Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

Why do we get started. Im professor wallace and i want to welcome you to the International Institute which i am a chairman and a colleague of yonah. I will introduce you all in one moment. First the topic of this program, terrorism captives, tactical legal and strategic implications. Those of you who have come to other programs of the institute and ourselves will know that yonah been that yonah unbearably says we shouldnt forget the victims of terrorism and this is a program about victims in a way. Maybe the first one we have had. One of my colleagues pointed out that i think its isis in egypt is the croatian i think is working in egypt. So tack ticks and strategy. I think yonah mentions in this write up the best practices. One of our colleagues who you will hear has written a book which i happen to have read at this time and he makes the point that we are not very good on strategy and i suppose its a real test it seems to me in this area. How does one formulate a strategy, what might be a strategy for dealing with this extraordinary array of victims who are of terrorism and we have heard a lot recently about ransom negotiations etc. And i imagine we will deal with all of these things. At this point i will turn everything over to yonah and he will introduce the speakers and the programs of thank you very much. Thank you very much dawn, for your great introduction but i know more is coming. Since he did not speak in terms of substandard if issues we will go to that particular topic. Im not going to present to you two bucks two books. One is alfred gray. General gray is sitting next to you. The only thing since you did say a few words im going to present to you a smaller version of general grays wisdom right here , okay . Second leg, im not going to present you another book which was just released yesterday. This is my only copy. Yours is coming on nato because nato plays a very key role as you know in terms of terrorism, counterterrorism strategy and also related to hostages and so on. We will go into this issue later on. What i would like to do very briefly because we have a very distinguished panel is to provide some context perhaps a roadmap to what we are going to discuss today. As moderator i am taking the liberty of doing that and first of all i would like to introduce our panel. You do have the program in front of you. First of all i would like to introduce very briefly the panel you met professor don wallace. Next to him is general gray the 29th, and onto the United States marine corps and currently senior fellow and chairman of the board of regents of the Potomac Institute for policy studies. He always requests to have the last word. He can have the last word in the first word im going to give it to him to decide when to jump into it he had at any rate, we are going to have first ambassador retired i would say, ed marx. Fortunately for me i had the opportunity to meet him and for many years when he was at the office of the state department academically contributed to our work. Next to him on the left not lyrically but at any rate my friend and colleague dr. Wayne zaideman. The only thing i would say now because i am a scholar and former fbi in the middle east etc. Etc. Next to him is the minister and counselor for counterterrorism efforts at the embassy of israel and then next to him, next to her, im sorry dr. Odierno seven a colleague going way back and is currently a Senior Adviser of the Atlantic Council and we are fortunate to have his wisdom in the articles basically every week. Now, i would like to acknowledge the contribution of cspan that is recording our event and bringing the discussions to a much wider audience in the United States and around the world and our cosponsors in addition to the International Law institute. The Potomac Institute for policy studies and the university of Virginia Law School core operating with us on this discussion. Let me be very brief at this point. I will hopefully have something to say later on. First of all what we are going to discuss today are basically two challenges that the general general is facing for many years. One is mother made sure of course that we know sometimes we have no control over what then what is of grave security concern is manmade i think challenges first on the technological disasters that we see happening now with several explosions today in china, injuring and killing many people, devastating which has to do with some chemical and the reason im mentioning this is because we have to think about the future in terms of the worst to, and in terms of our stake in it and i will come back to that in a minute. Then today of course the report about the croatian hostage allegedly that was killed by the Islamic State province in sinai. I say allegedly because we need the evidence in terms of that particular event but i believe thats whatever the situation is, it leaves the message coming through loud and clear to intimate the International Community so its not only those tortured and killed but the wider audience around the world and basically the entire society and is a potential victim of terrorism. So we have this particular situation and in addition to that of course we know and we are going to discuss today the role of isis, the Islamic State in this particular area, the hostages that we know we have seen and intimidated not only the families that the United States and our friends and allies all the way from the journalists from the United States, the u. K. , the japanese jordanians and so forth. So i think also let me mention that the Islamic State would have to define hostages and kidnappings and a broader Strategic Thinking of isis, they are taking slaves as a major target as a particular practice, not only individuals but entire communities and ethnic racial and religious i think members and so on. In terms of the hostage situation of the media recently i will focus attention on the u. S. Citizens were the socalled prisoners in iran and in the context of the nuclear deal with the iranians, the questions really is why did not the United States try to pressure iran to release the hostages and prisoners in iran cracks i really think that in addition to traditionally talking about hostages in kidnapping and i will come back to it in a minute i think we have to look at also the pirates and piracy. Whether its a criminal act also related to some ideological and political goal as well and piracy again is as old as history so is terrorism. Now in terms of the kidnappings as we know and i am raising this again, i think we can talk about kidnapping for ransom for example and the whole issue relates to policies of government that we would have to deal with whether governments have a clear policy related to ransom by families for example or institutions and so on so we have to deal with that. And you cannot isolate the terrorism political acts or cap deck from organized crime. For example the whole issue of nor could trafficking. We see whats happening in mexico and we see what happening in central america. We see whats happening in latin america and again latin america used to be the capital of kidnapping in the world in the 1980s and 90s but since we find a great deal of kidnapping and latin america as well, about 23 during the year. Then of course we have to look at some other regions around the world like african boko haram and abduction of the schoolgirls that is a particular challenge that continues and it has many implications originally and globally. Now one or two other things that i think we also discuss today. One is the socalled historical