#170: Negotiating With Terrorists - Special Presidential Envoy For Hostage Affairs Ambassador Roger Carstens

America maintains a promise to its citizens. A promise to never leave them behind and stop at nothing to return them to American soil. Over 200 Americans are wrongfully detained or taken hostage each year across the globe. The Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs is responsible for bringing them home. Ambassador Roger Carstens https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-carstens-036b45/ served as the SPEHA from 2020-2025. A West Point Graduate, Green Beret, Army Ranger, and seasoned security leader, Roger and his team brought home close to 70 Americans during his tenure; including high profile cases such as WNBA star Brittney Griner and Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gerskovich. Roger joined Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ from the McCain Institute in Washington, DC for a conversation on the role of the SPEHA, why countries take Americans for leverage, and just how America negotiates with terrorists. We explore the effects of wrongful detention and hostage taking on America’s national power, how families are turned completely upside down, and why only a Warrior Diplomat has the character required to make deals with America’s adversaries. Roger and Fran also share the mission of Hostage US https://hostageus.org/; a non-profit instrumental in supporting hostages and wrongful detainees - and their families - through captivity, return and reintegration. Watch, listen or read our conversation. Special thanks to the McCain Institute https://www.mccaininstitute.org/ for hosting us and sharing their mission to defend and enhance human rights across the globe. Highlights 0:00 Introduction1:42 Welcome to the McCain Institute5:23 What is the SPEHA?8:53 Terrorists vs nation states12:59 Deciding which cases21:38 Negotiating with terrorists24:38 Drawing the line27:14 No negotiation approach34:20 Family impact41:00 Why Serve In The Army50:05 Challenges In Transition57:32 Hostage US Impact1:00:47 Future of hostage security Quotes “A hostage is someone held by a terrorist group. A wrongful detainee is someone held by a nation state.” “Every case is different. There is no cookie cutter approach.”“It doesn’t matter if it’s a nation state or terrorist group, if they take you, you’re held hostage.”“You can never hand a bag of money to a terrorist group and say ‘we want our citizen back.’”“The United States does not negotiate with terrorists and yet I have.”“No one comes back when you call for their unconditional release.”“If we did not negotiate with Russia, they would just take Americans and you would see them stay 14, 15, 16 years there or they’d die in prison.”“We have to create new tools to be used to compel these countries to not take our citizens.”“If you want to stop evil. If you want to crush the next Adolf Hitler. Dial 1-800-USARMY.”“Every Green Beret will leave the service one day.”“If there’s not that higher mission where you’re allowed to serve and you don’t have that camaraderie, you’re going to have a hard time.”“If you have a mission you have to approach your next few steps differently than those who just want to be a thing or to have a job.” “The hardest negotiation I ever did was with the US Government.” The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance https://university-hp.com/, providing our Veterans world class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/. The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of my guests and myself. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  America maintains a promise to its citizens, a promise to never leave them behind and stop at nothing to return them to American soil. Over 200 Americans are wrongfully detained or taken hostage each year across the globe. The special presidential envoy for hostage affairs is responsible for bringing them home. Roger Carstens served as a SPIHOP from 2020 to 2025. A West Point graduate, Green Beret, Army Ranger, and seasoned security leader, Roger and his team brought home close to 70 Americans during his tenure. Roger joined me from the McCain Institute in Washington DC for a conversation on the role of the SPIHOP, why countries take Americans for leverage, and just how America negotiates with terrorists. We explore the effects of wrongful detention and hostage-taking on America's national

• 0:47Speaker 00

  security. We explore the effects of wrongful detention and hostage-taking on America's national power. How families are turned completely upside down, and why only a warrior diplomat has the character required to make deals with America's adversaries. Roger and I also share the mission of Hostage US, a nonprofit instrumental in supporting hostages and wrongful detainees and their families through captivity, return, and re-immigration. Watch, listen, or read our conversation. Special thanks to the McCain Institute for hosting us and sharing their mission to defend and enhance human rights across the globe. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by University of Health and Performance, providing veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

• 1:41Fran Racioppi?

  Ambassador Karstens, Lieutenant Colonel Karstens, or Roger. We could call you Roger. What do we want to see each other there? There's, you have a wealth of background there, and so we don't even know what your title is, but we're going to get into it all. But first, welcome to the Jedberg Podcast.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Dev Fran, glad to be here. I know we've been talking about doing this for some time, so I'm grateful to finally have a chance to sit down with you and have a good chat. Looking forward to it.

• 2:03Fran Racioppi?

  Well, before we get going, we have to put out a huge shout out to the McCain Institute. John McCain's organization, part of Arizona State University, working diligently as unsung heroes in the space of human rights, bringing our unlawful detainees back home to the US, a world that we're going to dig into here so much. Tonight, we have the Hostage US Annual Reception. We'll get into that later. But they're hosting us here in their central DC office. Amazing space and amazing work that they're doing.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you probably know, when I left government just about 100 and plus days ago, I signed on with the McCain Institute as a senior fellow. And I'm a part of something called the Freedom for Political Prisoners Initiative. It's run by a good friend of mine, Pedro Pizano. And the job of this is to explore all those people that may or may not be US citizens that are being held in places around the world. So the fact that McCain's willing to put together a rock star group of people and to pursue this, it's just wonderful. And I'm just honored to be a part of McCain. And I'll be sitting here with you in this space.

• 3:05Fran Racioppi?

  And not only the work they do, but we have to give a shout out to the late Senator John McCain.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 3:10Fran Racioppi?

  Who not only a great war hero, veteran leader and legislator, but I mean, when you look at leadership through generations.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21Fran Racioppi?

  And the fact that this is an individual who impacted the Vietnam generation through today, even though he's left us, what an incredible man, legacy that he left. And I'm honored because I got a picture with him long ago, even before I went in the Army. And so he's always been somebody that I looked up to. So it's pretty cool to be here.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  So I show a little known a secret. I actually worked on his campaign in 2008. That, you know, and it's a small role. But what always impressed me about him is, you know, he's held for seven plus years in Vietnam, went through some horrific experiences. And yet, after he came back, he becomes a Senator. And then is one of the people that helped us rebuild a relationship with Vietnam. And speaks to the heart of a man who is a warrior diplomat, someone who's able to, of course, put rounds on.

• 4:06Fran Racioppi?

  Target, but later on in his life, do the hard work of building bridges to include with the very people that that held him. Transitioning out of the military is about more than polishing a resume or attending a LinkedIn workshop. It's about rediscovering your purpose and forging a new path that's worthy of your service. At the University of Health and Performance, veterans are offered transformative G I Bill approved programming designed to help take them to the next level with confidence. Nestled in the heart of the Ozarks, their 800 acre, all-inclusive campus features world-class training facilities, modern living spaces, and miles of trails for reflection and growth. Here, veterans find a structured, immersive environment where they can explore their strengths, develop new skills, and build a life that not only honors their past, but prepares the future.

• 4:53Fran Racioppi?

  It's character. Yeah. Big time. You talk about character. Yeah. You know, and we're going to talk a bit about your career, most recently, having spent the five years as the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, so Presidential pointy, working under the State Department, both the Trump and the Biden administrations, but before that, you were Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. You were in Special Forces as Green Beret, served in Ranger Regiment, went to West Point. So you have the wealth of knowledge of what it takes to navigate these difficult waters. When we talk about wrongful detention, when we talk about hostages, and you were instrumental in your career in bringing over 60, almost 70 home during that time. Yeah.

• 5:34Fran Racioppi?

  And we're going to dig into the difficulty around that, but there's so much that we take from our careers in Special Forces. You know, you mentioned the term Warrior Diplomat, Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor, Congressman. You wrote the book Warrior Diplomat. Yeah. Where we talk about the ability to walk the halls and build bridges. But when it's time to use the sword, there's no one better. Yeah. And I think you had to do that in your role. So to kick it off, can you define the role of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. In a nutshell, it's a role that was created in 2015 by President Obama. The United States didn't do a very good job of bringing hostages home, Americans that were held in Syria by ISIS in the 2012 to 2014 time period. And in the wake of those failures, President Obama conducted a hostage policy review. And out of that, he built the scratchings of the Hostage Recovery Enterprise, as we call it. A part of that is the, at the White House, there was a group of people called the Hostage Response Group. Picture two or three people that convene people in the enterprise to render decisions and make, whether it's to get people out or to decide which case the government accepts. It also brought together the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell. Picture roughly 30 to 40 specialists housed at the

• 6:51Speaker 02

  FBI, trying to bring together information that will specifically help us bring back an American who's held hostage. And a hostage, for definition's sake, is someone that's held by a terrorist group, whereas a wrongful detainee is someone held by a nation state. So the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell focuses specifically on bringing hostages home. And then there's the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, the role that I had the honor of holding for quite some time. And the job of the SPIHA, as we call it, is to, number one, negotiate and coordinate the negotiation to bring Americans home that are not just held as wrongful detainees, but if it requires a negotiation to bring a hostage home, then SPIHA jumps into there and facilitates, coordinates, or actually

• 7:35Speaker 02

  conducts the negotiation. But SPIHA is also responsible for taking care of the families of both hostages and wrongful detainees, to provide them support, to give them information, to, when they, when people come back, to make sure that they're getting medical care, psychological treatments, et cetera. And then the last thing that SPIHA is responsible for doing, it's to build up prevention and deterrence. Because there's got to come a point where you don't have to do a prisoner swap or trade anything to get your Americans back. And we're probably about, you know, roughly, I'd say about 10 years to get to the point where the United States has a robust enough prevention and deterrence strategy that we won't have to go to countries like Russia, for example, and bargain for the return of Americans.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Because the Russians will have stopped doing that because we've successfully deterred them.

