Stuff You Should Know - How Hostage Negotiation Works

Episode Date: November 27, 2009

In this episode, Josh and Chuck explain the finer points of hostage negotiation, including the symbolism of hostages, the negotiator's goals and tactics, Stockholm syndrome -- and what happens when people refuse to negotiate. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Under 17 at a minute without parent. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. From HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

With me is Charles W. Punkin Bryant. Yeah, doing his cheeks. That's how you know I'm in the hizzy. That's twice right there, Coolio. This is double good luck. Okay, well good, then this should probably be a pretty good podcast. Which means we are doomed.

Yes. Josh, before we get going, can I just mention a little TV show coming up? The Road to Punkin' Chunkin' and Punkin' Chunkin' itself. Naturally. Yeah, yeah. And that, Josh, is Thanksgiving night.

You're bored after you're turkey on the Science Channel. Uh-huh. Starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time, right? Yeah. So, insert Clever Intro. Chuck, have you ever been a hostage? No.

Nor have I. I would remember that, I think. I'll bet you would. Yeah. Have you ever seen Inside Man? No, is that, which one was that? Denzel. No, I didn't see that.

Clive Owen. I wanted to. Dude, that is, is it? In my opinion, I haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon, but I think it's the greatest hostage movie ever made. You haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon? No, Chuck, I'm not 70, like you. Oh, I forgot that they burned all the copies

in 1985 when you were born. In The Great Fire, started by Al Pacino. No! Ooh. Dog Day Afternoon was gold. You should check it out. I will check it out. You know, a 100-year-old movie.

No, I'm sure it's good. That was Pacino at his prime. Sure. Yeah, before he just went absolutely nuts. Yeah. Um, well, okay. Neither one of us has been a hostage. Or seen each other's movies.

Right. No, we both see more games. Oh, yeah, true. Uh, but I can imagine that if either one of us were a hostage, there would be a hostage negotiator outside. Right. I would be dead pretty soon, I think, if I were a hostage. As a pizza delivery person could have delivered that segue

better than me. Yeah. Yeah. In 30 minutes or less. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, Josh, let's talk about hostage negotiation. I can't say that word. Negotiations.

Yes, chocolates. It is, uh, there's a few things going on. Usually the hostage taker is, uh, want something. Yeah. Money or they want to free their, uh, brothers that are political prisoners or, um, they want safe passage or something like that. Right. Or they want, you know, some country to stop some policy it has.

Sure. Sure. And, uh, usually the target of the hostage taker is not the hostage, but some other third party. Yeah. Um, yeah. But we'll get, we'll get to the exception on that. Okay.

Good. So I was, I was chomping at the bit right now. Uh, finally they are, uh, hostages are usually only bargaining chips that have symbolic value. Right. Like for example, uh, the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. Yes. Uh, the hostages there had some serious symbolic value.

They were, um, Israeli athletes. Yep. And, uh, what kind of, uh, what kind of terrorists? Well, the target was the Israeli government, clearly not the athletes. They were the pawn, the symbolic pawn. Much like in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the hostage crisis that happened there over what, a 24 hour period. Sure.

Um, a bunch of, uh, Palestinian terrorists took, uh, some Israeli athletes hostage and they were targeting Israel. Yeah. So these were very symbolic pawns, I guess as you put them. Right. Did you see Munich? That was a good one. Uh, and so Josh, now we can move on to the phases of a hostage situation.

Okay. Uh, the initial phase. So Chuck, yes. All right. Let's, let's dramatize this a little bit. Okay. The initial phase. Yeah.

We're just a group of people hanging out and say, you bank. Sure. We'll do a bank. Sure. And then all of a sudden a bunch of guys come through the door kicking off what's known as the initial phase. Right. Like you said already.

Right. And what's the initial phase, Chuck? The initial stage of panic and violence where they subdued the hostages and it's, it's very chaotic. So during the initial phase, they come in, everybody get on the floor. Right. Right. And then they bar the doors and the initial phase is very brief.