lessons because we are dealing really with anniversary dates. For example what lessons can we learn . Today, august the 13th is the fourth anniversary of the kidnapping or the abduction are the hostagetaking of a u. S. Contractor who was kidnapped by al qaeda in pakistan and the United States try to rescue him and another hostage from italy unfortunately were killed. So this actually happened in 2011, in other words four years ago and what kind of lessons can we learn from that and also i would like to mention that elsewhere for example in spain on august 13, 1997, this is the 18th anniversary that a spanish politician blanca and we do have some people who are experts on spain, he was kidnapped and shot. I think we have to remember this as well. Its not only the americans and a hustonians that there are many others and we will have to deal with that. The point im making is we really need a new approach so to speak to deal with hostages in terms of placing priority rather than another statistic. There is a saying in judaism and islam and christianity that if you save one life, it seems as if he saved the entire world and i do hope that we learn from history. We learn from history. What really concerns me as one of the generations of the holocaust because my family was killed during the second world war, 70 years later now of this particular period and also i want to take into account some other atrocities from the middle east related to the armenians actually, im talking about 1979 in 1972 we have the earlier episode and tragedy in munich when the 11 israeli athletes were taken hostage and then killed. The entire world was watching and watching and did not actually lift a finger. Later on in odor to do something about a terrorist threat and finally also in 1979 the takeover of the mecca by terrorists in saudi arabia sent a signal that the threats within islam between the sunni and the shiites are also important to take into account. But this context i would like to invite our speakers to discuss whichever they think is important for a dialogue later on. General gray would you like to say a few words now or later on . Its all yours. Here we have someone has a very extensive maddock background and also an academic that ground any deals with many of these issues. As i said we will present to you later on the book. Thank you. Thank you don. Its good to be back. Thanks again for inviting me back here. This time its different because im leaving off which allows me to make broad general statements. The last time as harris to love speaker and i spent most of the time leaving stuff out and i ended up with the cia redacted document. Well talk today about hostagetaking and terrorism. And im going to focus mostly on the United States. Its always good to start with a definition so the seizure or detention of a person with a threat to kill, injure or continue to detain that person in order to compel a third person or Government Organization to do or to abstain from doing an act as an explicit or implicit condition of the person detained. Thats the u. S. Government official definition. In a sense modern political hostagetaking arises from two historical precedent, traditions. One of which yonah referred to as a long history of the political and military used of hostages as guarantees of good faith and the observance of obligations between states, monarchies etc. But the practices of taking hostages for the security they carrying out of the treaty of civilized states is pretty much obsolete. In 1949 the Geneva Convention and International Convention against the taking of hostages both prohibit hostagetaking as a crime or an act of terrorism. The criminal version of kidnapping is also historic and there is a historical precedence to that in that continues of course. In fact some countries hostage taking forprofit has become almost an industry, ransom being the only demand for what is basically a criminal at today. An and major problem therefore facing government in dealing with this situation is determining whether a specific event is actually a political intent or pretends to be political because for some reason some criminals appear to be claiming that a political motivation in some ways more respectable so you have got this problem facing governments deciding what it is they are actually facing. But we are talking about is political hostagetaking something intended to make a political statement, challenge of existing government or further the influence of a particular movement a group so i think the question of criminal kidnapping of the fbi this is their turf, they been doing it for a long time. They know how to do it. Now modern terrorism hostagetaking began to some degree mostly defined in the 1960s. We have the marxist terrorist groups in latin america, europe, japan. Yemen and libya became centers of training and orientation where marxist militants of different nationalities learned tradecraft from the kgb come these germans and from each other. Then we had the afghanistan situation i guess we will call at which spawned al qaeda and other global jihadist movements. Training was done by the cia and pakistans intelligence director in particular and of course we had some of us remember the innocent days of the red brigades group, the children of the bourgeoisie. That period reduced traditional u. S. Government ct policy. It would bring terrorists to justice isolate state sponsors of terrorism improved allies counterterrorism capability and retrospect to hostages sessions, no deals. After 9 11, that policy was somewhat expanded with the global war on terrorism much more aggressive policy, at least rhetorically and especially more and were and the military. And then we had afghanistan, iraq followed idea that states patriot act, the creation of the department of Homeland Security etc. Part of ct policy is always the question of dealing with hostages. And i was much taken by a recent discussion on the background of this policy by rand corporations Brian Jenkins to you all know. His basic thesis is many people erroneously believe that negotiations with terrorists are prohibited in all circumstances at least from the u. S. Government. But there is no law against negotiating with terrorists. Existing negotiation policies were intended to apply only to assess situations and even dare was exaggerated. As i said to begin with theres no legislation, no statute in the criminal books, no explicit direct if brevity negotiations with terrorists. The only guidance is in the form of policy statements that pertain to negotiations. This Development Began in early night in 70s when terrorists began seizing this old diplomats and other government officials. Diplomats resent this and armored vans you know. Thou shalt not attack nuns children and diplomats but that was gone in a world which has created a false sense of decency. The United States took the position of the host country was responsible for the safety of diplomats. Yielding to terrorist demands seeing no way to encourage the possibility of more occurring. The United States worried that if it was seen to intervene in negotiations that might attract more kidnappings of american officials and direct demands on United States as a host government and thereby absolve local governments responsibilities. The policy was and sent sales in march of 1973 with terrorist groups to two american diplomats hostage in khartoum. Hostages demanded the release of palestinian prisoners held and sirhan sirhan. Responding to a question during the crisis president nixon stated quote as far as the United States as a government getting into black out demands we cannot do