← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Navalny, Gershkovich, Namazi: the battle to free political prisoners
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- [00:03]
Jamie Rubin
This is a Global Player original podcast.
- [00:06]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay. Hi everybody. If you're wondering why we're not talking about the breaking news, the big geopolitical stories, it's because we're on holiday at the moment. So we're bringing you an episode we recorded before we went away. We'll be back soon with our reactions to an analysis of all the latest events that are going on around the world. There'll never be a shortage of those for us to discuss. Today. We've decided to give everybody a real insight into how prisoner swaps and hostage releases take place. I'll be telling you about how I helped one quite high profile Iranian American prisoner get out of the notorious Evin jail in Tehran.
- [00:48]
Jamie Rubin
And I'll be able, I hope, to shed some light on the famous case of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershwitz, who was held for more than a year in Russia through my work with Secretary Blinken.
- [00:59]
Christiane Amanpour
And we'll use those case studies to explore what's going on right now. And that is the ongoing attempts by various governments to get hostages and prisoners out of these countries we've mentioned, as well as out of Gaza and elsewhere. So there are successes, there are failures. What leads to each one, what makes the difference? That's the topic this week. Hello everyone and welcome to the X Files with me, Christiane Amanpour.
- [01:30]
Jamie Rubin
And I'm Jeff. I'm Amy Rubin. As I hope you know by now, I worked for President Clinton and President Biden as a senior official in the State Department.
- [01:37]
Christiane Amanpour
And I've been a longtime foreign correspondent for cnn. And now I have my own show on that network. If you haven't already been following, make sure you follow our feed on Global Player or wherever you get the podcast so you never miss an episode. Let's get started. Welcome. We're going to get started now in this first part. We're going to talk about one high profile case that I had a role in. But first we thought we'd give you a little background. So from my perspective, I started my career at CNN really on the desk in Atlanta at CNN headquarters, bringing in video and typing in our correspondence reports into the computer about an ongoing hostage situation in Beirut, Lebanon in the early 80s. There were really up to about a dozen over, over a period of years Americans, whether they were diplomats, they were intelligence assets, they were journalists taken by Hezbollah, which was the Iranian backed entity in Lebanon. And that took a long time to get them released. Jamie, what about another example? Because it's been going on for a long time.
- [02:49]
Jamie Rubin
Well, I Guess the most important one related to that is, of course, the 52American hostages taken by the Iranian government, which really divided Iran. And the United probably still has a role in that division because it seemed like such a massive violation of the basic rules of diplomacy and being a host that you don't take your guests hostage. And diplomats, in a way, are guests in the country of Iran. And they were all taken hostage. And it took, what was it, 666 days, 444 days to get 52 hostages finally out.
- [03:26]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. And of course, that was as the Shah was overthrown and Ayatollah Khomeini brought in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Islamic Revolution, the first of its kind in that area. That was in 1979. And we can talk about that and how that ended in a bit, but we thought we'd start this week by going straight to a question or two from you guys. So Susie asks, how have hostage negotiation strategies evolved over the years? Jamie, that's one for government, right?
- [03:58]
Jamie Rubin
Look, I think it is interesting nowadays that hostages, prisoners are negotiated so prominently and so regularly without the question raised of, why are you negotiating with terrorists? In the old days, it seemed like for many, many years, for example, under President Reagan, it was seen as unseemly and a mistake at all to negotiate at all with the hostage takers, because the theory was that to provoke more hostage taking by giving people what they wanted, sort of like kidnapping, you know, should you negotiate with the kidnappers, and that will promote more kidnapping in a way, this subject is international kidnapping by governments, by terrorist groups. And I think what's interesting is that over the years, it's become more accepted that you just have to get your people home and do what you need to do. And as long as you don't go too far and you don't change your fundamental policies in order to get them home, but rather find some other way of satisfying the kidnappers or the hostage takers by giving up somebody they care about in the case of the Russia trade, or finding some claim that the hostage takers deem as satisfying, whatever you need to do is now more accepted to get people home. And I remembered Secretary Blinken used to carry around a little card with all the names of all the hostages. I have it somewhere here. I may be able to find it before the end of this podcast, a copy of that card. And then he would check the names off. And by the time he left office, something like ⅓ or 3/4 of the names on his card were checked off.