Right. Is it like my machine gun? Yeah. It was good. Uh, then comes the negotiation phase and that's when Johnny Law comes on the scene and that's generally called the standoff phase. Right. And this is almost always the longest phase of a hostage situation. Yeah.

This is when all the negotiation is taking place. This is when they send in pizza boxes with little cameras. Right. People are, have to pee. Sure. Uh, the negotiator saying, if there's a pregnant woman in there, let her out. Right. Right.

This is when people have to pee. Yeah. That's a good one. And then the final phase is the, the termination phase and, uh, you got a few different results that can happen here, um, either the hostage takers surrender and they're arrested or the police, uh, kind of mountain assault and kill them or arrest them or their demands are granted and they get away. Uh, yeah.

And the second one is actually what happened, actually a combination of a two and three is what happened in Munich as anybody who's seen the movie knows, um, the West German police are like, we can't take these guys that we need to let them think that they're actually going to escape and get them to the airport. Right. All the hostages were killed along with a pilot and a police officer. Uh, and, uh, the rest of the, um, the hostage takers, the Palestinian terrorists, uh, were killed except for three who were captured.

Right. It was a bloodbath basically. Well, I thought they were hunted down later. Isn't that what Munich was about? The people who engineered it. Oh, okay. They were supposedly hunted down later by the Mossad, right? Eric Banna.

Yes. Who is just clearly Mossad material. Yeah. The Australian Mossad. Um, so yeah, those are the three phases. And, um, during the second phase is when the, uh, negotiator comes on the scene. Right. And, um, if you've ever seen the movie, the negotiator, you're clearly disappointed.

Um, but there was something that is, uh, very characteristic of hostage negotiation. And that is, it's a very important point that the hostage negotiator not be the, uh, lead commander on the scene. Right. And why Chuck? Well, because, um, well, for a couple of reasons. One is that the negotiator doesn't need to be multitasking, right? Then they need to have all their focus on talking to and talking down the hostage taker.

That's one reason. That's part of it. So, um, one of, one of the great tactics that, uh, hostage negotiators use is, um, to stall and they prolong the situation. That seems like the main tactic. Right. It's just to buy time. And one of the, one of the tactics they use to create that tactic, um, is to say, well,

I can't make that call. I've got to talk to somebody else. Um, and if it's common knowledge that the hostage negotiator actually is commanding the scene, then that doesn't really work. Right. They'll say, uh, well, you can pull the trigger on that because you're the boss. Exactly. And they're like, no, no, no.

Don't use that phrase. Right. That's in every movie. Every single hostage movie is that scene where they go, well, I just can't give you a 747 full of gold bars, dude. I got to get clearance from Fort Knox and that's going to take at least a day. So you might want to lower your demands, which is actually another reason they stall is to try and chip away at the, um, the demands.

So the negotiators on the scene and he's trying to prolong the situation. Like you said, um, they're trying to lessen the demands. They're also, um, but they also stall and prolong the situation by, um, getting the hostage takers to focus on some minute and really unimportant details. Yeah. I like this. They try to derail them. So like the 747, what kind of 747 do you want?

Does it, is it okay if it was built before in 1998? Right. Because we've got some that are built after that, but then they have this seating arrangement. Sure. That might be a problem for you. And all of a sudden you're distracting the hostage taker from the crisis at hand. Right. And he's thinking about what kind of 747 he wants, you know, I could just see the guy

putting his hand over the thing and going, what kind of plane do we want? He's asking about seat configurations. I have no idea. Right. Exactly. It's all of a sudden they hang up and then you've bought some time. Right. And not only, um, not every hostage taker wants a 747, but this can also be applied to even

more minute details like what do you want on your pizza? You know, well, I mean, do you really want bell pepper? Because you're getting onion already and sometimes it's too crunchy. I imagine there's a point where if you're talking to a hostage taker and you try the bell pepper onion combo to stall, they're going to pick up on what you're doing. Or if they've read this article or ever, ever seen a hostage movie, I'm sure that's another good thing. And they would probably be wise to say, well, it sounds to me like you're trying to buy

some time here. Right. Bang. Which is what the hostage negotiator does not want to happen. No. That's number two on their list. One is to prolong it. And while they're prolonging it, we should mention that they're trying to get information,

as much information as possible on who the person is, how many there are, what's frame of mind they're in, if they're unstable, if they're violent, any kind of clue that can help them out. Right. Because a hostage negotiator is going to talk differently, they're not going to try that bell pepper onion thing on like a very cool calculated Clive Owens type. But they might on somebody who's like just out of his mind crazy because his wife is leaving him.

