‘Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’--Matthew 10:16 : Gospel of Security Spread to Missionaries

VENTURA —  One phone call could alert Simi Valley Police Lt. Bob Klamser that a group of vandals was smashing car windows in a parking lot.

The next could as easily alert him that a group of terrorists had kidnaped a missionary family somewhere in the Third World.

Watch commander and head of his department’s hostage negotiation team, Klamser also is a founder of Contingency Preparation Consultants, a 3-year-old, nonprofit company that advises overseas missionaries on avoiding--and surviving--capture. The company also steps in to negotiate when asked.

Earthly Advice

“We all believe we are serving God this way,” said Klamser, a fundamentalist Christian whose business card offers the biblical injunction: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16).

Klamser’s particular wisdom comes in the form of tips on how to detect surveillance, deal with kidnapers, carefully choose escape opportunities and the like. With his associates, he has appeared at seminars around the world, spreading the gospel of security to 1,200 missionaries in person and thousands more on videotape.

He has participated in negotiations ranging from a five-minute overseas telephone call to three months of cryptic, on-and-off contacts with guerrillas at an African jungle base. Using vacation time, he has conferred with ex-hostages and their captors, including the former leader of a three-man Filipino assassination squad. He has flown to Korea, the Philippines, Colombia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique--wherever missionaries are at risk.

Klamser’s company rushes in where the State Department will not tread--at least visibly. Although the government has breached its own policy time and again, most spectacularly in the Iran-Contra scandal, it officially condemns negotiation with terrorists. Klamser said he has kept State Department officials advised about his forays into the Third World, “but they generally don’t play a pro-active role in negotiating the release of non-government U.S. citizens overseas.”

Still, he and others in the missionary community see a dramatic need for someone to do so.

Deaths, Abductions

Seventy-one missionaries have been killed by terrorists or guerrillas since the end of World War II, and 13 have died as a result of other criminal acts. Kidnapings have become rampant; just in the last year, Klamser said, his firm has helped to arrange the release of hostages in four incidents involving a total of 14 missionaries.

Now that corporate executives are more on guard than ever, Klamser said missionaries are particularly alluring targets. “They’re involved in things that improve living conditions both in a spiritual and a secular way,” he said, “and when people are more satisfied with their living conditions, they’re less likely to be satisfied with violent insurgent groups.”

Moreover, he said, missionaries in remote areas usually have radio links to the outside and often are suspected of tipping governments to guerrilla activities.

For all that, about 50,000 Western missionaries go about their business comparatively unprotected, say experts in the field.

Reliance on the Divine

“They feel they’re there because the Lord has caused them to be there, and the Lord will protect them,” said Max Crittenden, general counsel for Youth with a Mission, a Texas-based missionary organization with 6,000 staff members in more than 60 countries. “You’ve got to overcome that tendency not to take common-sense precautions because it’s all in the hands of a supreme being.”

Three missionaries with Crittenden’s organization have been killed in the Philippines since 1984. Another was in a group of seven missionaries held hostage by rebels in Mozambique for 90 days earlier this year.

After Klamser spent a week in eastern Africa negotiating with the insurgents, who were demanding that the government of Zimbabwe bomb areas of Mozambique, the hostages were released unharmed into neighboring Malawi.

“It was pretty much like any negotiation,” Klamser said. “We just had to find an acceptable way to resolve it without any party losing face.”

Sometimes that can strain a missionary’s ethics, said Dave Farah, Latin America area director for Wycliffe Bible Translators, which has 3,500 scholars and missionaries stationed around the world.

Issue of Honesty

“What kind of stance can we as Christians take with a sense of honor? Is there any tolerance for making promises you don’t intend to keep? Those are very touchy questions for most missionaries,” Farah said.

“I personally would try to keep negotiations as honest as possible, but I also come at it from the viewpoint of basketball,” he said. “You fake to the left, but go to the right. It’s an understood part of the game.”

Such maneuvers might have saved the life of Chester Bitterman, a Wycliffe missionary who was killed in Colombia after being held hostage for 42 days in 1981, Farah said. “They might not have shot him,” he said. “We didn’t have the education. We didn’t know how to handle it.”

Two years later, a friend associated with Wycliffe brought Klamser in as a consultant. He formed his company in 1985, with principals who now include Farah; clinical psychologist Richard Farley of La Jolla; Ted Childress of Knoxville, Tenn., a retired FBI agent who is now director of training for a major defense contractor; David Harpool, a New Hampshire State Police official, and Chester Quarles, director of the University of Mississippi’s law enforcement program.

The company’s main aim is teaching missionaries how to sidestep life-threatening situations in the first place.

Common-Sense Strategies

“There are lots of little things people can do that are still compatible with the missionary life style,” says Klamser, pointing out that many of his company’s strategies are simple common sense. Others derive from standard police suggestions for people such as bank tellers and convenience-store clerks, who are more likely than most to fall hostage to gun-toting bandits.

“Look around when you leave your house,” he advises. If a strange car is parked nearby for two or three days, be aware of that. Know when you’re being followed. Have enough stuff packed to make a rapid evacuation. And get everyone in your organization--the individual missionaries, administrators, and representatives of the larger organizations--together beforehand on policies like whether to pay ransom.”

When traveling, missionaries should be particularly wary of doing anything to draw attention to themselves, say company trainers. Impressive business cards should be removed from luggage. First-class seating should be avoided, as should expensive suits and flashy jewelry. Passengers should insist on window seats to minimize the risk of being pistol-whipped during the first moments of a skyjacking. If captured, missionaries should treat their captors “with respect but not deferentially,” Klamser says. “Do what you’re told. Don’t resist. Speak calmly, slowly and only when spoken to. Remember--if they wanted you dead, they would already have killed you.”

He counsels judiciousness in plotting escape. “If there’s a clear opportunity, don’t ignore it,” he says. “But statistically, the odds favor waiting it out. The average captivity lasts 30 to 40 days, and your chances of walking away from it unharmed are very good.”

In the meantime, missionaries must put their calling on hold, he says. “The terrorists want you to know who’s in control,” Klamser says. “Especially during those first few days, it’s not time to be spreading the Christian faith in a real assertive way.”