 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to New America. We have an extraordinarily timely event today, which we didn't plan this way. Geo Van Dyke has a new book out called The Trade, My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping. He, of course, was taken by the Akharnis who held Caitlin Coleman and Josh Boyle and their three children who were just released in the last 12 hours or so. He has worked as a reporter for The New York Times and CBS News, and he's going to talk for about 15 minutes about the broader themes of his book, and then he's going to, we're going to open up to a conversation with Chris Mellon, who is our in-house expert on hostage and kidnapping. So, sir. Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming. Last time I came here, we had a conversation. Peter was not here, but one of his colleagues, and we talked about a book I had written, this was in 2010, about my kidnapping. I thought we were going to do something similar today, but taking the train down, I, like you, all of a sudden read the emails and saw the events that in some ways changed a great deal, but they're really important to what we can talk about today. So what I'm going to do is just talk for 15 minutes a bit about my experiences about the book and how it relates to exactly what happened this morning. And then Chris will go from there. In 2008, I was kidnapped by a group of men in the tribal areas of Pakistan. I knew everything that happened inside my cell, but when I returned to the U.S., everything was quiet. No one would tell me anything. And as a human being and as a journalist, and I'm sure you would be the same, I was curious. And more and more I became even haunted that I didn't know anything that had happened to me or why I was released, except a man who was involved very much and according to the small group of people, group of people from CBS and a group of people from Pakistan and Afghanistan led by an MI6 agent who the CBS men said saved my life. The FBI didn't do anything. And he mentioned this man named Michael, who's a crucial part of this book, saved your life. I met with Michael here and he said we did everything possible to prevent a second Daniel Pearl. I was the next person kidnapped after him in Pakistan. Daniel Pearl, of course, was kidnapped in January 2002. He was slaughtered by al-Qaeda within 10 days. The ransom demand was that we hand over the F-16s that we had sold to Pakistan and that we would treat Guantanamo prisoners better. In 2011, I believe it was 2011, a group of people, a good friend of Daniel Pearl's and others at Georgetown over a two-year period of funding and 21 people there did a study on what really happened to Daniel Pearl, how he was killed and I read that a number of times and I didn't believe it. I knew there was far more to that. In 2009, to go back to one minute, Daniel Pearl's father wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal and he said I feel that my son has died in vain and I knew I had to contact him. But it was easier for me to cross the mountain from Afghanistan into Pakistan and to go see the pearls or to talk to the pearls. Finally in 2010 after my book came out, I was pressed to do it. I wrote them a letter and Mrs. Pearl wrote back and said please come out and see us in the next in Los Angeles. An opportunity came up in 2012 and I went out and I sat down with the pearls and Mr. Pearl was, it was very hard for him to be, for him to see me there. It's very, very difficult and I told him how guilty I felt and how sorry I was in a fact that I survived and he suddenly didn't and he said go on Holocaust victims say the same thing. Mrs. Pearl said to me when I described how it was for me with a mock execution and when they went to pull out the knife that who I thought it was Daniel Pearl, she said Danny was with you there, wasn't he? And that meant everything to me. She came around after that and gave me a hug. We were in a restaurant and then I went to give a talk after that on my book and a man with it. Jewish online newspaper in New York came up to me and he said you think you would have survived if you were Jewish. I was taken back and that started my interest in knowing that I absolutely had to go back and find out who really kidnapped me and why. In 2012 I got a letter from the FBI. I came home one night from work and there was a letter from the FBI and said dear Mr. Van Dyke and this is a paraphrase. We regret to inform you but we are closing your kidnapping case. Please do not be disturbed and please do not think that we do not feel this is important. Don't take offense. They were very apologetic but your case is closed. We reserve the right to open it in the future but now for us it's finished and I looked at that and I said they got away with it. The people who had me got away with it. I have to go back and do this myself. And so I was working for CBS at the time and they would not let me go east of Turkey. I'm still afraid. You can divide a kidnapping up into two parts. Everything that happens inside a cell and then everything that happens afterwards if you're fortunate enough to survive. And so and by that time I had probably received close to a hundred phone calls or asking me and my family. My brother and sister and family out west from my fixer. Still looking for I think money. Cried once on the phone and said I think I was involved. What do I do? Where do I go to turn myself in. The FBI came up to New York to see me and asked me to go back and try to find him. I said no that's your job. I can't go back. I don't want to be responsible for a firefight. Somebody's killed. I can't do that. I was not ready to forgive but I didn't want to be responsible for anyone dying. And so I finally got a contract to go to the Middle East to do some work and I was there in 2014 and I saw the television Jim Foley and then later Stephen Sotloff and they without a doubt and Peter Casigas are courageous in a way that it's almost impossible for us to comprehend. They knew it was coming. They knew they were when they were out there they would already left us certain of that. They were so courageous to keep their backs straight. It's very very hard. You know that the night that's coming to keep your back straight took me forever to put my head up and hold it high. The chin was out each one and they sat there as the bravest most courageous noble man one can imagine. And I saw that and I said I have to go back. And so in 2000 well it was actually it was