The Market Price (Part 1 of 2)

If I were to ask, “What is the difference between hostage negotiation and business negotiation?” – what would you say? How would you answer?

I know what I would have said before I started my 20+ year journey back and forth between both worlds – “Ahhhhhh, I don’t know!” Something! Probably, just like you, I thought, “Well...they’re not rationale!”

I’ll never forget the first time I realized that there is a market price for human beings.

It had started out as one of the most exciting days of my life. I had finally made it to the FBI In-service training for the Critical Incident Negotiation Team, C.I.N.T. This was the hand-picked team designated to be called in for the FBI’s most critical hostage taking incidents. If you were a hostage negotiator in the FBI, you wanted to be selected for this team. In addition, it hadn’t been easy for you to become an FBI Hostage Negotiator in the first place.

Responding internationally to kidnappings of American citizens was part of the deal for this team if you wanted it. Imagine. Sitting at your desk...the phone rings...”Yes Commissioner Gordon! Right away! To the bat-cave!”

Back to the CINT In-service: Imagine you’re there. You are getting your first briefing on the negotiation tactics of kidnappers and you are excited. You figure you’re going to get the secrets, learn the secret handshake, be taught the Jedi mind tricks (and there are some that my company has discovered) to use in this “mystical” world.

A good friend and later a mentor (Dennis Braiden) is beginning our instruction. Dennis says “In every country the kidnappers will have a typical opening demand and an expected percentage of the opening demand that they plan to settle for. They’ll have expectations about the amount of time that the kidnapping will last based on their prior kidnappings in the area. If they want a higher payout, they’ll just make a higher initial demand.”

I’ll never forget the realization coming over me. This was a market price for human beings. A commodity trade of human beings. I was staggered by that thought.

Dennis didn’t use those words “market price”, but that’s what it is. When you grow up the son of a successful Midwestern entrepreneur, you grow up recognizing business terms. You just never envisioned applying that thinking to the trade of human beings.

Kidnapping is a business. It may be a brutal and horrifying to us; but to kidnappers it’s a business, plain and simple. A way to make money. Who would have thought of kidnappers as businessmen and that the commodity that they sell is human beings – kidnap victims? Who would have thought that they range from opportunistic entrepreneurs who perform many roles in their business, to highly evolved organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, even with a hierarchy and a boss? And who would have thought of them as simply some of the toughest bargainers on the planet?

I’ll also never forget later that day at the CINT In-service, after Dennis briefed us on some of the dynamics, there was a confrontation between one of our hostage negotiators and one of our “business” partners over the “commodity” at risk at that time, the hostage Jerry Schafer. Jerry had been kidnapped in Venezuela and was being held in Colombia near the Amazon by the FARC (the guerillas). The “business” partner in questions was the US Department of State. Their representative had been invited to address us about their concerns regarding our approach to how we did our jobs (somewhat aggressively in their view).

One of my colleagues had stood up and point-blank asked the representative from the US Department of State this question – “What are you going to do if Jerry Shafer gets killed? How are you going to live with that?”

We had heard through intelligence that Jerry Schafer had lost over 70 pounds and consequently he might not be in the best of health.

The State Department guy just shrugged.

The Market Price (Part 1 of 2)

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go as a team.