Mission Un-Impossible

If you're a good salesman you can be a good undercover agent, Ballard says. You don't have to try to act "bad" or be "bad". Just act normally. That's what they taught him at  "Undercover School" when he worked for Homeland Security and it worked beautifully. Tim Ballard is now shedding his undercover persona to be the face of Operation Underground Railroad, but that doesn't stop him from doing the dangerous stuff.

Tim Ballard with Rescued Child

The following are excerpts from an interview with Tim Ballard on what it takes to set up a Rescue Mission.

Tim: So we go in. We start doing the recon. We get the lay of the land. We know what to look for. We know where to find the traffickers. At the same time I have a team going undercover. Real dark, while I go to the embassy.  I go to the government. I tell them who we are and what we’re doing.  And then we  really start doing heavy undercover …  For example, two weeks ago I was in (unnamed country). I was meeting with the embassy. I was meeting with the prosecutor for trafficking cases.  I told them my team was here.  So that day I told him we’re going to go out. Where do you want us to start? And he says go to this city and that city and he gave us a cop and he said, “Take this guy with you.”

So we kind of got the lay of the land.  We figured out where the hot spots were and I came home and called my other operative and I said, “Okay, I want you to go.  How soon can you get there?” and he said, “Maybe a week.”  So then he flew down. Monday he met with the same prosecutor.  They signed him in.  They deputized him so he's immune from jail and then off they went. On their second day they found a trafficker selling 15 kids. Just like that. So that operation will now be a first priority.  That’s kind of how it works.  

Something really cool happened in June.  It was the first time that we had four teams out at one time. That was largely because we had a fundraiser in May in California and we raised a lot of money in one night. We immediately converted that into four teams that just took off. And that’s never happened before. And all that money, we just immediately dumped it into missions. At one time we had four teams in four different countries.  Reconnaissance missions. 

Question: So every op, every mission requires at least two trips?

Tim: Yes. Sometimes three missions.

Question: That's expensive.

Tim: Yes.The first missions are just a couple people though. Two people on the first one. Two people on the second one. And then the party. That's the one where we have five to ten people depending on where the take-down is.

Question: Are you still at $20,000 on a mission?

Tim: Well, it depends. It varies so much. The Haiti Operation cost that much because we didn’t have to do a party. It was just a small deal.  We were buying two kids. But once you do the party… the Cartagena one was more like $45,000. It’s usually between $20-$40,000 which is safe to say. And I’m so proud of that. It can cost up to $500,000 for a private military company  just to put boots on the ground where we operate so it’s still a super good deal.  

Question: So the private military company’s motivation is to make money whereas your motivation is to save kids.

Tim: Yes. We have no other motivation.

Question: Is this turning out the way you had envisioned it?

Tim: It’s growing way faster than I thought.  I’m super excited about it.  I never thought … If someone told me in January that I’d have four teams out by July I’d say you’re crazy. 

Question: “Dutch” (Jump Team Leader) said they are hiring people for the jump teams.  Is that still true?

Tim: Yes, we are.  Most of them are just contract guys.  Some volunteer. Some we pay a daily rate.  It’s way under what a private military company would pay somebody. Right now we’re still small enough that I’m not opening it to the general public yet.  I’m hand picking people who come through our training.

Question: I would think these would be people you would know personally.  People you can trust.

Tim: Yes, they’re people I’ve known for years. They’re cops, former CIA or military who I know.  Because in the beginning phase I’m not taking those kind of chances. 

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Utah Governor Gary Herbert and O.U.R Founder Tim Ballard

Tim Ballard met with Utah Governor Gary Herbert last week to let him know what O.U.R. is doing in Utah. To see the news story click here KUTV-News