Combating State Hostage Taking and Wrongful Detention

This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on June 4, 2025. Watch the full video here.

Jon B. Alterman: Hello, I’m Jon Alterman, the Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy at CSIS. I’m pleased to welcome you to the rollout of our report on hostage taking and wrongful detention. I’m here with my co-director of the project, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian.

Most of the policy issues that Washington think tanks deal with are a step removed from their human impacts. We often talk about governments or populations, but not about individuals. This topic is different. It is all about individuals, and how they suffer not because of anything they did, but because of the passport they hold.

Jason knows this firsthand. On July 22, 2014, the Iranian government put him and his wife in Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Mr. Rezaian: Jon, that experience changed everything in our lives. When Yegi and I were arrested from our home and taken to Evin Prison, it started a 544-day ordeal that we had no idea how we would resolve. She and I endured months of solitary confinement and threats of execution—ostensibly because we were accused of espionage.

We understood that we hadn’t done anything against Iranian law, but it didn’t become clear to us for many months that, actually, we were being held because I was an American citizen and the Iranian regime was trying to use me as leverage in negotiations with the U.S. government.

I understood and felt that deep sense of injustice during that time. What I didn’t realize was that this was happening more and more around the world. When I came home, I decided that I wanted to do something about it.

Dr. Alterman: I met Jason at a friend’s house about four years ago, and he told me his story. It resonated with me. It reminded me of when I was in high school, when revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. The event shocked the country.

After college, I was working on Capitol Hill. We had a constituent whose brother was Terry Anderson, the AP bureau chief in Beirut. He was kidnapped and held hostage, and one of my jobs was to put a statement in the Congressional Record every day about his captivity. More recently, close friends were arrested and held in Evin Prison.

Haleh Esfandiari, who was my counterpart running the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, was arrested on spying charges when she was visiting her mother in Iran and held in solitary confinement at Evin for 105 days.

I met Siamak Namazi in the late 1990s and knew him as a superb analyst of Iran. I visited him at his apartment in Tehran when I was there in 2000. In 2015, he was arrested on spying charges. He wasn’t freed until September 2023.

All of these people were Americans, and that was their crime.

So when Jason told me his story, it felt familiar.

Mr. Rezaian: For me, I understood and knew the stories of the people that you mentioned. What I didn’t know was that this was the beginning of a new hostage crisis — more and more Americans being taken by a series of authoritarian governments around the world, used as leverage in diplomatic negotiations with the United States.

When I came back to living what I would say was a recovered and normal life, again going back to full-time reporting at The Washington Post, I focused a lot of my time and attention on the growing number of cases of this sort of state hostage taking or wrongful detention that we were seeing happening around the world.

I realized there was only so much I could do in a Washington Post column. What I wanted to do — and to your great credit, John, you took me up on the idea — was to try and affect policy on hostage issues.

The U.S. government will do what it can to bring Americans home safely, but I believe we can do a better job of it: that we can do it more quickly, more efficiently, and hopefully over time put this long-term problem to bed so people won’t have to deal with it moving forward.

As we’ve seen in the cases of Americans around the world — Brittneyy Griner in Russia, a WNBA superstar who was arrested at Moscow’s airport and held for well over a year until she was released in a hostage exchange.

Paul Whelan, a retired U.S. serviceman who, like me, was charged falsely with espionage while visiting friends in Russia. Evan Gershkovich, a case that feels very close to my own. Evan was The Wall Street Journal’s correspondent in Russia until he was arrested, detained, and accused of false charges of espionage. And Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British citizen who was again arrested by the Iranian regime weeks after my release, held in Evin Prison for seven years before she was ultimately released in a negotiated settlement between the Iranian and UK governments.

I see this happening again and again. We see it happening again and again, and we hope that we’re able to do something to address this problem.

Dr. Alterman: The commission met for two years, under the leadership of Amb. Robert O’Brien and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. We met in person and virtually, and we had a retreat together. We came up with a report that is intentionally short, just eight pages.

Today we’re going to talk about the main recommendations of that report. We’ll talk about how to deter states from taking Americans, how to persuade Americans not to travel to dangerous places, and more. You’ll meet members of the commission, family members, and people who have worked in the U.S. government to free Americans.