• 8:21Fran Racioppi?

  I want to dig into each of those because you framed up kind of those three pillars really well, which coincide actually pretty well with my notes. I wonder why. I want to kind of think about, okay, let's first talk about the recovery effort.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:34Fran Racioppi?

  Because this is a vastly complex space.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:38Fran Racioppi?

  To operate in, okay. And you broke out, you know, very eloquently, the difference between a hostage and a wrongful detainee. And the reality is, is each one of these designations, which is also different than like a prisoner of war, but each one of these designations is different in the way it has to be approached.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:58Fran Racioppi?

  For in the recovery and negotiation.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but.

• 9:00Fran Racioppi?

  But each one of the cases is vastly different and the drivers behind the cases are vastly different. So when you look at the complexity of this and you look at cases like Brittany Griner.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:11Fran Racioppi?

  In Russia.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:12Fran Racioppi?

  Okay. And you look at Evan Gershkovitz, also in Russia. But you look at also friends of the Jedburgh podcast where we've had Jose Pereira.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:22Fran Racioppi?

  Down in Venezuela. We had Jessica Buchanan in Somalia, Michael Scott Moore in Somalia. How do you go about really thinking about the strategy of how do you engage with a terrorist organization versus a nation state?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Okay, you're gonna love the answer. By the way, Michael Scott Moore said hello.

• 9:39Fran Racioppi?

  Oh, good.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  It was about an hour ago. Say hi to Fran, please. Yeah, so you're gonna love the answer. It's the military decision-making process. Now, there are numerous ways to go about conducting a negotiation. There are books that have been printed by people like Bill Ury up at Harvard, who's an incredible negotiator, Chris Voss, who conducted FBI negotiations. I think when I took a look at it, I decided to do something I was familiar with. And that was use the MDMAP, the Military Decision Making Process. And it came from something that someone said, and I want to highlight something you just just put on the air here. And that is every case is different. And there is no cookie cutter approach. And that made this a little bit different. So I go to see Joe O'Brien. As soon as I get the job, many years ago, I go to see Joe O'Brien, who was the first SPIHA.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  And he served under President Obama and. After about an hour, as I'm pretty much going out the door, Jim said, one more piece of advice I need to give you. And that is, there is no cookie cutter to doing this. It's not replicable. Anytime you do this, you have to start tablraza and figure it out from scratch and then execute it. I know you're going to want to try to find a way to keep doing this, a cookie cutter, but there is none. I said, okay, very good. I walked away thinking he was wrong. As an army officer, I was going to find a way to make this into a machine that I could just keep pumping out. And then I went to see Robert O'Brien about a week later at the White House. He was the National Security Advisor at the time, but he also had been the last Spaha under President Trump. And after an hour of chatting with Robert, I'm getting up, I'm leaving, I'm shaking hands with him, I'm going out the door.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And he goes, Roger, one more thing. And I said, yes, Robert. It was kind of like that TV show Columbo. Peter Falk, the most important thing Peter Falk would say during this TV show, when he met with someone, was not the conversation, it's what he asked as he was going out the door. And so as I was going out the door, Robert O'Brien said, Roger, there's no way to make this into a cookie cutter approach. You have to take each case separately, tablraza and figure it out from scratch. And I'd heard, so I'd heard the same thing from two of my predecessors within about a seven day period. So I walked out again, sure that they were wrong. And over the next two years, life beat it out of me. You know, after case after case after case, you realize that you truly did have to start from scratch. And so we got to the point where, kind of like a battle drill, you know, something that we all could do within our own organization,

• 11:54Speaker 02

  is if we took a case, we would immediately go down to the SCIF at the State Department and invite over members of the CIA, Department of Treasury, the White House, members of Spaha, the regional experts. And we'd get in a room of about 12 people, and then we would take them through specified tasks, implied tasks, limits, constraints, risks, risk mitigation. That usually generated course of action one, course of action two, course of action three. Then we would wait them, wait the variables that we wanted to use to select our best course of action. And eventually we'd come up with a course of action that made sense to us. And that's what we would start test driving, as we started to talk to the other side, the bad guys who are holding our people.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  To get our people back. So there are other ways to do this. I would say that there may be a difference between what we did and do versus what say the FBI might do. It's that we do have to start from scratch. The FBI, I think when they send their hostage trainers or rather negotiators to hostage negotiation school, they can go through scenarios, they can practice in a way task conditions and standards. You can do exercises. And so when that bank with, you know, typical TV show, right? The bad guys go into a bank, they're holding up the bank. The teller goes underneath and hits the buzzer and then suddenly the cops all show up and the bank robbers cannot get outside the bank. And it becomes a hostage barricade situation. There is a way to approach that.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  And when someone rather is taken by Al Qaeda, ISIS, JNIM, the Taliban, or when they're taken by Russia, Venezuela, Syria, back in the olden days, Syria, there's not necessarily a way to keep repeating the process. Because the variables are too great and you just don't control much of it. How do you decide what cases to take? Yeah, I'll tell you, there was a time when it came down to your gut, when Robert and Jim had this role back in the olden days. They would get a bunch of information and they would just have to throw the information on the table. And when they were done looking at it, they'd have to render a decision and then go to the Secretary of State and say, I think we have another case here.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  And that's actually hard because you're almost required to take the purest of the pure cases. Because there's not really a process to evaluate. Well, in working with Congress in the years of 2019 and 2020, we were able to come up with some factors that we could at least evaluate the cases with. And Congress passed the 2020 Robert Levinson Act. And in that act, there are 11 criteria with which to evaluate a case. So what we have now is if someone is taken in Russia, for example, we assemble all the facts that we possibly can on the case. We'll get facts from the families, the intelligence agencies of the United States, other countries, the Russians sometimes might give us information.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  We might get information from journalists, but as you lay everything on the table, now you can take the 11 factors given to us by Congress and the Robert Levinson Act and overlay the facts of the case. And that will give you a sense of whether someone's been wrongfully detained or not.

• 14:55Fran Racioppi?

  So when you now have to break it out between being wrongfully detained or not, it can be actually become even more complex. I mean, look at the two cases with Russia that we just referenced.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 15:05Fran Racioppi?

  In Brittany Griner's case, you have a, we'll call it a nugget, a potential crime.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:11Fran Racioppi?

  And the fact that she had marijuana.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:13Fran Racioppi?

  So was there a law broken? Yes. Is the result of that, you know, imprisonment in a Russian, Russian prison until your exchange for somebody else?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:22Fran Racioppi?

  Maybe not. You know, and then you have Evan Gershkovitz, who is claimed to be a spy.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:28Fran Racioppi?

  Who's there, you know, seemingly as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, without necessarily that the hard evidence of the crime.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:37Fran Racioppi?

  So when you look at that, what's that analysis?