- [05:41]
Christiane Amanpour
Are those the Ones being held by Hamas or around the world?
- [05:44]
Jamie Rubin
No, these were mostly in cases like Afghanistan, in cases like China, in cases like the famous Russian trade with Evan Gurkovitz. And so it was all the places. But obviously the only people who got out of Gaza were when the ceasefire was agreed to. And I guess roughly half the hostages eventually came home. While there's still too many still there.
- [06:10]
Christiane Amanpour
Yes, more than half, thank God. There are about 50 apparently still remaining in Gaza. And the Israelis believe that potentially 20 or so of those may still be alive. And they people of Israel obviously want them back. That's their number one issue. And it will require a ceasefire and a negotiation. We'll get more into that. But let's go back to a little bit of the historic. So I'm going to kick off on my case study with this question from Cameron, who says, what is the most misunderstood aspect of hostage negotiations by the media and by the public? So again, it's often good versus evil. And as Jamie said, if you give, give in here, what happens in the future? I can tell you that we've had very, very sad examples. The journalist James Foley, who was taken by ISIS in 2014 in Syria. And because the US administration would not negotiate with the hostage takers who were isis, he was eventually executed. And his parents have created a foundation to try to change that a little bit. And we can get into that a bit. Not to make a black and white line when your kid's life is at stake, to figure out how you could potentially negotiate other nations. In this case, whether it was France, notably, maybe Italy as well, they did go into some kind of deal, the details of which are always murky, but it probably did involve money and they got their journalist hostages back. So this is a very, very important issue now when it comes to the media. Let me tell you a story. So there's a young man now, he's in his 50s, called Siamak Namazi. He's an Iranian American. I met him back in the so called reform days, when the so called reform President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, was trying to change the way the country was run and change the country's relationship with the United States and with the west. And most importantly, try to get Iranian expatriates who had fled the revolution to come back and work for the better good of the country. Now, one of those was Siam Aknamazi. He was a businessman and he did go back to Iran to see what kind of business opportunities there may be. And essentially he went back and forth several times and the last time was the last time he was able to get out freely and of his own free will because he was kidnapped. And he tells the story of how various American administrations Trump, Obama, Biden, essentially did deals on other issues with Iran, like the nuclear deal, for instance, or certain financial transactions that involve money that belong to Iran. But he was always left behind. So he was like a prime pawn, if you like, for the Iranian regime. One day in 2023, he decided that there was nothing more he could do. He had seen all these deals that he thought might work. And so he made a decision to call me. I'm an Iranian expatriate who works Iranian, British, who works on American television. And it was his last ditch gambit. So I'm gonna play a little voice message that he sent me when I asked him if he remembered what triggered his last ditch desperation move to call a global television station from inside, even prison.
- [09:47]
Siamak Namazi
To be honest, Christian, when people ask me what compelled me to risk calling you from even what I understand is they don't know what real desperation means. By that time, I'd spend seven and a half years rotting in prison. Obama, Trump had both promised to bring me home, and they both made deals that freed others and left me in the lurch. I'd endorsed solitary confinement. Months and months of it abuse, the arrest of my then 80 year old father. Did everything I could. Filed legal defenses, I wrote public appeals, I went on hunger strikes, you name it. But nothing worked. My captures made it crystal clear. No deal with the us no release, no matter how many more years it took. When Biden's team finally separated the hostage issue from the faltering nuclear talks in September 22, six months went by with no deal in sight. And I knew from experience every day was a roll of the dice. So I decided I need to make a direct appeal to the President. Consulted with my brilliant lawyer, Jared Genzer, who suggested the interview with you. But what convinced me was this. I was asking the President to take a risk. And I couldn't ask him to risk more than I was willing to risk for my own freedom. I also, to be perfectly honest, I figured that even if I get caught mid call, beaten and dragged to a solitary cell, my voice would still be heard, probably even louder. But Christiane, what few people realize is the risk that you took by saying yes to that interview. So let me end by asking you, what in the world made you take that chance?
