Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jere Van Dyk The Trade 20180102 : vim

CSPAN2 Jere Van Dyk The Trade January 2, 2018

Good evening everyone and welcome to tonights event were delighted to have joining us this evening Jerry Van Dyke and investigative journalist focusing on terrorism in the middle east region and our moderator carlos Senior Vice President of program at a World Affairs were recording tonights program so please take a molt to silence your cell phones. My name is tim callahan a Program Officer here at a World Affairs. If you enjoy tonights discussion and youre interested in learning more about the organization, i will be around after the program. So please introduce yourself. I will now like to turn it over to our moderator carlos. So good morning everyone and thank you for joining us its my great pleasure to introduce is our guest this evening jer is rei van dyke a journalist, author and cbs news consultant who covers afghanistan and pakistan. Host authored a book called captive my time as a prisoner of the taliban and another work in afghanistan. Also written for publication New York Times newsweek and national geographic. And in 1981 while workings a correspondent for New York Times, van dyke lived with the hadine as they battled soviet army from 2006 to 2009, he served as a senior fellow for the Carnegie Canal for International Affair and senior fellow in 2008 he went to afghanistan and pakistan to research the taliban for a book. But he was subsequently captured by the taliban and imprisoned for 45 days. Becoming the second american journalist to be captured, his most recent book the trade my journey into the political kidnapping discusses the political and economic motives of kidnapping. And hes currently an adjunct senior fellow on relations joining us here tonight to talk about the trade. And the geopolitics of kidnapping and way in which Tourist Groups have been used in kid mapping so jerry welcome and thank you so far for joining us. Thank you. And i think to start we probably need to understand a bit about what, what made you want to write the trade. What had caused you to need to go back and really think hard about the way in which kidnapping is being used. I think the best way for me to answer what is if you recall just before steven was murdered by isis he wrote a letter when he was in his cell with jim philly and others to his parents and in that letter he said everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you only have one. And i was someone told o me as a the greeks say twice face is i survived my kidnapping and i felt and feel that i have an obligation as one who survived to keep alive name of those who were murdered. To speak on behalf of those who did survive and who dont want to talk about it and detail the world what is now what i consider a new and extremely potent, new form of political warfare. And as karla said, i was the next person kidnapped after i was the second person kidnapped first one wases danielle is journalist reporter in karachi and pakistan held for two weeks dont know exactly when but he was slaughtered by al qaeda and the ransom demand was that the u. S. Provide to pakistan the f16s that we had provided to them that we had sold to them but failed to deliver as well as to provide better treatment for men guantanamo a rather strange demanding for a Tourist Group when you think about and that was the beginning of political terrorism after 9 11 and nighs the next person as karla sod kid mapped after a him and ill do this quickly but when my book captive came out in 2010 few things happened one i was giving talk many new york before a jowrnlgist society in Greenwich Village at the end i was signing box and man came up to me with with his then girlfriend my wife and he said you said tonight this is what mi6 intelligence agent said to we did Everything Possible to prevent a second damage pearl and he said to me this young man asked me do you think he would have survived if you were jewish, oh no one ever asked me anything like that. I began to think and some time a few months before then daniel pearls father had written an article in the wall street journal in which he said i feel that my son has died in vein. And i took a while but then i wrote him a letter and i said no. Im alive because of your son. And they invited me out to los angeles to see them. And i went out to see them. And no way easier to cross them out into pakistan than to go see them. And we had a lunch together and we spent two dayses together, and i said that i thought of daniel pearl when they took the knife out in my proposed execution two of them. But the big difference is and its all of the difference in the world that i dont have a right to talk about it is that my case they put it back. But when camera was rolling and i look at the man i say okay lets do it its you and me i thought of nicholas and danielle berk next person kidnapped after daniel pearl kidnapped in 2004 and beheaded. And so i began a trip because of this man in 2010 who came up to me after my book came out to go become and find out this was the first reason there are others of why Danielle Pearl was really kidnapped and looked deeply into his story which i didnt feel was really ever brought out in which i found a lot about and write about in the book. So there were multiple reasons why i went back. And there was one final reason to tell you this is that in 2012 i was, and as karla asked me this working for cbs i wases prevented from going east of turkey. And people are afraid that you are going to get in trouble again. And that u. S. Is seen as a bit one man said to me toxic cbss use me less and less afraid of what i might say or that i might embarrass people and so another fellow named john kidnapped his drive killed he was