Right. Which is actually the most common hostage situation is a domestic dispute that's turned into some guy with a gun barricading he and his family in their home. Yeah, usually think of the big movie scenario with some foreign enemy ticking on these people hostage, but it's usually just a regular old domestic scene and the worst ones, man, the worst ones are those you see on the news where you see some dudes got a baby acting as a human shield. Who does that?

You've never seen that? No. Oh man, it's the worst. Watch some of those cop shows, those true crime shows. A baby is a human shield and they have like a gun to the baby. These guys, it's like the dad is out of his mind and on drugs or something and he'll have his baby and it's just, it's the worst thing in the world to watch unfold. Wow.

Very disturbing. Oh, but in fact, don't go see that, Josh. Okay. That'll keep you up at night. I bet it will. Have you ever just thought to yourself, why me? Why is life so unfair? What do other people see when they watch me walk by when I catch my reflection?

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But back to the safety of the hostages. That's number two on the list of the negotiators to keep everyone in there alive. Right. I would think it technically be number one. While prolonging the situation, I think leads to number one. So it's the kind of tide. Right. So what you want to do if you're a negotiator and you are chipping away at demands.

First of all, you're trying to get the 747 out the window or the gold bars from Fort Knox. Sure. But you're really trying to get to the heart of what does this guy want? He wants a 747 and he wants gold bars while he wants to escape and he wants some money. So maybe it can be dealt with on a lesser level, but first, let's get you some food in there. But to get you some food, I need a hostage.

Right. So get as many hostages out as possible. Number one, to ensure the safety of the hostages, as you said. Right. But number two, when an assault comes, if it does come, there's a lot fewer hostages in there that the police need to not shoot. Right. You know?

Plus the hostage, did you just say this? The hostage can turn if they release someone who's like ill or pregnant, they can give them information inside your information. Right. Like even to create an even more distinct psychological profile, that kind of thing. Right. I think that you were talking about the lessening the demands. Like we can't get you some 47 and gold bars and it really, I could see that throwing the

hostage taker into a tizzy if all of a sudden there have to decide, well, will you take a helicopter and a cashier's check? That kind of thing. Right. Yeah. Well, actually I hadn't thought of it before, but yes. Yes, I will. Yes, I will.

Will you endorse it beforehand? Right. Yeah. Let's go to the bank. Oh, I'm in a bank. Awesome. Yes. Bring me that cashier's check please.

I want to keep everything calm. You don't want to upset a hostage taker. No. You want to keep everything nice and chill. Especially following the initial phase, that initial assault. The guy's all jacked up on like adrenaline. Sure. He's a little crazy.

All of a sudden it's starting to sink in. If he accidentally took hostages, it's starting to sink in like, oh my god, I am a hostage taker now. Right. This is a little nuts. Right. So you want to keep the guy calm or the guys or the gals calm, especially if it was a Bider-Meinhoff experiment.

No idea what that is. It's actually the, there's a movie out called the Bader-Meinhoff complex, I think. Really? And they actually introduced terrorism to the Western world when it was a group of Germans. Look at you. German radicals. Is Kevin Spacey in it? Basically bored kids that introduced things like skyjacking and stuff like that.

They were crazy. Crazy. So Josh, the fourth thing, and this is my favorite one actually, one of the goals of the hostage negotiator is to get the hostage taker and the hostages to work together, to give them some task where they have to interact like delivering the pizza. So send out your most agreeable hostage that you trust the most to get the pizza and bring it in. So all of a sudden the hostage taker has to talk to the hostages and say, hey, we need

you to go and get the pizza because we can't go within the sniper range. And the more you get them interacting, the more chance that the hostage taker sees the hostage as a human. Right. Instead of just blindfolding them and putting them in the corner. Right. Or shooting them in the head. Well, yeah, that too.