- [11:39]
Christiane Amanpour
I mean, it gives me chills still, you know, a couple of years later, the truth is, and Siamak didn't know this at the time. I was really conflicted because I thought if I did this and the Iranians obviously would see it and hear about it, then it could really reflect even worse on his conditions that he could get taken into, as he says, into solitary, beaten again, abused, basically forgotten. But for some reason that didn't happen. And that phone call, which to this day, I'm so glad we all agreed on my program and with CNN to air, was very, very bold, really started a process. Jamie, I just want to ask you here because I'm not sure whether you were in the government at that time yet, but there was a total blockage. The messages were not getting to Biden or the hostage negotiators in the State Department seemed to reached an impasse and nothing was happening and he faced yet several more years in jail. What was actually going on in the State Department at the time?
- [12:40]
Jamie Rubin
Good question. I don't know. I wasn't working this issue. It was run by a man named Roger Carstens, who was really terrific, worked both for Trump and Biden. But often what would happen as, as CMC told you is that would get caught up in the nuclear talks that it. It was hard to separate them out. And remember, Obama took intense abuse from the Republicans for when he had prisoners released, and it was perceived that he paid a ransom for it by returning money that belonged to the Iranians. But the Republicans abused him and attacked him and criticized him. Of course, when Trump does it, they don't care. Trump will do the same thing that an Obama will do on any subject, and the Republicans will be quiet. And the Democrats being responsible won't criticize a Republican president in the same way the Republicans will criticize a Democratic president. That's one of the differences between the parties. So I don't know specifically what was going on. I did want to show the audience the card because I found it while we were talking. This is the card. It's in red for people that were released and in black for people that are still there. And on Iran, he's now Siamak Namazi is listed in red and aligned through it. Look, the president of the United States ultimately is the one who gets to make these decisions. And he's got 100 things going on on every given day on any given subject, and 100 different competing priorities. And sometimes, as you also, I think, have spoken to you, spoke to the president's sister, I believe, about this president's.
- [14:14]
Christiane Amanpour
Wife, the first lady and his wife.
- [14:16]
Jamie Rubin
The first lady.
- [14:16]
Christiane Amanpour
His wife, the first lady, Yep.
- [14:18]
Jamie Rubin
But that helped bring it to the President's attention. And so then he can reshuffle the deck a bit and say, well, what? Why aren't we doing anything about this? We can put the nuclear talks aside. And that's how it happens.
- [14:29]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. And in this case, I also was becoming desperate because after this call, it was still quite. The trail had gone ice cold still. And then slowly, slowly, a few months later, the first lady was in London, here for the inaugural, not the inauguration, sorry, the coronation of King Charles III. And I was invited to a reception at the U.S. embass. And I had written a letter simply addressed to her, asking her whether she would kindly put this letter in front of her husband, the President, because there were Americans rotting in Evin jail. And we just wanted him to talk to their families, him to hear the full story and him to just know that there are people behind these names in Evin prison. I asked the officials in the embassy, could I do it? I asked her, could I give you this letter? And she said yes. And honestly, that unlocked this particular crisis. And so slowly, slowly, things started to move. Siamak and about 4 others Iranian Americans who are held with him were then released into house arrest in Tehran. Then they spent a month or maybe more. Then with the intercession of Qatar, which sent a plane for them all in contact with the US government, they came, they took these Iranians, Americans and then brought them back to Washington. And now Siamak and the other four are free. But it takes this kind of extraordinary measure. And as Jamie says, as a result, part of the deal was the Iranians wanted their own funds which had been frozen, and they wanted them back. And that was the deal. So essentially, it's black and white. Certainly from the Iranian perspective, they are pawns. They're pawns for a political concession. They're pawns for a financial concession. They are taken because they're high value targets. They go through trials which are all absolutely shams and show trials. They barely have defense lawyers, they can barely represent themselves. Everything is incredibly stacked against them. And then they just get sent to, even for whichever day happens that this political impasse is unlocked. And to that end, I want to play another little piece of a message that Siamat gave me because it's still going on in Iran. And he's very upset because. And he has written a letter to the current president, who's a civilian, his name is Pezeshkian, and he has addressed Pezechyan, who has now started to ask Iranian Americans and other expats, dual nationals to come back and work for the good of the country. But there are still Iranian Americans to this day being held and other nationalities. And Siamak wants to make sure that they don't go back. So here's what he told me on that issue.
