 Good afternoon. Welcome to the New America Foundation. I'm Peter Bergen. I run the international security program here. We are here to discuss a very difficult subject, which is Americans held hostage overseas. As many of you know, the White House is engaged in a review of our hostage policy, which is right now, and is I think very much constrained by the idea that the United States government will make no concessions. There's an interesting distinction that they make. They say we will negotiate, but we won't make concessions, which I think is sort of a largely a distinction without a difference, because what negotiation begins with the idea that we're not going to give you anything. That doesn't seem like much of a negotiating position. So we have a really outstanding panel of people to discuss these difficult issues. Gary Nozner, who's the chief FBI hostage negotiator for many years. He has been involved in negotiations involving 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens. He had a long career at the FBI 30 years, and then following his retirement became a senior vice president and control risks. While he was there, that's when I got to know Gary. He was very much involved in the case of the three Americans who were taken by FARC, who were held by FARC for almost for more than half a decade. He continues to consult with control risks part-time. And he is also the author of an excellent book, which is available outside, Storing for Time, which I'm sure will be happy to sign for you. We're also joined by Deborah Tice, who's the mother of seven children, including her older son, Austin, who was taken hostage two and a half years ago. Kidnapped in Syria in August of 2012, Austin was working for McClatchy and The Washington Post, among other publications. And then finally, Barack Barfi, who is a colleague of ours at New America, who's a journalist who speaks Arabic, specializes in reporting from Libya, Egypt, Syria, other countries. He was the principal advisor to the family of Steve Sotloff, an American journalist who was executed by ISIS, as you all know. And he serves as the Sotloff family spokesman. So we're going to start with Gary and then Deborah and then Barack. Thank you, Peter. Kidnapping has certainly really been on all of our minds since the terrible events perpetrated by ISIS. But it's a crime that's been around quite a long time, and we've had to deal with it. The U.S. policy is officially, as Peter says, we will not make substantive concessions to terrorists. And that has morphed through the years to become no ransom and often no negotiations, although, as Peter suggests, some are now saying we can negotiate. Let me give you a little bit of the background. Probably 85 to 90 percent of the kidnappings that we have around the world are for criminal purposes. U.S. law does not prohibit a family or a corporation from paying a ransom in a criminal kidnapped case. The remaining 10 to 15 percent, probably less than that, practically speaking, are kidnappings undertaken by terrorist groups. Now, terrorist groups on the State Department's list. We have to examine that because not every terrorist kidnapping is for political purposes. For example, through my career, most of the kidnappings we worked with, the FARC and the Abu Sayyaf, were simply efforts to obtain money. And we would negotiate with them in the normal fashion and secure a safe release. I think one of the issues we have to contend with is the fact that there's very, very few Americans overall taken. We probably have anywhere from 10 to 12 per year historically. And almost all of those are by criminal undertakings. The major concern with terrorism, of course, is that the payment of ransom provides material support to these organizations. There is no question that any time a ransom is paid to kidnappers, be they criminal or political, it encourages more kidnapping. However, what choices are we often left with to deal with these situations? Escape is a very infrequent event in these incidents. Military rescue, very dramatic, but also high risk for the hostages. It is the time that hostages are most likely to be killed. And so the outcomes are generally best achieved through negotiation process. In 1990, the FBI began deploying hostages negotiators abroad in response to the kidnapping of American citizens as dictated by law. We had an enormous success rate in the last 13 years of my career. We worked about 120 of these cases. I think the FBI's probably worked that many since. How did we do that? We worked with the other authorities in the United States Embassy. We worked with the families. The policy that we adopted then was essentially going back to the Lindbergh kidnapping, and that is the decision whether or not to pay is the decision of the family. So we would deploy and we would ask the family or the victim corporation company what they wanted to do. If they decided to pay a ransom, even though that was officially frowned upon by the U.S. government, we did not withdraw our support. The premise being that we needed to be involved in order to identify, locate, and hopefully potentially prosecute the kidnappers after we were able to secure the safe release of the victim. Because of that, we had a 98 percent success rate, and we dealt with the FARC and we dealt with the Abu Sayyaf and many of the other terrorist organizations out there with some success. Now I will tell you in the Middle East when we deal with ISIS and al-Qaeda, the prognosis for success is far more challenging. One of the last big cases I was involved in was the Danny Pearl case, and it was pretty clear from the outset that there were no realistic expectations on the part of the kidnappers to get the ransom that it was probably going to have the outcome it did. So those are extremely challenging. I'm a big believer in negotiations. Negotiations, although it for some has become a dirty word, means dialogue. It allows us to gather information, buy time, develop other options and resources, and sometimes actually resolve and generally does resolve the situation. For me, the use of military force because of the high risk involved should be a last resort and one that we look at very carefully because the risks. What I'm afraid has happened since 9-11, there's been a slow and steady movement towards the exclusive use of the military to deal with these problems. As Mazlal said, if you're a hammer every problem looks like a nail. And I think because we have a robust and strong military that we have often played that option exclusively. Now I'm the proud father of a former Navy Seal, so I'm not biased against the military by any stretch of the imagination. But I think we have to take a toolbox to these events. We have to have a variety of options available that we look at. Peter brings up a good point about negotiations. I would point out that I do not disagree that the U.S. government itself should not be seen as openly willingly wanting to pay a ransom. I think that has a lot of policy implications. However, I also very strongly don't feel as though the government should try to prevent a family or a company from paying a ransom in a kidnap case. There are far lower expectations on the part of the kidnappers when a family is expected to come up with money than if the government is expected to come up with money. I think we need to be true to the policy we have and live up to it. I'll give you an example. If a plane loaded with hijackers and hostages landed at Dulles Airport tonight, I guarantee you the FBI would negotiate with that plane. On the face of it, that would be a violation of our policy, but clearly we would do so. In order to stabilize the event, try to secure the release of hostages so that we could gain information and intelligence, perhaps secure a surrender. But if we don't, we have bought time to assemble resources, gather information, and increase the likelihood that we will be successful if we have to take tactical action. I think that's a very important thing to remember. Negotiation does not mean weakness. John Kennedy said it best, we should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate. Unfortunately, for many, the thought of having a conversation with terrorists is looked upon and frowned upon as being capitulation or acquiescence. It's not. I once went to a kidnapping in Columbia and the ambassador said, no sense talking to the FARC. You can't negotiate with them. And I said, well, excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, I've done it 20 times successfully. So I would argue the point. I was surprised that a diplomat said that because we should open those conversations and we should always do that. Now, I think the families are in a pickle. It's very difficult for them to try to secure the safe release of their loved ones when at the same time there's public pronouncements that we will not negotiate, we will not talk. I think things would be handled far better if the government was a little less vocal on these matters and supported the families and allowed the families to conduct negotiations as we used to in the FBI and give them all our full and undivided support and share information with the families. There is a tendency we have in the government to overly classify information and deny access to the family's information that they really need in order to make decisions. So my recommendations are that, first and foremost, we stop the rhetoric of saying no negotiate, no ransom, and we simply replace it with what the true policy is. The government will not make substantive concessions. Secondly, do not impede families or companies from conducting negotiations and, in fact, actually assist them in the process. Support the families fully with as much timely information as we