Mr. Rezaian: When we set out to build this commission, we couldn't have thought of a more appropriate person than Robert O’Brien to help us lead this initiative. Of course, Mr. O’Brien served as both National Security Advisor and the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the first Trump administration. Ambassador, I want to ask you first and foremost: Why is the issue of wrongful detention such a critically important one?

Robert O’Brien: Thank you for that kind introduction. Look, it's critical because of the people involved. We do so many things in politics that are about policy and big issues, and this distills it down into a small issue. It's a single person in a dungeon or a cave or a prison cell, and they've got no hope. And we've got to be that solution. There are so few things in government that are like that, where you can make an individual difference in someone's life. This is one of those issues. It's one of the few issues where you can make that kind of difference. That's why it's such a nonpartisan issue or a bipartisan issue. I worked with Democrats and Republicans. It didn't matter what party someone was. Senators from both sides of the aisle helped. Senator Shaheen helped in the Pastor Brunson case quite extensively. This is an area that we can get past what someone thought about President Trump or someone thought about President Biden and get to the core matter of helping American citizens that needed our assistance.

Dr. Alterman: To your mind, has the commission succeeded in doing what we set out to do, which was to provide some innovative tools to address this ancient challenge?

Mr. O’Brien: Jon, I think it has. Of course, I think we have to be modest in this. This has been going on since the pirates took Caesar as a hostage in 70 AD—or 70 BC. So this has been going on a long time. We're not going to solve it. But what we can do is make it better. Some of the things that the commission's come up with—and some of your ideas specifically, John—like increasing deterrence and working with our allies to get more of a united front, not just with America but the whole free world, getting behind the idea that hostage taking is just no longer something that can go on. It's got to be like piracy and slavery. It's got to be banished to those tiny corners of the world. And even there, we should seek out to end the scourge. So I think that that was a good idea. And I know that was something you were a big advocate for, and I think it makes a lot of sense. So I think we were successful. And I think if some of these tools are implemented—I mean, just on the individual basis, the idea that hostages come home and they've got back taxes and tax penalties, or that the FBI doesn't debrief them to find out what they could learn to help a future hostage in the same country—I mean, some of these are just common-sense ideas the commission's come up with. I think they make a lot of sense.

Mr. Rezaian: Ambassador, were some of these recommendations things that would have been helpful for you on the job as SPEHA, had they existed during that time?

Mr. O’Brien: One of the things I think about is the difference between a wrongful detainee and a hostage. So we had instances where we had families who the secretary wanted to be with—Secretary Pompeo—or the president wanted to meet with, or we had President Trump. And if they were considered, I quote, “hostage,” the FBI would pay for the airfare for the families to come. If you were a wrongful detainee, you had to foot your own airfare, and there was no help for you. So some basic things like that would have been quite helpful for me. We got it done. We always found money in the State Department or found some way to make it right for families because we didn't want to burden them at all. But it would have been easier if some of these recommendations of the commission were in place at the time.

Dr. Alterman: You had mentioned the importance of international cooperation. Where could we improve international cooperation, in your judgment?

Mr. O’Brien: Well, international cooperation is always hard, Jon. As you know, Churchill famously said the only thing worse than fighting a war with allies is fighting a war without allies. This is a bit of a diplomatic war. This hostage taking is increasing, unfortunately. I mean, we've got more and more countries that have decided there's a benefit to taking hostages and engaging in hostage diplomacy. We really have to—and the U.S. can deal with some of it—we can't deal with all of it. So we need our Anglosphere friends, our Five Eyes friends: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK. But we also need Japan and Germany and NATO. We need to really rally the free world so that these bad actor countries understand that if you take a hostage, you're not just going to spoil your relations with the United States—the country that you take the hostage from—you're going to create serious reputational damage to your nation beyond that country. We need somebody to understand if they take a Canadian hostage, they're taking on the U.S., they're taking on NATO, they're taking on Five Eyes and Japan and South Korea. And likewise, if someone takes an American hostage, it's not just poking the Yankees, it's not just poking the American bear—you're poking the whole world.

Mr. Rezaian: Ambassador O'Brien, you and I have been talking about these issues for coming up on a decade now, and we've seen a lot of twists and turns in the types of cases that there are. We've had some good successes bringing people home. But what would success look like to you on this issue if these commission reports were implemented?