so and we will not do so and boat. After the statement of public terrorists murdered to the pills and their browsing colleague and two days later the state Department Director was using the presence language. Therefore an unscripted response to a specific question in specific circumstances became general policy. It was used often and subsequent considerations over the years not giving in to blackmail demands which was expanded to include no negotiations. This was widely interpreted as a ban on all discussions. This approach became a mantra for the u. S. Government repeated in numerous situations from the twa airliner hijacking in 1985 to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice stating in 2004 that quote the president of the United States does not negotiate with terrorists and quote. The policy statements are now law. History and current law including the patriot act make it clear that the no negotiations policy was never intended to interfere with the authority, the Second Branch to conduct Foreign Policy or to pursue negotiations with anybody in addition, a threat to the u. S. Official in 2014 to persecute persecute the family of hostage for providing Material Support to a terrorist organization if they paid ransom would have gone nowhere in a u. S. Court. There are too many contrary examples. U. S. Policy does not preclude the fbi from assisting families faced with ransom kidnappings and it would not be able to hold to that policy in a court. Not only the United States, the United Kingdom adopted a no negishee since policy for dealing with hostages long before us get that policy did not preclude did not prevent them from them indicating eventually pushing with the iron ore did american policy against negotiation prevent the u. S. From using its influence on both sides in that issue so we negotiated and dealt with the ira as well. I want mention the peace accords in vietnam which involve the viacom board despite the promising promise we made to the israelis we would never talk to the plo in fact we have talked to the plo many times and negotiate with them. In some, despite the situation and i will quote ryan jenkins here because he is pretty good, quote absurd interpretations bike hushes bureaucrats and contorted for trails by a knowledgeable officials unquote led to the adoption of a policy which comes from a century shortterm response. Now, policy guidance in other words is just that. Its guidance. It may be the right way to go and it may be the policy want to follow but you have to always let the circumstances determined when the guidance make no sense that must be ignored and we and others will do that and well do that in the future. A lot of press comment, a lot of criticism and in response president obama invoked a special review which issued a new president ial policy directive. U. S. Nationals taken hostage abroad and personal recovery effects. Tdd 30 reaffirm the traditional no concerns and policy but, but for the first time no concerns and says not mean no communications. The u. S. Government may communicate with hostage takers and others. The u. S. Government a assist private efforts communicate with hostage takers to secure the safer cover of a hostage and this is interesting, the u. S. Department of justice will no longer imply, hints or worn the families that face criminal prosecution and in the best tradition of washington we have new at this rate of arrangements. There is no hostage response group, an issue manager, a family and a german team and a new president ial envoy for hostage affairs. Families trust and confidence. So now weve seen maybe not a change but certainly a significant orientation and how we are doing. This is all part of a change in policy over the last few years since 9 11. We had first and intensification of policy and the militarization to move to the acceptance of the complicated conflict. It had too much effect on the hostage policy accept the stuff i just talked about and thats been on a tactical level. However, many of the practitioners is taken on the transnational character as another talked about. Exacerbating the transnational Political Development in the insurgent activities with other types of transnational time for weapons of mass distraction and on and on. Criminal organizations as well as terrorist groups have gone global preventing a new challenge to government. Some of whom are overmatched and outgunned. The result is a global transnational exodus of political and criminal threats. The evolution of insurgency movements and terrorist tactics reflects what is happening to other organizations and is providing a situation with more or less solid nationstates now coming under attack by actors representing the self proclaimed entities as borders have become more open all of this legal trafficking activity is increasing exponentially. Its the system itself. In the terrorist and terrorist policy we have to focus on the strategic level in fact it is rapidly simple. Now we have a selfproclaimed hostage state. So we are returning to the older tradition in the Geneva Convention to become relevant again. In addition to the necessary National Response by governments it must be a coordinated response by the community of several levels government acting as group and in the international organization. Much easier said than done of course as the Current Situation demonstrates. The middle east is in political social collapse into anarchy. The major regional players that are standing on the scene with an ability to act in any degree took to saudi arabia and israel as the group and only one of them is arab. They all opposed the hostage taking and have a common enemy and isis but all engage in the crosscutting Competition Among each other. But in the end its all about politics. You can deplore the special operations teams from now until doomsday and you will not solve the problem. They are now dealing with hostage taking in the middle east particularly this is the challenges of dealing with the middle east for. How to sort out the enemies from our friends. [applause] [inaudible] it was designed to be the size. We have to continue by the way i think we have to discuss not only the Islamic State and others but also the lone wolf and particularly now that we are seeing the takeover in the people that came to watch a movie and all that, obviously we have to think about also the future in terms of the involvement of the socalled lone wolf now to weaponize and take over the entire communities let me move on to our friend and colleague as i mentioned with his experience for decades but also academically as a doctorate from nyu on iran to share with us the experiences in the middle east and elsewhere. Thank you professor. When i took the negotiations course in the fbi in the early 90s, it was focused basically on criminal hostages and when i asked the instructor what about the terrorist situations, he said he would handle it the same way. I am going to go through this and show how i believe it was incorrect at the time as it is now. They taught us that when you have a hostage negotiation or barricade situation where the crime has gone wrong and theyve taken hostages were there is a domestic dispute and theres a feeling of desperation by the people or somebody that wants to commit suicide by cop and theres hostages and hope they said that the first thing that people tend to want to do this work on problemsolving independent behavioral change. Hopefully the behavioral change our hands up and believe. But that rarely works if you proceed with three other things to do. The first is active listening. They basically mirror the hostage