• 15:40Speaker 02

  And just because every case is different, let me hit both of those separately. So, but it does apply to other cases. So check it out. When the Russians took Brittany Griner, she actually, when she came to the end of her trial, said, look, I'd like to admit guilt and go from there. So she said, your honor, to the Russian judge, I'm going to take responsibility for what I did. I brought some expended cannabis cartridges into country and I want to take responsibility for that. You know, there was no intent. I'd forgotten that they were there, they're for medicinal reasons. But that doesn't matter despite the fact I forgot they were there and they were empty. I know I violated your law and I want to take responsibility. So you could say, you pointed out, she's guilty of a crime. However, the Levinson Act gives us a little more leeway.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  The Levinson Act says if another country is specifically using an American for diplomatic leverage or leverage of some sort, that changes the calculus. If the sentence seems like it's super high, based on the fact that they're probably an American, that adds another factor in the Levinson Act that leans us towards maybe a wrongful detention. In Brittany Griner's case, not only did she get sentenced as if she was a major drug dealer, someone who's bringing like kilo after kilo after kilo, she was sentenced as if she was like a drug mobster, right? Instead, what she probably should have got, and which I would say based on Russian Law is, okay, thank you very much. You can go. Or here's a fine of 10,000 rubles, or maybe two weeks in the clink. Instead, she was sentenced as if she was a major narco trafficker. Ding.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Secondly, the Russians pretty much winked at us. And I don't want to describe how they did it, but you can all say metaphorically or by analogy. They winked, nodded and said, oh, by the way, we just got this basketball player and we are going to squeeze you. United States of American. And that hit another Levinson thing. That person, that American is being used for diplomatic leverage. Ding. And so Brittany Griner goes from someone who you could say is guilty. And instead starts popping into the wrongful detention thing. So you don't necessarily have to be fully innocent. You can be guilty of a crime, but if you still went through a jacked up legal process. If you were tortured, if you were given a hundred year sentence for something where you should have got 100 days. You now start moving into wrongful detention territory.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  And we had numerous cases where in that ambiguity. The Secretary of State was still able to say, look, I got it. They were guilty or I got it. This, that, or the other. But the Levinson act gave him a basis of evaluation. And that was, that was helpful. I know I'll try to keep my, my answers to not 20 minutes, but maybe like 20 seconds.

• 18:14Fran Racioppi?

  No, I like the 20 minutes because the reality of the situation, when we talk about any of these cases is that it could happen to anybody.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Oh geez. Yeah. So let's, I'm gonna hit, I'm gonna hit that in a second. Let me go back. Evan Gershkovitz.

• 18:27Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Talk about a no brainer. An accredited Wall Street Journal reporter gets arrested while trying to do a story. And that's why it took 11 days. And Danny, Danny Fenster in Burma, same thing, reporter, taken. And you can sit there. Okay, reporter was allowed to be there, wrote a story. The regime didn't like it. So the reporters actually happen really fast because it's a no brainer.

• 18:48Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  There are other cases where you don't know. You're trying to figure out, did that American actually commit that crime? Did he actually rob someone in China? Or did he actually try to import drugs from Africa? And so there's a time lapse thing where eventually you might take a case, but it might've taken you seven, eight, nine, 10 months to get there. You're trying to vacuum up all the information and just like if a crime was committed in Washington DC. Right now, we might, even though with all the security cameras and all the witnesses in this town, we still might have a problem of figuring out, is this person that we captured guilty or not? It's worse when it happens in China and the Chinese aren't telling you any information about the case.

• 19:26Fran Racioppi?

  Well, you're dealing with an adversarial nation who's not like, okay, here, oh, here defense. Like, let me hand over all the camera footage. Here's all the, the questioning details.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 19:36Fran Racioppi?

  You're not going to get any.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're just not. And so it's challenging, but we try to suck all the information in as fast as possible and render those decisions to get to work.

• 19:45Fran Racioppi?

  But now if you take, and for example, some of the other cases, you know, we brought up like Michael Scott Moore, riding in a vehicle, attacked by al Shabaab, taken hostage for a, taking hostage for a very specific reason, $25 million.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:01Fran Racioppi?

  Same for Jessica Buchanan.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:04Fran Racioppi?

  So now you've got to negotiate with a non-nation state actor who you can't even make the case is more or less rational.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause I mean, it is a different case for the hostage side. There's a different process. And that involves more like the FBI. Are they going to open up a hostage case? And if they do, that goes in the hostage hopper. So there's actually a different process for hostages versus wrongful detainees. Although there's a strong argument made by a lot of people, this community, that in a way it doesn't matter if it's a nation state or a terrorist group, if they take you, you're held a hostage. So do we need to have the verbiage wrongful detention or can we just call them all hostages? But there is a different process and there are also different rules. So like if it's a hostage case, based on presidential policy directive number 30, we're not allowed to give concessions.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  You can never hand a bag of money to a terrorist group and say, we want our citizen back. And so it's much harder to get a hostage back.

• 21:04Fran Racioppi?

  As the government.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  As the government. Yeah, I know, I know where you're going next. I'll stand by. If it's the nation state, if it's the Russians, for example, you might have a little more leeway in terms of not handing them bags of money, but trying to find that one thing or those two things that the. Russians might want that will get it done. And same thing with the Venezuelans. What is it going to take to get the Venezuelans to release an American? And we have a little more leeway in terms of finding that thing versus a hostage case, which were much more constricted as a government.

• 21:32Fran Racioppi?

  So the question that I was going to ask you about when we look at recovery.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:37Fran Racioppi?

  All right. So I, cause you know, we're talking, we're talking about the case, but now let's talk about what it takes to actually get somebody back.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:43Fran Racioppi?

  And we've seen now in just the cases we've mentioned here, which tend to be the more popular ones. And I'm not taking anything away. I know we're focused on these ones because they're in the news. They're the, they're not the easy ones, but they're the ones that most people recall. But you know, we've got anywhere from about 200 a year Americans are taken in various countries across the world. So you're not taking anything away from any of those folks who are sitting in captivity today and the lesser known ones. But we've had to give concessions. And my question was going to be, and you've kind of now dispelled that was do, does America negotiate with terrorists?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Oh, you bet we do. I mean, I love that, that what President Reagan said, and I believe might've been President Nixon prior to him, that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists. And yet, and it's not, not everyone gets the, the right to do it, and that's okay. But they at least want to make sure that SPIHA and probably members of our intelligence community have the ability to reach out. Otherwise no one comes back. You know, if you're not going to talk to the Taliban, for example, then you don't have people returning to the United States. You can do proximity talks or you can use a third party intermediary. You know, we've worked with Qatar, for example, on numerous occasions to talk to terrorist groups. Because we've just made a policy decision that we do not want to have that conversation.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  But in the cases that I've been involved with, where we've actually talked to the Taliban or worked through a third party to talk to the Houthis, we're at least making sure that someone's advocating on behalf of that American to bring them home. And for those that are like, oh, we should never do that. We should never do that. That all makes sense until it's your daughter.

• 23:21Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Or it's your son. And then you're going to be like, well, hell yeah, we should be talking to the bad guys. That doesn't mean you can't. Chase them down later. It's like, you know, when I met the Taliban, you know, actually I sat down at the table and said, you know, just, just to be clear, I spent three and a half years carrying a rifle, chasing you guys around the battlefield. And then they came back and says, yeah, you know, I fought in Helmand Province, or I fought here, you know, as in a way as you're, you're establishing that rapport. But at the end of the day, your nation still might go after these terrorists. But at a certain point, you've got to talk to them to bring them back. And I'll say this, 1973 Vietnam, we're on the battlefield trying to fight the North Vietnamese. And yet we were talking to the North Vietnamese in Paris, trying to bring home our POWs.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Currently, the Russians are in a brutal battle with the Ukrainians, and yet they've had numerous POW swaps. So there's something about this topic, whether the person's a prisoner of war, a hostage, or what we call wrongful detainee, that you've got to be able to reach out to the other side. And a lot of times you're able to do that without pulling in the ugly policy things to the left and right of those decisions.

• 24:23Fran Racioppi?

  Well, it's, I mean, the whole thing is a gray area. And I think this is

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Which is special forces. That's, that's why this helps, right?

• 24:30Fran Racioppi?

  Well, this is a good time to kind of bring in this thought process of in these negotiations, because it's so gray. Like, and you know, you mentioned, there's no right, there's, there's essentially, there's no right or wrong answer when we talk about, you know, how are we going to negotiate with them? How are we going to speak to them? But we've given concessions, you use the term concessions when we talk about primarily the nation states. Meaning we've given bad folks back to organize, to Russia.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:59Fran Racioppi?