- [17:21]
Siamak Namazi
Christian, every former hostage I know, including myself, once thought, look, I've done nothing wrong, so I'll be fine. Many of us took false comfort in the fact that we've traveled to Iran in the past without any issues, thinking, believing that meant we'd be safe this time, too. I, for one, was dead wrong. It was a mistake that cost me eight years of my life. The truth is, just carrying a blue passport, a green card, or any Western passport can make you a target. It's like swimming in shark infested waters. Just because you weren't bitten last time doesn't mean it's safe. And believe me, the shark doesn't care if you're a very good person. So, yeah, I'm disgusted and I'm deeply worried for the people still rotting in those dungeons. That's why I wrote the letter. It's my way of calling out the Iranian government for its heinous practice of hostage diplomacy and of echoing the State Department's extraordinary travel warning. Because right now, it really is hostage taking season in Iran. No one should go.
- [18:34]
Christiane Amanpour
So that is a dramatic warning from somebody who knows. And I just say before we move on to in depth on the case that Jamie worked on, Evan Gershkovitz, that everybody in England knows the name Nazanin Zagari Ratcliffe, a young woman with a young child who was visiting with her husband, you know, her family in Iran. Her husband's English. Anyway, she got prevented from leaving on trumped up charges that were completely and utterly bogus as all of these people. And again, it was about trying to get something they thought was theirs from the British government, in this case tanks and other military purchases that Iran had made before the revolution and that the UK had never sent to Iran after the revolution, did not want to send those purchases that had been made under the time of the Shah to Iran under the Ayatollahs. Eventually they had to. And Nazanin Zagari Ratcliffe was finally released after many, many years and terrible, traumatic separation from her very, very young child and of course, her husband. Now, thank God, they're all reunited in the UK and rebuilding their lives. But these are names and faces and lives and stories behind this so called hostage diplomacy of pawn taking. So next, as I said, we're going to look at the release of the American journalist Evan Gershkovitz. He worked for the Wall Street Journal. He was taken prisoner by Putin's regime in Russia for more than a year. And it was after the full scale invasion of Ukraine. And he was trying to do his journalistic due diligence and do his job. So Jamie, you'll be telling us about the role you played in helping to get this young man home. And it was a sort of a break with normal hostage diplomacy. When we come back.