taker is saying and affect letting them tell their side of the story. Then you bring empathy into it and you want to determine how they feel and then you want to gain rapport and gain their trust. Once the process Gains Momentum you get into the influence part which is working on problemsolving with the hostage takers and bringing about the behavioral change. However this has little relation to the modernday hostagetaking when youre dealing with islamist extremist terrorism. Before i go into the ideology, in the 1980s president Ronald Reagan transferred arms for the hostages in lebanon and he finally enacted and admitted that both said that it wasnt to gain the hostage release, it was to foster better relations with iran. But in effect this became a revolving door. You pay for hostages and they release some and then they get more hostages and that is what was going on in lebanon at the time. In 2002, president bush had a policy that ran what could be paid if they could gain intelligence about the terrorist groups or the individual terrorists but not for the purpose of freeing american hostages because you dont want to encourage terrorism but this did allow for negotiations ended it all out for using the rationale hoping to gain intelligence about the terrorist groups. As the ambassador mentioned there is a statute about the detaining of u. S. Citizens outside of the United States and basically as he mentioned, the policy in some ways remains the same. You can negotiate with no concessions, no ran some kind of change in the u. S. Policy to the hostage takers. However as you mentioned, the one change is we can buy we urge the citizens ought to pay ransom if they want to do it anyway, we provide basic Logistical Support and help with those governments. It should be noted that the department has never prosecuted anyone for paying ransom. Now recently, president obama swapped kelly and commanders. The rationale that he used us for our own soldiers we do not leave anyone behind once the conflict is over. However in my opinion, the sergeant lost this when he collaborated with the enemy. In that case i think that he lost the right to have the United States release the top taliban commanders. In 2002, the National Criminal justice Reference Service pointed out the civilians for the release of the prisoners. My colleague will go into this in further detail that it should be noted that the policy was no concessions and they rely on hostage rescue operations. However, due to the public pressure its a small country and people tend to know each other and as a result, israel began releasing prisoners and some, there was criticism from releasing those in return for releasing hostages. Getting into the hostage initiations for the islamist extremists i must note they are not concerned about the public opinion. They are not concerned. Their audience is and what the public says. Their audience validation comes from god. As a result theres no need to minimize casualties. In fact its fine for them to maximize. Its fine for them to do barbaric things like beheadings, drownings, crucifixions. The leadership believes to know what god wants of them. The religious scholars rule on behalf of the returns are they are tied in so once the citizens of a country and power the clergy to speak they are forever precluded from criticizing the clergy it would be like criticizing god himself. As a so tourism becomes an act of religious expression. One time, people at the book which would be like jews and christians were a protected status while they were persecuted and while they had to pay exorbitant tax rates at least they were protected from being killed. However islamist extremists get around this, to back. Instead of people of the book they refer to jews, christians were fellow muslims who dont agree with them which is pagan. So by changing the label from people in the buck, anyone can become a terror target. Christians, jews, muslims. Now they were once islamic and they are part of the islamic entity until the end of time. So its not negotiable. For example, it was under the islamic rule so they are precluded from dissociating or giving up any part of that and its an obligation on them so that people are either willing to be ruled under islam or they become muslim. Whats my solution . We cant win a war if we worry about political correctness. Its true that we have to identify the enemy, and islamist extremist. And while it is important to try our best to limit civilian casualties we cannot become paralyzed to take action for the worry that there will be some Collateral Damage. If we were paralyzed in this way and world war ii we would have lost the war. We must identify the enemy and allow the military to succeed in its mission. In world war ii if we worry about the Collateral Damage we wouldnt have been bombing japan and we wouldnt have obtained the unconditional surrender. So basically what im saying i am saying is that they end very badly. We must fight to win and obtained the unconditional surrender. If we go back to the position of military and economic strength we can deter the war with weakness or as an affordable in a inevitable. [applause] thank you very much. We will come back to some of the issues that you raised. The next speaker was a minister and counselor as i mentioned before in the middle east and counterterrorism and is a graduate of Tel Aviv University and the school of law so in cairo in the embassy several times and she will deal with the israeli response to the hostage taking to address a couple of days they declared that they do have some parts of the soldiers that are killed during the year ago with a lot of questions. We have to say from the start will offer more dilemmas than answers and i simply dont have we dont have good answers for what is the toughest most difficult situation for the decisionmakers anywhere. Another opening remark is i want to be discussing the situation of the border with al qaeda but we still have bigger breasts and bigger problems that we face from those organizations that have been targeting for decades now mostly the organizations. This is an ongoing challenge, an ongoing experience and one that has gone through different phases and i think its fair to say that they are we are still in the midst of the learning curve and while we have reached several conclusions this is probably not the end of the process unfortunately. But i would like to begin with first of all the understanding that while we face the unique aspect of the ransom which is to say we are mostly faced by the ransom which is to release prisoners into terrorists and this is not for the ransom that is paying money so the people that are kidnapped are not faced with this the mama and both were speakers spoke about whether to pay out of pocket or to get the money in another way so this is an issue to the states. Israel this is the responsibility of the state to deal with this issue and that families can do a lot in terms of Public Relations in terms of making this issue remain very much in the news but its not the capability to do what is needed to release their loved ones. So this is an important remark which is unique to our situation. But i would like to give a background in saying that the whole issue for ransom is actually a very old one in the tradition or at least the tradition of the jewish people they pretend the bible and this is one of the most important commandment that you have in the jewish religion and it was extensively debated in the literature because not only does it refer to a very tough phenomena that was going on the jewish communities facing the situation where people