  You know, we like, you know, just to name one, who we know that those people have committed acts of mass violence, have coordinated terrorist style attacks. And have killed international people, if not Americans, and we've given them back in exchange for, you know, our citizens who essentially didn't commit a crime. Where's the line in that? And how do we, how do we assess the value?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  We spent a lot of time, by the way, in the Russian ones, the guy, Banio Krasikov, we believe probably was, you know, an assassin working for Russian intelligence, captured by the Germans after he essentially assassinated someone in a German beer garden a few years back. Weapons dealer. So you'll find people that are have blood on their hands tangentially, but may not necessarily been the person that was killing a ton of people. I think Krasikov is one where, you know, you have to, it's much clearer. But I think the line is, again, you have to make your case. I guess it would be easy. My job would have been so easy if I could have said, yeah, we don't talk to terrorists and then we don't. And then I do what a lot of people want me to do. And that's just simply go to a podium or in front of a television camera and say,

• 26:04Speaker 02

  I am calling on the government of such and such or terrorist group X, Y, or Z to unconditionally give these Americans back. They're innocent. And if I did that, the families would feel good because I was fighting for them. Congress would be happy because I was fighting for them. And you get cool points because you're being tough, you're yelling at the bad guys, but and you're saying you're not going to, you're calling for unconditional release. And everyone would love you in this. You'd be a hero in Washington DC. But you know what? You would bring no one. You would bring no one home. No one comes back when you call on their unconditional release. When do they come back? When you sit down across from a table from someone like Ali Monluk in Syria, the head of intelligence, and you try to make the case to bring back Austin Tice.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  What's it going to take to get this done? How do we do this? Now, Ali Monluk, probably responsible for the deaths of 100,000 people in Syria. And yet, am I not going to talk to him? Oh, hell no. If it's going to bring back Austin Tice, I'm going to sit across the table and just say, what's it going to take for you and me to figure this out? And it's the same thing with the Taliban, with the Russians, the Venezuelans. At a certain point, you have to sit down and say, okay, how do we do this? How are we going to work this out? And again, I probably could have had an easy five years had I just said, we don't talk to terrorists. There are no concessions and I'm calling on the unconditional release. But my numbers, instead of being what you mentioned, would probably be zero.

• 27:28Fran Racioppi?

  Well, the theory behind the non-negotiation was always this kind of idea that if the world knows that we're not going to talk to you, if you do this, they won't do it. So it because it's not going to, why would you do it? It's not going to get you anywhere. You're not going to get any concessions. So. That goes into prevention.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:47Fran Racioppi?

  So if, if that's not really a prevention strategy.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:51Fran Racioppi?

  I guess what my question is, is if you take the approach that you said hypothetically, and you say, we're not going to negotiate, we're not going to talk to anybody, does it stop?

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Well, no, I'm glad you asked the way you did. No, it didn't. We had years where we really didn't talk to bad guys. And guess what? The bad guys still took people. They just held them forever. You don't get them back because we're not negotiating with them. Now, I say that, and yet if you want to really peel back the onion in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and 80s, you'll find that almost every administration at some point has done something to bring their Americans back. But really, the bottom line is if, if we did not negotiate with, let's say, the Russians, they would just take Americans and you would just see them stay 14, 15, 16 years there, or they die in prison. So the idea that you're not going to make a deal or work on some sort of solution does not keep them from taking people.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Now, we're going to get to that point, but we have to explore all those things that are going to make it so painful to the Russians and everyone else that when they think of taking an American and using them for leverage, they can't because we've raised the costs of doing so. So part of the deterrence part is what are those tools that we're not using in the areas of diplomacy, information, military, legal, economic, financial, law enforcement? What are those tools, those areas that we're not using? Or what tools can we invent and receive authorities through Congress to use that will ratchet the price up? So that 10 years from now, the Russians are like, well, the Americans and the rest of the world figured out how to beat us at our own game. We can't take people and hold them as leverage anymore

• 29:27Speaker 02

  because everyone's figured out how to make this painful for us.

• 29:30Fran Racioppi?

  And you just threw out the term dime fill.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yep. Yo, you caught that.

• 29:34Fran Racioppi?

  I caught it. Elements of national power.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  That's the elements of national, not just a, because we, I mean, Frank, you know what we do. Someone does something that pisses us off, and we go right to diplomacy slash treasury, and we sanction them. Well, find me a sanction that we've not used on Iran, Venezuela, or right, that we've maxed out. And so we have to create new tools that can be used to compel these countries to not take our citizens. Because the sanction tool, that's been used quite heavily.

• 30:04Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. When you get a situation like the post October 7th attacks in Israel.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:09Fran Racioppi?

  You have now mass scale.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:12Fran Racioppi?

  I mean, mass scale, you know, the thousand or hundreds.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Hundreds.

• 30:16Fran Racioppi?

  A thousand, thousand kill, hundreds taken hostage. And now the situation Israel is in, and you're, you know, we've seen this play out publicly over the last 18 months or so, is where you have those, the two camps. You have the families, you know, arguing with Netanyahu, saying, you know, hey, you gotta negotiate. You gotta do whatever it takes.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:35Fran Racioppi?

  You got the hardliners saying, you know, we're not negotiating with anyone, you know, they've leveled. I mean, absolutely. There's nothing left of Gaza. And yet they're still holding.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Fran Racioppi?

  Folks there, including Americans. And so when you look at a case like that, at that scale, with an organization like Hamas backed by Iran, and now you've added in the complexity of not only a proxy terrorist organization, who, whether we agree or not, is, believes that they are a government.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:08Fran Racioppi?

  Of some sort.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:10Fran Racioppi?

  Backed by a nation state.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:12Fran Racioppi?

  Now you've got everything.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's the PhD level of hard. I used to say that this whole topic was the PhD level of hardness. But I think when Hamas hit, that took it even to another level. It's just super mega hard, if I want to use a technical term. You know, how do you, at the end of the day, if you map out, how do we get this done? And we, we spent probably days of our lives on whiteboards trying to figure out, you know, how we get this done. Yeah, this is just super hard. And I'll say there, when you finally do get people home, there's this withers from Gaza, Russia, Janam in Mali. When someone comes home, you feel like thankfully, all this hard work has resulted in an American coming home.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  But you also go home that night and look in the mirror and you're like, man, you don't feel that great because usually had to do something really tough to bring them back. And that's why these decisions almost always come down to the President of the United States. It's never Roger Carstens saying, hey, how about if we do this? It's more like. Talking to the bad guys, coming up with a plan, and then has to go up to the president to decide whether he's going to make that decision, accept that risk, and pull the trigger on what it needs to bring an American home.

• 32:22Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I mean, we've seen in the American cases where we've done prisoner swaps and stuff. You know, it's like a couple for one, one for one. I mean, you look at the situation in Israel and you're talking about, what, 100, 200 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier? I mean, to have to assess and evaluate those levels of risk.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:43Fran Racioppi?

  Because the question has to be asked, okay, well, is the Russian assassin back at work?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:51Fran Racioppi?

  Right? Are the Palestinians who've been in Israeli prisons back on the battlefield?

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:57Fran Racioppi?

  And now what?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, when we, when we took decisions to President Biden, more so President Biden than President Trump. When I worked for President Trump, I don't think, we didn't have the Levinson Act until the very waning days of his first administration. And I don't think we really had a process for evaluating some of this risk. But under President Biden, we'd sit there and take a look at someone like Viktor Bout, the merchant of death, and ask the intelligence communities, can you do us an assessment to give us a sense of whether Viktor Bout will return to a life of crime once he's released? And when we get the information that comes back saying, ah, probably not, then we can take that to the president and he gets a better sense of what kind of risk he's signing up for. So we tried to be conscious of that.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  We didn't want to just make an emotional appeal. We wanted to have some mathematics into that so the president knew what he was signing up for. But surely the point is, you assume risk in all these. And you truly have to come down to a balancing proposition that has to be made at the level of the president.

• 33:59Fran Racioppi?

  Well, we've thrown out doctrinal terms.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have.

• 34:03Fran Racioppi?

  We've talked about the complexity of navigating this space. We've talked about having to build bridges. And now we had to talk about the actual bringing, like, we got to talk about bringing, bringing them home.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:17Fran Racioppi?

  And what does that look like? Because they all ended different.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:19Fran Racioppi?

  You know, in Michael Scott Moore's case, the family paid a ransom. You know, granted, it started at $25 million, but eventually, I think, what was he, a million? I think it was even under 2 million. That eventually, after 944 days, he was returned. But then you look at Jessica Buchanan. Who was rescued by SEAL Team Six.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:39Fran Racioppi?

  In a, in my opinion, a great operation that resulted in her coming home and a lot of bad guys no longer with us. So they can end very differently. Jose Pereira, you know, exchanged for the, what, the nephew?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  It's narco nephews, narco sobrinos, yes.