Mr. O’Brien: Number one, you're the right guy to get on this commission to be talking about these issues, because you faced this issue. You yourself are a hostage. You're a Rafale Tani in Iran—and I'll put on a plug for your book I Was a Hostage. When your book came out, I was reading it on the plane coming back from an overseas visit, and it gave me a lot of insight. And so if people are interested in the issue, they should read your book. But look, what success would look like is—and I think we're seeing some of that with President Trump—that we get Americans home that are held abroad now, and we lessen the incentive for these bad accumulations—these countries or non-state actors that engage in malign activity—to take hostages. And we're going to lower the incentives and deter them and bring Americans home. We're going to eventually get to a point where the portfolio of hostages—the number of baseball cards I used to carry around—gets pretty small. That would be success.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you very much.

Mr. O’Brien: Great to be with both of you. Thanks, Jon. Thanks, Jason. Thank you.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you. Before we go any further, let me give you a sense of some of the report's recommendations.

The first is that the report focuses a lot on deterrence. People talk about deterrence in the hostage-taking space, but we really try to flesh out what deterrence should mean. When you're deterring, it means countries don't take Americans for leverage in the first place. How do you get there? As we thought about it, the way to get to more deterrence is by being able to communicate clearly to countries that the costs of taking Americans are higher than the rewards they're going to get.

One big way we discussed that was having the State Department issue an annual report on hostage-taking and wrongful detention. A key part of that report should be a clear ranking among countries based on how they handle hostage-taking and wrongful detention.

We came up with this idea of having tiers. If you're in Tier One, there's no recent history of wrongful detention or hostage-taking. Tier Two is a little more worrying—at least one recent case, or a country that imposes exit bans on Americans or reduces consular access for Americans who've been arrested. Tier Three gets into serious territory: ongoing engagement in wrongful detention or hostage-taking, failure to act against groups that do it, or continuing to hold Americans after being notified by the U.S. government that it considers the case one of wrongful detention or hostage-taking.

If you get to Tier Four, these are the really bad actors—persistent and systematic engagement in wrongful detention or hostage-taking, or support for groups or governments that do so. When you get to Tier Four, there are real consequences. The report sets out a whole series of punishments that the president can choose from. If you're in Tier Three, the president can impose one of these every year. In Tier Four, the president can impose three every year. If the hostage-taking and wrongful detention go away, the penalties go away. But there's a very clear correlation between what you do, how you behave, and the consequences of that behavior.

This adds transparency to both what governments are doing and how the U.S. government views what they're doing, and it creates consequences for bad behavior.

We also argue that there are times when states are really holding Americans hostage. We use the word “hostage” because it's all about leverage. Hostage-taking is a serious crime in many countries' domestic laws, including the United States. It's a crime in international law. We argue that if countries are doing this repeatedly, the U.S. government should have the option to say this is hostage-taking. The threat of calling it that, in some cases, influences government behavior. It should give the U.S. government tools in U.S. law and international law to punish perpetrators.

What it does is give American negotiators an opportunity to escalate—and hopefully resolve—these cases more quickly.

We also have a whole series of steps that try to encourage Americans to think twice, three times, four times before traveling to risky places—or for the organizations that sponsor them to think seriously before sending American citizens into dangerous environments. We thought about ways to make it less convenient for Americans to travel to some of these dangerous places.

We also have some recommendations about how the U.S. government should be organized to help take care of the families of those who’ve been wrongfully detained, and to support the detainees themselves after they return to the United States.

Mr. Rezaian: Jon, when a detainee—a hostage—comes home, I speak from experience. It’s a joyous and wonderful chapter in your life, but the honeymoon ends really quickly. Unfortunately, the U.S. government isn’t set up to properly support these returning detainees.

Whether it’s problems with your credit history, back taxes that shockingly mount up while you’re being detained, or issues with bureaucratic details—like getting a driver’s license renewed or your insurance reinstated—this is the sort of thing the U.S. government can and should be doing to help returning hostages.

It’s not a massive number of people. We're talking about dozens of people a year—and hopefully fewer in the future—but we really should put a concerted effort into supporting these folks when they get home and have systems in place.

