CIA Clinical Psychologist Ursula Wilder on Profiling World Leaders

Michael Morell (0:01)

Dr. Ursula Wilder is a clinical psychologist at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she has served for 26 years.

Her career has included medical, operational, and analytic assignments, including positions in CIA's Counterterrorism Center doing operational field work post 9-11, the DNI's National Counterterrorism Center assessing personalities of extremists, and CIA's Medical and Psychological Assessment Branch assessing the psychology of world leaders, which is the topic of our show today. We'll be right back with that discussion after a break. I'm Michael Morell, and this is Intelligence Matters.

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Michael Morell (1:38)

Ursula, welcome to Intelligence Matters. It is great to have you on the show.

Ursula Wilder (1:43)

It's great to be here, Michael.

Michael Morell (1:44)

And I should say that usually we tape these things virtually, but we're lucky today to actually have you in the studio. So face to face. And that's a really nice thing that we used to do pre-COVID.

And now we don't do enough. So it's great to have you here in person.

Ursula Wilder (1:56)

It's a great analog experience to actually speak with a person and not a screen for a change.

Michael Morell (2:01)

Exactly.

So I just want to start by saying that I think our listeners will, we're going to talk about the psychology of leaders. And I think our listeners might be thinking they're going to hear about current world leaders, recent world leaders. And you're just not in a position to do that. And I just want you to explain why.

Ursula Wilder (2:25)

I'd be happy to. So let's begin with official policy. We as US government employees cannot opine about leaders in our country, recent leaders as well as currently serving leaders. That's an absolute boundary that we are very careful to attend to.

And in this case, I'll be able to speak more fully about leaders during World War II, American leaders during World War II and before that, and make occasional comments about US persons and recent leaders, but have to be very careful about that. In terms of leaders in general, including overseas, the ethics of the profession are, of my profession of clinical psychology, are very clear that we cannot speak publicly about living people of any sort. Celebrities, politicians, it's just considered unethical to publicly opine about them.

Michael Morell (3:27)

So it would be like seeing somebody in private and then going out and talking about them.

Ursula Wilder (3:30)

You just can't use your skills that way for two reasons. The first is, you really do need to have an interaction face to face with a person to fully understand them and to understand them accurately.

And that's because the work isn't just what they say in response to questions, but how they say it and what they don't say. And so that interaction is critical to the diagnostic or interviewing process as a clinical psychologist and the other, of course, is privacy, basic privacy and consent. So publicly, this is not something that psychiatrists, psychologists and other clinicians do. So that's another reason. And so I'll be able to speak of dead leaders. They have to be dead, dead. They can't be politically dead.

I was going to say, but if from your experience, you do not, and if something I say strikes you as from your experience, from the people you've met, and just your knowledge of history, jump right in. I think that would really help us.

Michael Morell (4:29)

Okay. So Ursula, let's start with how you got to be where you are. So what attracted you to clinical psychology?

What attracted you to the Central Intelligence Agency? And then why have you stayed there so long?

Ursula Wilder (4:44)

All right.

So I grew up overseas until I was 13 It wasn't hardship posting. My parents are missionaries, so we were in Paris and Brussels and Strasbourg.

And so I had an extensive time in childhood overseas. My parents loved to travel. And I think that kind of formed my interest in the world in general. In fact, for a while there, I spoke better French than English, because I only spoke English with my parents. And my siblings and I were in French schools, so we spoke French with each other.