can as we used to do in the FBI and I think they still make a good effort to do that. It's very important that families are briefed regularly almost on a daily basis on what we are doing. Families need information and support and we can't just leave them to their own resources to handle these matters. So I know we have a lot of questions coming up but I just wanted to set the stage on that. We are talking about a relatively small number of Americans who are grabbed for political kidnappings although our focus today certainly is on those cases. Yet our very firm unyielding policy as dictated by some has a more broad effect on every kidnapping and it could be an impediment to really using the vast resource that we have in the U.S. government effectively to try to resolve these. And I'll say one last thing, when I was a young FBI agent we worked a fair number of kidnaps for ransom in the United States. This was in the 70s. We almost eliminated that crime in America not by telling families they couldn't pay but by going after kidnappers very vigorously, identifying them and prosecuting them and putting them in jail at very high rates. This essentially forced criminals to say I'm going to go in another line of work. So it's very rare to have a kidnap for ransom today in the United States. This crime flourishes in countries that are dysfunctional where they have a corrupt or incompetent law enforcement, incompetent judicial systems. There is no punishment for the kidnappers. Mexico City today is the kidnapped capital of the world and I think you will see how that bears out in the way those matters are handled there. So that's the equation we have to try to pursue. Not deny the families paying ransom, but supporting the families and going after the bad guys after we safely secure the victim. I know for me if it was one of my children or my grandchildren, I would do anything in my power to get them out. Thank you. Thank you Gary. Deborah. I came with a note. This is not in my skill set. I am the mother of seven wonderful children. For more than 30 years, those kids have made me happy to be just a mom. I have four boys, three girls and one precious granddaughter. I'm so blessed to be the mother of seven people I genuinely admire. Austin is the oldest, a position he relishes for both its privilege and responsibility. He's the protector of his sisters and considers himself the advisor to his brothers. He is truly an Eagle Scout, the leader who can patiently lead the younger Scouts. Austin has always been interested in the big wide world. He's a national merit finalist and entered college just one week after his 16th birthday. In 2004, after graduating from Georgetown School of Foreign Service, during his first semester at Georgetown Law, he joined the Marine Corps where he served three tours and completed his commitment as a decorated captain. He is still a student at Georgetown Law and was slated to finally graduate in 2013. However, the summer before his planned graduation, instead of taking an internship, he made the decision to go to Syria, where he became an award-winning journalist. Unfortunately, that is also where his plans were interrupted when he was taken captive. I would love to tell you about Austin's amazing brothers and sisters and my adorable granddaughter, but since Austin was taken captive over two and a half years ago and our lives were turned inside out and upside down, those terrific kids are now commonly referred to as the other children and I am known as the mother of a hostage. Now, my life is defined by efforts to determine who is holding my son and how to bring him safely home. In these efforts, my husband Mark and I have been determined to leave no stone unturned. We have worked with our government. We have reached out to foreign government. We have worked with amazing NGOs like Reporters Without Borders. We have worked closely with news organizations, especially McClatchy News with whom Austin earned his journalism awards. We have been supported in amazing ways by Austin's huge circle of friends and colleagues and countless other brilliant and generous people. We have learned more than we ever wanted to know about the United States government and its response to international hostage crisis. We were told early on by a departing assistant director of the FBI that it is our responsibility to connect the dots and make sure information is effectively shared within and among U.S. government agencies. This, in spite of the fact that information is not shared with us, as most of you may know, this event was originally planned as a discussion as Gary's insight from his career as an FBI hostage negotiator and his book Stalling for Time. When a friend in D.C. told me about this discussion, I sent an email to Peter introducing myself and suggesting four questions from Mr. Nessner. Peter's response was quite unexpected. He invited me to come and ask the questions myself. When I accepted the invitation, Peter sent me a few questions, such as, given the White House review of hostage policy, what is your assessment of the policy, how might it be improved? Well, until November of last year, when Congressman Duncan Hunter of California made public a letter from the Defense Department stating President Obama had directed a review of U.S. government hostage policy, we were completely unaware such a policy even existed. Though it has informed every moment of our lives for the past 966 days, we still have never seen this policy, because it is the classified presidential directive and we do not have clearance. We have been told by a high-ranking government official the current policy is gobbledygook, non-specific and so overly broad as to have no consistent interpretation. This leads us to conclude this policy can only be improved by creating something entirely new. While we are gratified that the White House has positively responded to an insistence from the families that we be included, along with former hostages in the review process, we are dismayed that classification may prevent us from ever seeing the final result. In our meeting with the policy review team, we strongly suggested that the policy must address three main issues. Primarily, the soonest and safest return of the hostage. Secondly, communication within government entities, among government entities and certainly between the government and the hostages family. Last but certainly not least, protection of the assets and identity of the hostage. It is critical to understand that every hostage situation is unique. Instead of an established protocol and entrenched culture, which often devolves over time into a rote reaction, our government must be prepared to draw upon existing resources to assemble a uniquely qualified team to craft a thoughtful, measured response on a case by case basis. This does not require the creation of a new agency. Existing resources already dedicated are sufficient. The problem lies in efficiency and effectiveness. As Gary writes in his book, and as he just said, efforts should first and foremost be focused on the safe release of the hostage. There is no one, not anyone in the government whose singular mission is the welfare and return of the hostage. Every government agency has its own mission and agenda. The FBI is pursuing a criminal investigation. State is concerned with matters of foreign policy. The White House focuses on national security. All of these entities have a CYA protocol and are inherently inside the box and intrinsically risk averse. Largely because of these issues, it is only recently after more than two years that our government is in direct discussion with the Syrian government about Austin. Of course, we are encouraged by this development and our fondest hope is that his captors are identified and this will soon become negotiation for his secure release and safe return. To avoid this kind of delay, we support the idea of designating a single point of accountability with direct report to the president who may have the title Interagency Hostage Recovery Coordinator. In every hostage case, this individual will have the singular mission of securing the soonest and safest return of the hostage. All communication will be coordinated and effectively shared through this entity. This individual should be the full depository for every last bit of information and intelligence relevant to the hostage situation. Drawing from every agency and resource available and after a careful evaluation, this individual will designate an appropriate lead agency. There should be no aspect of our government's response which falls into a default mode. So how does the family fit into the communication matrix and what is our position on the team? From our experience, we can only guess this is not at all addressed in whatever is considered to be the current policy. We have asked and asked and asked to be vetted and to be given clearance so we can have unfettered access to all available information about our son. Similar to Gary's experience that he wrote about in his book, we have agreement from individuals at the highest level that this is a reasonable request. What we have not been able to overcome are the twin obstacles of protocol and culture. No entity nor agency is willing to take the risk of doing something so new and different because, well, you know, what is? In spite of all of our efforts and meetings and trips to the region, we are still not valued as contributing members of the team. The FBI especially still considers us a part of the problem and a risk to be contained and managed. From our perspective and based on our commitment and capabilities, we find this both offensive and absurd. We continue to ask for security clearance. Because we feel that as appropriately vetted