Also, bafflingly, there isn’t a process of debriefing wrongful detainees when they return. I, and every former hostage of the Islamic Republic of Iran, will tell you that none of us—although we've been held by the same perpetrators—have been put through a process of debriefing or providing details about our captivity. I think that's a major lapse and something we should fix.

Dr. Alterman: All very important. But of course, this really isn’t about bureaucratic issues. It’s about people. And there’s no one better at reminding us of the human cost of this practice than Diane Foley.

The journalist Jim Foley was kidnapped in Syria on November 22, 2012, and was killed by ISIS on August 19, 2014. Two weeks later, his mother, Ms. Diane Foley, created the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to address the problem of kidnapping, engage the U.S. government, and help others avoid the same fate as her beloved son. Ms. Foley, thank you so much for joining us. One of the things that struck me as we've talked—and as I’ve seen what the Foley Foundation has done—is how you've really brought home the extent to which the victims of kidnapping, hostage-taking, and wrongful detention aren't just those being held. It’s the families, too.

Diane Foley: Exactly. I was shocked when Jim was beheaded after nearly two years in captivity. I couldn’t believe that our government had not only abandoned him, but also the three other Americans who were with him. In that same time frame, there were four others who were actually abandoned by our government. It became clear to me that our government needed to rethink this. I just couldn't believe it. We had three youngsters in the military, and they always said we never leave an American behind.

I applauded that idea, but knowing that our son had gone into Syria as a journalist—just like Jason—wanting to make sure the world could understand what was happening there, the fact that our government did not see his return as a priority was very concerning to me. I felt our country could, and had to, do better. That was my hope.

Mr. Rezaian: Diane, at the time Jim was taken hostage, how was the government set up to deal with families, if at all?

Ms. Foley: It wasn’t. As a matter of fact, I quit my job in early 2013 because I thought, "Golly, I've got to figure this out." I began monthly trips to Washington. I was cordially received but passed around, if you will. I always met with mid-level people who had no power to help me. No one was really honest with me until much later—just a few months before Jim’s murder—when David Bradley helped us realize that Jim was not alone, but with other Americans. That’s when we finally got some straight answers. Mark Mitchell was very clear in telling us that our government was going to do nothing. They were not going to send a rescue mission or ask another country to help us. But if we dared to pay ransom, we could face prosecution. It was a really daunting way to be treated. However, he was the most truthful.

Dr. Alterman: People talk now about the hostage enterprise. How was it created, and how does it engage with families in the same position you were in back in 2012 and 2013?

Ms. Foley: There was nothing when I was going through it. Within a month of Jim’s murder, we were at the White House talking about the fact that we could do better.

After that, poor Stephen was killed, then Peter, and shortly after, Kayla. It became obvious to the Obama administration that they at least had to address the issue. They told me they were trying to figure out how to do so.

In the new year, Obama tasked the National Counterterrorism Center with evaluating our hostage response as a nation. His Presidential Policy Directive 30 came out at the end of June 2015. That directive established the three-pronged government hostage enterprise that exists today: the Hostage Recovery Group at the White House National Security Council, the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department, and the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell based at the FBI.

It really wasn’t meant to be based at the FBI, since it is supposed to be an interagency fusion cell, but the FBI provided the space, so that’s where it remains. That enterprise has endured ever since and was codified with the Levinson Act in 2020.

Mr. Rezaian: Diane, one of the things you’ve been so influential in is creating a community through the Foley Foundation to bring families together. From experience, I can tell you that’s meant a lot to me and my family—and so many others. Talk about what it's been like to build that community.

Ms. Foley: That felt so important, Jason, because it is such a lonely experience. In our case, our government didn’t even let us know there were other U.S. citizens with Jim. It was only through the help of my friend David Bradley that we learned Jim was not alone.

Shortly after Jim’s murder, so many good people sent us donations to do something in his name. That became part of the impetus to find a silver lining—something that could carry Jim’s moral courage and goodness into the world.

First, we helped fund Hostage U.S. so they could get a matching grant from the Ford Foundation. Then we supported the Alliance for a Culture of Safety. Eventually, we began our own advocacy efforts within the government.

Dr. Alterman: You’ve been doing this for more than 10 years. As you said, the hostage enterprise is profoundly different now. The problem has shifted from terrorist groups to state actors. In your mind, what’s left to do? What are the most important priorities?

