Making Sense with Sam Harris - #132 — Freeing the Hostages

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Sam Harris speaks with Chris Voss about his experience as a hostage negotiator for the FBI. They discuss different types of hostage crises, along with many of the lessons that apply to negotiating in normal life. SUBSCRIBE to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at samharris.org/subscribe.

Thank you. of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming Today I'm speaking with Chris Voss. Chris is an expert in negotiation. He's the founder and principal of the Black Swan Group, which consults with Fortune 500 companies about negotiation. He also teaches at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and at Georgetown University's School of Business.

He's lectured at many leading institutions, Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern. And perhaps most relevant to our conversation today, he was a hostage negotiator for the FBI for many years. And we spend most of our time talking about his experience in the field there, negotiating with terrorists and ordinary hostage takers and bank robbers. And then he has distilled some of the lessons he's learned from those extreme conversations for more ordinary ones. And he's written a book on negotiation titled Never Split the Difference, Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It. And now, without further delay, I bring you Chris Voss. I am here with Chris Voss. Chris, thanks for coming on the podcast. Sam, my pleasure. Sorry I made it so hard getting all my tech set up. Not at all. It's amazing we can do this remotely. So let's just jump into your background because you have more

than the usually fascinating background for a podcast guest. Thank you. How is it that you became a hostage negotiator? Okay. All right. So the pivot point in the FBI, because I was an FBI hostage negotiator and you have to be an FBI agent first to be an FBI hostage negotiator. I was actually a member of the SWAT team. I was on SWAT FBI Pittsburgh and I had a recurring knee injury. And I realized that there's only so many times they could put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I'd had my knee reconstructed for the second time. And so then before I blew it out entirely, I thought, you know, I talk to people every day. How hard could it be to talk to terrorists? I could do that. Is this the usual

path to becoming a hostage negotiator? Do they just draw from the ranks of existing law enforcement? Or I guess for the FBI, anyone who's in the rank and file? Or do most people seek it out in a very deliberate way through a separate track? It's a little bit more that people seek it out after becoming whatever law enforcement agency they're in. I mean, every law enforcement agency has additional specialties that if you get into it, there might be something that attracts you. And there are kind of four basic specialties and there are four basic real different types. You know, negotiation is one of those.

And you can be a hostage negotiator with the FBI. You can be a hostage negotiator with New York City Police Department. You got to be a law enforcement guy with that agency first. And then if you find it, if it finds you, whatever serendipity lines up, and hopefully it's your calling. And I originally thought SWAT was my calling. And thank God I hurt my knee because negotiation was better for me than SWAT ever was. And SWAT was great. How long were you a SWAT operator? our SWAT school, but there was a lot of local training with the Pittsburgh team. And then plus I'd been a cop before, so I was used to running around waving guns responsibly as opposed to not paying attention to what you were doing. So I was a Pittsburgh SWAT for about a year and a half, two years. So you went from Pittsburgh SWAT to FBI SWAT or FBI negotiation? Yeah, it's all confusing, right? All right. So

Pittsburgh FBI has its own office and they got their own SWAT team. They got their own negotiation team. Each field office, about 56 of them have their own teams, if you will. And I had gotten transferred to New York in the interim and then worked to get on the New York hostage team. And how many hostage negotiations were you involved in? Is this the kind of thing you keep count of? I would imagine it might be. Well, hey, yeah, you know, not just on a bedpost, right? Or on the belt or the totem pole or wherever you want to put it.

But I was, while I was in New York, uh, I was involved in probably about off the top of my head, three sieges, um, of varying sizes. Fortune, fortunate for me,

one of them was a bank robbery with hostages, which is really a really extremely unusual event. Uh, happens in the movies all the time in real life. Bank robberies where hostages are taken and negotiations subsequently ensue are very rare. It happens about once every 20 years in New York City, about the same amount across the US. I mean, just rare. Usually the bank robbers get away first. So yeah, I'd been in one of those and a couple of some fugitives in a high rise in Harlem, smaller situation in upstate New York.

So that was a fair amount, relatively speaking. Most negotiators don't get that many in an entire career. I got them in just a couple of years. Negotiators don't get that many in an entire career. I got them in in just a couple of years. And then when I became a full-time hostage negotiator at the FBI Academy at Quantico, we started working stuff right and left. And I probably worked, counting the kidnappings, I worked internationally. My rough guess is no less than 150 situations around the world. And can you generalize about the dynamics of a hostage negotiation, or do they change radically and maybe even totally invert depending on the context?

