STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Proper Rules Regarding Hostage Rescue and Hostage Survival

[1] Keep Every SOF/Delta Assault SECRET!!.

[2] If You have been a hostage before—Don’t Try It Again!! [i.e James Foley]

Again and again, hostages have become the new human currency in the chaotic world of International Crises Management.  As you know from my former blogs,  I have become an advocate of ransom payments because they are the new reimbursement for those individuals who feel ‘compelled to tempt death’.  Remember:  no one is innocent in the world of terrorism and possible hostage taking.  Least of all,  the recently executed James Foley of New Hampshire, presumably a freelance journalist.  Mr Foley knew exactly what he was doing and what the consequences of his actions would be.

Lest you consider me cold hearted and callous,  let me present to you this revealing piece of evidence that has not been properly discussed in the hypocritical self-righteous media.  In the NYTimes article entitled, “Before Killing James Foley,  ISIS Demanded Ransom From U.S.”,  (posted earlier) written by Rukmini Callimachi, the following  most revealing paragraph appears about James Foley’s death wish:

“Across the ocean at his home in Cambridge, Mass, the chief executive of GlobalPost Mr. Balboni, reached for his Blackberry and had a TERRIBLE SENSE OF FOREBODING [my emphasis]: The email informing him of Mr Foley’s abduction was almost an exact replay of the horrors his staff had endured a year earlier when Foley was kidnapped with three others by Col. Muammar El Qaddafi’s forces in Libya.”

Let’s review what happened in Libya:
“We had joked that we needed to take away his (Foley’s) passport, Mr Balboni said Wednesday. “I don’t want to say it was deja vu but in a way it was…in one way I knew what was coming.” Not only did James Foley put himself purposefully in harms way but he also compromised Mr Balboni and the integrity of his journal and it’s financial viability.  Mr Balboni and countless other individuals spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours to rescue James Foley from Libya.  In return for their collective “good-will” Foley returned to the mundane job of being an editor for the journal (desk job) in Cambridge Mass. 

I maintain that James Foley was a “battle junkie” namely he had a mental health issue with which he did not want to deal with and he recklessly decided to go back into the nexus of war and chaos: Syria.  So its no surprise that he was taken hostage for a second time.

Foley and his kind are what we in the Counter-Terrorism world call jock sniffers.  Yes, it is pejorative but what he did to himself, his family, his colleagues and his country—particularly our Special Forces—was to create an unnecessary high value target who should have never been allowed into any more war zones, least of all Syria.

I have previously mentioned that I have travelled on my own into Syria without protection and without anyone’s blessings other than the Good Lord who sought fit to make sure that I was interrogated by the Syrian intelligence and the Ministry of Security.

However,  for reasons that I will not discuss here, as someone who had been involved professionally in counter-terrorism for over 30 years, I had the necessary skills to avoid being taken hostage.  I even taught a course for many years at the state department on how to avoid being taken hostage or if the situation did occur how to survive as a hostage.

Just like a physician, the state dept and military must be able to triage whom they can afford to save and who they must let go.  Needless to say, not every hostage deserves to be saved.  Unless that hostage is sponsored by a large organization that can afford to pay ransom then asking the USG to send in Intelligence Officers and Special Forces to save a potential hostage would bankrupt us and endanger the lives of others.

If for reasons unknown, James Foley worked for some organization other than the stated one, the triage applies doubly for any overseas operatives who have been taught how to avoid these types of precarious situations.

The next lesson of this Hostage Rescue is the one that the Anonymous Voices in the Pentagon muttered against the WHITE HOUSE:
Secret means secret NOT partial secret!  Once a potential terrorist group knows that ransom will not be paid they always prepare for a possible SOF seizure. Now the terrorist groups will “DOUBLE DOWN’ on everything they do.  Obama, the White House, and the SEALS have a proclivity for self-aggrandizement. 

As General Patton said A hero is someone who takes hostages not someone who becomes one.