These Americans Are in Danger

Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Today, we're discussing hostage diplomacy. Not in

some sort of abstract terms, but we're going to talk about the human lives affected by this. And

of course, we're talking about American lives. And then we're going to walk through some of the

carrots and the sticks our government has to bring them home and to prevent this from even happening

to begin with.

When we hear about hostages, we think about criminal gangs and kidnappings. A lot of people

don't think about the fact nation states and their proxies are doing this. And when they're doing

this, it's for a reason. It's for hostage diplomacy. Over 80% of Americans held abroad by the states

in this case aren't charged with any legitimate crimes. They are being used as leverage against our

government into polar government into different type of agreements and negotiations. And it really

puts our government at a weak starting point. And there needs to be more done. So countries don't

think they can just take advantage of us in this situation. You know, we need to have a harder line

when it comes to the wrongful detainment of Americans. It's really interesting. Our government

isn't very forthcoming with the American public as to just how many Americans are wrongfully or unjustly

detained overseas. So we actually have to go to other organizations who track this and they

track this through relationships with the families of those detained. So it's a very, very frustrating

thing. It's not a lot of like clear, transparent negotiations going on. There are times we won't even

hear an Americans held hostage for years because officials within the state department will tell those

families, hey, it's not going to help in our negotiations. If you put up publicly that you loved one

is detained, right? We had Kyla Mueller's family bring this up. A lot of families have complained

about this. So when we talk about tracking a really great organization is the James Foley foundation,

you know, James was a reporter. He actually came to Benghazi after attacks and he did an interview

on the ground with Ahmed Abu Qatala that ended up being the terrorist, the US government framed

as a mastermind of our attacks. Unfortunately, he went, you know, and did reporting up in the,

you know, the Syria region and then he ended up sadly being beheaded by ISIS. So his family,

you know, put this foundation together to really work through some of these wrongful detainments

of Americans and to help other families. So according to them right now, they were at least 41

Americans held in these circumstances. And when I say these circumstances, I'm saying basically by

foreign governments abroad. I mean, this is a crazy thing, you know, when we're supposed to be the

top of the food chain and all these governments can just swoop in and hold Americans hostage without

real criminal prosecutions. Now historically, you know, there's some states that have been known for

doing this. Iran's a really great example in North Korea. And then some proxy actors who now,

unfortunately, have their own states, the Haqqani network being an excellent example of this.

And they have used the detention of Americans to extract consentions from our country. Those

can be diplomatic, economic, security related. I mean, with the Haqqani's, a lot was to bring in

more money. And to get tariffs released on a lot of time, the tariffs were released, as you know,

from Guantanamo Bay. I mean, a really great example is ahead right now of Taliban's intelligence

service was seek. He wasn't Gitmo and the insane part is he's also currently involved with the

detention of Americans, including he had direct involvement in the detention of Dennis Cole.

American Dennis Coil has been taken hostage by the Taliban for almost a year now. His

family has been speaking out, Molly Long went on news nation last week to ask for some more

public attention to this case. What is your administration doing to get him home in?

Will you give me the name? Dennis Coil. Okay. If you will, you give me some information. I'll

take care of that. I know that your administration is working on it. I know they are, but I could

do some things on the internet that are pretty. Do you have any response or message to the Taliban

for who continues to hold him for no crime for simply? Well, I'm not happy about them holding

anybody, and especially if he's not guilty of anything, and it sounds, I mean, from what I've

heard, and again, I'm not that familiar with it like you are, but I will certainly take a very

strong position on it. And the Haqqani family, specifically Sirajid in Haqqani, had direct

involvement in the current detention of American Makhmet Shahabibi. So when you allow them to do this

year after year after year, they don't stop this practice. They just keep taking advantage of it.

And as you know, now the Haqqani network runs a huge part of the Taliban government. They actually

run the whole entire Ministry of Interior. And so we're going to keep getting into these situations

because we are negotiating with them and allowing these to occur. We have not done a red line.