Because I can imagine there are, and I'm kind of thinking in international terms here, where there are countries where they routinely take hostages as a kind of, you know, cottage industry where it's just, it's not routine to kill the hostages and it's very routine to just negotiate until you get some economic completion. Whereas, you know, if ISIS is taking hostages now, we know all too well that it's very common to have them killed. What can you say about the different kinds of situations people are in? Yeah, great question. I mean, so domestic U.S. contains situation inside a bank, inside somebody's house, inside an apartment in Harlem. You know, that resembles a family holiday dinner. Lots of people upset, you know, past wrongs that other people have completely forgotten about being thrown on people's faces. You know, like all the, you know,

every year there's a movie out about a holiday dinner at somebody's house and with siblings mad at each other and parents trying to hold it all together. That's a little more common, contained situation, if you will. Very much as you observed, international kidnapping mostly is a commodities business. Commodity cold-heartedly happens to be human beings. And there's perception and reality. Perception is people get killed all the time. Even with ISIS, reality, it's a financial transaction.

You know, ISIS, their commodity was lots of different citizens, and they got what they could out of them, whether it be publicity or money. They get money for Western Europeans. They get publicity for Americans. But there's always a commodity there. The challenge is spotting what the commodity really is in any negotiation. Yeah, well, that's an interesting point, because with respect to international hostages, even The challenge is spotting what the commodity really is in any conditions. And there were a few well-publicized cases where the U.S. even made it illegal for the families to pay ransoms, whereas these Western European countries, many of them routinely pay ransoms. And so you become a very unlucky hostage if you're

the American among many Western Europeans. I don't know if that's changed at all. What is the current U.S. policy with respect to negotiating and paying ransom for international hostages? Well, the U.S. policy is all gray, and that's why it's been reported so many different ways in the media, and it was actually funneled back to the families improperly by the wrong U.S. government officials. I mean, there was a bonehead at the, and I'm happy to say it was a bonehead, at the National Security Council that was quoting it wrong the entire time. You know, what nobody knew was that nobody from the Department of Justice ever told the families it was illegal for them to pay ransom. And the Department of Justice, people responsible for prosecution, the National Security Council, BO Department of Justice people were responsible for prosecution.

The National Security Council, BOZO, was not responsible for prosecution and was ultimately essentially relieved of his position because he handled the family so badly. What does all that mean? What all that really means is the U.S. doesn't make concessions. U.S. doesn't make concessions. And there's some real fine nuancing to that. But there is room to allow ransoms to be paid. But U.S. government officials aren't always smart enough to know that. The issue is, what's the long-term consequences as opposed to the short-term expediency? And of course, there's the way the Europeans do it. And, you know, they back up to the hostage takers strongholds with truckloads of money and dump it all out on them, which makes it far worse for the rest of the world. And that's what would turn it into chaos. I mean, all the Western European nations are famous for showing up with suitcases, if not truckloads of money for hostages. And that's where things really get out of control. Yeah. So what should the policy be in your view? Because it's easy to see how we would be creating this industry by rewarding it so reflexively. And yet when you are in a specific situation where, especially if it's your loved one who's hostage, you can imagine that there's just this moral and psychological imperative to just pay at any cost, and you

really don't care about the external effects of creating higher risk for other people in the future. What do you think, if we could get everyone on the same page with respect to how to treat these situations, everyone being all the relevant countries, what should people do? Well, you know, the best analogy is the bank robbery analogy. We give bank tellers bait money. And that way you give the bank robber a little bit of money. The money's marked. And the bank robber gets his money and he leaves. I didn't even know that. Is this widely reported or I just haven't watched the right movies?

All bank tellers have money that they can just hand over? All bank tellers have bait money and every single one of them and they're all trained. Bank robber comes in the bank, you reach for the bait money, you hand them that money. It's not worth losing the life of a bank teller over a couple of hundred, few thousand dollars.

So you save the bank teller's life. The bank robber gets some of what he came in for. He's scared. He's rattled. He just wants to take the money and run. He gets the money and run. Now, the bait money's marked. So the great thing about that is there's probably an exploding die pack inside the bait money. And as soon as the bank robber steps out, it goes pow poof and it puts all sorts of green die all over the bank robber. But even if the die pack doesn't go off and he goes back to his hideout and he splits the money up among his co-conspirators who didn't go to the bank, money's ridiculously easy to trace, insanely easy to trace. How is that? I can't picture how it would be easy to trace. Yeah, you know, it's only in the serial numbers. I mean, it's, and those of us that aren't in the