family members, we can be an essential and critical part of the team. As things are now, it is quite likely we would be the only team members with the clear and singular objective of Austin's soonest safe return. Of course, no discussion of hostage policy would be complete without a mention of ransom. Since we do not know who is holding Austin, we have had no opportunity for negotiation nor request for ransom. Gary's already addressed the issue. I'm sure that Barack will speak to it more. I will say Mark and I agree with Gary that we should not let our desire to punish terrorist kidnappers cloud our judgment and restrict our options. Our efforts should first and foremost be focused on the safe relief of the hostage. We must have a wide range of tools available in our toolbox and learn to use them appropriately. Thank you Gary. Well said. Peter, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today and to know the subject of hostage policy is receiving the attention it deserves. So this experience may be less horrid for others. Nonetheless, our absolute highest priority remains the safe and soon return of our beloved son, Austin. We continue to be profoundly grateful to everyone inside and outside our government who has helped with our case. If you have not already done so, go to our website and sign the petition to our president urging him to do all he can to bring Austin safely home. Also, if you have connections which can help us receive security clearance so we can be fully informed about our son's case, please talk to me after the program. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you Peter. I think Gary and Deborah said most of the things that were pertinent to the cases. I want to touch upon a couple things and I'll talk about some things in detail. First of all, I was very intimately involved in one of the cases and one of the things I would like that I learned and I think is very important for anybody who deals with these cases, I wouldn't believe 98% of what you read in the press. Things are taken out of context or distorted. People don't have the right information and that's very important. When you come to a situation like this, and especially for me and for Debbie as well, we don't have any experience. So there's a learning curve. We start at the bottom when we get better. We have more and more understanding of what's going on and get more experience. One of the things that we learned very early on is the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is an impediment to facilitating progress and it's reactionary. I remember what Dick Morris wrote. I think it was in the book, The New Prince or The New Red Prince or whatever. He said, every four years or eight years, a new administration comes in with lots of ideas and the bureaucracy knows that all it has to do is hunker down for a couple years, block the initiatives and the initiatives will die out. And that's the same thing for people like us. We go in there, we have ideas, we want answers and the FBI and the State Department, they've been doing these things for years and they're not going to shake trees just because we asked them to do it. The FBI is very, very cautious. It's going to work very slowly. When there's opportunity for something to happen, let's say you get an email from the kidnappers or you're discussing, you're in communication with them, it's going to work very slow and very cautiously. It's not going to want to have as much hope and optimism and see some type of horizon as the families will. We also had a problem with the FBI's lack of cultural understanding. They didn't understand what they were dealing with in the region. ISIS, that ISIS was a state, it was very easy for people like us who had been spending time in the region to know that ISIS could act with impunity. This wasn't a replay of the kidnappings in the 1980s in Lebanon where the Shia radicals kidnapped Westerners and they moved them around where they put them in houses and villages with false doors and bottoms. These guys were, these hostages were being held in bases and prisons that people could go in and out of, that people could get us information. Someone came out, he had information, or a prisoner came out, he had information so many times. Did you say came out was released? Yes, well in some cases it was released. Somebody goes in to do something in the prison, he comes out and he says, I've seen Westerners. We had so many cases of Syrian prisoners being released, escaping, seeing Westerners. Unfortunately, a lot of this wasn't real time. Most of these times, just like a Hollywood movie, they slipped through our fingers. We had them in a location a week or two ago. We didn't have definitive real-time information until the hostages began to be released. When you talk about the FBI, Debbie hit upon it, it's a law enforcement thing for them. When they hold debrief, hostages, they're more interested in putting together a case against the hostage-takers as opposed to finding the hostage-takers and trying to get a solution to the problem. A problem for people like us is that we saw the government, the government and the agencies as an iceberg. We dealt with so few people above water, above ground. They interacted and interfaced with the other agencies. We didn't know what was going on. It was hard to know anything when people aren't giving you information. Peter briefly spoke about negotiating. You'll talk to the terrorists, but you won't give them anything. The FBI is like a Moses. It'll bring you the promised land. It'll help you write craft emails. It'll help you try to facilitate negotiations to bring them home, but it will not deliver the money. It will not bring the money. It will do everything else, which it's very puzzling. For me, it's not difficult to understand. I mean, I could understand this because they'll say, well, we have plausible deniability. We didn't negotiate with terrorists. We didn't facilitate anything. We didn't do anything. And that can't be proved. It can't be proved in the court of law. But for the families, it's so confusing that the families are trying to learn so much and they don't understand these nuances and these details that people in government have been working with for so many years, and it just compiles their frustrations and their challenges and their dilemmas. It's just one more thing that they don't understand. And at the end of the day, these families get overwhelmed. They just do not know the juggernaut that they're facing down, that stands before them. They are just so overwhelmed. Sometimes they just, either they shut down and let everything go over their head, or they just get so flustered and confused that they cannot function anymore. One of the problems we had, I think Debbie talks upon it, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. The FBI and the State Department, when you put them to do those two in the room, there's nobody that has priority over the other. They're both independent agencies. They can't tell each other what to do. And in many cases, they don't know what they're doing, unless what Debbie said, you connect the dots, unless you tell them what the other agency did. Or you're waiting for a review from one agency and the other agency doesn't know what's going on. Is it not in the loop? They're not going to know. And it is just so frustrating that you see things and you can create your own horizons and vistas. And the government agencies, these guys can't. And you just wonder what the heck are they doing all day. Congress. Congress is a very important role. As I've spoken out about our frustrations and with the administration that Debbie touched briefly on it, Congress is your best friend. Your congressmen from your home state are always going to help you. They will write letters to the president. They'll write letters to the head of the FBI. They'll write letters to the head of the CIA. They'll ask questions if you want in open hearings, in closed hearings. Those are your best friends in these situations. And again, that goes back to your learning curve. We didn't know that at the beginning until we started getting ferried around Congress. One of the things, so I have a lot of experience in the Arab world. In the Arab world, people always tell you, no, you can't do something. So you need to think outside of the box and think of a creative solution. How are you going to get a picture? How are you going to get a discussion with somebody? Or are you going to get past a checkpoint or get a permit? And the reasons for it. So you develop an act for creative solutions. And our government did not have any creative solutions. Well, we never know. I wasn't able to speak with anybody in the White House. And the people, the families who did speak, they never got much out of them. But the terrorists don't always want money. They want different things. There are different ways to appease terrorists without funding their terrorist infrastructure. We know from former cases of denial of benefits is a strategy and approach that was used in the past. One of the problems that we went encountered, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I spoke to people who worked at very high levels in the intelligence community before retiring. They weren't sure that the people in the White House had read the presidential directives that were instituted under Bush, because they didn't seem that they understood what denial of benefits was. What do you mean by that? Denial of benefits. So basically what happens is you facilitate the transfer of the money to the terrorist organization. But your stated goal is that they will never benefit from that money. You will deny them the benefit of that money. And it's basically follow the money. We see these