one week after Stephen was Sotloff was killed and I secretly and I told one person in CBS because I still had my contract there and I went back and when I went back to Afghanistan I went to see a man who I was told and someone I've known for a long time whose family I was told was enemies of the man who orchestrated my kidnapping which is one reason why I was taken. And I went back and I told him the whole story and he said no that's not what happened. This is what really happened and he sat there for two hours and he told me and he said this is extremely dangerous for you. Do not try to find out what happened. Leave. I've known this man for 30 years. The reason I could get to him is because he is a man he was the man when I was a very young guy 1981 and went to Afghanistan as a fledgling reporter for the New York Times. He took he introduced me to with a piece of paper and a group of men took me in to live with the Akhanis. The next day the CBS fixer in Kabul took me to the former head of the NDS which NDS is similar would be the FBI slash CIA of Afghanistan and he's this is an Afghan talking to a Westerner American and he said abuse his first question was after I explained things to him he said have you seen a movie called 12 Years a Slave and I said I don't know what that is. I've been out here for a year and a half and he said we'll hear that man. We'll see it. Everybody who you think is your friend is your enemy and he told me why and a few days after that I saw a couple other people and he said you must leave the country immediately and so a few days after that I did get on a plane and I did leave and then I came I was I knew I had to return I waited six months and I came back and at that time I was told to meet a man who's a tribal chief along the border. I met with him in the hotel he talked about himself for two hours and I said why am I doing this and I know his father and I know the tribal leader who's next door to him I've known these people for many years and so he next he wanted to meet again we met another time and he said Ibrahim Akhani called me. I said Ibrahim Akhani you mean the head of the Akhani network? He said yes and I said can I see him? I said why not? Which opened the door to a series of three meetings I've had with the Akhani orchestrated entirely by the ISI over a period of the last two years. I've had 20 hours of conversations with them about the very people who were released today and the Akhani's told me and I said to them I'd like to know I used your name a lot when I tried to stay alive. You're the name I used to stay alive and they smiled and they said don't worry about anything we will find out who kidnapped you. So here we have America's archenemy going to me someone who's known them for 30 years to try and help to try and help solve my kidnapping so it's and then he said don't think that we have changed we're the same if you have no friends in the world come and stay with us you were always our friend because you were with us during jihad meaning the Soviet time. Only you Americans have changed. They are the principal people who run kidnapping industry in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. It's a holding company that has and it flourishes along as along the entire Afghan-Pakistani border all the way across to the Iranian border where people are kidnapped they're not held by the Akhani's but they are commodities and what we saw and we'll talk about this later what we saw happen this morning is a direct result of the power of kidnapping which has become a new form of warfare. It is a way to put a week to fight against the strong. It's like suicide bombing which started in 1995 and it exists and this is what the president Obama told all of us in 2015 here when he brought all the hostages who survived and the families of those who did not survive together to create a new hostage policy and what the president said to us in that room about 40 of us I would do everything in the world if one of my daughters was kidnapped but my policy is as president of the United States I must take into calculation my US foreign policy these things exist in almost stateless areas where law the rule of the law does not exist the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl was the first kidnapping after 9-11 there was no ransom demand there was a demand made of the US government in effect. After that you had a kidnapping in August I believe it was in 2004 of three UN workers this was about the same time that Nicholas Byrd a entrepreneur a young man who was not a journalist on his own was kidnapped and beheaded live on tell we saw that we saw it on television and I was at CBS at the time and I heard the people in there argue over how much to show of that on television it was our no you should not show him screen you should not show him with a knife and the US government particularly US military was frightened that this was going out of control and so they did everything possible to rescue the three kidnapped the three kidnapped the three people who were kidnapped in in Kabul by the UN in August in August 2004 the UN paid according to the head of NDS 15 million euros but that money disappeared there's no way for me and I spent months trying to track it down talking to everybody involved it's the only person who wouldn't talk to me was the head of you know I'm the head of the United Nations mission who was today in Columbia to confirm to confirm that 15 million dollars were involved one of the men involved was the man in charge of my kidnapping the after that because it was we still don't know exactly how much how much was the the how much the demand was but after that in 2007 in March an Italian Danielle Maestro Gio Como was kidnapped and the Italian government put pressure on Afghanistan they released five Europeans a ransom demand was paid we don't know how much and then they beheaded not the Westerner but his fixer and his driver there was a documentary called the death of Naja Naji Nakshabanda who was the man who was kidnapped the his best friend became my fixer years later and who was involved in my kidnapping he learned a bit from even though his friend was killed how this was done what you have is a business beginning the poppy the poppy of the harvest thing has been in many ways shut down the US is and its allies are trying to clean up the way in which this anarchy which has existed since the Soviet withdrawal and the fall of the Taliban afterwards the there's so many people were