business of tracing money, we figure it's complicated because we don't keep close track of our money. But ever since, you know, the U.S. Watergate days, the refrain was follow the money. Well, it's follow the money because the money is insanely easy to follow. You can you can follow it back. You can find out, you know, who else had the money. It actually is a great way to round up the entire gang instead of just, you know, the guy that they thought was expendable enough to send into the bank to get the money for everybody else. So you can round up the whole gang if you follow the money. And that's really where it comes down to. There was a, it was a kidnapping in Ecuador in about 2000, the first time the US government tried this. This kidnapping gang had been hitting

oil platforms every year around October and had been getting away with money because there's insurance money for kidnapping. And the third time they hit it, unfortunately, an American was executed. But then the US government decided like, all right, so we're going to get behind this payment and we're going to follow the money. And what ended up happening, because it only takes about five or six guys to conduct the kidnapping. Well, they made the payment. They followed the money. They rounded up 50 people, and they shut down the entire kidnapping gang, and they never executed another kidnapping. They never killed another person. This was the first time the entire organization had ever been taken down. It was incredibly successful. Now,

organization had ever been taken down. It was incredibly successful. Now, they didn't get all the money back, but what they did was save countless lives on down the line by following the money and taking out the entire gang of 50 instead of maybe taking five. Had they gone on a rescue, maybe they'd have gotten three, four, five kidnappers. The rest of them would have gotten away. A lot of hostages would have got killed. You know, the long-term solution is to be smarter than the bad guys. And that's the way you're smarter than the bad guys. Walk me back to the analogy from bank robbing to other hostage situations. So what should be the international policy with respect to terrorist organizations? Well, first of all, you go ahead and engage in the conversation. The U.S. policy actually is explicitly stated these days that we shouldn't be afraid to communicate with anybody.

We should, the old John F. Kennedy line, you should never be afraid to negotiate, never negotiate out of fear, but never be afraid to negotiate. So communicate. The communication process becomes an intelligence gathering process. You generate a lot of information. You learn a lot about them. You profile them. You learn their tendencies. They tell you who they are inadvertently by their word choice. You can narrow down where they're from, how old they are, where they grew up by their choices of words. And you talk to multiple people on the other side. You gather a massive amount of information. You actually give yourself a better chance to conduct a rescue if you engage in communication. Then if you get into some bargaining, you bargain them down. They want some money. They want to take the money and run. You find a way to make the delivery.

You gather information over the delivery. You find out about how they pick up money, where they go, what they do with it. You follow the money and you follow them back to their hideout. You trace the money. You find out where they're buying weapons. You find out where they're buying bandages. You find out where they're buying beer, whatever they're buying. Who are they doing business with?

What's the illegal markets they're spending their money in? Because they're buying weapons someplace. You want to know who they're buying beer, whatever they're buying. Who are they doing business with? What's the illegal markets they're spending their money in? Because they're buying weapons someplace. You want to know who they're buying them from. You trace all the money. You do a couple of month investigation. You not only bring the kidnappers to justice, but you bring justice to their colleagues that have been supporting them also. It's long term.

It requires patience and it works. But how does one trace money in these kinds of transactions? I mean, for instance, I just walked into a market and used a $20 bill. Had I gotten that from a bank robbery, I can only imagine that just disappears into the economy without a trace. That's what you imagine. And that's why. That's why I'm a bad bank robber.

The guys that do white collar round all these people up. I mean, the greatest investigations in the world that Al Capone was taken down by a white collar investigation following the money. Watergate was unraveled by following the money. Watergate was unraveled by following the money. Our brothers and sisters in forensic accounting work magic on following the money. The rest of us think it disappears into oblivion when we walk into a 7-Eleven and drop a $20 bill. And that is not the case. But how is it getting tracked? So when the 7-Eleven sends their cash to the bank, it gets scanned as coming from the 7-Eleven. All right. So you want me to reveal to the bad guys right now that we're tracking their money? Well, I'm not going to do that. I'll let you judge what's prudent here, but it is interesting.

So we have different situations here. I mean, so you talked about the highly personal hostage situation. I mean, just a boyfriend taking his girlfriend hostage. This is clearly a situation born of real emotional distress. And I could imagine that has a very different character than the routine hostage taking overseas done by people who do this all the time as a business, do they require radically different approaches, or can you generalize about the commonalities between those situations? No, it's a great question. And the answer is every hostage negotiation team in the world and every situation that they approach, whether it be contained, and every situation that they approach, whether it be contained, emotional, or transactional kidnapping, they all use the exact same eight skills. Now, the commonality is there's going