things a lot in movies and in books, where the serial numbers on the dollar bills are traceable. It's fungible. That's why people want bear bonds that are untraceable. So that's one thing that could have been done. When you deal with these situations, you have, on our side, Debbie and I, one of your most important questions that you have to ask yourself is who are you going to trust? You're going to have to put together teams. You're going to have to look to certain people. You're going to have to create a security team that you follow that guy through fire, whatever the security guy tells you. You have to get guys on the ground, in our case, it was Syrians, that you will tell them everything about everything because they will do what they can for you. And they will get information that you never can get. They can go places that none of your people can get to. And of course the FBI, are you going to work with your FBI agents? Are you going to trust them when they don't tell you anything? The FBI is like a vacuum cleaner. It sucks up your information from you and doesn't give you anything in return. And I can tell you from personal experiences it frustrates a number of the families. Some of the families did not have good relationships with their FBI. Others, however, did. I know some of the families spoke very highly of them. You've got to choose the right agents when you work within the FBI. FBI teams come in two-man teams. You can't bring in a guy that doesn't know how to sit down on a table and can't talk to a family for two hours about the most most mundane topics. I had a guy, FBI agent, one of our FBI agents, he loved football. He loved, so we spent, you know, 10, 15 minutes talking about the Ravens. He loved the Ravens. And, you know, the Lions, Detroit, I'm with Detroit Lions fans. We got a head about safety and we talked about that. You need to develop some type of relationship, so you need affable FBI agents. You can't have some of these bookish guys. If you want to make it that your case a priority for the White House, you need to step up pressure. And how do you do that? You go public. Now, the questions here is you have a dilemma. You get increased exposure versus false leads. We were discouraged from going public. In retrospect, I believe that was a mistake. We had several families and some families weren't comfortable with that. But these are some of the things that when you just, when you think about how you want to leverage your assets from the government and what are the drawbacks. And also, this is a very unique case. I'm not sure we'll see it again, but we saw four Americans being held by the same organization in the same location. So it inclines itself to creating a team atmosphere where everybody works together. And that was ISIS holding the four. Yeah. And that tells you the four are. So Steve Salaf, whom I represented, Peter Kasig, who was an aid worker, Jim Foley, who was a journalist, and Caleb Mueller, who was an aid worker. They were kidnapped in different times, but they eventually were all brought together. And we had, the very unique thing is we had information about this. We knew things. We were able to get tidbits here there and then put them together. And then finally, when the hostages, the European hostages, who were ransomed by the government, come out, we put everything together and we know exactly what's going on in the room from Western perspective and we don't need somebody in a cell, you know, three cells down who hears the name or hears people speaking French, the guards speaking to prisoners in French. So the question is, when you talk about you have a team before the hostages together, are you going to work as a team to leverage your assets to be the government? Or are you going to work individually? And if you work as a team, how are you going to make this collective decisions? Is it going to be unanimous or majority rule? These are things that we really didn't think about at the beginning and I don't think many people have ever encountered. And finally, the question of ransoms. The ransoms could have been paid by the American families themselves early on when the price of a hostage was reasonable. But by the end, after all the European had been released, the prices were just so astronomical that only the wealthiest types of families in America could afford to pay that money on their own. And it was just futile and exotic to believe that that could have been accomplished. Thank you for all raised incredibly important questions. And so let me start with so, you know, Gary, you paint a picture of the FBI, you know, negotiating, you know, as a matter of course, having a very high success rate with groups that were not, you know, the Abu Sayyaf is sort of an al-Qaeda affiliate and Farq are, you know, pretty major terrorist group who've been around for five decades. So it's not, of course, you know, they're not ISIS, but they're still very serious people doing very bad things. So and then, you know, we visited Deborah and to Barack, you know, the FBI seems to be stiff-arming the families, saying nothing, not being that helpful. So what happened? What shifted and when did it shift? I think from 1990 to 03 when I ran the FBI's program, we seem to have greater flexibility and operated with a fewer number of other government entities. Essentially, the FBI would deploy a trained skilled negotiator to be the family's liaison. I think there's been a shift where they send investigators now who may not have some of the communication skills that a negotiator would typically have. And not only that, there's so many agencies now that since 9-11, there's been a slow, steady movement towards more and more agencies getting their funding from terrorism, wanting to be involved in all major terrorism cases. And truly, we do sometimes, I think, end up with many cooks in the kitchen and not sure what we're trying to make. I really like Deborah's idea of a central coordinating point. There is a group that meets in the NSC to interagency group to coordinate these matters, but there really does at least even when I was there seem to be a lack of clear leadership as to who's in charge and who's supposed to do what. I think that's a problem because of all the resources the government has. But we did show a very high success rate in the past. If I were to recommend again, I would try to move back towards that successful model. There's too many people contacting the families, giving them contradictory information. We used to share with them things that went well beyond security restrictions. And now I think there are so many other entities involved that each agency, particularly the FBI, may be scared to do that. Well, this interagency coordinator sounds like a really good idea. And he or she would be responsible for the two dozen Americans who are being held. I don't know what the exact number is. And for this to work bureaucratically, would that be a senior director at the NSC? Or how would it work bureaucratically? Because it would have to be somebody who can actually boss people around in lots of different places, right? It would seem to me it's going to have somebody with presidential authority. And I think that's lacking. I want to say one other point too that goes to Deborah's point. And I clearly hear that the families perceive the FBI is more interested in criminal prosecution. I will tell you that is not the case. Unless there's been a dramatic change that I'm unaware of, our top priority was always the safe and timely release of the victim. Prosecution was a distant, and I do mean a distant, second objective. It was the legal basis upon which the FBI becomes involved. But it was often an unrealistic goal and we knew it. The real important goal, the prize, was to get the hostage out alive. Another very fruitful idea I think that Deborah had is this question of giving family security clearance. And I mean, let's drill into that a bit because you'd go through a background check, you and your husband presumably, right? And you would only be given information that relates to your son's case. It's not like they're going to hand you top secret information about the Iranian nuclear program, right? So and then your clearances would be revoked if you said something in public that was classified, right? Or you would you pay some sort of penalty, right? There'd be a quip pro quo. Right. So this also seems sort of like a no brainer. It gets to around your observation, Gary, which if you have a lot of three letter agencies in the room and everybody's frightened about getting too far ahead, if they know the family has the right clearances, then it's a non issue, right? I worked the case with the FARC, the three American defense contractors after I retired. And at one point in time, the government, the US government got a videotape of the prison camp in which they had been held and recently moved from. They did not share that with the family. It was hardly top secret information. But then when they prosecuted one of the terrorists involved, while the captivity was still ongoing, they showed it in open court. And the families were understandably furious. Why weren't we able to see this very detailed videotape showing where our relatives had been held? So we had an idea of what conditions they lived in. And it's these kinds of mistakes that that happened because there are, again, in my judgment, too many people making these decisions. But you know, Barack raised this issue about the issue of going public. And Gary, I know that you it would Deborah, in your case, your sons, the check ambassador in Syria announced that your son had been taken. So it's sort of a non issue for you. But I know, Gary, that when you worked on the FARC case, this was a very big