Negotiating for American Hostages Overseas and in Gaza

WASHINGTON (07-16) – Former Israel Defense Forces special operations officer Mickey Bergman, who has been engaged in the delicate art of international high-stake hostage negotiations for the release of Americans being held overseas for the past 18 years, spoke of his experiences at the Stimson Center in introducing his new book “In The Shadows.”

Working through both the Richardson Center for Global Engagement and Global Reach, the nonprofit company he co-founded along with philanthropist Steve Menzies in 2023, in the past ten years, “worked on 124 cases of wrongfully held prisoners worldwide” 78 of whom are now safely at home with their families.

Recognizing the need to negotiate for a hostage’s release in a more innovative manner than the usual bureaucratic approach, Bergman embarked on what he calls ‘Fringe Diplomacy’ connoting “an innovative discipline exploring the space just beyond the boundaries of states and governments’ capacity and authority in international relations.”

Global Reach as a private non-profit NGO works only on behalf of the families of those illegally detained and does not work for any government or government agencies. The organization works for free and does not seek any form of remuneration including donations from the families involved in their work. Instead, it relies solely on funds coming from philanthropic largess.

Negotiations happen, he explained, through building a personal relationship to establish “familiarity and trust” with states actors holding hostages, and in the discovery of and development of an “engagement reason” for why they are trying to gain in country access to open talks. This can be most challenging as the approach to each situation is as unique as its captors and the circumstances surrounding each hostage’s detainment. Bergman described how studying the person would approach in negotiations was a crucial factor in developing an “emotional attachment” with them.

He went on to speak of former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson whom he described as his mentor and Richardson’s ability to develop personal relationships easily in pursuit of their goals.

While they do not work for the US State Department or any government agency, they do coordinate their activities in many cases with them and on occasion do work around them to achieve the desired outcome for a hostage’s release.

Two salient points he made regarding hostage negotiations were that countries that have sanctions imposed upon them have a greater need and do take hostages regularly to relieve some of that pressure and that often the first deal for a release is the best deal as the terms “never get better.”

During his discussion in the one-on-one interview with Stimson Center’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Brian Finlay, Bergman went on to describe some of the negotiations that their work has successfully resolved.

One case in point is that of long-time Russian hostage Paul Whelan who he described as having “been left behind four times” since his capture in 2018. Whelan, who was falsely accused of espionage during a two-week vacation to Russia, has been passed over in various attempts to win his release due to numerous circumstances that among others include the war in Ukraine and the release of Brittany Griner.

Bergman stated that it would be highly unlikely that Whelan would be released soon and that the assumption in Washington is that “Putin does not want to do anything in an election season that makes President Biden look good.” And in belief that the “window of opportunity will open after the elections no matter who wins,” a position Bergman refuses to accept as he continues working for Whelan’s pre-election release along with hopefully six others.

As both an Israeli and a hostage negotiator he was asked by Stimson fellow Barbara Slavin why the Israelis have not taken the ceasefire deal to see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. He responded by indicting that while at first the return of 109 Hamas hostages was regarded as a success, since then “We have failed.”

Noting that the Israelis and Hamas “look differently” on negotiations, he furthered with the failure of the Israeli prime minister to seek the right incentives confessing that he himself “can’t come up with the one thing that would change Bibi’s mind” and that has caused him “a lot of sadness.” Saying, “the Israeli prime minister believes that as long as there are hostages, there’s justification for the war. As long as there is a war, there’s no elections in Israel” and that currently Netanyahu is not electable.

One of the options Bergman believes would force Netanyahu into negotiating in earnest after nine months of failures would be for “President Biden to utilize his responsibility and opportunity to get a deal…that would bring back the Americans, not to spite Israel or to spite Bibi but to prove that it’s possible.” That he described as the “biggest leverage we have to force Bibi into the deal. Because that would be very hard for Bibi to digest for his public. That the American president brought Israeli hostages back home because the Americans are also Israelis and were brought home without him.”

He concluded by saying: “The Israelis believe that military pressure would decrease the price of a hostage deal, which it does not,” because it “miscalculates how Hamas looks at it. In fact, the more pieces of Gaza that the IDF took, the more Hamas will require of Israel to get the hostage deal.” Thus, he noted, Israel has increased the price of “the transaction.”

The work does not end, however, with a hostage’s release as it is important, too, to work on deterrence so that the taking of hostages is less appealing to those so inclined. Bergman indicated that his job is to bring the hostages home and that you cannot work in both arenas at the same time.

He opined, however, that “Sanctions don’t work” and that countries that look at the taking of hostages as statecraft such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela until recently, and China are the most sanctioned by the U.S. He speculated that countries that have hundreds and thousands of sanctions imposed on them utilize hostage taking as a means of “communication.” And that it is the negotiator’s job to determine what is being related through various means in determining just what is being asked for.

Bergman believes that one means of impacting the taking of hostages is the imposition of sanctions against individuals responsible in any way for wronging an American and that “there should be no reason why that person cannot be indicted in the U.S.” and a Red Notice (International warrant to detain a person) issued for them. He reflected on the seriousness of these types of crimes as a “national security crisis.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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