And they know they benefit from doing this to Americans. Now, when we talk about the two Americans

in Afghanistan, you know, I've long advocated for, you know, Makhmet Shahabibi. You know, I've worked

on his case for the last couple of years because it was really interesting. So the Taliban captured

Haqqani and then they handed him over to al-Qaeda. And what they do is they go tell our government,

we don't know what happened with him. He wasn't in our detention. We don't know where he is. We don't

even know if he's alive. And then our government parrots that. They even compared it to people he

was close to. We remain deeply concerned about the well-being of Makhmet Haqqani and other Americans

still detained in Afghanistan. The safety and security of Americans abroad remains a highest

priority of this State Department. And we are working tirelessly to bring Americans home.

In addition. And so I found that very frustrating, you know, so we spend a lot of time advocating

for Haqqani, you know, checking on his status and his welfare because unfortunately he's in a

situation where he's not just being held. He's actually being tortured. And then there's a host

of other problems that you can imagine when you're in detention for as long as he's been,

which has been over a couple of years now, you know, you don't get proper nutrition. You know,

that affects how your organs operate. Just so many different problems that can occur. So,

you know, we're pushing a lot to bring him home because he really is in a situation where his

health has deteriorated a lot. And a person can only do torture for so long. And I know it's not

the best way to put it, but you know, I just want to keep it simple. We don't want to kind of

say things that could harm the family or upset the family in any way. And then we brought up

Dennis Cole. Now the interesting thing is I knew Dennis Cole was detained, you know, in Afghanistan

all year, but there really wasn't any kind of outward discussion by our government, but he was

captured. There weren't really requests until just recently in the last few weeks to release him,

right? So completely ignoring the issue for an entire year. I believe was again pressure,

probably in the family to keep it quiet. So it's a frustrating thing when you look at it because

if you notice this year, our government went very strong on hostages in Gaza, not just Americans,

any hostage in Gaza. And then we saw them actually do operations to go for Americans held in

Venezuela, but for some reason, the Americans in Afghanistan are completely ignored as we give

the Taliban hundreds of millions of dollars a month. So we're paying them. And then they're holding

Americans as hostage to continue engagements with us. It's the craziest thing. I mean, this is

what terrorists organizations do, unfortunately. Obviously, I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan,

but there is a developing story that we have to talk about because it's a very frustrating

situation. I don't know if you've seen this. We have these two pilots. They're being held in Guinea.

Now, they're not being held by a terrorist organization. They're being held, you know, by the

country. The country is a little bit more of like a military controlled institution, but again,

they're not in some criminals hands or they're not in some terrorist hideout. They're being held

by the government. I mean, this has been over a month. We're scared. Mr. Chump, can you please come

down here and get us out of here? Two pilots, including one from New Jersey, jailed in a West African

country for almost six weeks. And they tell CBS News New York that it happened when they landed to

refuel Christine Sloan spoke with the two men on the phone.

Uing resident Fabio Espinal Nunez has years of experience as a pilot, but the 33-year-old tells us

nothing could prepare him for the terrifying ordeal around six weeks ago when the Republic of Guinea

military forced its way on the plane. He and co-pilot, Brad Schlanker, had landed in the West

African nation in order to refuel. There were around a hundred army people and they were pointing

AK-47s at us and talking in French, which we do not know, almost screaming in French.

Nunez and Schlanker speaking to us on the phone from the prison there being held in Guinea,

describing what sounds like a scene out of a movie.

By around four to five heavenly armored vehicles, pointing guns at us and saying that we need to go

to the ground, we've got the transcripts of the radio transmissions, all clearly revealing the

fact that we were innocent and pregnant.

Nunez was flying a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai on a private plane.

The flight log given to us shows they had clearance to land, but the government charging them

with violating Ghanaian airspace. I want to walk through what actually happened here because

it's starting to look like hostage diplomacy. So in late December, we had two US pilots.

One is Fabio Nunez and he's from New Jersey and the other is Brad Schlanker and he's from Illinois.

So they were operating a Gulf Stream and they were moving a Brazilian family from Suriname to Dubai

and they were stopping in Guinea for just one of your standard routine visits to get gas,

right? You're refueling your jet, very, very simple. So they put in the flight documentation

they put in the paperwork to obviously have approvals to land, they request the clearances to

come into Guinea and they truly believed we have authorization to land, do this refueling trip,

you know, and be on our way. This is a standard practice as these planes are flying all over the

world. This isn't even a situation where I had a friend, he was on a flight and they actually had

to divert the flight. I believe it was a mechanical issue. So he ended up in a not so friendly

country and the authorities did come on the plane and they took them off because he was an

American and he did spend a few days being detained and interrogated and again that was a situation

where that plane never should have been there. Right here, this plane planned to be in this location

to refuel. So I want you to keep that in mind. They didn't just go into an area they shouldn't

have been in. What happened is they touched down to refuel and instead of a refueling truck

come up, they were surrounded by guinean forces, right? I mean, they had weapons pointed at them.