issue for the defense contractors, right? For many years, they the family said nothing. Tell us what happened. Well, this case where three defense contractors actually, there were four, their plane was on contract from the US government to do drug surveillance, the plane crashed due to a ninja failure. And they were captured by the FARC. One American and the Colombian officer were executed right away. The other three were held for five and a half years until being rescued by the Colombians. But this case did receive sufficient notoriety. The family really couldn't keep it quiet. But let me make a point on this. It seems to be a fact that is accepted by everyone in the government that no publicity is always best. That is often the case, but it is not always the case. I've worked a number of cases, the shilling case in the Philippines, where we very effectively use the media, probably to save a young man's life by the messages that we crafted. There is a time and place for everything to have blanket, blind doctrine that takes away flexibility, I think, is unwise. So what are the upsides and downsides of going public? Well, there's time to appeal. In the case I refer to, the Abu Sayyaf threatened to execute this young man, cut his head off. As some of you may know, they have a track record of doing just that. And they were going to do this as a birthday present for the president of the Philippines in a very sick way. We, at that time, and for the first time, had this young man's mother make some very direct appeals, very well-crafted messages, personally went to the Philippines under our guidance and support, and painted a very positive picture of her son to the extent that Abu Sayyaf did not carry out that execution because, you know, he came there to marry a Philippine girl. He was a good person. He converted to the Muslim religion before he went to the Philippines. So we feel as though they backed away from that for fear of losing some support amongst whatever their followers were. So there, that's just one example of many we've used where we try to, now's a good time for us to come forward and make a statement. To say it's always bad, never do it, I think shows that somebody doesn't really know how negotiations worked. Barack, let me ask you a question. So you represented Steve Soloff. You speak Arabic, you lived in Turkey, you were in touch with ISIS. Is that right? Yeah. So I mean, what were you doing for the family? And you also worked on some of these other cases or helped in some of these other cases. What were you doing? And I guess another question was, was it, I guess you imply that it was, because I think most people would say, that ISIS always wanted to kill these Americans. But you're saying that there was a moment when they were asking for smaller amounts of money when a negotiation might have been possible? No. I'm saying that there were no negotiations between ISIS and the American men. We, Diane Foley, spoke earlier, they asked for 100 million euros. They appeared and then they disappeared. Those were just proof of life questions. But for what I was doing with the Soloff, early on we had to get information. And it was such a unique situation is that we were able to get information from prisons where people were, map out ISIS's prisons and such in this locale, wait until the fixer was released after, I think, about 17 days. So he could tell us who took them, where they were taken, what direction, what was going on in that prison, try to put things together based on what other fighters from other brigades were in that prison to locate the prison. And then what you do is once you have that information, you just wait. You get your Syrians who put you in touch with other Syrians who spent time in prison. And they will start mapping out provinces for you. You'll get all kinds of information from all kinds of different prisons. That's the situation there. Well, that information is useful for a hostage rescue more than for a negotiation then. Well, the first thing is you want to know your guys alive because these guys were vanished. You had Foley had Thanksgiving 2012, I believe. And he did just not a sighting of him until, I think, August 2013, I believe. So his family didn't know what had happened to him. And they thought that he even killed because he was with Cantley by mistake. Because Cantley, the man he was taken with, testified in open court against these jihadists from Britain who had kidnapped him earlier in Syria before he was kidnapped again. So you want, basically, this situation, you want to know that your guy's still alive, that he's doing okay. And very important, and Gary can talk about this, you don't want your guy to be alone because you crawl the walls. Anybody who's been put in a cell all alone and shut the door in the dark knows that that's the worst feeling in the world. You want to know that your guy's with other people, that he has something to do all day. Those are very important things. So Theo Curtis, as an American journalist, was released by Al Qaeda, the Qatari government, which has some, quite a lot of sway over the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, intervened. Now, we don't know the circumstances, but I doubt Al Qaeda just had a good day and just said, we're going to let this guy go. And I think this is a very interesting precedent for some of the things we're talking about, which is, it clearly, the U.S. government can't get involved in this negotiation, but the Qatari government did. And so, clearly with some cognizance by the American government, I don't think it was, so, I mean, it is possible, this guy was being held by Al Qaeda, which is not a nice group of people. And something allowed them to release this American journalist. So, Burak, do you have a sense of what that something is or, and what are the lessons that may, this relatively recent case may hold for anybody on the panel? Well, I think the circumstances surrounding Theo's release are, is going to come up very soon. We'll learn a lot more. But what happens is, I believe, I don't know everything, that, you know, the Qatari's have those channels. They can go in and peer in into those clever organizations. And they're willing to help us on that note. But what happens here is, whatever negotiations happen, become expedited once the, once the beheading occurs. And Neusert does not want to be put in the same basket as ISIS. And things are facilitated very, very quickly for a happy ending. I think the use of intermediaries is very critical, particularly when we're talking about the jihadi groups. The U.S. government simply cannot sit down at a coffee table with, with these folks out in the desert somewhere. We have to use intermediaries. And this is one of the areas, I think, particularly where the families, there's a lot of charlatans who come forward. It's different with the government. But there's a lot of charlatans that come forward and say, we can do this, we can do that. We need some seed money, whatever it might be. That's one of the roles where I think the U.S. government has to play a particularly important part to, to vet that for the families and, and to let them know what's going on. My negotiations used to sit down with people like Devin and say, here's what we're doing. And here's why we're doing it. And we're extraordinarily candid. And I think things have just changed a bit on this. On the intermediary front, when I retired in January of 03, I went to work in the private sector and began to work this kidnapping of the three American defense contractors. During the five and a half years, I have to say honestly, the U.S. government did nothing other than prepare for military rescue. They wanted to find out where these guys were and go after them. The only intermediaries that went forward, the only negotiation efforts, which were extensive, were done by the company I worked for on behalf of the families. That was it. And that was very disappointing for me because it was a departure from what we had done for the previous 13 years. And I think part and parcel to that was this perception that if we reach out, if we contact the church or the Red Cross or use a journalist, whatever it might be, that that was akin to negotiating and capitulating. And one more quick thing, Peter. The thing that surprises me so much what I hear on the news is from every politician is that our policy of no ransom, no negotiation, as it is stated, protects Americans. And I will tell you unequivocally, there is zero evidence to support that Americans are kidnapped any less because of this policy. There is zero evidence that this policy helps effectuate their safe relief. Zero. No one has ever shown me any statistics. I know of no group that says, ah, we got an American. Let's let him go because we're not going to get any money. It simply does not happen. So allowing this to restrict our flexibility is a terribly closed-minded approach to dealing with this very complex problem. Yeah. I guess the counter-argument to that is the French New York Times investigation which showed that French citizens were being taken at a higher rate. But this is a very small sample and you could say, and the counter-argument to that would be, well, these are all francophone countries where these people are being taken just by the law of averages. But I mean, I agree with you. There's no evidence for this claim, right? What would that evidence look like if it existed? Well, I mean, I think we would see that either Americans were released as soon as they were grabbed because someone says we're not going to get any money or they're simply not taken to begin with and neither one of those holds true whatsoever. So to me, the policy either should work to prevent Americans from being