There was actually a very famous case of that in 1975. Some hostage takers took over a subway train or a train in Holland and a guy named Robert DeGroote was about to be executed, Chuck. And apparently they allowed him to pray first and they heard him praying for his wife and children and they got them so bad that they just couldn't execute the guy. So they actually fake executed him. Right. The standoff continued and when it came time to execute more hostages, they didn't give

them a chance to pray and just actually executed them. Yeah. And I'm sure they pushed him off the train and he rolled down the hill and like faked like, like he was dead. And I'm sure the rest of the hostages were like, thanks, Bob. Yeah, right. And now we don't even, not only can we not pray, but we're getting a bullet in the head. Yeah.

And I was thinking about that. Like this is, you feel so removed from it. The weird thing about being a hostage is like no one plans on being a hostage, it just happens all of a sudden. Sure. And imagine dying on a train on some track in Holland by being executed by some hostage taker during a standoff. What a crap way to die.

I know. You're right on the money there, brother. Yeah. And I think, I think it's pretty damn pretentious of us to have not brought up Stockholm syndrome yet, don't you? Yeah. Go ahead. Identifying with your captor.

Yeah. It actually came out of a bank robbery and I think 1980 or 81 in Stockholm appropriately enough. And this, this bank robbers plan just kind of went to crap and I've been like using pseudo bad words all day. Stupid weird. This bank robbers plan kind of went to pot and all of a sudden he was a hostage taker, right?

Well, the standoff continued and strangely enough, the hostage just started helping them. They were serving his lookouts. They were giving him advice on how to escape and how to deal with the negotiator and all that. And that's kind of odd if you think about it. So why would, why would people suffer this, what they call Stockholm syndrome? Well there's a lot of psychological reasons for it. Oh yeah?

A defense mechanism, coping, coping type of thing. Well yeah, if you feel powerless in a situation like that, you go to whoever has the power and when you're a hostage, your hostage taker has the power. Yeah. And the other thing it mentioned too is that if you're not killed and there are other hostages are killed, you feel such a sense of relief that can actually morph into sympathy. It's kind of like, I remember we did the brainwashing podcast. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. Good one. Yeah. There's a lot of things in some famous non-negotiating countries. Yeah. Do you remember the 80s? It was like planes were getting hijacked everywhere, all over the place.

Butter mine off. Yes. The United States, Russia and Israel are all very well known for having a non-negotiating policy with hostage takers and terrorists. France had the opposite. Yeah. Didn't work out for them though. No, it didn't.

I'm very quickly a target for hostage taking because France would apparently be like, what do you want? Ha, ha, ha. Right. And apparently sometimes, and this doesn't surprise me, the countries that refuse, quote unquote, refuse to negotiate, there might be some secret negotiations that happen that they never let out because that would destroy their front that they won't negotiate. Right.

And France also apparently had a little problem with forming agreements with hostage takers. And then the hostage takers would break the agreements, which is crazy. Can you believe it? What a bunch of louse. So there is an equilibrium, Chuck loves equilibrium, but there is an equilibrium between not negotiating at all and over-negotiating. Right. I think that's what you're talking about.

It's kind of like negotiating on the down low and never talking about it. Right. And then hunting the people down who did this and murdering them. Right. So Chuck, let's talk about what happens when you just absolutely refuse to negotiate. As we've seen actually in the 21st century, sadly enough, twice in Russia. Yeah. A couple of famous occurrences there with the Muslim Chechen separatists.

In 2002, they took over a theater in Russia, threatened to blow it up, and so the Russians go in and... Under who? Uh-oh. Who was it? Putin, you think? Oh, okay. The guy who wrestles tigers with his shirt off in front of news cameras, don't you?

Didn't that bear his hallmark? Yeah. They run the theater and send in some knockout gas instead of negotiating, and they ended up killing all... I don't know if it was all of them, but 129 hostages died. 129 from the knockout gas. From the knockout gas. That's not a knockout gas.

