Stalling for Time by Gary Noesner

Unit (SOARU), which was configured to support tactical, hostage negotiation, and crisis management research, training, and operations for the entire FBI. Those of us on the staff were in a position to greatly influence the direction of the FBI’s policy and operational guidelines forthese programs. The SOARU was purposefully set up to better coordinate the often conflicting and sometimes contradictory approaches historically practiced by the FBI’s SWAT teams and field hostage negotiators.
    Behind closed doors, our crew was not above jokingly referring to the SWAT guys as Neanderthals and knuckle-draggers. But experience had shown us time and again that hostage negotiators were less likely to achieve a desired surrender when there was no visible show of force and a lack of tactical containment. Conversely, we had also learned that tactical entry was almost always safer and more successful
after
negotiators had bought time for necessary planning, practice, and implementation.
    It wasn’t that we didn’t appreciate the SWAT teams—we knew that we depended on them just as much as they depended on us. I also had my own reasons to appreciate them: while I had been in Germany for the Hamadei trial, information surfaced that terrorists might be targeting me for reprisal. In response, the FBI had dispatched members of the Hostage Rescue Team to my house to guard my family, even accompanying my wife and kids on outings and daily errands.
    As distinguished from the fifty-six part-time SWAT teams in FBI field offices around the country, HRT was a dedicated national counterterrorism tactical response unit. HRT was located, like SOARU, at the FBI academy, and was staffed by over sixty-five full-time tactical operators who were always either engaged in training rotations or operationally deployed on unique missions anywhere in the United States that required their unique skill sets. Protecting my family became one of those missions.
    When I wasn’t traveling to conduct law enforcement training programs or speaking at law enforcement conferences, my time was spent developing new negotiation instructional training blocks or researching and writing articles for the
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
. The objective was to gather information, assess its value, identify the key learning points, and then pass that information to negotiation practitioners.
    In addition to the intensive two-week hostage-negotiation training courses we conducted four to six times each year at the FBI academy, we also conducted regional training programs for local police departmentsin the field. The basic negotiation course in Quantico provided essential training for all new FBI negotiators, but we also kept open several slots for domestic and foreign officers.
    Practically every significant law enforcement leader in the free world cycled through the FBI academy at some point or another. Many of these officials would take time to stop by our unit to learn about the negotiation program, and to tap into our experience and expertise. They collected copies of our training materials and often requested that we travel to their jurisdictions to conduct field negotiation schools for their personnel.
    During the six months I spent at the Tyson’s Corner resident agency, I hardly left the zip code. I remember telling my wife, Carol, that this new assignment at Quantico would be less disruptive to our family life, and that I would not be traveling nearly as much or to such faraway destinations as I had when working overseas hijacking cases. Little did I know that by becoming a full-time negotiator, I was setting myself up not only for continuing worldwide travel but also for round-the-clock duty as a consultant to on-scene negotiators, taking those urgent phone calls seeking advice on nights, weekends, and holidays.
    The FBI has worked kidnap cases since 1932, when the abduction and murder of the two-year-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh stirred public outrage. In