Paul Berg is a career Foreign Service Officer currently studying at the U.S. National War College. He was running the U.S. Consulate in Medan, Indonesia when the December 26, 2004 tsunami struck. Berg immediately began coordinating relief efforts. He spoke with Kristin McHugh in March, 2007 for the documentary “Beyond Fear: America’s Role in an Uncertain World” produced by the Stanley Foundation and KQED Public Radio.

Listen to the MP3 audio of this interview.

Q: How about we step back a few years – I understand that you were in Medan when the earthquake happened and then of course, the subsequent Tsunami, but I’ve read accounts where you’ve said basically to you didn’t feel it. When did you realize the full impact of the devastation?

Paul Berg: Actually we did feel it, in Medan; it was a very strong quake in Medan. What happened was that it took place, you know, on a Sunday morning and I’ll never forget that Sunday morning ‘cause I had decided to sleep in a little bit late, it was the day after Christmas. Believe it or not, I had tickets to go later that week, to Aceh on a vacation and I was sitting in my bed and I felt something shaking outside and I didn’t know – I felt something making noise, and I didn’t know quite it was. And at first I thought well, it was one was the guards doing something outside a little bit irritating and I was thinking about whether I would get up to talk to him.

And then I realized no, it was the keys in the locks in the closet that were going back and forth, back and forth, jiggling, and it took me a second to realize it was an earthquake but the quickly we realized that. I’d done a tour in Mexico years ago, we had earthquakes a lot, and this felt like it. It hit Medan very hard yet it didn’t cause any damage there. No one died, nothing was damaged, and in fact, people had pretty much forgotten about it by the afternoon. I hadn’t, because we were already getting calls from Washington and from Jakarta, they’d picked up that the epicenter seemed to have been near Aceh.

And you know, the rumors were beginning to come in that there were some very serious damage in Aceh and so at that point, I got on the phone right away and every kind of communication that I had to try to get in touch with friends in Aceh, with the hotel where people would be. Of course you always think about whether there's gonna be any American citizens when there's a possible disaster and so I was calling the largest hotel there, calling all my friends, politicians, journalists, whatever it was. And of course, nothing was answering and at that point we began to understand that it was gonna – it was provably something rather serious because clearly all communications were down. And it wasn’t till that evening that we learned just how serious it had been.

Q: Now, the United States was criticized in the early days, after the Tsunami, for responding really slowly in terms of providing aid or pledging aid. Can you outline the official US response to the tsunami?

Berg: Well, I remember reading those statements, but the fact is we were one of the first countries to come forward. First, there was emergency funds that USAID [US Agency for International Development] administers that came to, I think about $100,000.00 that were expended immediately because a lot of the NGO’s that provide emergency relief in these kinds of things are under contract that they’re immediately sent out, that afternoon, if you been in Aceh, you would seen NGO’s setting up tents – beginning to setup refugee camps and those were NGO’s that were funded by the United States. And in just a few days, the relief effort, on the part of the United States and other countries had begun to get very serious and intense.

I think that there is always a certain period in the first few days when the bureaucracy is still reacting, trying to understand just what needs to be done. And I have to admit that it was such an incredible magnitude and hit so many parts of countries of that part of the Indian Ocean, that I think the international community itself, wasn’t clear at first, just how serious the damage had been in Aceh.

Q: You mentioned the international community – do you have a good sense of what the initial multilateral, multinational reaction was?

Berg: I think that what happened was that every country had its own assistance, its own relief effort, had its own area of strength. But things began to be coordinated more and more on the ground. I think one of the great things that happened early on in the effort was that the sides, the different militaries for example, the Australian, the American, the Singapore and some of the others that were there, as well as the NGO’s, the governments, the assistance programs – they sent people up within the first week, many of them, and after that, others began coming up as well.

And there's always the possibility in such a situation that there’ll be a lot of duplication that people will fight for particular areas and all of that. But from what I saw in the first few weeks, that didn’t happen. Everyone understood the seriousness of the project and there was a terrific on the ground coordination. A lot of things in the first couple weeks were being done from Medan. A lot of the organizations sort of setup their base camp there because there just wasn’t the right of infrastructure in Aceh at that point, it had been destroyed and shipments needed to be coordinated from someplace that had a functioning airport, with functioning commutations, etcetera.