so many men were killed in Afghanistan and harvesting is primarily done by men wheat is something it's it's something it's done by by families but mostly by men and you need water to do this you don't need as much water because the irrigation canals were bombed by the Soviets and thus destroyed for women to get involved in poppy the growth the harvesting of poppy so they the cultivation of poppies they certainly don't transport it that's where the Taliban and politicians take over but as this was being shut down and new business developed it started with Daniel Pearl which in many cases people feel was also a way for al-Qaeda to introduce itself to the world the after the after a Junkama was was released in August of 2007 23 one could say suicidal one could say seeking martyrdom subtly South Korean missionaries Christian missionaries went to Afghanistan and wrote a bus openly singing hymns and I talked to another group of South Korean missionaries about this on a road to Kandahar and they were taken hostage two of the men were killed the South Koreans paid 22 million dollars so that the price of a hostage had we don't know exactly how much it was then but not before then but it was then approximately a million dollars per hostage after that I was next and to this day I don't know exactly how much was paid how it was paid and I'm not going to tell you the story because it's a detective story but it took me two years to talk to everybody to go back to find out who really really cat that really kidnapped me because everything that the FBI everything that CBS everything that all the people who are involved in my kidnapping and everybody I talked to in the government was wrong so I went back and talked to everybody I could who was involved and that is the story of the book and that's the journey into this labyrinth labyrinth of kidnapping that today is such that al-Qaeda in Yemen when I was there in 2015 I was told this by the Prime Minister who said he got it he didn't know himself he got it from the Jack Snow who is the foreign minister of UK $35 million in their bank accounts so to speak today there's a protocol that al-Qaeda has from Nigeria to Somalia on how to get as much ransom money as they can in the West at one time was about $250,000 and now it's up to in some cases $10 million yesterday I did a brief television interview on a company called Cheddar television which I'd never heard of a few days before it was on the floor of the Wall Street of the New York Stock Exchange and I said every company in this it was registered in this room may not know this has now kidnapped in ransom insurance it is a close to a $2 billion industry worldwide that has exploded since 9-11 Lloyds of London has a syndicate now syndicate sounds sinister but it's completely it's completely the opposite of insurance and reinsurance firms in London that monitor and try to regulate and thus control amount of money that companies pay whether you're Shell oil in Nigeria or your IBM in Argentina or you're a university that has a NYU that would have a a campus in Dubai Rob the Dobby everybody's level to this new form of warfare the United States arguably went to war because Jim Foley was executed on television which is the second most watched event since 9-11 9-11 was a remembered event on television polls with the American people number one is 9-11 number two is the execution of Jim Foley so what we have here is how the weak are able to use kidnapping against the strong and it's something that we don't think about because it hasn't been in the news until this morning when I met with the economies they wanted to they wanted to use me as the intermediary to try and get their hostages released because one of their one of their well the son of the leader is being held by the Afghan government he was picked up by the CIA in Doha and saw in the New York Times in 2014 and taken to Kabul the Bergdahl agreement in which he was he was released in exchange for five men from Guantanamo a part of that release also was that the economies according to the economies would be allowed to go to Doha to visit their families part of the family lives there it was the first time and what happened yesterday maybe the second way don't know yet but it was the first time that the United States officially even quietly negotiated with the Taliban so the economy network one group of terrorists if you will one group of freedom fighters if you're on if you're on the other side was able to use kidnapping to elevate itself to almost a government level whereas for years as we all know Pentagon or when Donald Trump so was with Secretary defense what did he say that they're not even enemy they're non-combatants forget the exact term the economies were able to use kidnapping to make the Taliban in the eyes of the US government a state organization because they negotiated directly with them so that is where the world that is where kidnapping has taken us today the story of Daniel Pearl which I looked into very deeply very strongly about this when you read the Georgetown article Georgetown University and I don't want to denigrate any of the work that they did it's very well done but what they failed to do and they've been afraid to do or it was impossible for them to do is really find out ultimately who was behind it whether it's al-Qaeda in Yemen whether it's the Connie's in in in Pakistan enough and not in Afghanistan in Pakistan in this case and to a degree from Nigeria across kidnapping is not done in the vacuum by that I mean there was state involvement that people and it's sometimes it's it's not direct often it's indirect but I'm like Dottie this ties to Saudi Arabia these and I'm saying that Saudi Arabia orchestrated or was in any way responsible for the death of the Americans but in my experience and in my studies and part of this my research bears this out in this book is the backing of states indirectly of these organizations for their own geopolitical reasons and kidnapping has become like suicide bombing the principal way to gain traction in some cases defeat a far greater power so that's you want to share your experiences I think I should begin by acknowledging very important which is the which you alluded to but I want to be explicit about it which is the release of five for Connie hostages Caitlin Coleman or husband Joshua Boyle Canadian and their three children who were born in captivity Coleman and Boyle had been held since around this time in 2012 five year captivity by and