Someone came out. He had information of a prisoner, came out. He had information. In some cases somebody goes into to something and the person he comes out and he says ive seen westerners. We had some cases of syrian prisoners been released escaping, seen westerners. Unfortunately, a lot of this wasnt realtime. Most of the time its like a hollywood movie. They slipped through our fingers. We have been in the location a week or two ago. We didnt have definitive realtime information until the hostages began being released. When you talk about fbi its a Law Enforcement thing for them. When they debrief hostages theyre more interested in putting together a case against the hostage taker as opposed to finding the hostage takers trying to get a solution. A problem for People Like Us is that we saw the government, the government and the agency as an iceberg. We dont with so few people above water, above ground and they interact and interface with the other agencies so we did know what was going on. It was hard to know anything when people are not getting information. Peter spoke about negotiating, and you will talk to the terrorist that you wont give them anything. The fbi, it will bring you the Promised Land but it will help you craft emails. It will 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 its very puzzling for me its not difficult to understand. I can understand this because they will say we didnt negotiate with facilities, we didnt do anything. That cant be proven in a court of law. That for the families its so confusing. The families are trying to learn so much and they dont understand the nuances in the details the people in government have been working with for so many years. It just compounds their frustration and the challenges and dilemmas. Its one thing they dont understand. At the end of the day these families get overwhelmed. They just do not know the juggernaut they are facing down, that stands before them. They are just so overwhelmed sometimes they even shut down and let everything go over the head or they just get so flustered and confused that they cannot, they cannot point you anymore. One of the problems we had i think debbie touched apart from the left and doesnt know what the right hand is doing. The fbi and the state department, when you put those two in the room, theres nobody that has priority over the other. They are both independent agencies. They cant tell each other what to do, and in many cases they dont know what theyre doing unless you connect the dots. Unless you tell them what the of the agency did. If youre waiting for an interview from one agency and the other chief doesnt know whats going on is not in lieu they are not what you know and theres its so frustrating that you see things and you can create your own horizon and the Government Agency, these guys can and you just wonder what the heck are they doing. Congress congress is a very important role. I spoken out about our frustrations with the administration. Debbie touched briefly on it. Congress is your best friend. Your congressman from your home state are always going to help you. They will write letters to the president. They will write letters to the head of the fbi. They will write letters to the head of the cia. They will ask questions they will ask question 81 in open hearings, in closed hearings. Those are your best friends in these situations. And again that goes back to learning curve. We did know that at the beginning and to we started soundtrack one of the things thats but i have a lot of experience in the arab world the air people always tell you know you can do something. You need to think outside of the box, how are you going to get a picture, how are you going to get a discussion with somebody or how are you going to get past the checkpoint, get a permit. And the reason for the our government did not did not have any creative solutions. We never know i wasnt able to speak with anybody in the white house. And the people, the families, who did speak they never got much. But the terrorists dont always want money. They want different things. There are different ways to these terrorist without funding their terrorists infrastructure. We know from former cases from did not the benefits is a strategy and approach that was used in the past. One of the problems that we ran encountered, and i dont know if its true or not but i spoke to people who were at very high levels in the Intelligence Community before retiring. They werent sure the people in the white house had read a president ial directive that were instituted under bush because it didnt seem interested 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 its basically follow the money. We see these things a lot in movies and in books where they get the serial numbers on the dollar bills are traceable. Thats why people want better bonds bearer bonds that are untraceable. Thats one thing that couldve been done. When you deal with these situations you have, on our side, one of the most important questions is who are you going to trust. Youve got to trust, you have to put together teams look to certain people. Youre going to have to create a Security Team that you follow that guy through the fire whatever the security fatality youve got to get guys on the ground. In our case it was the syrians that you will tell everything about everything because they will do what they can for you. They will get information that you never can get. They will go places that none of you people can get to. And, of course, the fbi are you going to work with fbi agents . Are you going to trust them when they dont tell you anything . The fbi is like a vacuum cleaner. It sucks up your information and doesnt give you anything in return. That i can tell you from personal experience it frustrates a number of the families. A number of the families did not have Good Relationship with fbi. Others did. Some of the family spoke very highly of them. Youve got