And so, for the first few weeks we had daily planning meetings in Aceh among all of the NGO’s but begun among the militaries. I think the militaries would have their meetings first and then the NGO’s would join an this worked actually surprisingly well, surprisingly well again, because of the number of different organizations that were involved. Every country, every organization brings certain strengths to an effort like this and there's a limit to how much you can coordinate in theory before a theoretical disaster.

There's a limit to how much you can do that because there are always gonna be subjective factors affecting what each country and each organization can bring. What I think is much more important is communication on the ground and proper coordination on the ground and thank goodness that began to fall into place quickly.

Q: It’s my understanding that Aceh was off limits to foreigners in December 2004 because of the Separatist conflict that was going in the regions. If that’s the case, it seems very surprising to me, that the US Marines were able to put boots on the ground within a couple of weeks of the tsunami.

Berg: Oh, believe me, it was – for us, as diplomats, we were – I arrived in Indonesia in August of 2003 and of course, Aceh was an important part of my District and at that point, diplomats – nobody could go to Aceh, and finally by 2004, Jakarta had worked out a modus operandi that with certain permissions, diplomats and some other foreigners could sometimes go up there. Although we were almost always restricted to Banda Aceh the capital alone, so we were occasionally able to getup. Yes, as a matter of fact, in the opening days after the tsunami, it gave me nightmares.

The Indonesian military at that point, of course, had a very low opinion of foreigners, particularly of Americans, and they’d always – since we’d been very circumspect and not very supportive of their military effort, we’d raised a lot of second thoughts publicly about human rights, about a lot of other matters, we didn’t think that that was right way to deal with the conflict in Aceh. And the Acehenese Military, of course, had long been cutoff from much contact with the American military, so they were very suspicious of all kinds of foreigners coming up there.

And in fact, before the Marines even set foot there, we had situations where we had American journalists who had managed to penetrate the different areas and then got picked up by the local military. We had people, who were, from the Embassy, for example, from one of the medical units at the Embassy who’d gone up and we had to intercede with people that we knew, to make sure that they could get out into one of the local areas and do their proper work.

So, what happened though is that the President, then newly elected of Indonesia, Yudhoyono understood the need. Yudhoyono is one of the few Indonesian’s who has trained with the U.S. military. In fact he, President Yudhoyono is a trained Army Ranger. He’s one of these rare figures, an Eisenhower or Colin Powell like figure who is thoroughly military but thoroughly civilian at the same time and knows how to understand both worlds well. Again, he reminds me very, very much of Colin Powell. And that meant that he was able to get a hold of the situation early on; he knew that not just the American military but also the Australians the Singapore military, the Malaysians, who are not always totally welcome in Indonesia, would all be needed for this effort.

And it was he, who more than anyone else, interceded with his own military to make sure that all of the foreign militaries and NGO’s would be welcome. And there were times when you’d see statements from other figures that would sound less welcoming. But always it was the President of Indonesia, who’s had a very good relationship, a very positive relationship with the United States, both on the military and civilian side, who always cut through and made sure that the need and assistance, was provided.

Q: Do you know how much money the United States has pledged to tsunami relief?

Berg: Ooh, it’s hundreds of millions, but I don’t know the precise figure right now.

Q: So, you were responsible for implementing, in the early days, the United States aid?

Berg: That’s right, as the American Diplomat with the responsibility for Sumatra, including Aceh, I was the Ambassador’s person on the ground. But what meant – it doesn’t sound very dramatic or very poetic, but what it meant was being the bureaucrat, really, who made sure that things happened. You have to make sure – one of the things I’ve discovered – I’d never been involved – anybody who’s in the Foreign Services, been involved in disasters, but I’d never been involved in a disaster that was this serious – this big. And one of the things I’ve learned is that what you most need, in addition to of course, the people and the assistance that will actually carry things out on the ground, is someone on the bureaucratic level who can untie the knots; who can work things when there are disagreements; who can bring people together and that was the role that I took was – and that’s what implementing really means.

It means that on the myriad of little bureaucratic problems that come up, that turnout to be not so little – things like making sure that the Air Force people or the Consulate in Medan and going into the airport everyday, keep having the good relations with the Indonesians to make sure that the C-130’s with the assistance, actually can land, which was a huge issue for the first weeks, as an example. Making sure that the IOM [International Organization for Migration] trucks funded by USAID can actually get through on the highways, and making sure they actually leave at the right time. Overseeing the whole effort to make sure that things like that actually happen. That was what I thought was most needed, and so that’s what implementation meant to me, and I was delighted to see things happen because we’d worked the glitches; we’d worked the bureaucratic coordination, and cooperation that doesn’t always happen naturally.