that has two impacts on our procedure today the first of the practical one which is that Peter Bergen who is supposed to be up here speaking with Jerry had done lots of wonderful preparation for that had to dash and be in a studio elsewhere so I'm here on about five minutes of preparation so I hope you'll be a little bit lenient with me and the second is that it gives us an opportunity to look at what happened today through the lens of Jerry's very relevant experience and think about his captivity as part of this continuum of hostage taking events in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Connie's from Bergdahl to Coleman and Boyle the Connie's told me with Graham Connie who is the diplomatic head of the Connie network virtually everything you read in the newspapers is that Jalaludina Connie who is his older brother is the head of the or has been the head of the Connie network he was the founder when I lived with them there were 20 men today they they cover two countries and they're active in the Middle East far far greater supposedly he's dead but he told me he's not so very much alive what Abraham Connie said to me what angered him was he said I had no idea whatsoever that this was one reason why we were meeting it was after about three hours he put his hand on me like this and he said we only trust you and I said what's up I wonder and he began to go on about how the CIA reneged on its commitment as part of the Bergdahl agreement to allow them to travel to Dilha and to Abu Dhabi and to Dubai Jalaludina Connie unlike just about every Pashtun you will ever meet as a Arab wife there by opening up the whole Arab world to him two family ties so they go back and forth and Abraham was very angry that the CIA in his in his words not just lied but kidnapped perhaps the era parent I'm not sure about this at least a very important person to Jalaludina to the head of the Connie network his son and gave him to Kabul and he is presently in prison there and the Connie's we're trying to do everything possible to exchange the five people who were released today plus there are two more that they still hold an Australian and an American professor and there was an article in the Washington Post in New York Times you may have seen about Paul Overby another American who perhaps is being held by them or not we discussed that I haven't been able to pin everything down on that but what they did say was we'll go anywhere we'll go to Dubai if you can make if you can arrange that for us and I said you can't arrange that I'm not who you think I am I don't work for an intelligence agency but that doesn't mean anything because they would never believe that and they were so upset that the that the US did in their words did not keep their did not keep the US did not keep its word and they wanted to do a swap and this was a continuation of their success if you will in getting the US which is considered the Connie network a terrorist organization and therefore it's illegal this is what's people in the State Department FBI will tell me it's illegal for anybody in the United States government to officially talk to a terrorist organization that this is how they they want they were able to bring themselves into position where they can negotiate with the US government every time I met with the economies this was under the complete control in the ISI there's no way I could arrange to see them and I'll say it in Pakistan on my own it's vetted by the by the ambassador in New York everything visas it's all approved and I became the person who would go to try and do what I could as a as a citizen to try and bring this thing to fruition but the point is that none of this was done in a vacuum that and I certainly believe I Chris and I talked about this and Peter Peter a bit when you had to rush out is that you're going to read a lot of articles in the paper of the success of the CIA and the rescue attempt by the ISI or this or that so let's let me follow up on that so you mentioned you mentioned anastacon and the series of of hostage videos which were released over the past couple of years you know featured demands for the release of an as a Connie and some other Connie affiliated people who held a point sharky prison in Afghanistan an awesome zone death row again it's his execution has now been given amnesty or something but he was not released the demands that were made explicitly were not met what happened precisely because you've introduced this political element by suggesting that the ISI has quite a lot to do with these these cases Donald Trump has claimed quite publicly that his own political pressure on the government of Pakistan is at least implied that that was responsible for the release and is that plausible and what do you think happened I found out about this the same time you did I was on the train coming down this morning from New York and I can sorry I don't mean to put you on the spot but just on the basis of your own experience of any possible knowledge I'm firmly I'm firmly convinced if I had to put money on it that inadvertently or not Trump's speech put so much pressure on Pakistan that they felt that this was one way and I think they were very successful judging by his comments this morning or the White House's comments this morning to get on the good side of the United States very sophisticated way to show that we are on show the Pakistan was not almost a terrorist state as they want to hold on to the amount of money that they get from us 13 billion 13.5 billion dollars since since 2001 a non-nato ally recipient of not just tremendous amounts of aid but very close relationship that was created during the Cold War between the CIA primarily and the ISI to go against communism because India was closer to the Soviet Union and Pakistan was closer to China and just the way under the Baghdad pack and sent to how this relationship developed the Pakistan doesn't want to lose and I think that the Hakanis were probably told look we know you want we know you want your son back but we far greater than that we want to maintain a relationship with the United States the only way we can do this and the only way that we can go forward is we got to give them something and let's give them this bar very important thing and then we can work something out down the road I firmly believe that this is it is something else here that you might find interesting is that two two people of course were held were held back when I talked with Abraham Iqani he brought