grabbed or help secure their safe and timely release. I don't see it doing either one of those things, although it seems like common sense to us. Certainly, the terrorists will see that there's nothing to be gained by grabbing an American, so therefore they won't do it. It will show me the case where that's happened because I'm unaware of it. So basically, you're looking at the N. Tabby case. N. Tabby being in 1976, the Palestinian PFLP hijacked an Air France plane. We're carrying Israelis on it, and then they bring it to N. Tabby in Uganda and they divide them. I think earlier they divided them in Libya or whatnot. The Israelis and the Jewish sounding names and everybody else and they let everybody else go. You don't have that happen in kidnappings. You don't have Somali pirates know that they're going to get on a boat and who they're going to find on that boat. That said, when you look at French being taken higher numbers or whatnot, we could very simply look at the number of Americans who have passports and a French who have passports. There's no Americans in Mali. I mean, I looked in that in depth and it's been a few years, but French and French, they had a policy across the board. On the first occasion, they persuaded the Malian government to release terrorists. On the second occasion in 2010, they went in with force. Their policy has not been uniform on this. And in those cases, those countries, you don't have Americans traveling in those countries, Francophone or not, Yemen. You'll see a lot of French in Yemen. You don't see that many Americans in Yemen. So those are the issues as well. But that's not going to change until you have a uniform policy that everybody subscribes to that says no ransoms or ransoms. If there's no ransoms, it's useless to try to kidnap anybody and you're not going to target them. But in the real world, that's never going to happen. That's not practical. Right. And I mean, I think what everybody is saying, we need a flexible policy. Right. Because every case is different. I mean, and the problem is that requires a lot of effort to respond individually. Yeah, government doesn't like. We don't like nuance. We like yes or no. Right. Absolutes. And in fact, these cases are the very essence of nuance. You have to use a whole spectrum of creative ideas, sometimes in intermediaries, sometimes you go public, sometimes you do a rescue. There's the whole gamut you have to run through and what is the best way to get the hostage out alive. I mentioned earlier that the FBI virtually eliminated kidnapping many years ago because the bad guys got arrested and served very lengthy jail sentences. Look at Somalia as a bit instructive. All the ships that were hijacked and the company said we'll just pay the money. It's cost of doing business. And then all of a sudden this became such a problem that they started to put armed guards and then navies were out there intercepting the pirates. We have very little of that today. Why? Because rather than saying people couldn't pay a ransom, we went after the bad guys, even after a ransom was paid. That's the solution. Let's get our people out alive first and then we vigorously pursue the bad guys and make them pay a price for what they did. Simply telling the families, you know, they tried this in Columbia. They tried it in, believe, Malaysia and the Italians tried it back in the 70s banning the payment of ransom. What happened? The families just did it without telling the authorities. Made the problem even worse. It does not work. I think as well as can be expected. Like I said, these kids are amazing and in the absence of a mother and father who are completely AWAH for them, they've really banded together and look after each other. You know, the youngest is 21. But it's not easy. It's not easy. They miss Austin and they really miss having their mom and dad fully on board and engaged in their lives. We'll open up to questions because we have a C-SPAN live audience. Can you wait for the mic before you start talking and can you also identify yourself so we know who you are? So if anybody has any questions, put up their hand and the mic will come to you. No questions. Here. Some of you mentioned the media's involvement in this and whether or not to go public. Is there any communication, Mrs. Tice or Brock, with the State Department before they put out a statement regarding your family member or client's case? And if there's not, should that be part of the protocol? Kind of a joint media plan? Yeah, the media. So when you talk about media, you look at it divided into local media that doesn't understand anything and they're going to be responsible and then the national media that they are always going to look out for your best interests, 99% of the time. And if you're going to roll out something, you can craft it with them and test, you know, focus group testing or whatnot. They will do what they want. And we went to the media a couple of times. We had ideas about planting something, how we would go about it. And they were fully cooperative. I mean, at the highest level, the best known organizations. Your only problem is that your local media is just not going to understand the magnitude and the ramifications of reporting that a guy is the Senate of Holocaust survivors. They're not going to understand that. And they're not going to understand certain elements that they put into the stories that you don't want that are common. A lot of this is common knowledge amongst journalists. So many. Well, I just to clarify, you're saying that the national media is pretty good about not reporting things that would put people in danger. Exactly. Exactly. So for instance, the fact that Steve Softloff is Jewish was something that the national media didn't report on. No, they didn't report on it. They all knew about it. Many of them knew that he had spent a lot of time in Israel, but they didn't report on it. And they're not even trying to scoop. You know, if a guy gets kidnapped, you're the first person to know you can write a story. They don't care about scoops. You get people like, I don't even know if I should say their name, but very big journalists who are always there for you, bounce ideas, hold your hand, just do amazing things for you. Do you think that's because, I mean, Steve Softloff is a journalist, is this, I mean, because the media gets a lot of deserving criticism for all sorts of things it does, but I think it does do a good job of sort of self-centorship on issues that were put, fellow journalists in danger. But is it one standard for journalists, or is it across the board for Americans to help hospitals? No, it was all of the, all of them, even Kayla at a late date. I know it came out, it was a miscommunication between some people and Kayla's entourage, her family's entourage, and the media, and they released it. There was some type of ultimatum that had been made by ISIS for her with ransom figures. Media, we reached out, they reached out, and the media didn't go with that. And ABC wasn't really, ABC was, I don't believe was at fault either. I think it was a miscommunication there, but it stopped, and nobody else was talking about that. I would just disagree to some extent. There has seemed to emerge a bit of a double standard with the media. When it's a journalist grabbed, it's been told to me by my friends in the FBI that they're quite ready and willing and cooperative to keep a lid on things, but when it's not a journalist, there seems to be a different approach taken and less sensitivity to the problems and issues involved. Now, that may not be correct, but anecdotally, that's kind of what I'm hearing. Well, that's kind of, go ahead. Well, in reading Gary's book, it was talking about when they had the sniper in the DC area, and they were talking about, you know, he won a very good shot because he kept getting the chest and sort of the head. And so it was as if he was taking his cues from the media. And if I understand correctly, what Phil was asking was coordination with the family and state in crafting a media message. And we experienced that early on, there was a video of Austin, and folks in our government could hardly wait to show how smart they were in not being tricked by the content of this video. But if you're really, really smart, people will figure it out and you don't have to put a billboard up about it. And so we spent almost two years walking that back. Tell us the story in some detail so everybody understands. Well, the video shows Austin taken out in the countryside in men in sort of a more, address more common to Afghanistan than Syria. And so our government was very eager to say, you know, this isn't really happening in Syria, this is a hoax, somebody's trying to just throw a red herring. Well, you know, that may not have been the first thing that needed to be said. Yeah. And what venue did they make these statements? Well, if you're going to try to approach someone to help you, you maybe don't want to come right out of the gate calling them a liar. That may make your communication far more difficult. So recently we had an incident where there was discussion about Austin having been seen. And then once again, there was the first thing that wanted to happen is people wanted to show I'm too smart, you know, I'm going to show how smart I am. And thanks to God, two and a half years, we did work together. And we responded together to that news, rather than having anybody pursue their own agenda and go off on their own. And it was the first time that we really felt that we were part of the team, and that we came up with a response together. What I would say if I had been advising the families were I think it is a good or a bad idea to make a statement. However, it's always the family's right to