I mean, this was like a military operation, you know, around their plane. You know, when you talk

to people on the ground, you know, they say it was, you know, a very large contingent who met the

plane. So this is very concerning. This is something you would do if like a terrorist

was landing on your soil, right? So obviously what they said to the pilots is you do not have

proper authorization to land in Guinea. Again, now this is a claim that's obviously being

disputed. I mean, these pilots do this every single day. You know, there's a lot of different

kind of bureaucratic steps you have to go through, you know, while you're flying between different

airports, stopping for refueling, etc. I mean, it's just like, it's just the common thing you do

all the time. It's like, it's habits like riding a bike. The case could have just been solved quickly,

right? A review of the paperwork and then figure out what happened. Was it a bureaucratic error?

Like, what weren't wrong? But that's not what happened. And then it's now becoming like

geopolitical friction because they are still like wrongfully being held. And now it's February.

So this is an insane thing to be held this long for refueling stuff. We have an issue where

obviously countries control the airspace above them, right? I mean, that's very simple to understand.

And then unauthorized entry, of course, can be criminalized. Now, in the aviation space,

there are so many layers of coordination to prevent an issue like this from occurring.

You have dispatch filings. Regional air traffic control is involved. You have diplomatic

overflight permissions. And then, of course, you know, there's a ground handler component to this.

So when something breaks down in this chain, right, it's bureaucratic, or you really just had

some sort of accidental miscommunication, or there is something politically sensitive going on,

and you had no idea, and you had no shot, even if you did everything correctly. And we're all

kind of sitting back and being like, well, what is it? Which one is the issue? So the lawyers have

a legal team, and they've pursued their case through, you know, guineas, you know, official

legal system, because they are detained. You know, first, it was approved that they would get bail.

Well, that unfortunately didn't materialize. So we have a situation here. It's not like

everything separate. It's not like the judiciary's separate from kind of like this military

run government. They get to exert control on it. And that's what appears to be happening in this

case. Again, we're not getting a lot of clear answers as to why they couldn't even at least have

bail. Another thing is state department has acknowledged the case, and they have said, oh yeah,

you know, we have consular visits, and we're involved in it from like our consular section.

You know, as we know, that's not the same as having a high level representative, right,

like your secretary or your state involved in this, because the consular section doesn't have

this type of leverage that a cabinet member has. So a lot of people are like, let's not just rely

on the efficacy to solve this. Like, why is this not going, you know, up the chain of command,

and somebody getting involved, you know, in a more aggressive way? Now, here's something that's

the truth. Four nationals, particularly Americans, have diplomatic street value. I mean,

it's insane way to put it, but it's true. That's why we get used as bargaining chips, even when you

hold an American, their case attracts massive media attention. It generates pressure, and it creates

channels of negotiation that you may never have had as a country, right? You may never have been

able to sit down with our secretary of state or get on a phone call with our vice president,

but in a situation like this, you have some sort of over leverage that might put you into those

brokering situations. And a lot of time our government wants to wait to see where this is escalating.

If we can deal with it just through the legal process, of course we can, but if a country is trying

to pull us into this kind of like diplomatic hostage taking, like we are going to end up going

down that path, even though we didn't want to. So environments where governments face kind of

economic strain, political isolation, and their legitimacy kind of on the world stage just isn't

there. They think, hmm, we could use these Americans as a bargaining chip. We could get a benefit

from this interaction. So families in this case are really, you know, escalating the peel. We're

starting to see a little bit of press talk about it, but not as much as you would think for just

two innocent Americans being detained. And, you know, we do have to get an answer from

Washington, like this looks like bigger than a consular issue. And is it going to become a

diplomatic priority? It should. We do not want this to occur again and again in other countries by,

you know, ignoring it or being soft on it. We want to say there are repercussions if you wrongly

hold Americans hostage. Before we jump into like what carrots and sticks our government has,

one thing I want to bring up that lots of times it gets ignored is when you have an American

wrongly held, there's a whole other piece everybody forgets about. It's the families.