his son along and I've watched over the three years that we've had these talks how his son has increased in power and he is being promoted if you will and he at the last time we met he said I'm able to make a decision on this but what really bothers me is the children I'm so concerned about the children now when you're in captivity there's tremendous amount of pressure on you to because you become a commodity and the people had me as people at David Road the same thing that if someone else finds out about you they're going to try and steal you or the people who have you are going to sell you to the next person and they called me the golden goose because I was worth so much money to them I went to the New York Times a week after David Road was kidnapped and we had a small meeting and they got one guy said they called him the Red Rooster why I said that means they're not going to kill him he is worth so much money to them and it took their time and I'm not going to tell you what really happened behind the scenes I was finally got the deputy legal counsel at the New York Times to tell me it's in the book what went on that it was a matter of very simply money now with the children and I learned I had heard last week that that Caitlyn was pregnant and that she was due to have a third child this week now according to reports now she already has three children I've been in touch with Mr. Coleman Jim Coleman in the last quite a bit in the last few months because what the Connie's were willing to do and this comes from the Sun I believe this but also comes from the women I'm going to come to this in one second they wanted to they were willing to bring the Coleman's back to Pakistan to meet with their children and to meet with his their daughter Caitlyn and their grandchildren if I would bring a letter with me from the US government thereby giving again another form of official approval of a negotiating starting they would allow them to meet with them now think about this those of you were married have children or just in general to bear a child how you're going to do this and where the conditions are sanitary and all these and how are you going to bring the children up because in a village when Caitlyn in our case there would the amount of water that we would have to we drink water we would have to pour it on the floor if there's too much water because if it's seeped out then the neighbors would know that there were more people in there and there and in Pakistan there's in this there's a saying that even a dog there's you know a stray dog cannot go unnoticed in any Afghan or Pakistani Pashtun Pakistani or Afghan village these people cannot their commodities they're hidden but I do think because the son was so concerned about the children and his mother did not like the fact that he was meeting with us she was afraid that something happened the person I Pakistani that I had go with me whom I trusted implicitly because she was part of my rescue team and that she has made the arrangements with the ISI that the mothers I think play a role here for the fear of the children and for the well-being of the children because these people have to be fed the children have to be nourished and I do think that this personal ties strangers that may be seen in with arguably the most clearly the oldest and when you consider the number of people they killed and I saw the economy is the last time on the night of May 31 and during I couldn't get to them for two weeks while I sat in hotel room and on May 31 they launched a 90% sure and I'm sure Chris and everybody else who follows this knows the most devastating suicide attack and maybe in the history and I don't know if it's been a worse one they killed a minimum 250 people and loaded hundreds more done by the economies that night they met with me to try and bring up the about the children I think it came from the women the mother's power of the mother is very powerful in a family particularly inside the house I want to ask a question about your continued engagement with economies I'm interested in what it was also on the basis of a personal relationship or sympathy and they felt that you would be a conduit through which they could make contact with people in the United States if you think that that's something they were doing to other people or what their strategy was and continuing to engage with you and why they felt they could trust you I wonder the same thing why are they doing this what's up what I noticed was that the in the first meeting I first of all was surprised one that I was to see them again about a doubt they were so welcoming so smiling and big hugs and we sat there and we talked for about three hours and time passed and they realized I think that I wasn't interested in anything but them I wanted to know about how they started what the father was like how they began the relationship with Pakistanis I was thinking I had a contract to write a book which is due out of which this one came out of it it's called the Akhany's Akhany network in the greater Middle East that is my book contract it's due in March I'm two years behind because of this other book and any writer here will understand it that as we kept talking back and forth about their history and my interest in them as people he was like this he said we only trust you and I think it was wait a minute he's not here maybe he does care about us he's not here just as a government official perhaps and I think that's part of it that they felt and because he went on about he meant they had captured the Soviet tank when we were up in the mountains once and he was so proud and he went back and he remembered the time he's probably 20 years old then of how he was able to start this tank after 20 minutes of fiddling with the engine and he was reliving that glorious time when they're and I was with them when their backs were against the wall which is why he said to me if you have no friends in the world you can always come stay with us because you are you were with us during jihad so there's this feeling of because I respected them because they were so good to me and I wasn't critical of them they felt one I think they could use me and the government and I've talked to the White House and the FBI and everybody about this I don't keep any of this secret from the government that they have said you are the honest honest person in between you're the bridge you can do this now I haven't used me that much really in any official capacity they don't need