The Market Price (Part 2 of 2)

The commodity at stake when this lesson was learned? An American named Jerry Schafer who had been kidnapped in Venezuela and was being held in Colombia near the Amazon. The intel was that Jerry Schafer had lost over 70 lbs in captivity.

One of the FBI negotiators 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?”

The State Department guy just shrugged.

Fast forward 2 years.

I am back at the FBI Academy at the next CINT In-service. A very slender Jerry Schafer is regaling us with stories of his time as a commodity in the international exchange (the kidnapping business in Colombia) run by the guerillas, the FARC. These stories were alternatingly jaw-dropping and hysterical.

Jerry had learned to sleep up on the wooden pallets with his captors even though he initially preferred to stay as far from them as possible. The reason? Because when you sleep on the ground you wake up with snakes curled up with you trying to absorb your body heat.

Since he couldn’t get away (they were too deep into the jungle for him to escape) he could wander around the camp with relative freedom. They gave him fishing line and a hook so he could go down to the river (the Amazon) and fish. He told us in his slow Southern drawl “That was how I learned about electric eels.”

He went in for a medical check-up after his release. When his doctor discovered he had lost over 70 lbs from eating nothing but rice and hiking around in the Colombian mountains for 18 months, his doctor told him he needed to get kidnapped every 3 years.

Finally the story of Jerry’s negotiated release: If you’re working these cases, you know there’s a danger the kidnappers will double-dip. A “double-dip” is where the kidnappers take the ransom and then tell you “Oh, you misunderstood. That was a down payment.”

This is a common problem you had to learn to navigate in this business. You can’t sue a kidnapper. You’ve got to get your Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) up to an exceedingly high level and be able to clearly articulate not only why this is the best deal that could be gotten for the family (or the company) but why the kidnappers will perform.

Now when I say “we”, this is how you do this. If you’re an FBI hostage negotiator you’re a really a coach and advisor. FBI hostage negotiators coach the family member or company representative who is dealing with the kidnappers. The final decision of what’s going to happen lies with the victim’s family or victim’s company. The FBI provides coaching and advice.

So in addition to all the other skills you’d used if you were working the Schafer case: EQ to ascertain what the kidnappers sounded like when they were telling the truth, bare knuckle bargaining (to out-bargain them with a much more sophisticated bargaining system then just offer-counteroffer-meet in the middle) you still need to seal the deal. You get them to transport their commodity 100 miles through the jungle to the exchange point, “the closing table”, a river crossing.

The business rule? Make them invest in creating your outcome and most likely they will perform and give you what you want. What happens to the likelihood of deals when your counterpart travels to see you? What happens to reluctance to proceed as investment in an outcome increases?The jungle on the opposite shore of the river at the exchange point in crawling with FARC. The negotiator crosses the river with the money. There is a long delay with who knows how many automatic weapons pointed back at you from across the river. Finally Jerry Schafer and your partner emerge and come back across the river in an all-too-small boat.

You all load up in the truck to drive to safety. Your local hire driver has gotten so sick he is incapacitated. Jerry jumps behind the wheel and says “Get in and let’s get the heck out of here!” Jerry drives everyone back. One tough guy.