to choose the right agent when youre working in the fbi. Fbi teams coming to man teams. You can bring in a guy that does not sit down at the table and cant talk to the family for two hours about the most monday and topics. I had a guy, fbi agents, he loved football. We spent 10 50 minutes talking about the ravens. He loved the ravens. And the lines, im a Detroit Lions fan. You need to develop some kind of relationship so you need affable fbi agents. He can have some of these bookish guys. If you want to make a federal case a priority for the white house you need to step up pressure. And how do you do that . You go public. The question here is you have a dilemma. You get increased exposure versus false lead. We were discouraged from going public. In retrospect i think that was a mistake. We had several families, and some families were not comfortable with that. But these are some of the things that 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. Im not sure well see it again but we saw for americans being held by the same organization in the same location. So it inclines itself to creating a Team Atmosphere where everybody works together. [inaudible] Steven Sotloff weibrecht and, peter casey who was an aid worker, jim foley who was a journalist and caleb who was an aid worker. Are kidnapped in different times but they eventually were all brought together and we had a unique thing is we had information about them. They knew things. We are able to get here and there and then put them together and then finally and hostages, the european hostages for ransom by the government putting together, we dont need somebody in three cells down who hears the name or heres people speaking french the guard speaking to oppressors in french. So the question is when you talk about you have a team are you going to work as a team to leverage assets, or are you going to work individually . If you work as a team how are you going to make this corrective . Is it going to be unanimous on majority rule . These things we didnt think about a lot in the beginning and i dont think many people have ever encountered. And, finally the question of ransom. For instance, could have been paid by the American Families themselves early on wednesday price of the hostage was reasonable. But at the end when all the europeans have been released the price is so astronomical that only the wealthiest types of family in america could afford to pay that money on their own. And it was just too exotic to believe that couldve been accomplished. Thank you. You raise an incredibly important questions so let me start with so gary you paint a picture of the fbi negotiating you know, as a matter of course having a very high success rate with the groups that were not sort of an alqaeda affiliate pretty major terrorist group who have been around for five decades. So its not a course they are not isis but they are still very serious people doing very bad things. And then barak, the fbi seems to be stiff arming the families say nothing, nothing that helpful. So what happened, whats shifted and when did it shift . I think from 1990 to 2031 around the fbis program we seem to have greater flexibility and operated with a few number of other government entities. Essentially the fbi would deploy a trained, skilled negotiator to be the families liaison. I think theres been a shift where they sent investigators that we may not have some of the communication skills that a negotiator would typically have. And not only that, there summon agencies now that since 9 11 theres been a slow Steady Movement towards more and more agencies getting their funding from terrorism, wanted to be involved in all major chairs and cases. And truly sometimes we do i think in the with many cooks in the kitchen and not sure what weve tried to make. I like their perspective a central core data point. There is a group that meets in the nfc, Interagency Group to coordinate these matters but the really does at least when i was there seem to be a lack of clear leadership asked who was in charge. And it was supposed to do it. I think thats a problem because of all the resources the government has. We did show a high success rate in the past. If i were to recommend begin, i would try to move back towards that successful model. There are too many people contacting the families even been contradictory information. We used to share with them things that went well beyond security restrictions and now i think theyre so many other entities involved that each agency particularly fbi may be scared to do that. This interagency coordinator sells a really good idea. He or she would be responsible for the two dozen americans that are being held, i dont know what the exact number is and i mean for this to work bureaucratically, how would it work bureaucratically . It would have to be summoned again boss people around and all lots of different places, right . It would have to be someone with president ial authority. And thats lacking. I want to say one of the point that goes to debras point. I could hear that the families perceive the fbi as more interest in criminal prosecution. I will tell you that is not the case unless theres been a dramatic change that i am unaware. Our top clearly was always a safe and timely release of the victims. Prosecution was a distant and i do many distant second objective. It was the legal basis for which the fbi becomes involved, but it was often an unrealistic goal and we knew. The real important goal, the prize was to get the hostage out alive. Another idea that debra had was this question of giving families security clearance. Lets delve into that a bit. You go through a background check, you and your husband presumably, right . You would only be given information that relates to sense case. Its not like theyre going that you top secret information about the Iranian Nuclear program, right . Your clearance would be invoked if he said something in public that