kidnapped by a Secular Group of different ethnic group than the taliban that belong to, and he said to me, were like candidates that people think weve been brainwashed and so you live with that. And more than anything elses youre a victim. Always a victim. When i went to see pearl in his paper reporter said to me so thats what whair going to say in your obituary that youre a victim whats it like living life where youre seen as a victim in order to get over that become say a man again. I was a another reason. And final reason. Is that in weve, i came home at night from work and there was a letter from the in 2012 i came home from work and there was a letter from the department of justice federal bureau of investigation, what is this about . The fbi is in charge of all kidnappings of americans anywhere in the world and the letter said, this is a paraphrase, dear jere van dyk, we regret to inform you we are closing your case. We know this probably comes as a bit of a shock, difficult for you to comprehend. Please dont think it is disrespectful in any way of that we saw fit to close your case. If in the future we find reason to open it we will. I sat there and i said they got away with it. The men who were involved in it, they got away with it. It is up to me to go back and find out the truth. Those are the things that led me on this journey. Tell us more about the number of political kidnappings and why they started to occur in larger numbers. We dont actually hear about these cases as much as we should because one of the strategies is of course to try not to have it be a subject of discussion in the press. How many people are being held and what is the motive for increasing political kidnappings . I dont know how many are being held today. It is important to distinguish between political kidnappings and commercial kidnappings. If you work for shell oil and you post on an oil rig off the coast of nigeria your chances of getting kidnapped are quite high. All of these things are business, they operate political kidnappings in lawless areas, somalia, tribal areas of pakistan, iraq, syria, coats of nigeria across the sahara. Those are political kidnappings. Today outside as a protocol for dealing with political kidnappings. The used to get 50,000. Most recent one was a swedish person, a motorcyclist south of the sahara, 10 million so it is very much a business but to get to your question, the exact number of political kidnapped victims being held todays secret. I dont know. The fbi would have that information. Do they work closely with the cia . They compete with the cia, we know the story, after 9 11 if the fbi and cia may be worked together, maybe they would have prevented 9 11. The reason they compete is tribal warfare, they want larger budget and greater power but as one fbi agent said the cia does not have to testify in court. They can operate completely under the radar without any accountability which is extremely dangerous. Donald trump has said the cia like the American Military will have the ability in afghanistan, can you give greater power to the cia, greater latitude to use drones indiscriminately. In february 2002, i happen to cover this case, i was there at the time, daniel pearls case was the First Political kidnapping after 9 11 and he was kidnapped in pakistan, there were 26 people involved in his kidnapping, the same number involved in mind. Most were pakistani but it was an al qaeda operation and many people feel it was al qaedas way of announcing to the world that they existed. What they just did a few weeks before 9 11, it was in the political world, the political kidnapping world this was their way of saying we are here and they introduced a new form of political warfare. Kidnappings per se started in the modern era in 1983, hezbollah taking terry anderson, another journalist in beirut, but post9 11 the focus because those people, all of those held by hezbollah there was never a ransom demand for any of them. They were used as ponds against the United States and france and that was the first time. The second part, the second side to the two sided form of warfare is bombing and that is when they bombed the Marine Corps Barracks in 1983 and 10 minutes later the french paratrooper barracks. The First Political suicide bombing in the afghan pakistani theater took place in pakistan in 1995 orchestrated by the head of al qaeda, a very interesting back story to that that i will come to in a minute. The second kidnapping was Nicholas Berg from pennsylvania went to iraq, he was kidnapped the city, jordanian, he comes out, he went this is the introduction of al qaeda, i will talk about this more in a minute. He went from jail to pakistan and then he went to a refugee camp, the Guerrilla Group in the southern philippines got its name, trained there and went to tora bora and developed his credentials, he went to iraq, most people here will know this story, in order to create al qaeda in iraq, he had to assert himself in vicious war against the shia but kidnapped Nicholas Berg, it was shown on television, introducing al qaeda to the world and i was at cbs, in the newsroom the day the video was shown in the argument between the National Editor and another editor of similar stature over how much of this video are you going to show because i remember the screen but what were talking about is absolute power of television and political kidnapping as a form of warfare used by the week against the strong, the next kidnapping was in couple when three un workers were kidnapped and that is when the u. S. Army and us embassy, the us military more than anybody else and we have to shut this down. There is something starting here so very hard to try to stop what happened to keep it relatively quiet. And researching my book the interior minister in charge of this