were put in jail by hostile authorities in order to pressure the communities to pay ransom. There was such a commandment that was considered much more important that adult with helping the poor in helping the weak. So we have discussions that they are going back almost 2,000 years ago. [inaudible] but the most important rabbis from both years and the questions are mostly how do you weigh the life of a person and individual and the benefit of the whole community and how do you put value on human life . Could even be possible . Wouldnt that be counterproductive because it would just bring about the next incident where a person from the community with the object of and get back into salon. The answers have been given by the way. There was even an attempt to actually say you can pay ten times the fair value of the hostage and who is to tell what is the fair value of a human being and how can you even presume that apparently people found ways to do that but i have to say even those who were not exactly maintained there were exceptions for example in the case of husband and wife and they have the duty to pay everything they have to release his wife at least for the first time. There are no limits to what you pay because the peoples value to the community is much higher and so on and so forth. There is some kind of logic for the community to operate according to the reality always stronger than those attempts in the rules. If i go now to our time, the modern state of israel, again the nature have changed and it is mostly the release of prisoners and the babies of terrorists. That is another set of competitions and dilemmas of course decisionmakers because mostly it is a question of motivation and a if you do paid this price what happens next and what about just encourage the next hostage taking and we have to take into consideration. Those themselves have the potential. The decisionmaker is facing again how do you weigh the lives against life if you know there is a citizen or a soldier that has been kidnapped they have a face and a name and parents and family and friends. Theres a small country and Everybody Knows everybody. But at the same time, you are asked to release the funds released will probably go back to terrorism and then they might kill an independent number of people that you still dont know their identities and their families. So it is a result of the terrorist activities that some of the people who were released during the last have been a bold and different levels. This raises a huge dilemma for the society and for the government. So, beats are questions that are very, very difficult to answer and there are no good answers. This is the ongoing effort. [inaudible] there been changes in the way that the organization conducted the kidnapping activities as a result of the way that the government of israel chose to react to them. So there is a significant difference between those kidnapping and the ones that we experience since the 80s to this day. The main difference is if you had this incident where there would be a takeover by the terrorists in and the facility it could have been school, bus house and they were would take hostages and then they would start making their demands and bargaining yes or no would start. That allowed for a situation where instead of actually starting the negotiation to release the hostages, the government of israel chose when it was possible to try a military option, a military takeover taking down the characters in releasing the hostages without paying the ransom. So, not yielding to terrorism. And that in fact was the policy that has put forward in the 70s by the late then print mr. Whenever there is a possibility to try to take down the terrorists and release the hostages, you do not negotiate. You do not start the negotiation. However, the second part of it was when this possibility does not exist, you in fact do start negotiations and you start to see which of those demands you can answer and the reason you cannot leave people in the situation and just abandon them completely. So we never really had a policy of no negotiation because that would have been i think for the Israeli Society almost unbearable. Because we have a general and poison girls when they turn 18 go to the army especially from the Jewish Population both boys and girls. They go to the army and a list. The country sends them to defend itself and when they are taken hostage were kidnapped in this context, a country has an additional duty to get them back. This is part of what was mentioned here with respect to the u. S. He dont leave a wounded soldier behind. You dont leave soldiers behind and it is i think a very strong notion in israel somewhat argue its more than a that the state of israel has with its soldiers then israel has for the parents of the soldiers. The former generation because its the mother and father in the state of israel expects to send kids at the age of 18 and they expect to do his best to make sure that there is a possibility for them to come back home this is what the state should do. So what has happened in the 80s was that since the different terrorist organizations saw that the government preferred to do everything forcibly and ordered not to conduct negotiations but is actively trying to by the way with a terrible price. We have cases of both hostages and soldiers that participated in the release of hostages. Im sure we are where of the case where we had airplanes that were affected to uganda and the israelis held hostages at the airport there and there was a very heroic release of them. Actually most of the hostages got back safe and sound. There was a lady who was hospitalized and she died but actually we took losses and the famous one was a Prime Minister. So in the 80s they saw a change in the strategy and tactics of the terrorist organization. They understood that as long as they operate in a known place there would be some attempt to release the hostages so what they tried to do from then onwards was actually kidnap an israeli citizen be it a soldier or a citizen and take him somewhere unknown preferably outside the state of missouri where would be difficult for the security organizations to find him. And there actually you leave the state noted a chance but to start a negotiation. If indeed there is a moral religious what have you commitment to bring our citizens and our soldiers back home. There started were a lot of people to see nowadays as the slippery slope for you had some very famous deals and you could see a trajectory where the prize just goes higher and higher. The ratio between the numbers of the hostages or the kidnapped people that were released in the number of prisoners that were released by israel to security became bigger and bigger and in fact in the last 30 years or so we release more than 7000 people and god 16 people back so the ratio is Something Like 450 to one but in fact some of those still for example the last deal we actually had 1027 people released in order to get him back. Having said that, theres a lot of criticism in israel on the deal, on the ratio on this slippery slope. One has to say for each deal with all the criticism there was a lot of popular support. I think in the case it was 80 in each deal was applauded by the society because no one could release a picture of a young soldier going back to his father and mother. Its the human thing, does the human reaction so you have the very irrational and logical analysis of the state of israel and then you have the emotional where everybody thinks of their own son or daughter when they go to the army and you cannot compare between the two. But its a