The High Stakes of Global Hostage & Prisoner Negotiations with Mickey Bergman

Mickey Bergman
00:00:00

There are two cardinal truths about hostage and prisoner negotiations. One is that the deals never get better over time.

We spin them, we adjust, we make different ways of cutting it so it will look like the deals are better. But the truth is they never get better. Often they get worse over time. That's one.

The second one is that time is the biggest enemy to these prisoners or these hostages. Because at any given day there can be a disease, there can be a violent event at the cell or they might collapse and self harm.

And I'm mentioning all of these three because all of these three, I've experienced them, I've seen them.

Arnold Stricker
00:01:00

Welcome to St.

Louis Intune and thank you for joining us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders and everyday people who are driving change and making an impact that shapes our society and world. I'm your host Arnold Stricker along with co host Mark Langston and we're going to get right into our interview. Mickey Bergman is Opening the St.

Louis Jewish Book Festival and the book is entitled in the True Stories of High Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad. Our guest is Mickey Bergman.

He is the Chief Executive officer, founder and chief intergovernmental mediator for Global Reach and the Richardson center for Global Engagement, non governmental nonprofit organizations that negotiate the release of political prisoners and hostages around the world.

He is a special operations veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces and has spent the past decade freeing Americans from some of the most complex and insulated countries on earth, including Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, Gambia and the Sudan.

He's an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service where his graduate courses focus on the art of emotional intelligence in international relations. He was nominated for the 2019 and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize alongside former Governor Bill Richardson.

This book is a co authorship with Ellis Henneken, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper columnist and a New York Times bestselling author. I guess my first question to you Mickey, is what is Global Reach?

And I know is the Richardson center for Global Engagement part of that now since the Governor has passed away?

Mickey Bergman
00:02:40

Global Reach is a non government nonprofit organization. So we do our work on behalf of families of hostages at their request and absolutely no cost to them.

As a non government organization, we coordinate and we work with the US Government where it makes sense, but we don't always do that because our objective is to get somebody home and their objective, while they want our people home, is most of the times much more complex in terms of their policies and interest.

The Richardson center, which I worked with Governor Richardson with for about 17 years is going to shut down at the end of this calendar year, and Global Reach is the organization that replaces it.

Because we had to move, unfortunately, with the governor's passing on this, and we figured out it's an opportunity to expand and go into areas that we were lacking with the Richardson center before.

Arnold Stricker
00:03:42

Did you ever imagine, and probably not starting, but looking back now, all of the pieces that fell into place as you were starting with the IDF and then when you came to the States and got your degree, and then we're working for the Clinton Global Initiative, that you would be helping to stop a war in Lebanon with a friend and a colleague to kick off your career in this area. Did you ever imagine that?

Mickey Bergman
00:04:07

I have to tell you, Arnold, that came to me as a huge surprise.

If you had asked me early on in high school and tell me, oh, yeah, this is what you will be doing, I would be laughing at you and saying, yeah, that happens in the movies.

But as I started going through life and through my experiences in the IDF and then especially moving to the United States, working for the Clinton Global Initiative, going to Georgetown and starting to understand and see the world in a different frame, I realized how much any of us have the ability and have the power to actually change events and change lives. And I know it sounds like cliche, but I don't look at changing the lives. I don't.

My work doesn't change the lives of millions of people, but it does change lives of individuals. And I know who they are. And so I refer to it all the time as the mom and pops kind of impact, because the people, it's small.

But at least within the Jewish tradition, there is a saying that if you help save a single soul is as if you saved the whole world. I find a lot of motivation in that.

Arnold Stricker
00:05:16

A lot of purpose there. Yeah, a lot of purpose.

You mentioned in the book several times this statement that a vital role that private individuals can play in shaping the world.

And that's what you did when you stepped out of school and you got called to a job, and then all of a sudden Governor Richardson called you to, hey, we're going to the Sudan. And you were like, I'm not quite sure about this. And then it really hasn't stopped after that.

Mickey Bergman
00:05:44

Yes, that is true.

And Arnold, when he called me that weird Wednesday morning with his gruff voice and he says this Mickey Burglary, I said, yes, this is Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. I needed to pack your stuff and get yourself to Santa Fe. You're coming with me to Khartoum. At that point, it's not that I.