Ms. Foley: There’s still a lot of work to do.

Stateside, we need to improve the wrongful detention designation process and make it more transparent for families so they know where they stand. We need to help hostages when they come home. There’s a huge number of problems they face. Jason knows this firsthand—hostages who’ve been in captivity for five to ten years are asked to pay taxes, they’re behind on their bills. It’s ludicrous.

There’s also the urgent need for mental health and physical support when people return after many years in captivity.

On a broader scale, we must ask: How do we stop this? How do we deter the use of human beings as political pawns? That’s a huge international effort. Thankfully, it’s begun through partnerships with Canada, the United Nations, and others to address arbitrary detention. But we must strategically decide, as a nation, how we are going to deter this practice.

Dr. Alterman: Diane, as always, thank you very much for your work and your vision. Thank you.

Ms. Foley: Thank you both for all you’re doing.

Dr. Alterman: Jason, as you know, Diane is a remarkable advocate for families. Let’s now talk with someone who sees his job as fighting for hostages and wrongfully detained Americans every day.

Adam Boehler is the Special Envoy for Hostage Response in the Trump administration. He's a healthcare executive, a founding board member of Operation Warp Speed that developed a COVID vaccine, and the first CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Mr. Boehler, thank you very much for joining us. You were the Special Envoy for Hostage Response. You could have had almost any job in this administration. Why did you want this one?

Adam Boehler: When I was running DFC, a lot of what we did was foreign policy as well as development work, and I worked very closely with Robert O'Brien when he was National Security Advisor. In my first meeting with Robert—in Asia—it was also the first time I met him. He met the president of China, and we were negotiating back and forth. He gave two Bibles to the president of China and asked him to bring them to some hostages China had at the time.

After the meeting, I said, “Oh wow, I’ve never been in a meeting like that.” I had known the prior NSA, and no one had ever brought something like that up. He explained his prior role at SPEHA, and it stuck with me. I thought, what an unbelievable job—to be able to work to bring Americans home. Something so tangible, and I’m sure so rewarding. When this role came up, it was the first thing I thought of.

Mr. Rezaian: Can you talk a bit about your approach to doing this work and how it may be different from your predecessors, Robert O'Brien and Roger Carstens?

Mr. Boehler: There are probably both similarities and some differences. First, the goal for my team and me is the same: bringing every single American home and making sure other countries don't take Americans again. We're 100% focused on that mission.

One thing that’s different—every administration is different—is that the President of the United States has this very much in his heart. President Trump has been very empowering. He also recognized that there are a lot of technical classifications: when someone is technically a hostage, when they become wrongfully detained, unjustly detained, and so on.

In this administration, the President empowered me to say it’s not just wrongfully detained and hostages. Anyone unjustly detained—we want to make sure we’re working across the whole of government to get those Americans out. That’s been very empowering, but it’s also an evolution. I don’t see it as being different from Robert’s approach. I think you stand on the shoulders of great people before you. The role itself has evolved.

Dr. Alterman: You’ve been in all kinds of negotiations with all kinds of people, but you hadn’t negotiated for the freedom of Americans before this job. What have you learned that you didn’t know before?

Mr. Boehler: In a job like this, you're dealing with bad guys—sometimes really bad guys. You have to hold your own in those meetings. You need to think through and put yourself in their place, even if that feels very odd. The best way to understand the situation is by trying to understand the incentives on the other side, even if they’re very bad people.

It’s a different skill set. Until you do it, you don’t know if you can. You don’t know if you can sit in a room with people who have an extremely different approach than you do. That’s a very important part of the role—to sit down with people and do the best you can in all circumstances to accomplish your mission, which is to bring Americans home.

Mr. Rezaian: What are the useful tools recommended in this commission report that you’d be happy to have in doing this job?

Mr. Boehler: The report focuses a lot on deterrence, which I like. Getting Americans home is one goal, but just as important—if not more so—is making sure they’re never taken in the first place. Strong deterrence is critical.

The report identifies both positive and negative levers to ensure that people understand taking Americans is not productive. It doesn’t result in a better deal. In fact, we can’t even have serious discussions until you’re not holding Americans. It’s unacceptable.

Some elements in the report send the clear message: don’t take Americans in the first place, because it’s going to be a disaster once you do.