heartbreaking issue. We had families of victims of terrorism that tried to protest and again for the decisionmakers this is a very very difficult dilemma. I should add to that and this is something that is also unique i think to the state of israel, but one of the things that you should consider when releasing prisoners to get a kidnapped person back is not just that you are encouraging or creating incentive for the next kidnap or hostage taking, not just that you are releasing terrorists that by the way when in jail our experience shows they only get more radicalized, more experienced. They get Operational Training from other comrades and they become much more dangerous and by the way when they are released they become a role model for young people in their community. Their release actually helps recruit new members to that terrorist organization. Theres a whole myth that is created around them and it has the impact that is much more than releasing one individual or a thousand. But the fact is an interesting question is what does it do for the turn of the state of israel against these different enemies and the problem is that hostage taking as our terrorist actions are part of an automatic four. An automatic or you dont adhere to any accepted rule of International Law and that place against the rules. This is the way of getting more and we as a country that defends itself against different threats need to deter our enemies from continuous continuing down this path. Theres a lot of questions in israel when a country accepts that the money release 1000 people for one person does that in fact hurt and curtail our deterrence because there are lots of nonstate active terrorist organizations in the region. They are all watching. They are all drawing their conclusions and their conclusion isnt look, this is a society that is so sensitive to the lack of one individual so we should try to do our own actions or our own hostage taking and maybe get more or make israel do this or do that and in fact the leader of hezbollah likes to talk about the Fragile Society of israel and compare us to all kinds of descriptions but i could also argue and i think that this is something that a lot of people share in israel that this is actually a sign of strength of the society that if a society is willing to take such big risks and knowingly, knowingly released terrorists and the bloodiest murders you can think of that kill children and babies knowingly and intentionally to get one person back, this is a sign of strength, this is a sign of solidarity, this is a sign of commitment and that make society actually stronger. When a society is stronger the country is also stronger. With all the vulnerabilities that this creates, i cannot answer one or the other. This is not going to bait area i would say though that there has been some attempt lately in the last three years or so to try and set new rules, rules that would in a way limit the discretion of the government and of the Prime Minister actually when deciding on such sensitive and complicated cases. We are all hoping not to face this situation again. I should add by the way that this type of kidnapping, this episode that we have been experiencing usually takes a few years because its so complicated to conduct this kind of negotiation. This is not days or hours like was the case with the hostagetaking that took place inside of israel itself that people can be in captivity for years. Actually was in captivity for five years of his life and while this is going on the family is going through unspeakable misery and those people who know them and those people who get closer to them in the broad sense, they are all going through very emotional and very painful situations and this is something that is very much, is very much present in the daily life in israel while it is taking place. Every few years we have such an episode so we are hoping not to reach a new one. We are going to attempt to set new rules. Then minister of Defense Committee chaired by the chief justice of the Supreme Court justice and this committee was charged with carving out new rules not just about the price but all the relevant questions. Who should we do go shape but who should be responsible for conducting the negotiation and what would be the limitation and so on and so forth. The idea, the decision from the very start that this will not affect the initial deal because this was an ongoing case and they didnt want to risk it and so they did not publish but they concluded, their conclusion a short period after he returned to israel and the conclusions were submitted to the minister of defense and they are abiding and confidential. The reason they are confidential as we do not want our enemies to understand what they are dealing with that if they have the manual it would just make it easier for them to come up with the most efficient ways for them to apply the next incident. A lot of people present that the idea is to limit the price and arrive at a much more reasonable ratio so you would still have room for maneuvering for the government to conduct the negotiation. You will never reach a situation where a person is taken hostage and the country says im sorry i cannot negotiate. This would be unacceptable in israel but the government could not be extorted and the way it has been in recent years by the terrorist organizations that confront them because they know there are limits on the numbers and i should say here we were asked and we paid a price also for some idea on the medical conditions of the kidnapped soldier. Is it alive or dead . We were asked to pay for dead soldiers, for remains. There was no limit of the use of this kind of extortion and who is getting more power and authority from this issue in a new effective rules. To conduct this in a way that might be more reasonable in the eyes of the society and the government. But again i have to say no easy answer. Nobody knows how that would actually work. This is an ongoing dilemma because it is a dilemma that cannot be solved. When human life pits one against the other nobody can say that the answer is a or b. Hopefully i wont discuss this next time and say what was our experience and what were the lessons that we have learned but i leave you with this hope and im open to take any questions. [applause] okay, now we are coming to our last but not least speaker. Doctors dr. Warren olney as i mentioned before is a Senior Adviser to the Political Council and also the Business Executive or interNational Security. I think i should really mention that most recently he is also a distinguished fellow, a good friend and a very distinguished journalist and strategic thinker he had. It was a real pain as a naval officer. He was so smart they got rid of him too. Its all yours. Thank you. Don and yonah its good to be here and its always good to be with a 20 not, not of the main car a la gray and ive learned a lot of things from al. Most importantly taught mama battlefield brains rather than bullets when wars but dont ever discount the power of a bullet. Im going to be fairly brief and i have to apologize because i have another meaning i have to go to so im leaving a little bit early. I want to provide some ideas that i hope our thoughtprovoking ideas that you may not apply that appeared one of the greatest dangers posed to us by al qaeda is not so much physical threat to american citizens but the threat to the constitution. What alqaeda has done through terrorism has highlighted the tensions between protecting Civil Liberties and protecting the nation and we do not have a good response. What you see at Guantanamo Bay is a question of whether