- [20:27]
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- [21:31]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, everybody, we're back. And we've gone from Iranian hostage diplomacy, so to speak, using hostages as pawns. And now we're going to go to a case study that Jamie worked on when he was in the State Department about an American who was taken hostage by the Putin regime. Just want to start with a question from one of you who sent one in and it's entirely relevant. Mackenzie asks, what's the internal process like when an American is taken hostage abroad? Who decides what gets communicated publicly? Those are two separate things, but both very, very interesting. So Jamie, background, of course, Gershkovitz, a colleague Wall Street Journal accused, I think, of spying. Honestly, anybody could see that that was just nonsense. He was doing his basic journalistic job trying to report from the Russian side what was happening from the Russian perspective after the Putin invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
- [22:26]
Jamie Rubin
This was a very unusual situation. I think our viewers and listeners know that I was very close to Secretary Blinken He's a longtime colle mine personal friend. So I worked on disinformation and the information war. That was my main job. But I was also one of Tony's closest advisors and one of the subjects that he cared a lot about, and that's why he carried this card in his pocket, was wrongful detainees. That's what we called them. And if they got on this list, they were wrongful detainees. And that MEANT that the U.S. government had an office run by a man named Roger Carstens, who ran the job of. Of keeping track of these people, talking to the families, and doing our best to get them out. Now, the Gershkovich case was particularly gruesome because we weren't really able to have a lot of dialogue with Russia at that time, because most of our effort had to go into the response of the world to this horrific decision of Putin to launch into the invasion of Ukraine. That was our highest priority. And one of the ways in which this worked out was a result of an outsider. We call them the back channels. And they're often, as Roger once explained in a speech called the wizards of diplomacy, because they can propose things, they can suggest things, they can involve themselves in a way that governments can't, because governments can't talk to each other hypothetically. It's very difficult to have a hypothetical conversation where you say, well, if I did this, would you do that? Did this, would you do that? Because what happens is the other side then takes the hypothetical point and makes it their policy. So Christogradtsev became my friend. Frankly, he became my friend through our son, and I met him through our son, and he and I became, we jokingly called new best friends. And he was a Bulgarian journalist of great skill, and he very much wanted to help Evan, and he wanted to help solve problems with the Russians. And he and I began meeting and discussing this subject, and he showed me the concept of all of the different Russian people in Russian prisons and all of the different Russian spies in other countries around the world. And I then explained to him that, well, right now, the CIA is our channel for communicating with the Russians, and that it's a very formal channel. It's not really a negotiation. It's just a communication. What happened was Christo explained this to me, and we saw that it wasn't working. Nothing was working. And Evan was getting enormous publicity because the Wall Street Journal did a great job in keeping the attention of the world focused on this. And we came up with this phrase. I think I actually came up with it from President Eisenhower, when you get stuck, he once said, you need to sometimes enlarge the problem. Normally, you want to keep things as simple as possible, one for one, two for two. But in this case, enlarging the problem was the secret, because it brought into play a key player that Vladimir Putin cared about, his personal assassin, a man named Krasakov. And this is a man who kills people on Putin's orders.
- [25:50]
Christiane Amanpour
Should we play the Roger Carstens commentary about that?
- [25:53]
Jamie Rubin
Yes, please.
- [25:54]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah, because when you say that, I mean, look at the difference of what Putin wanted for the release of Gershkavitz. An assassin, right, who probably killed people in foreign lands and elsewhere versus the Iranians, as bad as they are, wanted their own money and stuff back. It's two different kinds of cynicism and horror there. So let's play what Roger Carson said about who and how they decided about this heinous person.
- [26:20]
E
So now we're going to involve trying to bring Germany into this very broad swap situation. And the secretary, I guess the way I could characterize what he said, it's like, look, we've got to make the problem bigger so that the solution is bigger. He called it when he was in Japan yesterday, enlarging the problem. And that's exactly what we tried to do, to enlarge the problem, to try to generate a bigger olution.
- [26:43]
Christiane Amanpour
Okay, so, JB what was the biggest solution then?