to be but they also said to me we've met with two CIA agents and we couldn't stand either one we refused to meet with them again and we have not met with anybody since and but when there's my first meeting with them was in 2015 we talked for eight and a half hours and I ended the conversation because it was getting it was 1239 I was getting a little worried about how many get out of here so that's I there's something there that that a friendship if you will between us that is it's hard for it was it was so so horrible to hear about the suicide bombing in my instance that they did it and then to meet with them that night but if it was a way to help the children and to help the Caitlyn and that I would do it because I have a say one thing David so close because of where the two people who were kidnapped by the economy and that that whole network there subcontractors to the economy is that the trouble we've caused the fact I survived in Ganglapurl didn't I feel a sense of responsibility and it's a form of this book is a form of because there's so much in there and that I have permission from the families of those the folies the casigs the Mueller's salt loves to talk about what we talk about what they talked about behind closed doors to Obama that's all in there form a redemption to try and help and so that's one reason why I stayed close to the economy's and I've to be somewhat calculated it's also really interesting generalistic and they tell me things best we're about ready to go to the audience question so Albert has the microphone if you'd like to ask a question please raise your hand and wait for him to deliver the microphone and then identify yourself and ask your question thanks David Sturman here with New America so my question regards you talked a bit about how the business of political kidnapping emerges from larger structural forms a lot of the discussion on the question of whether to make any concessions or concession policy in the U.S. has been about how big ransoms from European states France in particular have not only raised the price but also generated the business in places where it may not have existed before or caused targeting of Americans I'm wondering to what extent do you think that storyline or interpretation is disproven by structural aspects that existed and created the business beforehand and in particular to what extent is the Western hostage taking an outgrowth of an already existent local hostage market is it something different so thanks there's been a cottage industry of kidnapping in Afghanistan and Pakistan for generations maybe it goes back hundreds of years and increasingly with the chaos that has resulted of after the Soviet Union left and the rise of the Taliban a Sunni Shia kidnapping industry where a lot of Shia doctors in Pakistan have been kidnapped that is true and in Yemen has lived on this project and spent time the tribes will use kidnapping in order to get the government to put in a road or electrify our village or we want to help clinic that's true but it's never been anywhere approaching what the price is now and one reason that the it's become very definitely a form of warfare and a way to and without a doubt it's a huge business but the economy's never talked about money with me never at all we want to do a deal and all we care about is our nephew that's what they talked about the children can go we don't care about we want the children to go we want to do a deal on that Daniel Pearl had nothing to do with money it had everything to do with the fact that I'm not going to tell you the most because I want you to read this but which is why I brought up the story about the guy from the Jewish newspaper telling me this because when you look at and I really explored this the story of Warren Weinstein and Adam Gadan and Daniel Pearl and how things played out there behind the scenes and with Al Qaeda you find that there are other things at play than money this is a this is a form of geopolitical televised theater and war so it's not just money but one thing that Al Qaeda has done very in a very sophisticated way and maybe it's the Wahari or because he the the link between Pakistan and Yemen it's very close that how they're able to create this protocol to raise the amount of money that they pay to from it was about 250,000 in Somalia for pirates and now in Sahara it's up to 10 million so it's very it's a very sophisticated way which is why the Lloyds of London syndicate as has these 22 insurers and reinsurers have assurance have come together is to regulate the amount of money because it's we'll get out of hand and if it gets out of hand someone's not going to pay and people are going to get killed so IBM and Shell and the New York Times and the Guardian and everybody else want to keep they all have they all have kidnapped and ransom insurance but they want to keep it at a certain level because they don't want to pay that much yes Americans are seen at and Chris and Peter done a lot of research on this as as those who because we don't pay are more valuable but I'm not going to what we do officially is not what we do what we say private in their cases in here and I proof of things from high government officials but one thing that the United States has done and this is public it was relatively quiet but in 2000 a Martin and Gracia Burnham Christian missionaries from Kansas were kidnapped in the Philippines the southern Philippines by Abu Sayyaf which is a Muslim group trying to fight for its form of independence a form of autonomy and primarily Christian nation they become terrorists and they kept them in the jungle for a year and the Bush administration administration paid a ransom and they said so publicly and it was that and the money disappeared and that we do this and and maybe can argue they did a priest-christian constituency but they also said if it leads to the capture of we do this hoping it will lead to the capture of the hostage takers then in 2010 it and this is another thing we can talk about publicly the others I wrote about or not is that Jason Amarin highly decorated green beret lieutenant colonel on his way up famous for doing some keeping president Karzai alive before he became president was given a job at the Pentagon to do whatever it took don't worry about money whatever it took to get burgdoll and other hostages back and for the first time the US paid the economies for proof of life and his and he was he was forced out of the military and one reason he was he was