Dr. Alterman: You’ll have to talk to Adam Boehler.

Mr. Boehler: That’s right. No one wants to talk to me. Once I show up, it’s no good.

Dr. Alterman: Adam, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for the work you do.

Mr. Boehler: Thank you, guys.

Dr. Alterman: Diane Foley and Adam Boehler talked about the importance of deterrence—but what does that really mean? There’s no better person to ask than Professor Danielle Gilbert. She’s a political scientist at Northwestern University and a pioneer in using the tools of political science to understand hostage taking and how to stop it.

Dani, help us understand this. Can you explain what deterrence is? And if deterrence doesn’t work, where does that leave us?

Danielle Gilbert: When we talk about deterrence, it’s about preventing someone from doing something they haven’t done yet. It’s about maintaining the status quo—making sure someone doesn’t take an action you don’t want them to take.

Compellence is the flip side. It’s about convincing someone, through threats or promises, to take an action they otherwise might not take. Compellence is about changing behavior, whereas deterrence is about preventing behavior.

Dr. Alterman: How often is compellence successful?

Dr. Gilbert: The academic literature suggests that compellence is successful only about a third of the time.

These studies often look at economic sanctions—policies imposed on adversaries or foreign governments. For example, we might sanction a country’s economy because of a certain behavior, hoping the sanctions will force a change. But those efforts are only successful a small minority of the time. Most of the time, compellence fails.

Dr. Alterman: How do you see the commission report’s recommendations contributing to deterrence?

Dr. Gilbert: The key question is: How can the U.S. government deter countries from getting into the hostage-taking business in the first place? How can we convince countries that it is not in their interest to take Americans and hold them for leverage?

Right now, a lot of perpetrators see significant value in hostage taking. They’re not doing it out of sadism; they’re doing it because they see it as a means to an end. So the challenge is to shift that cost-benefit analysis. We have to make it clear that it’s not worth a government’s while to arbitrarily, wrongfully, or coercively detain an American.

This report lays out ways the U.S. government can send that message. It recommends an annual report to Congress assessing countries’ involvement in hostage taking: How many Americans are they holding? Under what conditions? How widespread or severe is the practice?

Countries would then be ranked according to these public metrics. Based on their ranking, they’d fall into different levels—and with each level, clear consequences would follow. For example, if a country escalates from minimal involvement to more active hostage taking, specific punishments would be triggered. If a country begins engaging in hostage taking for the first time, there would be defined repercussions.

This system creates clear, public criteria and holds the government accountable for issuing a yearly assessment. The goal is to make the consequences of hostage taking immediate and predictable—thus deterring the behavior.

Dr. Alterman: You’ve used the term “hostage taking” repeatedly. As you know, the U.S. government currently avoids using that language. How did you come to believe that "hostage taking" is the right term in some cases?

Dr. Gilbert: The criteria for determining wrongful or unlawful detention vary widely—there are eleven different criteria. When I looked closely at those, I saw that some align with the international legal category of arbitrary detention. But one of those criteria aligns very clearly with hostage taking.

That criterion involves holding someone for leverage—to pressure the U.S. government to change its behavior. These are the cases we’re most familiar with in the media and in public discourse: governments like Venezuela, Russia, or Iran using their criminal justice systems to detain Americans in order to coerce concessions. These might include prisoner swaps, financial payments, or the lifting of sanctions.

In those cases, I believe we should call it what it is: hostage taking. And we should refer to the individuals involved as hostages—not because of anything they did, but because they are being used as bargaining chips.

It matters that we call this practice hostage taking because international law prohibits it. Hostage taking is a criminal offense. If we want to develop serious international cooperation and legal mechanisms—both domestic and global—to deal with this issue, we need to name it clearly and accurately.

Dr. Alterman: We can’t forget that the phenomenon of hostage taking isn’t about theory—it’s about real people.

Sarah Levinson Moriarty is the daughter of Robert Levinson, an American businessman who disappeared on Kish Island, off the southern coast of Iran, in 2007. For many years, the U.S. government said it didn’t know where he was. It ultimately concluded that he was captured by the government of Iran and died in captivity.

Sarah, thank you very much for joining us.

Sarah Moriarty: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Alterman: You and your family have really turned tragedy into purpose. What was it like dealing with the U.S. government when your dad disappeared?