• 34:52Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Uh, and so they all end differently. And so now, you know, you talked about how you feel when they come home, but talk about that, how their impact and their families? And what that reunion and reintegration was.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, on the family side, I made a decision when I first took the job that we were going to go out and visit every family. And so if Mr. So and so is taken by the Russians, within seven days, usually seven to 10 days, I was anywhere in the world to be in the living room of Mr. So and so's family. So if, let's say that his family lived up in Massachusetts, well, I'm on a plane up to Massachusetts for hours with the family and try to get a sense of what the case is like. Tell me more about your son that was taken by the Russians. Do you have any pictures? What have you heard from him? Have the Russians said anything? And so we get caught up on the case, but also get a sense of the man or the person that's being held. And then we, at a certain point in the meeting, after about an hour or two, you switch into, hey, look,

• 35:48Speaker 02

  my office was created because the US government failed to negotiate or talk to the families. And we're trying to fix that. So what we would like to do is partner with you, the family members, to come up with a solution to bring your loved ones home. And so the rest of the meeting is talking about how we function, how we want to communicate with the families, and how we're going to like plot and scheme to get their loved ones back. Say specifically, we'll say, look, we're going to give you updates at least once a week, unless you don't want them. And if you want them daily, we'll call you daily. If you want them with them weekly, we'll do that. If you only want to be updated when something new happens, whatever battle rhythm you want in terms of getting information, we're going to jump on that. And by the way, you can call us 24/7.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  If you want to call me at Friday night at 10 o'clock because you read something in the, in the paper that referenced something that President Putin said, I'm picking up the phone and I'm staying on until your round's complete, until you're done asking your questions. More to the point, we're going to declassify information. So that we can give you a sense of where you are on the map sheet. We had two people from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on in the in the Spihaw team and pretty much, I would say the 70% of their time was spent declassifying information so that we could tell the families where we were. And but the really the last thing is like, look, we're going to partner. This is not going to be government as usual. We're not going to be cold and distant. We're not going to push you away. We are going to have a powerful relationship. And sometimes you're going to yell at us.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Sometimes we're all going to cry together, but we're going to do this together. And I brought it up like this. If since I know you, and so we have a different relationship than maybe someone who's one of your team members, your team members, if they do something bad, I will politely say, oh, hey, could you please not do that? You, because I know you, Fran, I'll scream and I'll F-bomb you and say, hey, I told you, you can't do it. And that's the relationship we wanted to have with the families to where we were close enough to where I wanted them to feel comfortable to yell at me, hug me, kiss me on the cheek, cry with me and hold and hold each other when things go well or wrong and partner and actually be vulnerable to give each other our ideas. And I'll tell a quick story and I'll shut up and let you go to the next one.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  But I gave that one pitch about how we want to partner. And I'd said, you know, sometimes the families are going to come up with a solution because I surrendered 50% of my creativity every day I walked into the State Department and put on a suit and tie. Why? The State Department building just does that. You you're creative at eight o'clock in the morning, 8:15, you go into the building, wham, 50% of your creativity just sucked right out of you. But the families, they're they're the ones that are always constantly 24/7 thinking about how to get their loved ones out. So I said, maybe you guys will come up with a solution. So we're at the end of a family visit. We spent four hours in the living room. I'm trying to walk out the door and put on a coat. And a 17 year old boy comes up and says, Mr. Carson's, you know, I was thinking, you know what? Never mind, never mind. It was really nice to meet you.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  And I said, no, no, hold on now. Were you going to tell me something? Yeah, well, I was think, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, it was really nice meeting you. I said, now, come on now. What were you going to tell me? And he's nervous and he goes, well, I've been following my dad's case for years. So, and I often wondered why we weren't doing this. And to me, my world stopped. I just sat there for what seemed like, you know, an eternity. I'm sure it was only like 30 seconds. I was like, that's it. That's the missing piece. That we're going to do that. So this family member came up, release mechanism, that we then struggled to make happen over the next few months there. So to have that partnership was important to us. It was important to the families and was important to the return. Because in working together, we found we got a lot of stuff done.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  I'll say one more thing. People often give me credit. You said, oh, Roger, you brought back 65 people. And the answer is I brought back zero people. Now, I participated as a member of a team on efforts to bring back 65 people. Sometimes I was the negotiator. Other times I was writing the talking points for the intelligence team. Other times I was shouting my support at Jake Sullivan from the sidelines. But it's a team effort and the family members are a huge part of that team that sometimes includes hundreds of people, maybe a thousand. That returnee comes home, he may never even get to meet them, meet those people. But these are big teams and frankly, because of your interest in this, because of your work with Hostage US and because you're interviewing people like me and Michael Scott Moore, you're a part of that team.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  When people come home, everyone seems to have a thumbprint on that return.

• 40:14Fran Racioppi?

  When faced with a challenge, Green Berets adapt, overcome, and keep moving forward. Now's your chance to stand with them. Join the 1952 Society with a monthly gift of just $19.52 to provide critical medical devices for wounded, ill, and injured Green Berets. Your support fuels their recovery, helping them return to duty or continue serving their communities. A Green Beret's mission never stops. Neither should our support. Join the 1952 Society today and stand with those who stand for us.

• 40:45Fran Racioppi?

  Every case captures my, my attention. I think it's, I think it's critically important. You know, and you go back to what we're going to talk about next and you go back to service.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:55Fran Racioppi?

  And we were fortunate enough this morning to be in the Pentagon again with the Sergeant Major of the Army and the Sergeant Major of the G three, five, seven Sergeant Major Mullenax, where we really talk about why they call it service.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:09Fran Racioppi?

  Call it service because it's hard.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  You know, and you think about it, it's like a concept where, where you go, wait a minute, that's like so simple. It makes sense. And I've never thought of it like that, but you're right. But that's why they're great senior NCOs and we were officers that have to make it more difficult. Okay. But, but that's it. You know, like why they call it service, you call it service because hard.

• 41:29Fran Racioppi?

  And you go back to things like the Ranger creed.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:33Fran Racioppi?

  I'll never leave a fallen comrade.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:36Fran Racioppi?

  And it's that's, it can be that simple.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:39Fran Racioppi?

  And now you expand your definition of comrade, right?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:45Fran Racioppi?

  It used to be your, it was, it was your Ranger buddy.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:47Fran Racioppi?

  You know, it was your teammate, an SF team. And then it becomes every American who finds himself as part of this club that nobody wants to be a part of.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 41:58Fran Racioppi?

  And you fall back on this is the service aspect of what we're doing in these roles. So we got to ask you, you went to West Point, which I won't hold against you, uh, being an OCS guy, but why serve in the first place?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  So, okay, one target first, Wendy Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State was a great ally in bringing people home. And she said that one day, she's like, you know, we, we would move heaven and earth to bring a soldier back because we leave no fallen comrade behind or a comrade taken behind. But shouldn't that be for every citizen? Shouldn't be, we leave no citizen behind. And that's why she was just really tough in these National Security Council meetings when others in the meeting would not want to return our Americans. She was always pushing the envelope there. But in terms of the service part, we, all those things that made us want to be Green Berets, some people, it's something fanciful is watching John Wayne and the Green Berets. Of course that, that should be.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  One of the main reasons for every Green Beret, I want to go on record, but there are usually other factors. And for me, it was reading the newspaper at age 11 in Spokane, Washington, about the genocide that was taking place in Cambodia. And it's like, oh, my gosh, this is horrible. At age 11, you know, you're reading about people, you know, being, you know, murdered in a, in a mass way. And, you know, it's probably something I shouldn't have been reading, but I did. And I thought, I want to be the guy that helps stop that. And in my analysis, there was only one organization that had the will, the resources and the wherewithal to stop something like a genocide. And that was the US Army. It liberated Europe in World War, World Wars I and II.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  And I think you can find all sorts of examples where the military shows up and solves, solves the problem. And you and I have been around long enough to where as you get older, you realize the military sometimes shows up, doesn't solve the problem, or is not given the power to do so, or blah, blah, blah, blah. But in the recent history, if there was a tsunami or a hurricane, there's a reason that we put an aircraft carrier in a hospital ship off the coast and send in soldiers or Marines to solve the problem. Okay, because they can get there, they know what to do, and at the end of the day, they'll figure it out and serve. So I wanted to be a part of that and made a beeline to West Point. I figure I'm going to be a part of the team that, that I would call the greatest humanitarian organization that was ever created, the US Army.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Now, I say that as a person that also appreciates its lethality. You know, if you want to stop evil, if you want to crush the next Adolf Hitler, dial 1-800 US Army, right? But if you also want to prevent evil from doing the other things, again, the army. So West Point seemed like a natural fit. The army seemed like a natural fit. The infantry seemed like a natural fit. But more to the point, Special Forces, the motto, "De oppresso liberum", to free the oppressed. And so I think early on, I got caught in this idea of helping and protecting those who are most vulnerable. And that's something that stayed with me from West Point, through the Ranger Battalion, through Special Forces,

• 44:58Speaker 02

  through the nonprofits that I ran in Somalia and Jordan, to working in the Bureau of Democracy. Human rights and labor at state and eventually being the hostage negotiator. What's your job? Find the people that need help and need to be brought home that need rescue. And I love you. I love your word, serve.