was classified or you pay some sort of penalty. This also seems like a nobrainer. It gets to your your observation which is we have a lot of three letter agencies in the world and everyone is fighting the team too far ahead of them. If the family has clearance bin this is a nonissue. I were to guess after i retired and at one point in time the government of the Us Government that the videotape of a prison to which they had been held. Recently moved from. They did not share that with the family. It was hardly top secret information but then when the prosecuted one of the terrorists involved while the captivity was still ongoing, they showed it in opencourt. And the families were understandably furious. Why were we able to see this very detailed video showing what our relatives have been held soviet an idea of what conditions they lived in . These kinds of mistakes that happen because there are again in my judgment too many people making these decisions. Barak raise this issue about the issue going public, and kerry, i know you endeavor in your case the check and has inserted announced he would be taken. Sort of a nonissue for you but i know, gary, this is a big issue for the defense contractors. For many years the families had nothing to tell us what happened. This case where three defense contractors, there were four their plane was on contract from his government to do drug surveillance. The plane crashed due to an engine good and they were captured by the farc. One american and the colombian officer were exited right away. The others were held until being rescued. This case did receive sufficient not right. The family couldnt keep it quiet. 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. There were a number of cases the schilling case in the philippines where we very effectively used the media probably to save a young mans 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 its unwise. Been a so what are the upside and downside of going public . The time to appeal. In the case i refer to they threaten to execute this young man, cut his head off. As some of you may know they have a track record of doing just that. 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 that this young mans mother make some very direct appeals, very wellcrafted messages, personal to the philippines under our guidance and support and painted a very positive picture of her son to the extent that they did not carry out the execution. Because he came to to marry a filipino. 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 among whatever their followers were. So thats one example of many where we tried to now is a good time for us to come forward and make a statement. To say its always bad, never do it, i think shows that somebody really does not negotiation works. Barak, let me ask you a question. So you represented Steven Sotloff the you speak arabic. You lived in turkey. You in touch with isis is that right . Yes. What were you doing for the family . You also worked on somebodys of the cases or or help on some of these other cases. What were you doing . I guess another question, i guess you implied because i think most people would say that isis always wanted to kill these americans that you were saying there was a moment when they were asking for money when negotiations mightve been possible. No. On that im saying there were is no negotiation between isis and america been. Diane spoke earlier they appeared and disappeared. But for what i was doing, early on we had to get information. It was such a unique situation that we are able to get information from prisons where people were ice prisons 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, tried to put things together based on what other fighters from other brigades were in the prison to locate the prison. And then what you do is once you have that information you just wait. You get you are serious and will put you in touch with other syrians who spent time in prison, and they will start mapping out processes for you to you get all kinds of information from all kinds of different prisons. Thats the situation. Information is used for a hostage rescue . The first thing is you want to know if your guy is alive. You had fully foley thanksgiving 2012 i believe and theres not a sighting of him until i think august 2013 i believe. So his family did not what had happened to them and they thought he had been killed because he was the man he was taken with testified in opencourt against jihadists in britain who kidnapped him earlier in syria before he was kidnapped again. So you want, basically you want to know that your guy is still alive, that hes doing okay. And very important, gary can talk about this, you dont want your guide to be alone because you crawl the walls. Anybody has been put in a cell all along and shut the door in the dark knows thats the worst feeling in the world. You want to know your guy is with other people and he is something to do all day. Those are very important things. The american journalist was released by alqaeda the qatari government which has quite a lot of play over alqaeda if you in syria intervened. We dont know the circumstances but i doubt alqaeda just had a good day in said were going to let this guy go. I think this is a very interesting precedent for some the things were talking about which is included, the u. S. Government target oldest negotiation at the qatari government did. Clearly with some help of the american government. I dont think it was, i mean it is possible this guy was being held by alqaeda which is not a nice group of people. Something allowed them to release this american journalist. So barak, you have a sense of what that something is . What are the lessons that is relative recent case may hold for anybody on the panel . The circumstances surrounding his release is they will come up very soon. Will learn a lot more. But what happened is i believe, i dont know everything that the countri