forced out because he said what we do he said publicly it was done privately that's all you can see this on you can see it's on he testified before Congress it's on Fox CBS ABC you can read you can see the footage it's all public when I'm telling you but the point is that the United States does do what it says it that will not do less frequently and often there are different circumstances so the burgdoll case there's there is the distinction was made it was in public that he was a soldier and there was a tradition true true but with others they they become so frustrated that they want to bring the people home the one thing that that's with regarding the Kailin Coleman and Joshua Boyle and the family the the told they told me that the Connie's told me that they're about 10 to 15 people representing different countries who are trying to get to them but no one could get to them only you can get to us true or not I I don't know clearly some I knew other people I learned that other people were talking around them I don't know who those people are because something did happen today and one person said that the Pentagon and a prominent commander was talking about ten million dollars that the United States Pentagon was trying to or just trying to do a deal with this fellow for access and I came back and I told him if you're paying that ten million dollars to this person you're gonna lose that money so there is there's a lot that seems to go on that we don't know about regarding the payment of hospitals but officially the United States Australia Canada New Zealand United States and this and Chris can speak to whether that's valuable whether that works or not but I will say one thing and I'll stop this is that Ed Kasek confronted in our meeting with you know is the NCTC meeting down here in June private meeting and this is I'm not he is said I could say this I saw he confronted number two guy in the FBI who said that you're not supposed to pay we will not pay and he said you have no moral authority yeah no moral potential as far as I'm concerned wait until it's your son wait until it's your daughter then come and say that and so it's it's something that everybody has to really think about now got geopolitically and officially there's one thing every family today is very angry at the government because the government tell them what really happened they don't know and that includes the general parole Mark Rotsky the what does the money go is I presume is transferred in cash of some form in bills money's traceable I mean is the first thing about crime fighting is follow the money and you just say disappears that seems very strange to not know where the money goes I agree I don't have an answer to you I don't know I know that I've heard stories in my case and I know stories officially in the New York Times case it's illegal to transfer month X amount I don't know where it begins is it over $10,000 is it over $50,000 maybe some of you know to officially transfer money secretly overseas you have to go through a bank the New York Times sent money through a bank they were complaining because the bank took so much in these trying to rate to rake off as much as they could how is this done secretly I don't know but I do for example Pierre Kierke who was a South African was a small South African charity paid I heard it was about $250,000 to al-Qaeda there to and the money came from Yemen itself I don't know how the money the money was sent from South Africa to Yemen and did they physically take it in a bag and deliver to al-Qaeda perhaps the United States did not know anything about it and we sent in the seals the very day that Kierke was supposed to be released and Luke Summers and Kierke were killed we didn't know that the money was even being transferred so I don't really have an answer to how it's done they'll never I don't think we can be hard to find out the idea of trying to trace the money is that it presumes a certain amount of cooperation between the United States authorities and the bank that's giving the money for this purpose which could run afoul of you know illegal sanctions from the United States that they're knowingly providing money for ransom to a terrorist group I don't think I don't think it's in principle impossible to do it but I think it's practically very difficult partly because of the cooperation that would be required and partly for just logistical reasons of operating in some of these areas where the money's going when I was a very young man I worked on the hill here from my from Washington State for my senator and a good friend who worked as an aide another senator and his wife works for an intelligence agency here she'll never tell me which one and and that's what you supposed to do is to be quite about but she said to me there's so much money floating around out there that one can use in discriminant we have money or Pentagon has money so yeah whoever has money it's out there so maybe it's cash transaction I mean she was very glib about it and I glib that she thought there's so much money out there Jason emery and said Colonel emery of I had unlimited funds to think out of the box to do whatever it could I could and he somehow made a ring and he I said how do you know the economy side of context maybe through the through Karzai because he worked so closely with him before he became president up in the mountains somehow the Pentagon was able to transfer that money and it disappeared and the FBI was so angry that the military was involved they threatened the court this is all public threatened the court martial him and eventually or to sue the FBI wanted to sue him it was tribalism we want to control this but the Pentagon didn't clearly in some way move money thank you for the presentation but so you talk about they have insurance policies these large corporations have they been so the insurance companies now pay these ransom I don't know how it's done in every case but the kidnapping ransom industry has grown tremendously since 9-11 the State Department brings I gave a talk at state at one of these at least twice a year the State Department brings the security people or a security person from major US corporations NGOs and universities from the Bill and Melinda Gates organization to the University of Texas to Alcoa to the State Department to discuss precisely this this problem there's an important distinction to be drawn which is that it is not legal for these insurance companies operating out of the syndicate Lloyd's to