Ms. Moriarty: It was really hard. My mom, my brother, and my aunt were the ones having regular—probably daily—conversations with the U.S. government.

But it was argumentative. It was confrontational. There was a lot of infighting and a lack of clarity about who to talk to regarding which issue. That confusion persisted for a very long time.

This was at the very beginning of Americans being taken, and there was no playbook. Trying to navigate that complicated government landscape without any guidance was extremely difficult. I’m very thankful that we’ve seen some progress in this space since then—progress that can help others where it was so hard for my family.

Dr. Alterman: One of the areas where you’ve been especially creative and articulate is in finding ways to convince people that some places simply aren’t safe to travel to. How should we think about persuading people not to travel to dangerous places?

Ms. Moriarty: It’s hard, because I think everyone believes it could never happen to them. Some people go to these places thinking they’re safe, or that they’re just visiting nearby—like someone going to Colombia and not realizing they might cross into Venezuela. Then suddenly, they find themselves over the border and taken.

We need to get through to every American that this could happen to anyone. It could be our neighbor. It could be our friend. It could be our family member.

Dr. Alterman: But that’s about us. What about the countries that are holding Americans?

Ms. Moriarty: My dad was the first to be taken in what we now consider the new hostage crisis. We've been watching this happen for 18 years, and nothing tangible has ever been done to stop it.

Right now, we’re averaging at least one American being taken every week, and while there have been some really successful negotiations to bring people home, we’ve done nothing concrete to prevent it from continuing.

Countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia continue building their stockpiles—detaining more Americans to prepare for their next negotiation. We need deterrence, not just to stop these countries from continuing this behavior, but to prevent other countries from learning from them and doing it themselves.

Mr. Rezaian: Well, I believe and I hope you both agree that the report is filled with new and innovative ideas on that very issue. Thank you very much for all the work.

Dr. Alterman: And that's partly due to Sarah's contribution. So thank you.

Ms. Moriarty: Thank you. And both of you, thank you for all of your great work to bring this important issue to the forefront on everyone's minds.

Dr. Alterman: For five years, the person in the U.S. government who thought more than anyone about Americans being wrongfully held abroad was Ambassador Roger Carstens. Appointed the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs by President Trump in 2020, President Biden retained him in the role, and he served throughout Biden’s administration. Roger, what are some of the most important lessons you learned from being in the role of the Special Presidential Envoy?

Roger Carstens: One of them would be empathy. If you cannot be empathetic, then you really can't work in this space. I say that with regard to how a person, as a government employee, should and must treat the family members of someone who's been detained. You have to bring every ounce of empathy to these engagements and recognize that there's something they're going through that you'll never be able to comprehend. But you have to try to at least do your best to put yourself in their place so that you can treat them the way that they need to be treated—and that's with love, respect, kindness, and compassion.

The empathy also extends to negotiations. When you're negotiating with a hostile opponent or someone who's taken an American citizen wrongly, you still have to be empathetic and show respect. I found that going in with arrogance and a lack of humility does not get me closer to the objective. Going in with empathy, respect, and seeking to understand what the other side is trying to communicate and what they want to achieve usually brings us closer to getting the result we want—bringing that American home.

Dr. Alterman: You had the title of Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, but in many ways, you needed a lot of other people in the government to help you. How were you able to be successful in getting the entire U.S. government aligned with what you were trying to achieve?

Mr. Carstens: I found that the most important negotiations are not the ones with the country, hostage-taker, or terrorist group that's holding your American citizen. The most important negotiations are the ones that take place in Washington, D.C., within the interagency space.

You'll find yourself, when trying to align people with a certain strategy, negotiating with members of the Department of Treasury, the Secretary of State's office, other people within the State Department buildings, as well as the CIA, the Department of Defense, and really just the White House writ large. While you might think that getting someone back from Venezuela requires a negotiation between the United States and President Maduro, what you really find is that the negotiation is only successful if you're able to align people within the U.S. government—come up with the strategy, determine what the United States is willing to give to get its citizens back, and then develop a process for these back-and-forths with those actually holding American citizens.