- [26:45]
Jamie Rubin
The bigger solution was President Biden had to do something very difficult, which is he had to persuade the German chancellor to release an assassin who was in a German prison. And Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, was reluctant. Frankly, she was worried about what she called moral hazard, the idea that releasing him would send a message that an assassin could get off. And frankly, she was also worried he might kill somebody else. And what happened was President Biden and Secretary Blinken talked to Annalina Barbak and Chancellor Schultz and explained to them that. That there was a larger moral imperative that should trump the moral hazard. The moral imperative was that we got out Evan Gershkovitz. We also got out an American whose name was Paul Whelan. And we got out a half a dozen Russian dissidents who were unfairly in prison, who came to the United States. So we got more prisoners than the Russians did. I believe it was 12. We got. And they got six. So we took Christo Gradsev's list and we went around the world. Roger did this with the help of the NSC and the CIA to find all these Russians who could potentially be traded and then added them together and came up with this trade. Now, the tragedy was, for a moment there, it looked like the most famous dissident in Russia might get us out as well. And his name was Navalny, of course. And at one point, it seemed like Navalny could be thrown in. And that's what we used, frankly, and Christo's insight to persuade the Germans to put Krasakov on the table. They had a great relationship with Navalny. That's where he recovered from his poisoning. The German people loved him. And so the Germans were persuaded to offer initially the release of Krasakov in exchange for Navalny coming out of prison. Then the hard part was getting Navalny's family to confirm that if he left, he wouldn't go back. He was such a determined dissident that people worried if he left, he would go back. So these were all the complications. And that's why it was the most complicated prisoner swap that I'm aware of. Where you had countries all over the world, it was done through the good offices of the government of Turkey. The American ambassador there got involved. And this was extremely secretive. I mean, I'd never really been involved in something where the number of people involved knew about it was so small. And people were worried about leaks because they were worried about these different factors coming into play and somebody complaining about letting Krasikov out or letting someone out in this country, in Poland or Scandinavian countries. And so any leak could kill the whole thing, and that's why it was so complicated. But in the end, with the help of President Biden's leadership in getting Schultz to do something that she said he only did because President Biden asked him. And this is where allies come in. You win friends, you develop friendships, you develop relationships. And when the chips are down, your allies, ideally, and hopefully help you, they come through for you. And that's what Chancellor Schultz did for Joe Biden.
- [29:58]
Christiane Amanpour
Again, it just. You know, I'm staggered to think of this assassin who's released and who knows where, wandering around, and we've got journalists and human rights workers and ordinary civilians being held in. In all these other places on the other side. So it's often very unequal, and that's what makes it unpalatable. A lot of these releases and these exchanges. So what to make of that going forward? Let's take a little break. And when we come back, just where we are on the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoner swap, it may seem like it's been pushed onto the back burner. And to an extent, it has because the war is raging still there is no ceasefire and the starvation crisis in Gaza. Rightly getting the lion's share of the news right now trying to stop that crisis when we come back.
- [30:52]
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- [31:56]
Christiane Amanpour
So we're back and there are huge questions about trading prisoners and hostages beyond the individual cases we've just spoken about that involve two sides that are historically at war. You can imagine what was going on in the years that it took to end the Northern Ireland conflict. There were all sorts of swaps and trades and issues that had to be negotiated there. Obviously, the most public now is what's happening between Israel and Hamas. Hamas is looking for a massive prisoner release from Israel. Israel wants to get the remaining approximately, According to them, 50 hostages back, 20 of whom they believe to still be alive. So Jamie, what is it going to take?
- [32:38]
Jamie Rubin
It's a very good question. I don't know the answer. I think there's two players. There's Hamas and there's Bibi Netanyahu. It does feel like the pressure in the world, including President Trump, growing pressure from him, is changing Israeli policy slowly, slowly, way too slowly. And I think that's the key because this case is a case where the hostages can't be separated from the larger problem. And that's why it's so hard. These other cases we've talked about, we separated it from Iran from the nuclear issue or Russia from the Ukraine war. It was separated. In this case, it's all wrapped up in the war, and that's why it's so hard. So I think until Donald Trump really uses the leverage he has, which he's starting to do slowly, much too slowly, and Netanyahu is responding slowly, much too slowly, that this whole thing can't fall into place because they just don't seem to find a way to separate it from the larger ceasefire and the larger end of conflict.