It's not only that I didn't know him. I literally didn't know the man existed.

And I had about 48 hours to figure out whether it's an opportunity of a lifetime or the stupidest decision I make before my head gets separated from my body.

And my wife and I discussed this, and we decided that I'm going to fly to Santa Fe out of respect to the governor, and I'm going to have lunch with him, and then I'm going to explain to him that not only am I Israeli, but I'm an officer in reserves, and it's very dangerous, and I will bow out of the mission very respectfully. And I went and I had that lunch with him, and I told him that.

And he just looked at me and he said, yeah, no, Mickey, Mickey, I vowed for you with the Sudanese. I told him that, I know you for six years. You're coming with me. And then he looked at me, and he has this very silly smile on his face.

He says, thank you. Do you know what I'm famous for? I said, what is that, Governor? He says, I get people out of jail.

So worst comes to worse, you spend a couple of months in a Sudanese jail, think what it will do to your career. And he's like, laughing.

And the next thing, my wife likes to tell the story that she hears me on the cell phone and she hears jet engines in the background, and I'm telling her, I need to go with this guy.

Arnold Stricker
00:07:11

Wow.

Mickey Bergman
00:07:11

And that's that that was a decision that was life changing for me and.

Arnold Stricker
00:07:17

Life changing as you observed him. And I use the word observe because many times you see what to do, when to do it, why to do it, how to do it.

And one of the things that I thought of this morning as I was preparing for this was there's a book by President Trump called the Art of the Deal. And I looked at that and I was like, okay.

And when I read your book, I was like, this is really the art of the deal when you can go into a foreign country, as some of the countries that you went into, and help secure the release of prisoners. My question to you is, what are some of that. What are some of the skills?

What's the skill set that you had and that you honed and that you learned and developed as you been doing this over the course of time?

Mickey Bergman
00:08:03

See, I want to thank you for that question because it is important. The books that have been. It's the purpose of why I actually wrote the book. Yes, I wanted to tell the stories. And when I wanted.

Yes, I wanted people to know, but I wanted to, through telling the stories, to convey the biggest lessons that I have learned in this. And it's true that the negotiation books, and they're fantastic books, they're out of the deal.

Again, whether or not you like Donald Trump or not, that's irrelevant. The book itself is a very good negotiation book, such as the book of Chris Voss, the FBI hostage negotiator. Never split the difference.

These are great books, and it's the how to books. And if you read them and follow them, you can be the absolute best negotiator version you can if you are them. And what do I mean by that?

Is that if you have their personality and nature has it that. That the people with a certain personality who are negotiators are the ones writing these books.

But the truth is that it does disservice in a way that people who don't share that personality and look at it and try to imitate it come across as dis. Ingenuous. And that hurts them or people who know that they're not have the same personality. They say, oh, I'm not like that.

So I can't be a good negotiator or a good leader or a good communicator. And I argue exactly the opposite of it.

I think that the ability to be a good negotiator or communicator or leader stands and begins from having some work and understanding and accepting who you genuinely are in personality and in character. And there's no bad personality or good personality. It's just different. And it's not about who you want to be and how you want to be seen.

It's about who you generally are in terms of our personalities. And once you know that, you can lean in with your style into this. And that is the version. I refer to it a lot in the book as emotional intelligence.

Arnold Stricker
00:10:01

Right.

Mickey Bergman
00:10:02

It is understanding when you get into a room, have an awareness of yourself, what is the baggage that you're bringing into this and be able to manage that. And then what is the baggage that the other person that the counter side is coming in their narrative, the way that they see the world, the way that.

That they understand their role in it. And then, of course, how to manage that relationship with them in order to get the tangible thing that you want.

And in essence, that is really what I want to convey through these stories, that it's not about the transaction it's not about how to max eyes. They're asking for a hundred dollars and you want to give them 50 and you compromise on 75.

No, it's about how you understand emotionally where they're at. You attach emotional leverage into this in order to influence the way they make their decisions.

Arnold Stricker
00:10:55

That's really important. You also talk about some word symmetry, always symmetry. And then there was a lot of waiting and waiting and waiting and going back and forth.

And many times decisions were not made by certain representatives of sides that were conducive to what the outcome was going to be. What other factors? Because I was, I had a separate question about emotional intelligence. But you answered that.