• 45:17Fran Racioppi?

  Well, you know, the first time we met was because of your potential need to be rescued. And so I vividly remember I was in Djibouti, running the East Africa operation. So I was in the J three shop there and I was the J thirty five. And one of the mechanisms we were creating there was some sort of combat search and rescue capability force off in the region. And so we were doing some interoperability training with the air force assets that are out of Lemenier. And then also some international, some NATO organizations. And you were in Somalia and I got a call that I think, you know, I don't know, like where you kind of got to, to get to us.

• 46:00Fran Racioppi?

  And I remember the conversation we had on the phone and I asked you, well, what do you need? And your response was, I just need a number to call in case I need. And I'm like, well, I don't know what I could do for you, but if you need a number to call, we'll do everything we can.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  I think that gave me a feeling of comfort. Well, you know, it's funny, we talked about that earlier and I remembered I talked to Mike Sheehan, who at that time was ASD Soling. And I was like, asked him the same question. I'm like, you know, Mike, you know, or Mr. Secretary, you know, if I need help, who do I call? And I think I finally necked it down to your phone number between that and the people in Somalia, some of the military folks I was working with. And yeah, it ended up being your number. That's actually, I mean, it's an SF thing, right? Or it's just a be prepared. Maybe it's a Boy Scout thing. When it goes wrong, that's not when I want to figure out who I needed to call. So being able to call a barrel chested freedom fighter like you, knowing that on the other end, you know, you're going to put the, the boys in the helicopter or put the net call out, that's a feeling of comfort when you're either running a nonprofit in Somalia

• 47:00Speaker 02

  or working with us at that time, Bancroft Global Development. So yeah, it was, it was good to connect with you and it's also was a pleasure to watch you in your career, uh, serving some pretty distinguished roles. And that's also cool to watch you do what you're doing now, spreading the wealth and providing awareness through the, the.

• 47:14Fran Racioppi?

  Effort. Well, and that's why we gotta talk about transition. Yeah. Because I think we do these great things. We threw out the term service. We have these careers that bring us to experiences and bring us to places that we could never dream about. You know, you go back to your, your decision to go to West Point and you said earlier that everybody has, serves for a different reason. I mean, I was, I wanted to be a journalist. I, I went to Boston University to study broadcast journalism. I wanted to be Tom Brokaw. Yeah. And Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and nine 11 was my junior year in college. And then I said, well, what am I going to go do? I'm gonna go to like the middle of nowhere in America and, and we still had VHS tapes that. That's right.

• 47:56Fran Racioppi?

  You know, and I, I would envision myself so watching the news and I'm watching the, the effort in Afghanistan in October of 2003. And then there's guys with beards and long hair and they're riding horses and you know, subsequently we went to Iraq and. I'm like, and I envision myself like sitting in an editing room. Yeah. A year from now, taking a video of VHS tape from one player to another. And I just thought, I, there's no way. Yeah. There's just, I can't do that at this point in time. If I want to be a journalist, if I want to do this profession later on in life, then I can go into the army. I can gain these experiences, this perspective.

• 48:39Fran Racioppi?

  And then if that's my calling later on down the road, that's what we'll do. Yeah. And you go into this career and I would have never imagined or thought I would have gotten to go to the places that I got to, to go to, do the things and meet the people that I got to meet. And it really changes your life. But one day it ends and General Tovo, the, the former USASOC commander, the current chairman of the Green Beret Foundation, has a great quote. We actually put it up on, on our social media the other day from an interview I did with him. And he says, every Green Beret will leave the service one day, whether you, whether you believe it or not. When you're in there, like you're gonna leave and I remember and we all vividly remember

• 49:20Fran Racioppi?

  that last day. I mean, I turned my ID card in. I got in my car. I drove off of Fort Carson. You know, somebody walked me out, shook my hand, said, thank you for your service. And I got in my car and I literally started crying.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:33Fran Racioppi?

  Cause it's everything you know. And you got this, you know, 13 years, it comes down to a handshake of somebody you don't know. And all of a sudden, you gotta figure out what you're gonna do.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:42Fran Racioppi?

  We struggle, I believe in the Green Beret community with transition. We spend a career on these teams where even if we don't like the guys we're with, they're our best friends.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:55Fran Racioppi?

  And we do everything with them. And then yet we get out and then guys say, oh, I'm gonna go live in the woods. I'm gonna hunt and fish all day and not talk to anybody. And then they take their own life.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:08Fran Racioppi?

  You've transitioned and continued to serve in so many different capacities. But when you look at the transition challenge that we have out of special forces, what are you seeing?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  So you and I talked about this earlier and it got onto that mission part. And I think that unless you really are self-aware, know yourself, it's going to be hard to get into something that doesn't have a mission or some sort of a sense of that camaraderie. And even then, let's say that your entire life, you knew you wanted to be, I'll choose something ridiculous, a car salesman in Minot, North Dakota. And so you leave special forces and go out there and you know, you want to be that. You've really wanted to be that. SF was just something you were doing for 10 years until you did that. When you got to Minot, North Dakota, if there's not some higher mission where you're allowed to serve and you don't have that camaraderie, you're going to have a hard time and people don't realize that. I think, I know we're doing a much better job of counseling people on

• 51:01Speaker 02

  their way out the door. So you can maybe highlight these things, but I think I was kind of self-aware about that. And I knew that I wanted to serve. I wanted to have a higher level mission. I want to be around people that I really liked and shared the same values. And I tried to shape some of my decisions that allowed me to be in those groups. And I would say that's given me a sense of mental stability, a sense of comfort. Physically, emotionally, financially, and even spiritually, because I wanted to stay on that same thread of continuity that brought me into the army. I would say in my world, I've made some conscious, you know, I'm gonna say conscious decisions. I really blundered into every job I've had, but as I'm blundering into the job, I could at least say,

• 51:45Speaker 02

  is this the same thread of continuity? And by still interested in protecting the most vulnerable? And as I look back, I've been a decent job of doing that. And so the very same things that brought me into special forces are the things, same things that brought me into SPIHA as the hostage negotiator and frankly brought me into the McCain Institute. You know, there's a, the mission statement and what the McCain Institute is doing right now aligns with my personal values. And if I had to talk to a young captain or E7 right now, captain who might be getting out or lieutenant colonel or an E7, like, yeah, I'm thinking about getting out or I'm put in 20, it's time to go on and try something else. It's like, could you have any advice? They're probably thinking I'm gonna point them to a job. And I would not point them to a job. I would point them to a thought on a mission.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  And that is, don't worry about where you're going. Worry about what the values are, the things that excite you and animate you about life. Whatever you're about to do, make sure that's in what you do next, because without it, you're going to feel a little off your map sheet.

• 52:45Fran Racioppi?

  So I teach a leadership seminar and one of the blocks that we've built on this leadership seminar is about, we call it choice. And there's three components to it and it's purpose, which is what you're talking about. What's your purpose? What's your mission? Why are you here? And the second one is autonomy. Do you have input into how you do things? Because if you have input into how you do things, you're more motivated to do it versus micromanagement.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:12Fran Racioppi?

  And the third piece is efficacy, results. Are you seeing tangible results? And so the thought process is, is that if we have purpose, if we have autonomy, if we see the results of our actions, we make the right choices as a leader. And I think you summed it up there when you talk about transition, because guys are looking for the job. What's the job?

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:38Fran Racioppi?

  We're all guilty of it. I mean, I was guilty of it. I interviewed in my transition with everyone, every big name that you could list, I tried and didn't get any jobs. And I was fortunate that they took a chance on me at Merrill Lynch to go be a financial advisor and I was miserable. Because it didn't fulfill the the purpose.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:58Fran Racioppi?

  It didn't it didn't resonate with who I was.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:02Fran Racioppi?

  And ultimately, you had to had to go on and go do other things back into the security industry and then starting this show.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:10Fran Racioppi?

  Which, you know, people ask me now, why do you put the effort into the show? What what's so important about it? I'm like, because it's about impact.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:18Fran Racioppi?

  And it's about telling the stories and it's about getting the message out there that is missed because we as quiet professionals have also become silent professionals. And we will forever be in competition with our SEAL brothers, whether that be in service or beyond. But they've done a great job of transition. You know, and they've done a great job of supporting each other in transition.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:43Fran Racioppi?

  Now, I don't think everyone should go out and write a book about every experience they ever had. But I but I do believe they've done a phenomenal job about saying, hey, you know, you come out of your 10, 15, 20 year career on a SEAL team. And now, you know, we're going to put you in a role in an organization with like minded folks. And they're always doing that. And I don't think we as Green Berets do as good of a job when a guy comes in and says, well, I'm just going to be a recluse back up in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:12Fran Racioppi?