these captured individual should be treated as criminals or as enemy combatants. We have not resolved that one way or the other. You see the dilemmas the National Security agency. How far can they go in trying to protect the nation and get violate Civil Liberties . This is ongoing. Its going to get a lot worse and is something we tend to ignore at our peril. Second, the best armies, navies air forces and marine corps and i say that singularly, marine corps, al, are incapable of defeating an ideological enemy that has no army, navy, air force let alone a marine corps it. We see that in afghanistan. We have seen that in iraq and we see that in the Islamic State. The third is while we talk about resolving these things with a comprehensive approach, any of you have not heard the term comprehensive approach for all aspects of government, not just the department of defense but it does the department of defense is the best resourced us to organize most functional agency in u. S. Government of size by default it takes on all these issues and they can do that. They cannot solve the terrorism problem unless you get to the root of the terrorism problem which are a combination of ideology and physical need whether deprivation or psychological satisfaction. You are not going to be able to deal with it and we have not been very capable because our government system the way its organized right now is not organized for this very massive comprehensive detailed series of dangers. We are still very much comfortable he oriented on the cold war and the kind of bilateralism with a huge enemy such as the soviet union or nazi germany and we have to change your mindset raid ive been arguing for a brain space strategy for a very long time and perhaps as beethoven was deaf said, i shall perhaps hear in heaven. But they talk about a couple of challenges you may not considered like terrorism and hostages. First, cybercrime. Anybody not aware of cybercrime corrects anybody not read the headline of who stole 100 million by getting data . I have news for you, thats going to get better and better because what happens when i get into the records of companies and lets say i want to bet the stock market data share price goes up or down my command is being played manipulate that data. Im a 12yearold terrace living in romani and i have access to the internet was going to prevent me or my colleagues are making huge amounts of money by cybercrime and leveraging these things. Its happening today and tomorrow is going to get a lot worse. This is going to be the next effort terrorism. The annexed to that is cyber lack mail. Supposing im a member of the Islamic State and i decide im going to threaten because i can shut down the power grid in Northern Virginia and in washington d. C. What happens if i am with petco might get a threat that i know is valid from the terrorists and they want 100 million or 200 million. What do i do and by the way they just happen to shut down toward my power grid. This goes a step further because i believe the Islamic State is going to be conducting cyber blackmail. Let me give you a great case. This is not the Islamic State but a bunch of cyber beads. A very very rich woman, hugely rich personal assistant got an email from this lady sang would you please than 250,000 because i just bought abc and d and by coincidence this assistant happen to run into this lady and said im going to take care of the suthersby deal. The woman said what deal . What happened was they were able to get into these email accounts and were able to forge this womans way of speaking, had all sorts of access. What happens when the Islamic State decide is going to now commit this kind of blackmail . Is going to call a family abc and d and unless you do the following we will kill your relatives, we will kill your family and do whatever we do. These are things for which we have to repair. A final point i will make about hostages what happens have been prepared in when the First American serviceperson is captured by the Islamic State and worse supposing it is a woman and supposing they have three or four or five or 10 American Service captives. They going to say we are going to crucify them one at a time and show it on youtube and whats the response liable to be and how are we going to react to that or are they going to say we have captured 10 of your servicemen and we will sell them back to you for 100 million a copy and every hour or every 24 hours we will execute one of the most vile ways. What does the president of United States to . This may never happen. This may be a fixture of hollywood movies but its something we have to think about in the album of thinking about as we have such a divided government in such animosity between both parties that even if a president irrespective of party would have sent members of Congress Said look, here are four or five what or five what is to think about an opinion piece transpire we have to be able to have a nonpartisan way of responding. Can you imagine what happens if an American Serviceperson hostage and now the president says we have to do abc and d. I can guarantee that the parties going to say you were the worst most cowardly president a world defeating whatever policies the president may have. There are solutions but those solutions require immature responsible government and quite frankly undone was quite kind and mentioning my book a handful of olives and what i argue in the book is arising from that war the starter 101 years ago for new horsemen of the apocalypse were invented. We see it in washington, we see it in afghanistan and syria we see it virtually around the world. How do you deal with that . The second is economic disparity and dislocation similarly has global consequences. Religious ideological extremism is what we are talking about an environmental calamity. These are the greatest dangers but the biggest danger right now when we are dealing with this issue of hostages and terrorists how do we make of our government work under these circumstances . I will leave you with the answers to find out how we should do that. Thank you very much. [applause] do you have a minute . I will have to leave in about five minutes. Let me take the opportunity to take questions. Speaking about the scenarios of cyber lack mail let me ask you this, should we actually rethink the conception him and definitional aspects of the house which thinking because if the scenarios we raise the ante and for example thats why mention for example even the lone wolf but we know they are isis and their statistic thinking and alqaeda as well and by the way its the anniversary of the declaration of war by the alqaeda against the United States going all the way back and it seems to me when we think about the future we cannot discuss only individuals, groups of people that entire nations. That is to say the escalation to the weapons of mass destruction, the biological, chemical, the radiological of a dirty bomb to entire nations hostage and then their demands. How were going to do it that . For that . First of all we can exaggerate many threats. I have always taken as a disaster thats probably not going to happen for any number of reasons so thats one of the things i believe is more function of movies and literature or fiction and reality. Thats one of the things im not really worried about. What im most worried about is that we lack the strategic approach. We do not have a strategy. Take for example the Islamic State in this is critical. We have a coalition of 62 countries that are joined up against the Islamic State but what we have not done is put in any kind of oversight mechanism. We have