- [33:45]
Christiane Amanpour
Indeed. And as all the Israelis say, those who've got family there and those who are looking at this, it's their number one priority to get their people back. And they all believe that it will take negotiations and this war is not going to get their loved ones back. So. So let us go to some more personal issues here. In terms of examples, Hayley asks Christiane, given how many times you reported from war zones, have you ever come close to being taken hostage? What protection is given to journalists to keep them safe when out in the field? So I'm going to start with the last bit first, because a huge amount has changed since 9, 11, and since ISIS started taking and beheading Americans and other foreigners during the, you know, early 2000s. And it was absolutely terrible. So many of our organizations do provide security, do provide information, do give us courses on how to protect ourselves. There's a lot of help and support that come from inside our own negotiation organizations now, much, much more than when I first started out. And I'm really pleased to see that this is. Is what's going on. And almost no reporter goes into the field these days unless they have taken the course they need to take and unless they go properly secured. It's burdensome, but it's apparently a must in today's world. I remember a very scary time after the. Well, during the first Gulf War, there was an Iranian, British journalist who worked for the Observer. His name was Farzad Bazovd. He. He was in Iraq trying to do stories. And at one point, he went to a place where the Iraqis thought that he shouldn't be. And he was trying to figure out, you know, what Saddam Hussein had done when he gassed the Kurds before 1990. And anyway, he was arrested and the British didn't get him out. They refused under the government of Margaret Thatcher to negotiate. And he was tried, he was convicted, and he was hanged. A trial with no defense attorneys, a trial in Arabic that he didn't understand. It was all, you know, sham, of course, a kangaroo court. But he was killed. And that was very scary. And in 91, when I went to Iraq, during the Iraq, first Gulf War. I remember asking to go to various places to cover the news and cover stories, especially when the Kurds started to revolt cult in Kurdistan and the Shias down near Basra. And I was told by an official who looked me in the eye and who obviously knew I was Iranian as well. He said, be careful, Amanpour, you remember Farzad Bazovd? I mean, a chill went through me, and that's what he intended. And it was terrifying. So that was. That was one of the most terrifying things. And then I think we were engaged or married, I can't remember, but I had a situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Jamie, do you remember?
- [36:51]
Jamie Rubin
Yes, I remember being in. I think I was, you know, working with Madeline Albright very closely. I was with her or near her. And suddenly the State Department operations center reported to everybody that Amanpour and Emma Bonino have been taken hostage by the Taliban.
- [37:09]
Christiane Amanpour
So she just to say, was a senior EU official who had come for humanitarian mission to Afghanistan, and they took her hostage as well.
- [37:18]
Jamie Rubin
But you. You managed to get out of that one. But the really sensitive one, as I recall, was, was Serbia when the war started, which I had something to do with, with Madeleine Albright. The bombing was either starting or about to start. And suddenly your president called me out of Madeleine's office to say that CNN President Tom Johnson. Yes, son. It was actually Easton Jordan.
- [37:41]
Christiane Amanpour
Easton Jordan, the vice president.
- [37:42]
Jamie Rubin
Yeah, yeah. And he called me and said, I'm sorry to report. We came. We can't find Christiane. We think she's missing. And the Serb archon, the war criminal, is running around saying, where's Amanpour? So that was pretty hairy. And just to tell our viewers the short version of what happened is I had a rough night, you had a rougher night. But we did get some help from a friendly, neutral country in Scandinavia who helped you get out of the country by escorting you in their car, I believe, out of the country by knocking on your door with some code word or something, I think.
- [38:19]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I had decided to avoid the lobby. I knew Arcan, the indicted war criminal, who I had been very tough on. I'd done reports on, and I'd been generally very tough on the Serbs and the Bosnian Serbs for their genocidal policies during the Bosnia war and imminent in the Kosovo war. And there I was in their territory as the Americans and NATO started bombing.
- [38:46]
Jamie Rubin
And.
- [38:46]
Christiane Amanpour
And frankly, they blame me. They used to say, you're the one to blame for all of this. So it was very Scary. I decided not to stay in my own room. I went to sleep with my colleague in her room. And that was a good decision because when said ambassador came and knocked on my door at like 4 in the morning or whatever it was, gave a code word and said, I'm here to get you out of Serbia. I quickly went to my own room to get my suitcase and everything had been turned upside down. Stuff was stolen, papers all over the place. Suitcase, you know, completely emptied all over the place. And I thought, oh, my God, thank God I didn't stay in my room last night. Anyway, thanks to the State Department and to my CNN vice president and president who gathered the troops, I was driven out and I was driven to the border by probably the Hungarian border. And then I flew over to the Kosovo area and gave them hell from there. But luckily I wasn't taken hostage.