  And three years later, they're no longer with us. And we go, I can't believe that guy did that. It's like, well, what do you mean? He lost his community. Nobody helped bring him in. And I think we gotta do a better job of that.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think your characterization of the SEALs is spot on. I've always, I mean, even when I was in, I was always my, or I always recognized how the SEALs get out. And they stay on the attack. You know, oh, I'm getting out. Well, what's next for you? Oh, I'm going to Harvard Business School. Or, oh, I'm getting out. I am writing a book. Or I'm getting out. And everyone had a a plan where they were still in the fight in one shape or form. And so I think your comments are spot on. And by the way, that class that you teach, I want to take it. Did you did you come up with that?

• 55:52Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  And that those three steps.

• 55:53Fran Racioppi?

  All the components of a performance mindset.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, have you written a book about that yet?

• 55:57Fran Racioppi?

  Seminar. No, but people tell me that.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  You know, write a book. That's great. Actually, it's because that really does encapsulate how I feel. About the work that I do, I often thought that I never wanted to be a thing. I never want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a rock star, a politician, fill in the blank. That would have made my life easy because I could say, oh, you know, I got out of med school. I'm now a doctor. Mission complete. Instead, I wanted a mission to take care of those who are vulnerable. You could have, your mission could be kill your nation's enemies. It could be, you know, whatever. But if you have a mission, you have to approach your next few steps differently than those who just want to be a thing or to have a job. And by the way, not saying anything bad about those who go into the financial world and succeed wildly.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Because the people I've met who actually do well in the financial world, that aligns with who they are. It just wouldn't align with who you and I are. And you're right, I think the mentorship part or pointing to the guys getting out. They just say, ah, you're thinking of going off to Louisiana, live in that shack on that lake, that property you bought back when, you know, 1986. You might want to rethink that, you know, how about joining me on this? Or there's a group of guys doing this to keep that team thing going on. Because yeah, I think I'm with you on that. I don't think I've seen too much data on why, you know, we lose 22 veterans every day. But I would have to wonder if it's because of the loss of those three things that you're teaching about right now in your class.

• 57:25Fran Racioppi?

  I firmly believe it is. I feel very passionately about that.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:30Fran Racioppi?

  And I think we got to do a better job. We used to call, we used to call looking for work. Remember you'd like clear room?

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:38Fran Racioppi?

  That's right. Look for work, look for work, you know, don't just stand there. Yeah. And guys would stand there like, what are you doing? I'm pulling security. You're like, no, dude, you look for work.

• 57:48Fran Racioppi?

  Well, you're in a bit of a break or they, you thought you were going to be in a bit of a break right now, but I would argue that you're not considering, you know, we've talked about your, your work here at the McCain Institute. And tonight, here very shortly, as we leave here, we gotta, we gotta head over, we're gonna go to the hostage U S annual oversight. So you are definitely a guy who's looking for work and getting involved in a number of stuff. I mean, you took three or four phone calls while we were setting up over here. But the importance of hostage U S in this role, we talked about the families, we talked about the impact. That it has, but here's an organization led by the executive director, Liz Cathcart, also a great friend of mine in the show, and then also Dave Commandant, legend in the physical security space, chief security officer at Boeing for a long time. He jokes,

• 58:30Fran Racioppi?

  his whole career was at Boeing. And then now you're really leading the efforts at the board level of the organization. We're going to go tonight to the annual reception. We're going to see so many people we talked about earlier and so many more. They're working with the families. And so can you talk for a minute about the impact that they're having in working with the families and then the post recovery efforts that when somebody actually does step foot back on American school?

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the work that Hostage US has done and is doing and will do. It's been, I'd say, fundamental to our success as a nation in bringing people home and reintegrating them. Liz has done an amazing job. I'm glad you mentioned her, you know, Amy Monson, John Smith, who first came out of Hostage International and helped build Hostage US and all these other heroes. I really could probably spend about five more minutes by name, but let me tell you why I like them. And I'm just going to give you a specific example. So we get an American back from Venezuela. It was unexpected. You know, we didn't think we were going to get anyone, but we got two people. One person we fully expected, we know about. We know where his family is. We know all about him. One person we didn't know much about, but suddenly he's

• 59:36Speaker 02

  flying home with us to Texas. We land and he didn't really have to, didn't have any family members in the United States, had lost his job when he was taken hostage in Venezuela a year prior and showed up with nothing. And so one hand, I have an American that I know all about. I know his family and they're right down the road and they're coming in to greet him, meet him, take care of him, eventually take him home after he leaves post-isolation support activities in Texas. And another person who essentially has nothing. So we took him out to a mall, bought him some clothing, got him some food, bought, got his passport, bought him an airline ticket back to where he job was. And you know who made all that happen and paid for all of it? Hostage US. Because no one else could really at that moment move that fast,

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  cut through the bureaucratic red tape to make that happen. Certainly the US government couldn't do it with all the time that we put in. And all the effort we put into making it a soft landing when someone comes home, we were unable to adapt quick enough to handle this unexpected kerfuffle. I'll say a blessing, an unexpected blessing. But Hostage US was able to pay for the clothing, pay for the food, pay for the airline ticket. And in short order, working with Hostage US and my team, we were able to get him his old job back. So within a week, he was going back to work. That's the impact that Hostage US has, whether it's in wellness for people coming back, making sure that they have psychological care and counseling, whether it's making sure that people have cushioning financially when they come back,

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  whether it is advocating on behalf of someone who is fighting an issue with the IRS. Hostage US is right there in the trenches with the family members and the returning when he comes home to either A, bring them back, or B, make sure that they're functioning and getting off to a good start once they they come back to freedom.

• 1:01:20Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, and I think that they're relentless in their pursuit.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  Oh geez, amazing, yeah.

• 1:01:25Fran Racioppi?

  They are, and they've built just great, great partnerships, I think, at the corporate level.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Fran Racioppi?

  And then also, you know, across the community, I mean, in private sector, and then being able to bring in, really just the who's who of the security industry to get them to understand that, as we mentioned earlier, this can happen to anybody.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:44Fran Racioppi?

  And this can be your employee.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:46Fran Racioppi?

  You know, this can be your family member. Or do you know what resources are out there to support them? And so I look forward to that here, here pretty shortly. Where do we go from here when we look at hostage diplomacy? As we space the threats, which can be defined as almost greater than we've seen in quite a long time, from nation states, from peer to peer and near, near peer adversaries. But the threat of hostages at a, you know, from a terrorist organization level isn't diminishing.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would say that there was a time, until just recently, until like last few weeks, I would have said the numbers are going down dramatically. So there was a time when I had 54 cases on my desk, had a total, I think, 74. Active cases throughout my time there. And by the time I left, we had under 10. And so we were not finding that people were going out and restocking the pond, taking more people. However, I'd say just in the last 90 days, the US government's identified more people in certain countries. So you could make the argument that the numbers are starting to climb back up. But really, the bottom line is you have to do a few things simultaneously. And in a way, we already mentioned them. The future is this. Number one, there may not be a cookie cutter, but you can get better about negotiating. You know, find out what works and don't waste time. Get right to it.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  It always was frustrating to spend two years bringing an American home. When maybe in the first few weeks, we knew exactly what we needed to do. But then we had to fight through the bureaucracy to get it done.

• 1:03:07Fran Racioppi?

  And so is own bureaucracy.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  That's it. It's like, oh, Roger, what's the hardest country you've ever negotiated with? The Venezuelans, the Syrians? No, the hardest negotiation I ever did was in the United States government, just trying to get alignment. Cause everyone wants to solve the problem, but everyone has their own way of doing it. And trying to get everyone on the same sheet of music in the US government is definitely a challenge. So you're really conducting 360 degree negotiations with the bad guys, but also with your, your peers, compatriots, and fellow government types back here to make sure that you come up with your release mechanism.

• 1:03:38Fran Racioppi?

  You know, there's a term for that.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 1:03:40Fran Racioppi?

  It's called meta-leadership.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:03:42Fran Racioppi?

  Meta.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  I thought I was gonna add something that we couldn't say on air, but.

• 1:03:45Fran Racioppi?

  No, no, well, there's a lot of that too. Yeah, we'll talk about that later after a few drinks. It's called meta-leadership. And there's a book, which I would highly recommend if you haven't read it already. But it's, it's called You're It. And it was written by Eric McNulty, who is part of.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Eric, I put it through the queue first. He owes me money.

• 1:04:03Fran Racioppi?

  Eric.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  No, it's a funny.

• 1:04:05Fran Racioppi?