Q: I knew when the tsunami hit that Aceh had been embroiled in a civil conflict for a number of decades, but I’m not sure that that was really high profile in people’s minds, in the early days of the tsunami. You know, realizing what was going on with the tsunami in Indonesia. Is it fair to say that the tsunami accelerated the peace talks between the Indonesians and GAM, or the Free Aceh Movement?

Berg: Yes, I think it, I think it did, and I guess that’s a silver lining from the ugly cloud of the tsunami. But I think it did in many ways. I think what really happened is that the people of Aceh, who’d of course – the people of Aceh, they may take one side or another, may have taken one side or another in the conflict, but they were certainly sick of war; they didn’t like being an occupied country. But at the same time they also, an unoccupied territory, but they also didn’t like having the insecurity of a Guerilla movement going on. And the tsunami came along and although both sides – both the military and the GAM – both sides declared sort of informal cease fires but shooting started again, quickly.

And the people of Aceh said to themselves – and I can speak for them in this way, ‘cause I knew so many of them; we talked about it so often. They were saying, enough. We’ve got serious work to do here. We have an entire Aceh to rebuild and the last thing we need is a conflict going on. And what it tended to do was put pressure on all sides. Again, I have to mention President Yudh0yono – back during the Megawati Administration, when there seemed to be so few people in the Cabinet who had any sensitivity about the situation in Aceh and the particularities of the Acehenese people, Yudhoyono was her only Minister, or one of her few Ministers who actually did seem to understand. And when he became President – before the tsunami, just before the tsunami – he made it a point that he would try resolve peacefully the situation in Aceh.

And that was not making a great deal of progress before the tsunami but after the tsunami, I think all sides realized that this is really the only option, the only option that anybody had was to finally, finally move towards peace and it happened, it happened. It really is a miracle. I really think it’s an incredible thing. A miracle but like all miracles, it occurs because there are some exceptional people involved in the process on both the Acehenese and the Indonesian side, as well as foreign side, there were some exceptional involved, starting with President Yudhoyono.

Q: I visited a small village called Ronga-Ronga, which is on the road to Takengon, where USAID is funding through the International Organization for Migration, a new outdoor market. The project, as I understand it, is part of post-conflict, rebuilding in Aceh, and is not tied to USAID’s tsunami relief. What can you tell me about U.S. efforts to rebuild Aceh’s conflict areas?

Berg: Well, I think that the USAID effort is throughout Aceh. There was a certain large amount of money that was budget for just the tsunami hit areas, but there's also USAID money that doesn’t come out of that budget that can go to rebuilding all of Aceh. And of course, the point is that even areas that weren’t physically touched by the tsunami and weren’t damaged by the earthquake are nevertheless deeply affected by the tsunami, which affected economically and socially all of Aceh.

For example, you mentioned Takengon is deep, as you know, is deep in the inland Aceh, and so you’d say well, it wasn’t really affected by the tsunami but it was because of course, Takengon, sends a lot of people to Banda Aceh, and Malabo to work. And those people were killed or those people lost their jobs and had to go back home and unemployed, and a drain on the economy because they had nothing to do. So, the tsunami, very quickly, affected all of Aceh, not just the areas that were affected physically. So, there's a need throughout Aceh, and I think that there's a need for a combination of different American projects there.

I think with assistance you always have to be careful. On the one hand there's always a need for assistance and large amounts of it after this kind of a disaster. And there's a need, a continuing need, for various different kinds of economic assistance, for certain kinds of social assistance; for certain kinds of infrastructure, and also for some kinds of assistance that will support the Peace process. These are all important needs. But you have to be careful to let a place get back on its own two feet.

Aceh was very poor and had many needs and yet it wasn’t basket case, it was never a basket case. The Acehenese people are smart, they’re self-sufficient, they do have resources there, and I think assistance has to be pitched towards helping in ways that will help the Acehenese get back on their feet, but won't make them dependent, addicted, to a certain kind of assistance or a certain kind of process. That’s sort of a sensitive matter, but I know that our USAID professionals are very experienced in this.