That's death gas. I think that's what you mean by knockout. I don't think so. They just don't want to call it death gas. Maybe so. My eyes are open now because I didn't realize that was a euphemism. The other one, Josh, was really, really sad. I remember this one well.

Yeah, me too. I remember when the same Chechen separatists invaded an elementary school with guns and bombs and locked themselves up in a gym, and Russia would not negotiate, and 300 of the hostages were killed. That was awful. And half of them were kids when they blew up the gymnasium. Yeah, it was terrible. Listen up, Putin.

Yeah, but you maintain your toughness. We're not going to negotiate. Just kill the kids. Have you ever just thought to yourself, why me? Why is life so unfair? What do other people see? When they watch me walk by, when I catch my reflection, people run. Like, I have a contagious infection.

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Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Okay. So Chuck, are you okay there? Yeah, I'm good. A little riled up, but I'm good. Let's talk about a hostage situation that actually went relatively well, at least compared to Russia.

Yeah, go ahead and hit it. I know what you're going to talk about. Well, there is a very famous incident at Prince's Gate in London in April 1980. Members of the Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan. I'm going to change that name. It's not even American. It's a mouthful, isn't it? Yeah.

So, Iran is an Iranian province and the group wanted to liberate it, clearly. And they were Democrats, I guess. Maybe. But there were, I think, 20 of them and they took, no, there were six of them and they took 26 hostages at the U.S. Embassy in London at Prince's Gate. So there was a standoff that lasted quite a while. The hostage negotiator did this by the book, kept the hostage takers focused on details like what kind of food do you want, that kind of thing.

Right. I'm thinking Thai. Yeah. Maybe. I'm in the mood for Thai. I could go for a nice curry buna. Yeah. That sounds good.

That's Indian though. That's good stuff, by the way, if you've ever had it. I'll try it. They actually did execute one hostage, but the other hostages apparently reported that this guy decided to get into a debate over Islam with Iranian terrorists, which you don't do in a hostage situation. Yeah. Keep your mouth shut if you're a hostage.

The negotiator actually did manage to get the release of two ill hostages. Maybe one of them was pregnant. Sometimes you replace ill with pregnant, which I don't understand. And they got info from them. Yeah. And so basically, the one thing that really wasn't by the book was that the SAS got the, which is the Special Forces in Great Britain. Yeah, they're bad, dude.

They are bad. I have a friend who's in there. Really? Yeah. I can't say his name here. Okay. They got the hostage negotiator to talk to the hostage takers on the phone right before the assault, knowing the assault was coming as a distraction.

Right. That doesn't happen much. Not usually, and why? Because they don't let the negotiator in on this kind of information because they think that they would compromise the job just through maybe even inflection or tone of their voice. They would give it away. Right. On purpose, of course.

No, no. Certainly not. Yeah. Very few hostage negotiators experienced Stockholm syndrome, I imagine. I'd be a bad negotiator. Yeah, definitely. They just mentally crumble at the first time in 12. But it actually paid off.

The hostage negotiator kept the lead guy away from the window and the SAS stormed the building. Boom. In fact, I imagine five of the guys in arrest the sixth. Yeah. Not bad. And I think they only lost one other hostage out of the 26, which is not bad. No. But I mean, if you storm a building in a hostage situation, it's like, well, yeah, that guy

lost his life. And another guy lost his life. Right. But it's like, yeah, but that's actually a really good percentage, I would imagine. Sure. I mean, I wonder what, well, I would guess the 2004 Russian standoff is probably as bad as it can get. Yeah, I would say so.

One thing we mentioned there that I thought was pretty interesting was you mentioned the Stockholm syndrome, but that is actually a tactic that the negotiator will use sort of sort of a good cop, bad cop thing, they'll get on the phone or however they're communicating and say, yeah, you know, I actually, they'll try and relate to them. I kind of see where you're coming from. I understand this police captain does not understand where you're coming from and he wants to mow you down. Right.

So talk to me, man, and we'll work it out between us. Chuck, you would make an excellent hostage negotiator. I just realized that I wish I had a hostage I could give to you right now. That was good. Oh, I just offer you a six pack and you'd throw it on your gun. It's all over pretty much in some smokes, but that's a pretty cool trick there. I like that. Of course, again, this is straight out of the movie.