  No, it was gonna.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Remember this is what you say if you've never heard.

• 1:04:06Fran Racioppi?

  Oh, yeah, that guy.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, whoever it is like.

• 1:04:08Fran Racioppi?

  That's right.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  What did he, oh, that guy could run.

• 1:04:11Fran Racioppi?

  And they owe beer. If it's the first time, they owe beer. So Eric McNulty is, he works as part of the Leadership Institute at Harvard. The National Preparedness Leadership Institute. That's where it is. And he and a number of other professors wrote this book called You're It. And it's a great, it's a, it's a short read and I would recommend it to you because they highlight numerous leaders, including another great friend of the podcast, who was the Boston police chief during the marathon bombing. And it's these leaders who are in these positions, Daniel Linsky, I assume it was. And in a moment, they're like, oh, interesting.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll buy that book.

• 1:04:45Fran Racioppi?

  And now, how do you lead when a moment ago, you were a spectator at the Boston Marathon?

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Fran Racioppi?

  You're still a police chief, but now you had a bomb.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Fran Racioppi?

  And the whole world is looking at you.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Fran Racioppi?

  And you're it.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:05:02Fran Racioppi?

  And you don't want to be it. Very much like the hostage situation.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Fran Racioppi?

  It's a club you don't want to be a part of, but once you identify you're a part of it, or you're in charge in this case, what are you going to do? And so they highlight, I don't know, I think I've kind of gone a tangent here. But the reason why it's important is because they talk about this concept of meta-leadership. And we talk about it in the leadership class that we run. We credit Eric and his team for giving us that language. But it's about the need to, as a leader, you have to lead up to your bosses and those you report to. You have to lead down to your team. You have to lead across to your peers and your supporting elements. And you have to lead across and out.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  You have to lead out.

• 1:05:40Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. To the third-party organizations and folks who influence your organization. And so it's this three-dimensional, four-dimensional leadership sphere that in order to be effective in crisis, I would argue, in any sort of complex leadership situation, you have to be able to identify who you're talking to, what the messaging is to that group. Because as you referenced earlier, how we talk to our team and how our team receives information isn't how we talk to our boss.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Fran Racioppi?

  It's not how our boss talks to us. It's not how we speak with our peers. And it's not how we communicate with outside organizations. And so our ability to effectively identify and do that is what separates great leaders from not great leaders.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  See, I feel like I got more out of this chat than I gave to you because that's important to me. And I'll probably go buy that book and it'll be in my next book that I read. Because I think the leadership thing, that's 100%. And that's how I think I've tried to run my life. But also in DC, that's an important way to do a business. I don't think everyone does it, but I think that's how you should conceptualize trying to get things done in DC. I would just add, instead of leadership, you could substitute negotiations. You have the Spaha job right there. So I appreciate that and that'll be on my Reading list like as of like now, but to answer to, I guess, continue on answering your question. What's the future look like? It's continuing these negotiations. It's coming up with prevention and deterrence to raise the cost of taking our citizens to the point that countries no longer do that. And again, it's going to be a multi-year fight.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  And then the last thing is keep up in our game in terms of taking care of citizens. We have done such an amazing job in the last few years of going from nothing to suddenly something. And taking care of the families of those who are being held. The things that we do now from information, visits, flying them to Washington DC to brief them and let them see their congressional reps. Providing medical and psychological care, not just to the people that are taken when they come home, but also to family members. While their loved ones are still held overseas. So US government's essentially gone light years. And yet I look at what the Israelis are doing right now in terms of providing stipends to family members. And I like, that's the future. If someone's taken and by a nation state or by a terrorist group.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  The Israeli government will A, pay a stipend to the person that's been taken. So if you're making, you know, a hundred thousand bucks a year, the Israeli government's going to continue those payments into your bank account. If you've been designated as one of their wrongful detention, so to speak. Secondly, the Israeli government recognized that family members will quit their jobs and focus full time on getting their loved ones back. So they're now starting to cut checks as stipends to those family members that are involved in the recovery process. And thirdly, they're, they're assigning a milit, an active duty military officer and a retired military officer. And a social worker to every family to help them navigate.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  A, talking to the government and B, trying to get things done in the, in the social space, whether it's medical care, psychological care and all this stuff. So there are things that we still could be doing. So let me recap. Number one, get better and faster negotiating with a sense of urgency. Number two, work on prevention and deterrence so that this problem one day goes away. And number three, keep improving the way we take care of the families of those that have been taken. That's going to be the future.

• 1:08:58Fran Racioppi?

  We gotta, we gotta give another, another plug to Hostage US here because everything you mentioned in terms of the recovery effort or coming back is what they're working on. And it is what you were talking about with the financial piece is I think when we look at these cases and we see what gets reported in the media.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Fran Racioppi?

  What they don't talk about are things like the family who quit their job. And you look at Jose Pereira, you know, part of the sicko six, whose son stopped working.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Fran Racioppi?

  And was sending him food, throwing packages and you know, Jose talks about the letters that they snuck in, in the, in the tins from his wife, which is what motivated him and had his son left his job and moved to Venezuela to be there to, or moved to an adjacent country, I think, to send him food up roots your whole life. You're not getting paid from your job because your employer says, well, you're not here and we don't have a legal obligation to pay you anymore. So now you don't have income, but now you're down multiple incomes. And Jessica Buchanan talks about the fact that her credit was destroyed.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Fran Racioppi?

  Because she, nobody was there to pay her bills.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Fran Racioppi?

  Nobody knew she had the bills and there's no box to check at Experian or Equifax that says like, you know, oh, held hostage by Somali pirates.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Fran Racioppi?

  So like, you know, couldn't pay my bills for Michael Scott Moore for years. So you spend then a decade coming out from bankruptcy, from a zero credit score rating as an adult. And those are all things that become so challenging as, as you have to kind of rebuild your life.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. We now give out a letter if someone's taken hostage or wrongfully detained and it has the signature of the Spieha on it saying, you know, this pursuant to Levinson Act, blah, blah, blah, blah, so and so's been declared a wrongful detention, signed by Roger D. Carson Spieha, or now my, uh, the person who took over, Adam Bowler. And that letter is then used to go to the IRS and the US government says, take these guys off your to-do list, stop everything, no penalty, no more penalties, don't pound on them for having not paid their taxes. Then we go to the banks, the letter's there to go to the families, they can send it to the creditors, but it's still too passive. I think we need to be active in terms of aggressively going. To all of these creditors as the government doing it. And again, the Israelis have kind of figured this out.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  But yeah, I tell you, I got to give credit to Hostage U.S. But there are other players in this space. The Foley Foundation has done a marvelous job in not only bringing awareness to this topic, but working with members on Capitol Hill and the executive branch and the families to mitigate some of this pain. So when someone's taken, the one thing I'm very grateful for is that there now is a hostage recovery enterprise. We used to think of that as just the government, but I think we now think of it as the government plus NGOs like Hostage U.S., McCain Institute, Foley Foundation and others, members of Congress on Capitol Hill and their staffs. I would say super empowered individuals like the late Governor Richardson.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  I would say partners and allies like some of the countries that helped us on the last year's 1st of August swap, where we brought people back from multiple countries. It's a bigger crew. I'd say businesses. We talked about the security industry that Dave was working in, that as you mentioned, he's a legend. But we're bringing this wide community into this whole topic to solve this problem. And whether, again, it's negotiating, or it's taking care of families, or it's prevention of deterrence, this is a team effort.

• 1:12:22Fran Racioppi?

  Well, the one thing we know is it's not going to end anytime soon. We've got a lot of work to do.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do.

• 1:12:26Fran Racioppi?

  So.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  We do.

• 1:12:27Fran Racioppi?

  Well, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. This, when we look at impact, you know, I mentioned efficacy, we want results.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:35Fran Racioppi?

  Green Berets get results.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do.

• 1:12:37Fran Racioppi?

  Warrior dip.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  We're getting our results.

• 1:12:39Fran Racioppi?

  And if we don't get it the first time, well, guess what? We're coming back at you. And we're going to do it again. And I do, I do think, you know, much like we talked about for 25 years and beyond, you know, the global pursuit of our adversaries. You have a global pursuit mission to go get those who've been taken from us.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:12:54Fran Racioppi?

  And you've led that effort. I know that you will continue to lead that effort in whatever capacity that looks like for the very long future to come. And I appreciate very much everything that you've done for us, for my team and the McCain Institute for hosting us here. Hostage U.S. will see her in a little bit and stay in the fight.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Hey, Fran, I'm glad you stayed in the fight as well. What an honor to be here with you today. Thank you.

• 1:13:18Speaker 00

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rychowi. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X or Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.