make a statement. And if they decide to do so, then we try to craft a statement that would be positive and have an impact because it is a secondary way through which you can conduct a negotiation. On the government piece of it, the government will want to know what the families are going to say. But I don't know too many examples where the government tells the family what it is going to say. And I think that's a missing piece that we've seen in the past, and that's because the multiple agencies involved. But I think it's very important when I advise corporate clients on managing and kidnapping, the first thing I say is whatever you say, it's shared with the family before it goes public. And give them that first look at it and the ability to comment on it and coordinate with them. Just an important point. Here's a great example of how this bureaucracy has become hobbled by its own misinterpretation of policy and institution of protocol. We were asking, you know, how about this? Well, you have your First Amendment rights, we can't advise you on what to say. That doesn't have anything to do with our First Amendment rights. But they would not advise us. Now, they would say, that doesn't sound too bad. Well, does it sound fantastic? My son's life is on the line. I'm so sorry to hear that because we used to actually craft the statement. No, no, we have First Amendment rights there. You were violating that. I wouldn't dream of violating your First Amendment rights. Ladies, gentlemen, any other questions? This gentleman here and then this lady here. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I just had a quick question. Have you identified yourself? Sure. I'm Sean Lanker. I work at the George Washington University. Work with students going abroad. You've talked a lot about the relationship between families and the government. And I was just wondering if you could touch a bit more on the intermediaries, like the companies they might be working for, that kind of how they work into the relationship. Well, it can become a problem because the government sees the family as being the entity that officially is to be updated or briefed or coordinated with. So when there's a company involved as well, it can become complicated because the companies typically will want to represent the families. And sometimes they can get cut out of the process so it gets very complicated. But for me, you have to identify the involved stakeholders. And then the briefings have to be very focused on keeping everyone on the same sheet of music. You have to keep everyone in the tent. Now, I will tell you, one of the problems that the government has, and this is a legitimate one, families are not just mom and dad. Families are aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters. And there almost always is a family member that decides this is their five minutes of fame. And they're going to say and do a lot of things that truly are counterproductive to the case. So that's why the government, one of the reasons at least the government's wary. But I do believe there's ways to manage that properly as we talk about vetting the families and giving them the appropriate limited clearances. I think that's a wonderful idea. And I would support that. So when you look at third party intermediaries, there's two types. So there's people like me who are regular civilians that are close with the family. We don't make a lot of headway with the government, because just like he said, they think that we're looking out mostly to try to get our 15 minutes of fame. And we're going to upset the wagon. Then you have other third party intermediaries, which are members of the former members of the intelligence community, who worked closely with a lot of these people in their former positions that have a lot of experience, how the government works, how bureaucracies work, and they are able to open up certain doors that people like me can't. And they'll speak to senior people in the IC on a weekly basis. And this is because of other people that were involved in the cases that had this type of representation and things that I heard on the phone when I was on the phone with them with senior people, how they addressed them, what they said about what they had in former conversations. Look, a lot of this stuff is when you sit with people in the government, you just want to listen, because they don't want to say anything. But at some point in time, they actually say something when they're not trying to say something, and you can put things together. And that's what we're able to do. So third party minors from the IC, I think that they do have more traction that people like me would get. Interestingly enough, Diane Foley contacted me. She, like you had read my book, and she asked the FBI if she could speak to me, and we spoke. And it saddened me because someone, reportedly from the National Security Council, had threatened the Foley family with prosecution. And had I been advising her at the time, which I was not and had not even known her, I would have said, tell him to go fly a kite, because no one has ever been prosecuted, no family member for paying, well, no one ever has been prosecuted for paying a ransom in violation of this policy. If it's a family member, they never will be. I cannot envision a federal prosecutor going to court and saying, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let's throw the book at the Foley's because they spent million dollars to save their son. It's just simply not going to happen. So to make those kinds of threats is disingenuous. It's insulting, frankly. And whoever said that in the government probably should be out looking for a new job somewhere. The family themselves don't get the money and pay it. What if they have a third-party intermediary who is raising the money and then they have donors who give the money, you cannot extend that umbrella to those other entities. And that is the big problem when someone gets them. You can extend which umbrella, the informational one? No, no, no. You're saying that they can go fly a kite because they're not going to, you know, pass performance as indicative of future returns. But what happens, what happens to me and what happens to the donors I bring to the table? Are we going to be able to get, we're not going to get that. And by saying something like that, they are putting it out there to warn us and not so much to families. I think they could come after a company. We haven't had a test case yet, but it's only a matter of time before a U.S. corporation pays a ransom to a group on the state's list. And I'm confident that if that goes to court, they're going to be, that law is going to be thrown out. I think we had that, didn't we, with the banana company? No, but that was not a kidnap ransom. That was sort of an extortion bribery kind of situation. Yeah. So there is no precedent for this, but I just can't see it holding up. It's sort of an idle threat and saber rattling that should not be part of the discussion. Well, just since we're on the subject, let's try and do some math about what proportion of ISIS's payroll is coming from kidnapping as a percentage. So let's say they're getting a million dollars a day in oil revenue or whatever the figure is. Barack, you can help me out here. Yeah, it was a million, but here's the deal. At that point in time, so the number in the New York time I believe is about 23 million euros that they received for the hostages, for the European hostages. Grosso-Moto, give or take. Let's just say that's the number is right. Early on, that money is important. So ISIS, we know that ISIS had this big strategy with the hostages, how they saw these things, how they envisioned taking place, and nothing happened the way they thought it would happen. They were very frustrated. But what happens is early on, that money is very important because it doesn't have a lot of money. It's just broken away from Al Qaeda. It also has to do with internal dynamics, what you bring, because some of these people were kidnapped before there was an ISIS. So if I have a hostage in my group and I've joined ISIS, I'm going to leverage that position. I'm going to get higher. I'm going to get more commanders in ISIS. I'll have access to better weapons. So it's an internal thing and not so much a money thing. So there's a lot of factors and ramifications that go into this. Down the road, when the American hostages are killed, the amount of money they're getting for the hostages, they don't really need that anymore. After they take in Mosul and what they're getting out of Mosul, they've earned their Mosul protection rackets. The discrepancy and differences between the oil revenues out of Syria, which is being refined individually by private individuals, vis-à-vis what you're doing in Mosul in northern Iraq with massive refineries, it's just completely different and your calculus is completely changed. So just to reiterate, at the beginning, that money is somewhat important. By the end, it amounts to just nickels and dimes for them. Yeah. It's a matter of degrees and nobody wants to see $40 million or $100 million. But again, I mentioned before, I think there is a lower expectation on the terrorists, particularly early in the situation, that the families will come up with a big amount of money. And therefore, it's actually better to let the family do the negotiation and not the government. I'll give you a good example. In 1990, I flew to Africa for a kidnapping in Zairek. An oil worker was grabbed. And the terrorist group, the FARC, I'm not the FARC, the, I'll think of it, the second, I'm sorry, I just lost it. It was a commitment to the front. They were holding this American they wanted money to buy weapons. And of course, that was very much