said there is absolutely no answer whatsoever. I talked to a British Intelligence agent who said there is no answer whatsoever and the government friend of mine said there is a ransom and the money disappeared which is the truth. I dont know the truth. You may be able to discern it based on the evidence i provide in the book, the head of the un refused to talk to me. I tried many times. The next kidnapping after that was three years later in afghanistan, and Italian Foreign correspondent named danielle who i felt a bit cavalier he and somewhat arrogantly when i heard this story, very naively, went with an afghan sixer which means a guide and the driver to southern afghanistan to meet with the delavan and he was kidnapped. The demand was the karzai government released delavan prisoners and that the italians remove themselves, members of nato in afghanistan remove all forces, italy refused, karzai refused to release the men, the delavan beheaded the driver and the sixer, italy panicked, italy paid a huge ransom and it was the first time that a government paid a ransom for a western kidnapping victim. There was never a chance for the pearls to have an opportunity or the burkes. A few months after that, very naive, south korean missionaries, christian missionaries went to afghanistan, it illegal to evangelize for christians in the italian embassy, the catholic church, anybody whether you are a soldier or foreign worker, the only place to go to church in afghanistan. They were kidnapped. Two people were killed. The south Korean Intelligence Agency paid, according to reuters and others, 22 million. The United States tracked them down and killed them all and i was next. Demands for me was 1. 5 million and three men from guantanamo. The next person after me with the New York Times, his demand was 25 million which quickly came down but in his case or in my case they called me the golden goose. A week after david was kidnapped i was out and went to the New York Times and they started this group, same thing cbs and the wall street journal and others have done to figure out what to do. They call david the red rooster meaning they are not going to kill him. Hes worth a lot of money. A kidnapping victim is a commodity. In my case they wanted to exchange my sixer and my father comes in at the collateral. If you want to take a loan out you have your house, the Bank Collateral for a human being. In the kidnapping world collateral is a human. The next after that to end this real quickly, becomes very extremely powerful is execution of jim foley, which we all know about, which is the second most remembered, watched, and remembered since 9 11, the most remembered even for the entire population is the towers coming down, the second one is the execution of jim foley. That is arguably the reason why the United States went to war. Horrified the nation, galvanized obama, led to the war on isis. Two weeks after that, stephen sought her off solderoff, then another one killed by a bomb. So upset the Obama Administration they called all of us former hostages and families of those who were killed to the white house and in 2015 we met with the president and Vice President as they tried to create a new form of policy where the United States, people like my parents, my father, my brother and sister or the pearls could negotiate with the kidnapping victim, with the kidnappers. First time, that became the policy. The final point which i forgot to mention is because this was before 9 11, in 2000, two christian missionaries from kansas kidnapped in southern philippines, went through a horrific year in the jungle, the george w. Bush administration authorized a ransom. They said so publicly, 320,000, the money disappeared, i deal with this in the book, they, the white house said if it leads to the capture of the kidnappers then this is the way we it is possible, we are going to provide a ransom and some people feel it was done for bushs christian constituency, you can argue whether that is the case or not but the United States did provide a ransom and it got to the point, skipping ahead, in the white house in 2015, some of you may have seen this on television, it came to the point where with the case of Bowe Bergdahl being kidnapped, the how connie network which held him was able to extract a ransom payment for proof of life. The pentagon did it, the fellow in charge of that stated so publicly and he was going to be courtmartialed but he was let out of the army so today what we have, most recently, we will talk about this later is this week we had a release of a family, a canadian American Family that made headlines throughout the United States involved in that for a long time come behind the scenes with the families on the other side and i will talk about that but it shows the power of kidnapping and the most important thing about that was the entire time from post9 11 when the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration we would never negotiate with terrorists. We would never deal with the taliban and. The Bowe Bergdahl case, the how connie network was able to raise itself to the point they negotiated directly with the United States for the release of Bowe Bergdahl so kidnapping allowed elements of the talent and to achieve almost, i wont say nation stature, to be accepted as a nationstate but they were able to force it where the United States had to negotiate to get Bowe Bergdahl out. Thank you for that and for talking about your own experience and trying to give some context and reminds us of all the individuals and families who have been affected by this strategy over many years. You spend quite a bit of time and do quite a good job portraying the complexity and the nuance of radical islamic movements that are

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