They are so impacted by these detentions. This becomes their entire life to advocate

you know, for their loved one to be released. In some cases, the loved ones, even the burn

winner of the family. And then it obviously causes other issues that you can imagine. I mean,

think about it. You know, you have fathers and in some cases mothers, you know, they're missing

birthdays. Heck, we've had some misweddings and sometimes the hostage diplomacy has gone on so far.

We've had some of these detainees die in custody. You know, we believe Paul Overview is likely deceased.

He had basically gone to Afghanistan and then he traveled over into a zirstand to meet again

Sirajid in Hakan. He ties through a lot of these in that area. You know, just to interview him for

a book and then he got captured. You know, we of course have Bob Levinson, you know, Robert Levinson

held a night ran and it took so long to do the negotiations to free him that he unfortunately

died in prison. Well, this is a massive impact on the families and then these families have

almost become a community. You know, they start making friends with the other detained families

and like, as you can imagine, the impacts are felt by all of them. So I just want to kind of

at least bring up, hey, this isn't just about Americans being used as bargaining chips. There's

a human cost involved here and there are nations damaging, you know, Americans and then Americans'

families back home. You know, I talked to the wife of, you know, one of our American detainees

and you can hear it. Like, she was frustrated. She wasn't getting answers from our government. She

was getting misinformation about even the status of her husband's situation. And I think people

are getting really frustrated because like I said, this is not a clear and transparent process.

They don't do it repeatable, right? I explained to you in some cases, they lean all in and that

hostages the most important person in the universe and other hostages that they don't even say their

names publicly or they don't even announce at all that an American is detained there to begin with.

So just understand there is a piece of it where families are feeling like what would be a moral

injury from the government in the way they're handling these cases. Now if we just look back at

some numbers from 2024, at that time we had 54 Americans, you know, held in this custody or the

state of hostage at least that their families wanted to publicly come out and say, remember there

are families pressured not to say anything. So the numbers aren't always exactly accurate. But in

that case of the 54, they were in 17 different countries. So it's not like two or three countries,

use Americans for hostage diplomacy. We're talking about over a dozen. So this is a problem that's

happened again and again and again and we keep allowing it to occur. You know, another stark fact

from this is when an American gets held in one of these situations by a nation state,

there's not really a criminal prosecution or a legitimate means to hold them on average. They're

spending six years in detention, six years. Now think about it when you're kind of older and

elderly. You don't want these hostages there in their 60s and 70s and then you're going into

these detentions in third world countries, you know, with out proper food, medical care and really

access to consular services. I mean, I can tell you, Habibi has not had any consular visits from

the US government. That's a long time to sustain yourself and to be in the situation where

you don't know if people on the outside are advocating for you. You don't have access to the press.

You know, you're staying strong, but there are times where you're losing hope. It's a very frustrating

situation to be in. You know, so what is the US government actually do when we have Americans held

abroad? I want to talk a little bit about it as kind of this care and stick phenomenon, but first

I want to talk about this legal framework that has been put in place to help and then a follow-on

executive order. So we have the Robert Levinson. I told you, he goes by Bob, you know, he was held

in Iranian custody, the Robert Levinson hostage recovery and hostage taking accountability act.

So in this case, it allows the Secretary of State to mark a rubio to officially designate a

detain American as wrongfully detained. You know, that is a critical mandate that triggers then

high level US engagement. So once you say, yep, they're officially wrongfully detained,

you can get cabinet level individuals involved in negotiating their release. So when you have

family, that's the designation you want, right? Because you want your case at the highest and top

levels of the US government. You want their eyes and their effort on it. They need to be invested,

of course, in getting your loved one released. Now the other legal framework put into place is

really interesting. So it was September 5, 2025 and now President Donald Trump signed an executive

order and it elevated it up his step. So we said how you get labeled a wrongful detainee. Well,

he took it to another level and he said, hey, how about we just designate people, state sponsors

of wrongful detention so a country can be holding an American and get this designation. So I'm going

to walk through a little bit of how these work. So when we talk carrots, that's more US policy.

