervin and Tiana have three children and their parenting style is very different from Kervin’s upbringing. When it came to naming his oldest, he knew right away.

My favorite word in the English language is grace, and it's because I think everybody deserves a little bit of that, of grace. So, I say that because I hope people would give me grace when they find out things that I have done as well. And that's her middle name. It's a very important word for me because I think it is a powerful word that can actually turn terrible things into good. So if you're struggling with anything, usually you can't get out of it because you can't show yourself grace.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.