against US policy. But we crafted a deal with the oil company to give them medical supplies, tents, blankets, and some vehicles. Everybody was happy with that. The local government, the US government, and we saved somebody's life because we were creative. I doubt that would work today. I doubt anybody would go for it. During the three defense contractors, at one point in time, the company of all wanted to send in backpacks for each man, prescription eyeglasses, medicine, socks, underwear, and the Justice Department threatened them with prosecution for providing material support to terrorists. Now, FARC was a 25,000-plus army that did not need three backpacks with prescription glasses. It was ludicrous. We got them the back off on that, and we made the delivery or tried to make the delivery. But if there is going to be a concession, there's a way for the US government to sort of do it if you allow sufficient space and time. I mean, look, if it's both Bergdahl and the same day the five Taliban guys are released, the quick pro quo is very obvious. But there is a way if we have a more flexible policy to do some of the things that we've just discussed and also make the quick pro quos less obvious, I think is, I would agree. But there also has to be a desire, a desire to be creative, a desire to be flexible. I mean, the same guy that threatened the family three times with prosecution, when I ask, what do we, yes, I do, what are we going to do to get clearance? What can we do? He told us, and let's try telling this to the interns coming into the State Department this summer that already had their clearance, he told us that it would cost us over $100,000 and take more than 15 months to get clearance. Same exact person. I mean, the disinformation is just astounding. Let me throw out another idea, because I think a not uncommon view in the United States is, well, these guys or girls were in Syria or there, and therefore they were in a risky situation. My response is, if somebody spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, Pakistan, it would be, well, if we're going to stop, I mean, by definition journalists are going to be in dangerous places. I mean, we're not reporting in great numbers in Switzerland because nothing happens there. So we're reporting in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan, Pakistan. And similarly, for the NGO community and for the aid community, by definition they're not in Switzerland. They're in places where people are. So if one response is, well, kind of, they're in a dangerous place and therefore we're just going to forget about them, which I think some Americans seem to believe, then you're kind of... I get emails saying what? Exactly that. Right. Free country, your son wins, not my responsibility. Here's the deal with that. When you get a revolution in Libya, and Libya is a closed country, and we're not getting any information out. The first people who go in their bed and wean them in from CNN, he's on the border, he risks his life, he goes in there, and he gets a story, and he's able to find out who these rebels are, and we're putting together who they are and who the National Transitional Council is and who every person on there, because the CIA does not have that information. They do not know these things. Go read George Stephanopoulos' memoirs. When we had that Ranger problem in Somalia, how'd they find out about it? How'd they turn on CNN? The CIA didn't have that information for them. That's the way these things are. I got to say something. I was on one of the programs Planet of, made some statements for one of the families, and then you had one of the Navy SEALs who was involved in the bin Laden raid come on and said, he doesn't want to go in to save these people who are Iraqis. People like him who are soldiers, they're there to carry out their duties that the President of the United States asks them to do. They're not paid to think. They don't write research papers like Peter and I do, and that's some of these dilemmas here. There are people that go in. When Austin went in, I was on the border. I went into Syria when Austin went in. He went in in such a fermenting time, such an important time when the borders had opened in Idlib and Aleppo and weapons were coming in, and there was a chance that the regime could have been toppled at that time. He was providing very crucial information that we did not have. The CIA did not have assets inside Syria at that time. We had no way of getting information, and it was people like Austin who were getting that, and he was doing a great service to this country, and we have to do everything we can to help get him out. Peter, if an American businessman goes out in Mexico City, gets drunk and gets kidnapped, the FBI still tries to get him out. We don't judge our actions based on someone's behavior. The Bergdahl case, which received much criticism, I think it was a wonderful trade. We'll get those five guys later. It doesn't matter. They're not that big a fish. For me, my son was a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan, because of mental issues or whatever, he had made some poor judgments and he was grabbed. I would still expect my country to do whatever it could to get him out. Once he's out, as they're doing with Bergdahl, fine, we can address those issues later on. But it's our obligation as a nation, particularly when someone is serving us to do what we can, anything we can to get them out. And that includes our journalists. If it includes a drunk businessman, it should certainly include our journalists and everybody else. So that's just a terrible argument. Yeah. This lady here. Go ahead. Sure. Gary, my name is Lindsay Hamilton. And I was wondering, since you've worked on both the government side of this and the private side of this, is there a difference in your success rate in those different roles? And if you were in the situation, would you go to the FBI you or the private sector you first? Boy, that's a tough question. My answer is I would go to both. There are things the government can do that no one else can do, clearly. And we've sort of been bashing the government a bit here, but there are some incredible people to totally dedicated to this effort and doing the best they can. And they need to be given credit for that. But there's also some things that the private sector can do. I mentioned the three defense contractors at that time, the ambassador and the government entity down in Columbia, because we were supporting the military in its fight with FARC, wanted nothing to do with anything other than military rescue. But the private corporation that I worked for and the kidnapped negotiations that we were trying to undertake, we're the ones that set in the intermediary. The government didn't feel comfortable doing that, but we were able to do that. Euras, representatives of the church, humanitarian organizations, to get information, to do things that really made, I think, could have made a huge difference in that case. It did make a difference, but not the final difference. But so I think both sides, you have to reach out to as many people as you can, who can help us in this situation, and you have to make your judgments based on that. The lady in back. Jennifer Vasquez with NBC. This is for Deborah. Two separate questions. If you could just share with us what's a direct message for the White House? What changes would you like to see? And as a mother of Austin, just share with their audience the emotional toll that this entire process has had on your family. What was the first question? What was the message to the White House in terms of the review? First of all, we're glad to know that we're part of it. That's hugely important to us. And of course, we'd like to see the final product and know that there would be someone who's singular objective was to get your loved one home as soon as possible and as safely as possible. And the White House is directing that review and that effort entirely because it will be a presidential directive when it's finished. Did that answer your question? And yes. And then your question about our family? It's, you know, there are nine of us plus the grand baby plus now Austin has two new brother-in-laws since he's been missing. So, you know, we can be all over the page when the rubber really needs to meet the road. We're all together. And that blesses me down to my socks that the kids really are able to look out for each other, to love each other. When one is struggling, they tend to circle the wagon and pull them together. I kind of hit the wall in October of this year. And that was the first for them to see mom really struggling. And it was amazing what they did to make sure that I looked at self-care, which I tend to neglect and moms kind of do anyway, but this was pretty critical. And all of our family traditions, the kids said, mom, you are our guest this year for Thanksgiving. You will do nothing but come and honor us with your presence. So, you know, that's just pretty darn amazing. And I think we're holding together as well as can be expected. I really do. Thank you for Brock. If you've stayed in touch with the Saltloff family and if so, how are they doing? I speak to them once or twice a week. I knew the Saltloffs for a decade before this. I was very close. You know, I was friends with them. Steve was best friends with dad. So, whenever we were together, you'd be skyping with them at night. And I would talk to his dad. So, I'm close with them and I'll always be close to them. And these are difficult times, but they are handling it with a class that I don't think I would be able to do, to Vince and demonstrate. Any other questions? Well, I want to thank our panel. It was really very well done. Thank you, Dad.