Hostage Negotiating Secrets & How the US Mishandled ISIS Ransom Situations

Former FBI negotiator and adjunct professor at the USC Marshall School of Business, Chris Voss, shares his experiences with hostage dramas and outlines some of the reasons he believes that U.S. officials mishandled past ISIS ransom situations.

Voss says the official U.S. policy on the matter is that the government will not make concessions during hostage negotiations with terrorists. However, it also states that officials should not be afraid to open dialogue with any individual or group.

“And that’s where they sort of lose it in Washington. It’s disheartening to find that there are so many people in Washington that don’t know what they’re doing,” he said, adding that many implementers of the policy are very new to it.

He explains that many of the government authorities faced with dealing with the latest situations of American hostages taken and eventually killed by ISIS were still trying to figure out their jobs and were largely unprepared.

“It hasn’t happened to any of them before and they didn’t know what they were doing – a lot of them just flat were in over their heads. And instead of admitting that they didn’t know what they were doing, they did things like get in the way of the families – some of them said ridiculous things to families.”

Voss – who also now runs the strategic business advisory firm The Black Swan Group - said that some of these officials told family members that if they paid ransom money to the hostage-takers, they would be arrested and prosecuted. “Which is a horrible thing to say to families and certainly makes them feel like their government has abandoned them.”

Specifically, Voss said some of the “stupid” things being said by U.S. officials were coming from the National Security Council and the State Department – not from the Department of Justice, which is well aware of the laws governing narrow circumstances for people being prosecuted for paying ransom.

When asked about whether the paying of ransom affects future negotiations and the chances of success in hostage situations, he said it has more to do with how the ransom is paid.

“It’s more a question of how you pay and whether or not you engage in a bargaining process, whether or not you stretch it out and whether or not you keep every dollar possible out of their hands,” he said. “You can bargain down the price of a kidnap victim the same way – from a hostage negotiator’s perspective – the same way I’m going to bargain down a car.”

Speaking about the beheading death of James Foley at the hands of ISIS, Voss said people can never forget that the Islamic jihadist group is wholly responsible for his death – regardless of any mistakes that were made by U.S. officials.

“Could the U.S. have done a better job? Absolutely. Would that have made any difference on the outcome? Unlikely,” he said, adding that the thing that would have mattered is that Foley’s family would have been treated better.

Whether negotiators are dealing with domestic situations or international terrorists, Voss says the highest level of danger is reached when the hostage-takers will not communicate directly with them. If negotiators are able to establish contact, he said it’s their job to figure out what’s going on inside the head of the hostage-taker’s mind so he might be able to talk him out of harming or killing anyone.

“I can completely understand everything you say without agreeing with a bit of it, which is a hostage negotiators job,” he said. “I don’t have to let go of any of my values, to be able to see what yours are, as long as I understand that empathy is not agreement.”

Watch the full interview to also hear Voss explain the specific role language and phrasing plays in hostage negotiations, and for his analysis on how the actions of ISIS clearly depart from their purported Islamic ideology.