- [39:42]
Jamie Rubin
That was a case, interestingly enough, where, you know, we used to be asked time to time whether our jobs were conflicted by our relationship. And clearly in the minds of the Serbian leaders there, there was a connection that they chose to make which wasn't legitimate, but they made it, namely that you were married to the man who was defending the bombing and promoting the idea of their blame and justifying the use of military power against Serbia. So that was a time when. And my job probably negatively impacted your ability to do your job.
- [40:18]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah. But I will say also, earlier in the Bosnia war, before we knew each other, they didn't like me.
- [40:25]
Jamie Rubin
Still blamed you.
- [40:26]
Christiane Amanpour
They still blame me. Exactly. They still blame me, basically because of the prominence of CNN's platform and the prominence we in the whole world gave to the illegal war that the Serbs and the Bosnian Serbs were conducting against defenseless civilians all over Bosnia, in towns like Sarajev, Renito, all these towns that resonate with the terror that was committed. And we were there reporting on it, and they didn't like it. And so we. Luckily, I escaped being held hostage, but I can't end this without saying because of that, so many of our colleagues were in their literal crosshairs in Bosnia. So many of my friends and colleagues were killed and wounded. And to this day, you know, I never forget. And it was actually the first war in which journalists were deliberately targeted before. Before Bosnia. Journalists, before my generation were often killed on the job, but it was generally caught in the crossfire. Generally, this was the first time journalists were deliberately targeted. And now, as we've been discussing, have been deliberately taken hostage, used as pawns. And so this is an ongoing situation that we have to you know, work very, very hard to make sure we can get all our people back one way or another. I think that's it, Jamie. A lot of stories, a lot of real issues, a lot of successes and failures and a situation that I think is probably going to continue. I know, and I'm sure you are probably thinking about it too, that there has to be some kind of hostage proofing. I don't know how, but some kind of way to make it unprofitable for the hostage takers.
- [42:08]
Jamie Rubin
Let me address that. Secretary Blinken and I talked to Roger Carstens about this, about a policy that you could enforce or put in place. Essentially, you'd gather up the responsible nations and make certain commitments that if one of your country's citizens was wrongfully detained, you would all act in a unified way to either impose sanctions or impose diplomatic pressure and build a system of incentives and disincentives to, to minimize the number of times this happens. And one of the things then just to end on this and this card proves it. You know, this card had, I don't know, 75, 80 names on it when Secretary Blinken started it. By the end it had 20 or 30. And people used to say every time we got people out that you're just incentivizing people to take more. It didn't happen. It wasn't true numerically. And so if you do your homework, if you do your work right, and if we were to gather together in a grander policy the legitimate and responsible nations to create disincentives for any future wrongful detainees, you'd probably make it even less likely. So it's wrong to say that every time you negotiate to get your people out, you're promoting additional detainees or hostage takings. The numbers don't prove that.
- [43:38]
Christiane Amanpour
That was a really interesting trip down memory lane and to project and look forward as well. So thanks for listening to the X Files with me, Christiane Amanpour and Jamie Rubin. Make sure that you are following the feed so you don't miss an episode. Follow, subscribe, do all those things. We'll see you for our next episode next Tuesday. And don't forget, you can email us@amanpour podlobal.com and we are on social media, Amanpourpod. You can always listen to the podcast on Global Player, download it from the App Store or go to globalplayer.com or wherever you get your podcast. And you can watch, of course, on YouTube when it lands there. Bye bye, Jamie.
- [44:17]
Jamie Rubin
Bye bye. This is a Global Player original podcast.
- [44:28]
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