It's never just SPEHA. It's never really just the Department of State or the U.S. government. A lot of times it requires partners, allies, NGOs, self-empowered individuals, members of the media, businesses. It's a huge effort. Only with everyone in the mix—trying to get aligned, come up with that strategy, and execute it—do you end up bringing someone home.

Dr. Alterman: You had a lot of triumphs in your time and a lot of frustrations. Was there a moment that struck you as the best moment? And was there a moment that struck you as the hardest?

Mr. Carstens: Maybe I had a best moment multiplied by 65 times. That was that very short moment—it doesn't last forever; it might be a 10-second snapshot of months and months, maybe years of work. But when the American who's been held out of reach from their loved ones for two, three, four, five years is finally released by the terrorist group or hostile nation, and they return to the United States, step on the U.S. tarmac, and fall into the arms of their families—that's always the most powerful, righteous, and joyous moment you experience in this effort.

It really is brutal, hard work. For the most part, you're failing, failing, failing. Then things suddenly seem to come together like a Rubik's Cube. Everything aligns, and you're able to get your victory in short order. But to witness that 10-second reunion on a tarmac on U.S. soil might take two or three years of brutal, hard, nonstop work to reach that moment.

Dr. Alterman: Last question. We came up with this report that had a lot of recommendations. One, is there anything that strikes you as especially helpful? And related to that, would the recommendations we're making have helped you be successful and have more of those moments of joy in your job?

Mr. Carstens: When I take a look at the recommendations, I find myself wishing that I would have had some of them implemented while I was at SPEHA. There are things on the list that I think are going to change the game.

One has been very important to Mr. Rezaian, and that is the expansion and greater use of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. If you're able to take a judgment or file a lawsuit against a nation-state that has taken you or your loved ones and held them hostage, that's going to start changing the calculus on these nations. It's also going to send a strong message to people even thinking about doing that.

I also support succeeding on the prevention side of the house. I love some of the recommendations that would hopefully discourage U.S. citizens from risky travel behavior—anything from taxing or surcharging travel fees for people trying to get to a place that’s rather scary, a place that might actually detain them. I think it's also important to acknowledge the risk you're about to take, especially if you're an organization. Whether you're a business or an NGO putting your people in harm's way, it's important to acknowledge that risk—maybe even the individual should.

If I could leave you with one more, I was always—while grateful that the Levinson Act of 2020 gave us the 11 criteria to use to identify when someone's been wrongfully detained—I always felt like we didn't get it right. I always felt uncomfortable when we couldn't explain our thought process to members of Congress, when they were trying to hold us accountable, or to the family of someone who wanted to know why their loved one had not yet been declared wrongfully detained.

The one thing that hits me most personally from these recommendations is increasing the clarity that surrounds the wrongful detention process. That alone will increase trust in the government. It will make things a lot clearer for case officers in SPEHA and the USG writ large. And it will allow those who hold us accountable—members of the media and Capitol Hill—to better evaluate whether the U.S. government, the executive branch, is hitting its milestones and objectives, and doing the jobs we've been entrusted to do.

In the three areas I outlined, I wish I would have had those while I was at SPEHA. I'm grateful for all of these recommendations—they're all solid. And the reason they're solid is because CSIS did a masterful job of bringing together the right group of people from all different parts of the hostage recovery enterprise to bring these recommendations to the fore. I'm grateful for the chance to speak about them.

Dr. Alterman: Thank you, Roger.

We hope today's presentation has given you a sense of the seriousness of the challenge of hostage-taking and wrongful detention, some of the remarkable people who are helping to fight this phenomenon, and some of the tools we can use to make the practice even less common. You can find the entire report, a one-page summary of its conclusions, and a moving personal introduction to the topic that Mr. Rezaian wrote on the CSIS website, www.csis.org.

Mr. Rezaian: In closing, Jon, I just want to say a deep personal thank you to you and to CSIS for believing in the importance of this issue, for giving space for this commission, and to the commissioners who took part, to the officials and members of the U.S. government from both parties who put their personal politics aside and got to work with us on this issue, and to all our friends in academia and journalism who have taken this issue so seriously and engaged with you, me, and the entire commission on our findings.

This is the culmination of two years of intense work, and I believe, if implemented, it has a real opportunity to change the equation. I hope that policymakers and stakeholders agree and take a good look at our recommendations.

Thank you all for being with us. Thank you.