Q: This particular market project required that a certain percentage of the people who worked on it were ex-GAM Fighters. Is it fair to say that this particular project wouldn’t have happened without the peace?

Berg: Well, we had a certain amount of Aceh money before the tsunami and before conflict. And we were not spending a lot of it, at that point, because during the conflict, people couldn’t go to Aceh, as you said before, and so the projects couldn’t be properly monitored. So after, you know, after peace began to breakout after the signing of the Accords and everything, you know, of course, the greatest – one of the greatest needs was to re-integrate the fighters back into civil society. And to me, that is still the greatest threat – possible threat to peace in Aceh, is a threat posed by excessive levels of random violence.

And it calls for a number of different assistance efforts, not only in areas that you mentioned areas of employment and job creation and skills, but also in areas of law enforcement, so that it doesn’t become an out of control problem where the military needs to be brought in, which would, you know, polarize the situation. It needs to be a civilian matter, and it needs to be handled with a variety of different approaches. And these are all areas in which the USAID has familiarity and has played a really constructive role.

Q: When I spoke to some GAM officials they were talking, specifically about this need for money and reconciliation and reconstruction so that they could keep the peace going. I think that most Americans can see the need in terms of spending money for tsunami relief but not necessarily for post-conflict relief. What are doing with that money? I mean what's the ultimate goal?

Berg: Good. I think that’s even more important because I think all the reconstruction won't matter much if Acehenese society becomes polarized again and there's a return to the conflict. Then a lot of what has been done, after the tsunami, will have been lost. There's two things to say on that; one is that Aceh has had a long, long, long relationship with the United States; there's always been a special relationship. Boston Trading Ships sailed into the port of Malabo in 1815 – the relationship goes back that far.

A lot of Acehenese leaders, human rights leaders, intellectual leaders, political leaders were educated in the United States. So, we have a long relationship with Aceh; it’s one of the reasons that we’ve always been sensitive to how the Indonesian government was dealing with the Separatist issue. We’ve never supported separatism. We’ve always wanted Indonesia to remain one country. But there's a question of how you deal with a Separatist Movement. And at times in the past, we felt that the past Indonesian governments hadn’t dealt with it in a way that was sensitive to the aspiration and particularities of the Acehenese.

Americans and American diplomats are always – American officials should always be sensitive to the special relationship that Aceh has with the United States. And by the way, it’s a devout Muslim area, yet an area that has a very warm feeling for the United States, and frankly I think these days we need all of that kind of support that we can get all over the world. Well, if we would somehow turn our backs on Aceh and on peace in Aceh, then we’d be giving up or we’d be doing damage to a long close relationship between one of the most devoutly Muslim areas on earth. I don’t think that would be a very wise move.

And the other thing is, you know, this is something, Kristin, I think you’ve experienced, the same as I have – I’ve never met an American who’s gone to Aceh who didn’t immediately fall in love with the Acehenese people. They really are a very special people. And I love all of my people Sumatra, I love them, but the people of Aceh are certainly a very special people. And there seems to be something in the Acehenese temperament that matches with the American temperament. And so, it’s something emotional, I guess, even though it also – why we should stay in Aceh and why we should be involved in peace process also has to do with our strategic interest in the region.

We don’t want Aceh to become an area of conflict again, and threaten the unity of Indonesia, our key friend in Southeast Asia, the largest country, the country that was really the leading effort behind the founding of ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations]. No, we wouldn’t want the unity of Indonesian to be threatened by successful separatist movements or by insurgencies. But more important than that, there something emotional, there's an emotional link between the people of the two countries and I only wish that a lot more Americans could go to Aceh. And it may not be – or someday it will be a tourist spot because there are so many beautiful places in Aceh, but it’s a place where you can go and enjoy a really remarkable people.

Q: I absolutely agree that the folks in Aceh have a tremendous future. I think the area could really be an alternative to Bali in terms of a vacation spot. But do you think that the perceptions of the Acehenese towards Americans, do you think that that’s spread to the rest of Indonesia? Has the perception of America in the largest Muslim country world changed because of the tsunami?