What other important aspects do you find that are important in doing what you do?

Mickey Bergman
00:11:29

Yeah, so I, I think first of all, I, I, I think you're right in terms of the weighting. And it's one of the hardest parts of this work because yes, in the book I tell stories, I tell failures, I tell successes as well.

But even the successes that we have, when you get somebody home, it is typically on average about two and a half years after the person was taken. Now that means that for two and a half years you woke up in the morning and you fail that person.

Because while we are, I'm having dinner with my family and I'm going to sleep at night at home, that person is in a jail or in a cave somewhere.

And that is something that is extremely difficult to deal with on a daily basis because a colleague of mine always says we fail daily for years until we succeed and the success is one day long. So that is something that is really important to. But one of the concepts that is the most hard for us is that we know.

I've been doing it for now almost two decades. There are two cardinal truths about hostage and prisoner negotiations. One is that the deals never get better over time.

We spin them, we adjust, we make different ways of cutting it so it will look like the deals are better. But the truth is they never get better. Often they get worse over time. That's one.

The second one is that time is the biggest enemy to these prisoners or these hostages. Because at any given day there can be a disease, there can be a violent event at the cell, or they might collapse and self harm.

And I'm mentioning all of these three because all of these three, I've experienced them, I've seen them happen.

And if you take into account those two cardinal truths, the lack of urgency in solving a case, the fact, oh yeah, we can wait, let's See what happens next week. For you and me, it might be tolerable. For the person in the jail, it's inexcusable. And to their families, the agonizing families here, that's just.

There's nothing, there's no way to justify it.

Arnold Stricker
00:13:45

How do you deal with the failure daily of waiting, as you mentioned? What do you do with the emotion? You obviously can't pack it away. Do you do your 20 mile runs in the morning every day and then get that out?

Mickey Bergman
00:13:57

Yeah, you joke about it, but that's exactly what I do. I run a lot. It gives me a lot of an escape. It is a joke that people who run marathons, they're running away from something. Yeah, that is true.

I'm running away from these struggles. But to be honest, like the exercise.

And it's the only time that my phone might ring, but I don't see or hear it and I'm in my own head and I'm able to organize. And there's something about the. The endorphins that get released when you're exercising that help you calm down.

So running is one of my escapes on a personal level, but my family knows that after I spend time with the family of a prisoner or hostage, because my job is so reliant on the ability to empathize and to carry some of that emotional burden, I do take a lot of that pain on me. And a lot of times it's really important to recognize where you are yourself, are in terms of your burnout zone.

And because when we are emotionally burnt out, we make mistakes. And in my field, mistakes can cost somebody a life or can cost them a month or a year in captivity.

And so it's extremely important to be aware of that. And that is something that I have to take care of. And sometimes I would say, hey, I need a day in which I am. It's not that I'm not working.

I'm working, but I'm not communicating out with this just to make sure that I am not. The term for it in the professional emotional intelligence world is emotionally hijacked.

And that is when you're running so high on the emotions that the pathways from back of the brain to the front of the brain, when you make logical decisions are slower.

Arnold Stricker
00:15:38

That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. I. One of the things that really stood out to me, I think that grabbed me in the book was this collective sense of trauma.

And you talked about Israel and North Korea and then applied that really to Russia. Would you explain that a little bit to listeners so that they understand what that is. I thought that was a valuable point that I've totally missed.

Mickey Bergman
00:16:05

Yeah.

And I'll give the example of Israel just because we know we're year into a very significant war in Israel that runs high emotions in not only for Israelis, but obviously in the United States for the Jewish community, for the Muslim community, for the people who have a passion about this conflict and advocate for either of the sides.

Often there is a response and a misunderstanding of why Israel responds the way it does when there is an event in which there's two or three people that are casualties of a terror attack and then Israel completely response what they refer to here as disproportionate. And one of the things to understand from this is an example again is that when the Israelis count casualties, they don't start with 1, 2, 3.

They count 6 million and 1, 6 million 2, 6 million, 3. Because the memory and the scarring of the Holocaust is only three generations ago.

It is in their hearts and in their minds that informs every single day the existence of the Jewish people and the way we're. We've experienced life in the world. And again, it doesn't necessarily justify the. Oh, I know I shouldn't say necessarily.