So if any hostage takers ever seen any of these films and they should be one step ahead of the negotiator, I would think so. I would think so too. There's another example of not going by the book that I wanted to mention. What's that? In 1975 at the U.S. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, there was a hostage situation and apparently the Japanese Red Army, members of the Japanese Red Army, attacked the consulate and took hostages.

So the terrorists actually called the authorities to tell them that they had the hostages and some junior officer at the embassy elsewhere in the embassy picked up the phone and from that point on, for the rest of the standoff, they wouldn't talk to anybody else but this junior officer who was not a trained hostage negotiator and it's just like, oh, God. Well, he probably has an ear rigging the other ear. Right. Well, no, there was a negotiator on the scene like coaching the junior officer. But yeah.

Yeah. I also saw in the article where there's always a secondary negotiator on the end. Because sometimes they freeze. Sure. Because you're basically improv-ing. You got to be quick on your feet and if all of a sudden you're going, ah, you need someone to step in and say, tell them that we'll send them pizza. That first one sounded exactly like Kevin's facing in the negotiator.

I didn't see that. Wasn't there some stupid twist where he was in fact in on it or something? I don't remember. I blocked it out of my memory. That might have been spoiler. Of course, you're supposed to say spoiler beforehand, but whatever. Yeah. Well, we are pretty much done here with hostage negotiation.

We're going to leave a whole section untouched on becoming a hostage negotiator. Sure. You can find that in the article, how hostage negotiation works. You can type in hostage, I imagine, on the handysearchbar at HowStuffWorks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. No, no, Josh. No. Not today.

Okay. No listener mail. We're going to do a little Kiva update like we are want to do. Okay. So you want to go ahead and give the plug? Yeah, man. I just started a Kiva team, Kiva.org, K-I-V-A.org is a microlending website, a socially responsible one, which means you don't make any interest on your loans.

You can loan as little as 25 bucks to people in developing countries and now the U.S. Sure. Entrepreneurs who are trying to become self-sufficient through their businesses, they're little tiny loans that make a huge difference elsewhere in the world. Indeed. And we are kicking bottom on this. We are, man, and I'm proud of the stuff you should know, Armi, because you guys are responding and this is really, really cool.

We challenged the Colbert Report, or I like to call it the Colbert Report, and we actually made a video where we chastised him. Yeah, which you probably never see, but just know this, if you watch the Colbert Report scoff while you watch it, thinking of Chuck and I and the stuff you should know, Armi. People have responded in a big way and it's going great, and hopefully the Colbert Report will take notice because that will make even more money for Keeva and it might get us on his show. Chuck is just chomping at the bit to get on his show.

So well, if you want to join the stuff you should know, Keeva team, please do. You can go to www.keva.org slash team slash stuff you should know and that will take you right there. Plus, there's a pretty picture of Chuck on there. Yeah, me and Emily actually. It's a picture of, we have, you know, she's on my team. I was talking about our picture. Oh, no, no, no.

On the member page though, if you're curious of what my wife and I look like together, then you can surf through the member page until you find it. Good looking couple. Is that the one that's your screensaver and your iPhone too? Yeah, it's one of the best pictures I have of us. It's very nice. Thank you. And how about the blogs real quick?

Yeah, we both run a blog and I've been a little lazy with it lately, I'm going to get back off the schneid. You can access the blog on the blogs page, which you can find on the right side of the HouseStuffWorks.com home page. Right. I just barely spit that out. So that's where you can find it. Yeah.

Go interact. Yes, go interact. It's a pretty cool blog. We like it a lot. If you have an email or if your name is Aisha Tyler and you have never listened this far before in a podcast, you can send us an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks?

Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? It's ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European Riffer Cruises.

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It was my first time traveling alone, packed my car with hiking boots, a camera, and my dog Randy. I don't know what I was searching for. Maybe it was something new, with adventure. Maybe it was the idea of vacation I would never expect, filled with wildlife, national parks, rivers, whatever it was I set out to find, it was all there and more. Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.