to be an emotion and there aren't that many emotions. Now, it's either going to be anger, it's going to be greed, it's going to be excitement, it's going to be a sense of loss, it's going to be a fear of loss. Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Behavioral Economics, said that human beings around the planet, regardless of situation, are most driven by fear of loss. Not exclusively, of course, but most driven by fear of loss. So this encompasses human behavior. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's a kidnapping, whether it's a bank robbery, whether it's a business transaction. So human beings have the same basic set of emotions,

and they're all driven from the caveman days by the same survival instincts and fear of loss. Fear of loss is the biggest single driver of human behavior globally. And I mean globally by age, gender, ethnicity, or globally in terms of situations. So you start with those rules and then you begin to look for commonalities. You start to find them really quick, regardless of whether or not it's a bank or it's a kidnapping. Well, we'll get into the general principles that you've extracted here in a minute. And these don't just apply to hostage negotiations, but to negotiations of any type. But let's just

talk about your experience in the trenches here a little bit more. Are there any negotiations that stand out for you as far as having taught you the most or having been the most intense or impactful on you? Well, yeah. I mean, kind of try to learn from all of them, but let's go to the bank robbery first, the bank robbery with hostages, Chase Manhattan Bank. The ringleader in that group was a ridiculously

controlling guy. Interestingly enough, right on, you call into a bank, you expect the bank robbers to be upset, concerned. He actually said to the NYPD negotiator, who was the first negotiator on the phone with him, he literally says to him, I'm the calmest one here. He was a really manipulative guy. Crazily enough, he exhibited the same negotiation approach as a really smart CEO. He tried to diminish how influential he looked on a phone when he was talking on a phone with us. He was saying, yeah, it's not up to me. There's a lot of other guys here, and they're more dangerous than I am. They're the unreasonable ones. He was in love with plural pronouns. What's a guy who's in love with plural pronouns going to do? He's trying to hide his influence, he or she, so that you don't

pin him down at the table. And this is what this guy did in the bank. By the time I got onto the phone with him, I used a hostage negotiation technique that we refer to as mirroring, which is just repeating what someone has said, kind of word for word. Because he said stuff that startled me, and it's a great verbal reflex when you're caught off guard, and it buys you a lot of time. And the other side ends up just blurting stuff out that they wouldn't blurt out otherwise. When I mirrored this guy, because I was asking him about the getaway van and he said, we don't have one van. I said, you don't have one van? He said, we have more than one van. I said, you have more than one van? He said, yeah, well,

you chased my driver away. Now, what he did when he said, you chased my driver away, he just roped in a third guy that we didn't even know was involved in a bank robbery, which is, you know, he was so controlled, he involuntarily blurted out admissions of guilt, not just on him, but on other people. And we ended up rounding up the whole gang. Everybody surrendered. It took about 12 hours from start to finish, which is kind of par for the course when you begin to understand a profile of situations, if you will. And I learned a lot from that. Once he realized that he'd voluntarily given us stuff that he wish he hadn't said, he actually handed off the phone to another guy. The controlling negotiator

will get flustered. They'll get frustrated, but they won't get angry in a way that damages the situation. He got so frustrated and flustered, he just handed off the phone to his colleague who had been manipulated into the situation. I got that guy to surrender to me in about 90 minutes. He met me outside the bank. And when he came out, he admitted to everything that was going on, told us who was inside and what was going on. Then it was just a matter of time for us to continue to work our process and get everybody out of line. So is it common in these situations that you're able to exploit different levels of commitment or different goals on the part of the people involved, the hostage takers?

Yeah, it's real common. And you start out just sort of feeling your way through the situation, you know, looking for gently for whatever thread you could get. And then, you know, with a gentle sort of patient approach, you can unravel a situation really easily. And it works. I mean, it just works consistently. And if you work the process, you'll actually negotiate through the entire situation with patience faster than you will by being in a hurry. There were a few cases in your book where you essentially give the blow-by-blow for some of these negotiations where it's a family who is in the loop with, I guess, the FBI

in this case, and you're trying to negotiate the price down. This is not a bank robbery, but some international hostage kidnapping. Kidnapping, yeah. In a situation where the initial demand is so sky high that no one involved could possibly pay it, I sort of understand it. But at a certain point, it must begin to seem unethical to be driving a hard bargain in dialogue with someone who is threatening to kill or dismember your loved one? What is the point of, you know, when you get it down to whatever it is, $50,000 that the family can pay, to be driving it lower than that? I mean, some of these negotiations

that you detailed continued past the point where I thought, okay, this seems like it's just raising the risk to the hostage. Yeah, great questions. And so the issues of ethics, morality, any negotiations? If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber-only content, including bonus episodes, Thank you. Harris.org.