not told these countries what they are responsible to do and how they are going to do it so you have nine lines of effort in this particular approach to which our military which the department of defense is doing quite well as are some of our allies but for example the counternarrative we are talking about an ideology to take on the other ideology. We have not done anything about that. We are being destroyed in terms of propaganda not only by the Islamic State but look at Vladimir Putin in ukraine. They are killing us in terms of the propaganda battle. This is one area we have to do a lot more because we have to defeat the ideological basis for this in one way to do it, where all are all the imams and mullahs and ayatollahs . You have people like the grand ayatollah who is in iraq. Why are these people not issuing marshak was . Fatwa. Political realities, you have to talk about politics. Let me take three interesting situations in history. The americans in the philippines. The fight against the 30s and 40s. That ended when the political situation changed, and then you have vietnam. You can talk all you want about ideology. The problem in iraq and syria is theres no political legitimacy and competence. Even ideology isnt going to get you very far. Well get you some other time. Okay. We are going to open up a discussion and if you have a question comment, please identify yourself for the record. Yeah. One second. Get a mic there. Thank you very much. I worked on Counter Terrorism for many years. I would like to try to correct the record on a couple of things, if i might. First of all, on the statement that dr. Ullman mentioned when people are held hostages. General higgins were killed. We did take some of actions, unfortunately they violated the policy that mark talked about. Every time one hostage was released, another would be taken. So there was that dilemma that we faced. You know, there wasnt quite the video of beheadings, etc. That was a dilemma that we faced. We made the wrong choices by making the deal. Is part of the dilemma that you layed out. Hostage situations is a classic case of shortterm gain versus longterm. You can solve the shortterm problem but you can create longterm problems down the road. Theres do dividing line thats not always easy. I would raise the question to yall, the elements that we faced in state department and elsewhere, is the issue of publ publicity, sometimes it goes very public like they did in the time of lebanon. Then increase the value of hostages in terms of hostage takers, raises the currency. Its something that has to be dealt with. A question for you, realizing tradition against Death Penalty which is only used in a case, is there any consideration in israel that perhaps they should use Death Penalty against terrorists who were clearly involved with blood in their hands . I just wondered that issue. Thank you. Technically we have Death Penalty in israel. It was implemented only one time. We were talking about maybe the most famous nazi criminal of all. This is something that and the trial was really disturbed as a lot of Holocaust Survivors had the opportunity to participate. We do have Death Penalty in in extreme cases, but nobody even dreams of implementing the things. Were there maybe voices here and there, i was not familiar with any serious discussion in israel. I think one reason would be that there is a lot of Death Penalty for various reasons, but also i think for practical reasons im not sure, yes, it would prevent the situation of hostage taking for purpose of releasing prisoners, it would create a generation and might create problems. But i think we will really have a problem, this is something thats just not party of the judicial and moral in israel. It would be very difficult. Bare in mind that even here in states that you do implement the Death Penalty, it takes years for modern judicial system to get to the final appeal, and using that on terrorists, you kind of lose the momentum. Im not sure that this would really be seen as most efficient tool we can we can use. Again, in this situation where there are no easy answers. Thank you. Wait for the mic, please. From the center of internal relations. My focus is the area. My initial question, why i actually came here, was mostly to examine the degree which ransom displaying a role in changing, is a game changer, if you like, in deciding terrorism. There was a study that estimated 90 Million Dollars from 2000 to 2010 and debate whether the money actually made it. On the other hand, after the french intervention it became obviously that people that were hired by al qaeda by payment were easy to convert, all they did was surrender. Money is a big factor. It goes down because i have huge respect for the service what the fbi has done to the world for preparing people for incident, people who, you know, are trapped in a situation that they need to escape. But isnt it about time to examine, when it comes to Collateral Damage, for example, very interesting discussions in may, big ohs biggest problem in yemen is Collateral Damage from drones. Its very moderate supportive of mission in yemen, of course, same problem in yemen today. Isnt it time to start deconflicting, if you like, strategies and tactics based on the actual situation in the ground and becoming flexible in dealing with complexity of each separate case . I mean, we have experience from lebanon with hostages, some were released sus successfully and some of them didnt. If you remember. So we have successful cases on that. Successful cases of release of hostages that pirates are taking, ransom or sell them to terrorist or in outside somalia. We have a lot of successful cases in a lot of different settings. Theres a lot of work to be done in how to adjust to each setting and how to respond successfully. I think might be even counter productive. I want to bring it to this panel, how far would it be confident in our capacity to deal with complexity and how much are we conflict in our capacity to respond in each separate case based on what we know from before . Anybody wants to your comments are obviously very interesting whether we discuss the drone policy and strategy, but one of the areas that we did not go into the rescue mission of israel. So it seems that since that time every country prepared capability and so forth, and sometimes it works and sometimes it didnt worked. Depends on the situation. Any other questions . Yes, please. Regarding drones, one of the problems is when you dont have troops on the ground to examine the targets and cooperate all the information they had and direct the attacks, youre going to have this kind of problem. As far as money is aa factor, depends on the situation. For example, colombia, its a business. Money in the middle east, money is not even ways, its done strictly for shack value. As far as what yonah said about terrorism, that is a serious problem. There was a office all it takes one Nuclear Device which would just fry all electronics in the country. Itll just fry everything, which will put it back to stone age. Thats a serious problem. As far as what dr. Ullman said about ideology, i couldnt argue with extremist ideology. So, you know, i give the best logic in the world, its not going to do any good. You need to have respected islamic that can talk to them from their own point of view. When i spoke with they had people they captured before they commit the terrorists acts, they had them counseled by a clerk, who is respected and he says to them, why are you doing this, well, kill the enemy where you found them, he says, everything has its time and its place. Muslims were per sec