So there's like quiet diplomacy, third party negotiations, you know, obviously like a cutter

and sawty sometimes takes the lead in some of these cases, you know, to do the negotiations to

get Americans released. We have humanitarian engagement, even offers of aid. Like sometimes

it looks like an American was free to know money past hands, but in a large number of cases,

like a big chunk of money will be handed to an NGO or those type of things. So there are things

that happen behind the scenes that really the public was never made of aware of, but a lot of money

happens to move in these cases. And then the last one is obviously again that consular access,

obviously our embassies abroad will say, you know, we want access to the detainee. We want to

bring in lawyers for the detainee. We want to be part of the legal process, you know, to support

this detainee. And in a lot of cases, like I said, they're being held hostage and they really do

need that extra legal support. So when we talk about kind of those carrots, all that is to really

incentivize a country, you know, to release the American who's held without any sort of conflict.

It's really almost all quiet behind the scenes. You know, this isn't on the CNN ticker. It's like,

let's see what we can do quietly to resolve this issue, you know, free the American and move on

from it. Of course, not everything stays at that level and you have to use sticks. So of course,

this new executive order is a stick. Now, when you have sticks and under this executive order,

you can do these things. That means you can sanction a country, individuals, organizations in the

country for wrongfully holding Americans. You can restrict visas for them, right? So you can say,

none of your elites get visas. You can say, oh, none of your children can have visas to US

universities. That is an option. They don't ever employ it, but it's an option. You can do export

controls, right? You can affect the economies of these locations and then diplomatic pressure

increases dramatically. Now, when this occurs and once we get into this phase, if you do release the

American, you can then roll back and not be like the state designated issue. So it's not like you

get a designation that lasts forever like, you know, a tear scoop could be designated and then it

could take a really long time until you roll that back if ever. In this case, if you release the American

and you do the negotiations, you can roll it back. But, you know, one thing we find frustrating is,

okay, you have these sticks, especially under this executive order. Why aren't you using them

against the Taliban? You can cut US funding to the Taliban, right? We fund them humanitarian

dollars and we fund them counter-terrorism dollars, right? You can end both buckets. You have the

ability to affect the travel of senior Taliban leaders, right? You can go to the UN and you can

go to the Security Council and say, hey, I know we gave approvals for these few members of the

Taliban to travel, but let's now restrict that, you know, because they're holding Americans hostage.

That is an opportunity we have. You can put sanctions against them. The crazy part is a lot of

senior Taliban leaders have sanctions and even the US government have circumvented those sanctions

to get them funds. So, while we have these, like, this act and then this executive order in place

that really could be affecting these issues and this hostage diplomacy, we're not using them

in every case and it's really interesting and it's leading to a lot of people to say, what

is different about the Taliban, right? Like, who in the White House is saying, no, no, no, don't use this

executive order against the Taliban because something like that is happening and a lot of people are

asking a lot of questions about it and they're actually very concerned that there's different

rules in place and for some reason the Taliban is getting a pass at harming Americans and remember

in this case the Taliban even handed an American over to al-Qaeda to torture. Like, that is a

level that should be a red line for all of us and there's such little advocacy to do anything

about this. I want to just quickly go through a few more of the Americans held overseas and just

give their locations. So, we have Alina Lopez, she was detained since 2017 in Cuba. We have

Chuck Zimmerman, he's been detained since June 2025 in Russia. We have Reza Valeste been detained since

2024 in Iran. We have Ferry Singh detained since 2022 in Cambodia and we have Olga Jezler detained since

2022 in Russia. So, this isn't just Ginny, it's not just Afghanistan, we have Cuba, Iran, Russia,

and Cambodia. In each of those names doesn't just represent this person stuck in this insane

world of hostage diplomacy but their families who are impacted, they're sitting there by their

phones awaiting answers, they do not know how their loved one is doing, it's a very frustrating

thing. So, hostage diplomacy rarely gets any sort of headlines but these are real humans, real

Americans caught in the crossfire and today we walk through some of the personal stories because

I told you there's over 40 Americans held by nation states. There's a lot of people needing help

and a lot of families out there just advocating for a voice and saying, hey, my loved ones detained

too, you know, like bring them home and that's where we need to be, no American should be used in

this ridiculous chessboard, you know, of world diplomacy and it's time to bring them all home.

Thanks for tuning in.

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