Berg: Well, I think it’s an interesting situation in Indonesia. I think you have two things going on at the same time. On the one hand, I think that practically all of Indonesia, from end to end, strongly opposes American policy in the Middle East, including Iraq. That is simply a fact of Indonesian public opinion and hasn’t changed. And so, if you ask in a public opinion survey, what do you think what the United States, in its foreign policy, and particularly if you bring people to think about the Middle East, of course, they’ll be negative on that subject.

But if you step back ask depth questions about how people actually feel about the United States, Indonesians have a very good feeling, a very positive feeling about the United States. So, our efforts in Indonesia have to be efforts that will reach down to the bedrock good feeling that Indonesians have about the United States. And they have to be constructive; they have to have some understanding of what the sensitivity of the Indonesian people is.

But what I constantly found was that the Indonesian people had great feelings about the United States, and in many ways, still look up to the United States but I would say, what they would say is that they’ve been disappointed or angered by their disagreements with our policy in the Middle East.

Q: Do you think that all of the assistance that we’re providing to Indonesia now, because of the tsunami is helping to make the United States safer because we’re helping to keep the peace in Indonesia?

Berg: Oh yes, absolutely, absolutely. We’re gonna find that as we move into the next century, that our strategic need for Indonesia, in Southeast Asia and Asia, is gonna grow and grow and grow, for three reasons. First of all, just because of its strategic position. It sits astride the Straights of Malacca, it dominates Southeast Asia, and it is one of the areas that could provide a counter weight, if needed, to China or to India, if that were somehow needed in the relationships.

That’s one. Secondly, it sits on an enormous stock of natural resources – gas and oil as well as minerals, gold, you name it, it’s there in Indonesia. And these are all resources that are need, not only by the United States but also they’re needed by our friends and allies throughout the world, especially in Asia; so that Japan and China for example are increasing dependent – Japan has always depended on a large amount of energy from Indonesia. And China will be becoming increasingly dependent on it, so that’s a second reason that Indonesia become strategically important the United States.

And the third reason is that Indonesia has, for so long, been a close friend of the United States, and I think that we have to pay attention to the needs of countries that are our close friends, of a security in those countries as well as anything we can do to help them become more prosperous. They already are a market for American goods. They already are a country that has an important commercial relationship with the United States. And now as their economy begins to pickup, it’ll become more so. So, those are all really important reasons for a really constructive relation with good prosperous Indonesia.

And the way you get there is through intelligent assistance programs of various different kinds. And by intelligent, you can't measure in dollar amounts; it isn't necessarily true that $300 million dollars is better than – and $200 million dollars – it’s no that – although sometimes it is. What's much more important is that these be programs that are focused in the areas where we can do the most good, and where we can do the most good for building an Indonesian society. And yeah, absolutely, and Indonesia, that somehow became racked with separatism that had major political conflicts of the sort that would draw people away from each other, that wouldn’t be good for American interests.

And neither would poor Indonesia with an economy heading downwards that also would be bad for the United States and its interest. What we need is a prosperous, content, peaceful Indonesia in which human rights are respected and in which democracy and the rule of law are real.

Q: I do want to ask a little bit about the controversial signature American aid project in Aceh. As you know, we’re building or constructing a major road between Aceh’s two big cities. And it’s sort of bogged down in process and, we’ve shortened the road. And the GAO [US Government Accountability Office] has been very, very critical of the road project. What's your take on this particular project?

Berg: Well first, the need is absolute. I mean – was one of the first things – I think I may have been one of the first Americans to see, from the air, what that highway looked like after the tsunami. This is such an important road because as you say, it’s the road that links the capital of Aceh – Aceh’s most important city, Banda Aceh, with the leading fishing port, Malabo. And it has a lot of small port cities along the way. It’s a very important place, commercially. You couldn’t possibly have a revival of the Acehenese economy if that road wasn’t rebuilt in some effective way.

So, that has to happen. And the fact is it’s a very expensive road to build. If you look at it topographically, these are almost mountainous areas that are almost right next to the sea. The area where the city was located was usually a small area of relatively flat land, near the coast. And then with highlands directly behind them, and that makes it a very difficult area to rebuild because there are areas that are swamp; there are areas that fell into the sea; there areas that could fall into the sea next time. And then there are areas that go straight up into these big hills that are almost mountains.