It doesn't justify the suffering and the killing that happens as a result of that. But it is a way to understand the mindset in a way. And it is true in a similar way I found in my work.

And that when we approach the North Koreans and most Americans will say, we will know, we'll have plenty of opinions of why and what we need to do with North Korea and policy. But if you ask Americans why did the North Koreans hate us so much, we don't think about that. And again, I'm not justifying the North Koreans.

It's all about justifying or legitimizing. It's about understanding it. The North Koreans lost four and a half million people in the Korean War.

For most Americans, this war was this small war between World War II and Vietnam, those Americans who even remembered that there was such a thing. For the Koreans, it's the cardinal sin. And that is.

And unless we emotionally address that, we don't, we can't figure out, we can't understand why they're acting to what seems to us to be so irrational.

As you mentioned, I explain in the book too very similar how the Russians or Putin himself is interpreting history and the narrative through the pain of losing 28 million people in World War II or sacrificing them for the sake of the. Of our joint win against Nazi Germany.

And he says, not only have we lost 28 million people, but these were the young men that were supposed to be the engine of our economy. And therefore, that's the reason why we lost the Cold War.

And you guys in the west, you're all celebrating Normandy and the Western liberation of the camps, but you're not acknowledging our loss. Now that, again, it's an emotional thing. There's nothing in it like, we didn't kill them. We were fighting.

The Russians and us were fighting shoulder to shoulder against Nazi Germany.

But the acknowledgement of that suffering, of that sacrifice that they've made is the lack of that acknowledgment is what Putin is writing to prove to his people, to show to his people that the west is really anti Russian.

Arnold Stricker
00:19:46

That was just brilliant to me. When I read that, I was like, this makes total sense.

And this is this emotional intelligence that you're talking about, understanding the other, where the other person's coming from and really why they are behaving the way they're behaving and what you can do to have a dialogue and make some progress.

Mickey Bergman
00:20:03

Yep, absolutely. And again, and because I often say, and I, at least I'll be talking about it this, this weekend in St. Louis, my life is a little bit.

My work is a little bit simpler in some ways than a US Government official, because I'm like a horse with blinders.

I have a very tangible thing that I need, that I want to do, and I can insulate that issue with when a government official comes in and tries to deal with an issue, let's say the Americans and the Russians getting together, because they're trying to figure out how to get Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner back home, even if their best intention is just to talk about that when they sit in the room as representatives of their governments, the weight of the war in Ukraine and the weight of nuclear instability weighs on this before they even say the first word. And it's almost impossible to isolate the issue of the prisoners and just solve it as a tangible thing.

When I go and meet the Russians, I we can talk about Ukraine, we can talk about nuclear instability. We can talk about anything that they want to raise. But I'm not government. I have zero authority on that.

So I'm able to keep the issue and refine and define what is the pathway to bring people home outside of everything else.

And then I'm able to convey and hopefully convince our own government that this is the cleanest and less painful way of getting innocent Americans back home.

Arnold Stricker
00:21:33

We've been talking to Mickey Bergman. He's the author of in the Shadows and Mickey, I greatly appreciate your time today. Thank you, sir, for taking time out of your schedule.

And you're going to have a great talk this weekend and I'm sure everybody will be enthused and informed about the work that's been done behind the scenes. Thank you.

Mickey Bergman
00:21:51

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Arnold.

Arnold Stricker
00:21:53

Mickey Bergman is going to be at the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival.

He's opening the festival and it's Saturday, November 2nd, and this particular engagement starts at 7pm and ends at 8:15pm you can get more information and tickets@jccstl.com jccstl.com that's Mickey Bergman speaking November 2nd at 7pm that's all for this hour and we thank you for listening.

If you've enjoyed this episode, you can listen to additional shows@stlintune.com consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser or your preferred podcast platform. Your feedbacks helps us reach more listeners and continue to grow.

I want to thank Bob Berthesel for our theme music, our guest Mickey Bergman, and co host Mark Langston, and we thank you for being a part of our community of curious minds. St. Louis in tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US Radio Network.

Remember to keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy, and let your light shine. For St. Louis in tune, I'm Arnold Stricker.