reimburse ransom payments that are made to designated terrorist organizations that's that that was actually explicitly made illegal in the UK defense bill I think in 2015 it had been presumably illegal prior to that under other international terrorism agreements but so the way it typically works is that if you are say an oil worker in the Niger Delta and you're kidnapped by pirates by militants of some sort your KFR insurance allow you know stipulates that a private security company will intervene on your behalf they don't have to do the negotiations deliver money etc. and then the insurance company will reimburse that security company the amount has been paid and that is very common and it's a very successful method I think most of the private companies say they recover alive on the order of 97% of hostages were kidnapped but that is not the procedure with groups like the Hakanis that are officially designated as terrorist organizations so just clarifying on that does that mean that for those organizations if you are the unlucky oil worker to be kidnapped by one of those terrorist designated terrorist organizations that mean your policy is just no good and you better hope for something else that is the way that is well it's complicated I mean there are situations where there's plausible deniability or there's their proxy kidnappings where the group that's actually receiving the money is going through a non sanctioned organization and in those cases something you know maybe the KFR does pay these are strictly commercial this is almost you know for example in Nigeria it's really commercial it's almost done on a on a weekly basis I think Shell probably has to figure it into its budget and somehow crawl whoever it it hires as it's as it's insured I think it's Chris knows these figures I do not maybe 250 cases of kidnapping last year where ransom was paid it's all been very quiet it's commercial the Hakanis political that's not commercial otherwise they would have asked for money for their for these children minus political Daniel Pearls political David I should clarify also on the sort of the KFR insurance point that people do engage private parties to negotiate or attempt to recover people who are held by designated terrorist organizations the thing that's really problematic is the payment of money in the United States specifically under the Patriot Act that could be considered material supportive terrorism which obviously is a very hefty serious charge there was one peace talks if you will in 2014 between Afghanistan and Pakistan and Ibrahim Makhani was in that room the Chinese were in the room we were not in the room not even a lot we were we are keeping our distance we were not officially or even unofficially in that room we had an observer but this came from the State Department said we do not have anybody in the room so we keep our distance because it's the economy my name is Danny Gilbert I'm a PhD candidate at GW in terms of the last question I would actually be interested and I don't know if anybody knows this where there's a prohibition on paying the ransom to a terrorist group there's so much else that goes into K&R insurance of paying those professionals of reimbursements of other kinds of things so this gives me something to go look at after this talk but my question for you Jerry thank you so much for the talk and we've seen kidnapping changed so much over the past several decades from airplane hijackings in the 70s and 80s to what we're seeing today and so much of the move in criminal kidnappings is moving more to digital and extortion and sort of holding something hostage without the human hostage and what do you see as changing trends in political kidnapping if you were to take a guess where is this crime going the importance of television and the importance of using of using people as as political propaganda it's a very sophisticated it is clearly a very sophisticated form of warfare that is a result of tragically of Jim Foley and the power that that gave ISIS and the economies have used I don't know how many Crystal tell us how many videos that they used as their way of also talking to the West and I was taken by the way in which Caitlyn was dressed there's no there's no women in Pakistan or Afghanistan dresses like that she wore a black abaya they don't wear black abayas Arabs wear black abayas I felt that that was also a message to the Arab world that we it's a form of of keeping our keeping our links to the Wahhabi element and those in their primary fund funders in Dubai and in Riyadh so it's very subtle I thought it was very well done but they were released often first to the families and they were not made public for some time before they were reported whereas I mean one interesting change in the way that hostages can be used for political effects we think especially as relates to the ISIS cases that now there is a medium through which they can broadcast these hostage videos the internet whereas there's there we don't have the option in the way that we used to not conveying their message to the public we're trying to somehow deny them the benefit of these gruesome beheadings for whatever purpose that was meant to serve whether it was swaying American public opinion and getting us involved in war in Syria or whether it was attempting to you know raise the ransom price for the European hostages they were holding or any number of possible motivations and we went you can argue that we went to war because Jim Pauly was executed in front of and horrified most of America it propelled the Obama administration to do much more publicly than it was and I certainly learned from that we're closing in on the time there are hostages out there now still and they haven't been publicized but I think we're going to hear about them in the future because as far as the counties are concerned they still want their they still want their son back I'm firmly I firmly believe that this very well done operation by Pakistan and its and its and its proxy army the economy is very successful it's done it's done so much for geopolitics of Pakistan against with the United States it's the release of them so the fact that it's something that we can identify with and it touches us and the children especially and the fact that the economies would even allow me to bring the Coleman's and the Boyle's to visit their grandchildren it's they play with that and they would want that on television very much thank you very much Jerry for being with us