So, it’s physically a very difficult place to build. And it’s also politically a very difficult place to build because there are different local governments that have very strong feelings about where a road should and should not go. And obviously no one is intending to make the building of a road an exercise in local politics but this also can't be ignored. This also can't be ignored and sometimes what the various local officials want, they conflict with each other. How are you gonna settle those things?

So, building a road like this is full of both physical complexities and local political complexities. And this road has to be built, this road has to be built somehow or other, an effective road has to be built because it’s just too important to integrating this part of Aceh back into a province wide economy. If it’s not built then that will be a serious damper on the revival of the economy.

Q: It’s my understanding that land acquisition is the biggest problem remaining with the road. I mean I was out there along, the old portions of the road and clearly they could fall into the sea. At the same time I could see where we were moving the entire road bed behind a mountain, so to speak; so to reroute that particular section of roads – and parts of it are clearly being constructed but other parts, I know, I talked to landowners who haven’t even started negotiations necessarily for their land. Or are in the very early stage and price is an issue.

Berg: Yes indeed. You know, those are all serious issues and the whole issue again, it becomes even more complicated because in many parts of Aceh, land may be held communally or it isn't held with a document. And plus, there were a lot of property documents that were lost in the tsunami. So yeah, those are incredibly complicated issues and not only are they complicated issues but suddenly come up where you thought they’d been resolved or we thought they weren’t an issue before.

Q: Are there lessons that can be learned from the experiences that we’ve had post-tsunami in Aceh, that could be extended to the way that we do business in the world elsewhere?

Berg: Well, I think that there's two things that spring to mind right away. One of them is the need for cooperation, coordination on the ground. I think that the minute you have this kind of an awful tragedy that everyone involved has to settle on a cooperation mechanism. And I think there's a limit to how much you can put a cooperation mechanism in the icebox and then just take it out for any disaster, ‘cause every disaster is different. But I do think you have to have people who are experienced in setting up cooperation mechanisms, so that they can do that once they’ve gotten the sense of what the recourses and players – who the players are gonna be and start setting up cooperation mechanisms that are sensitive to all the different people and countries and organizations that might be involved, as well as – and this so important in Aceh, as well the local population.

Again that was the other thing that in Aceh, the whole history of conflict in Aceh has been fueled by the fact that various past governments in Indonesia seem to totally ignore the wishes of the local people. There was always at the beginning, the possibility that the assistance effort might repeat that mistake. Of course, in the very beginning, everyone in Aceh was traumatized and so, for the first week or so, it was hard to find people who could give you a coherent understanding of what needed to be done. But that changed rapidly, and thank goodness the assistance effort pressed to make sure that the Acehenese were involved at every step.

They are a smart and opinionated people and if they hadn’t been involved – there have been problem with reconstruction but they would have been much worse. And the other thing is I think that this particular model for – the model using the Aceh, the AMM, the EU-ASEAN effort to monitor the Aceh Monitoring Mission – excuse me, I’m an old man, my Alzheimer’s is coming back – but I think that an approach like the AMM, the Aceh Monitoring Mission approach is a possible template for other post-conflict situations. It’s worked very well in Aceh and I think that it offers the potential – I think it needs to be studied closely, so that it can be – its lessons can be applied to other post conflict situations.

Q: And that’s not a U.S. driven process.

Berg: It isn't, but we supported it from the beginning. What had happened, in the previous attempt at peace in Aceh, we’d been strongly involved in it and the Indonesian government, I think, some parts of the Indonesian government felt that we were identified too strong with the Acehenese. And with the GAM, although we never supported separatism, and so we decided on this one, that we would give our full support – full support to the efforts of the EU and ASEAN and they chose an excellent people. We’ve come up with a lot assistance, diplomatic support, every way we possibly could, we supported it. They did a terrific job. We’ve always saluted their success and as I say, we’ve given it our full support.

But as for ourselves, as the U.S. government, I think we wanted to sit back a step, not in terms of work or effort, but in terms of who’s gonna get the glory, so to speak, for doing it better that they should get it and our own, sometimes, controversial presence not become an issue.

(This text has been professionally transcribed. However, for timely distribution, it has not been edited or proofread against the tape.)

This material is part of the public radio documentary "Beyond Fear: America's Role in an Uncertain World" from the Stanley Foundation in association with KQED Public Radio. The program is produced by Simon Marks, Kristin McHugh, Keith Porter, and hosted by David Brancaccio. All material related to "Beyond Fear" can be found here.