Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

THERE IS ALWAYS A TEAM ON THE OTHER SIDE
The FBI sent me back in. Now I was sent in to make sure a
deal got made. It was all very high profile, too. Some of my
contacts reported that FBI director Robert Mueller was
personally briefing President George W. Bush every
morning on what we were doing. When Director Mueller
showed up in the U.S. Embassy in Manila and I was
introduced to him, a look of recognition came over his face.
That was a very heady moment.
But all the support in the world won’t work if your
counterpart’s team is dysfunctional. If your negotiation
efforts don’t reach past your counterpart and into the team
behind him, then you’ve got a “hope”-based deal—and
hope is not a strategy.

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One of the things I failed to fully appreciate then was
that the kidnappers had changed negotiators themselves.
Sabaya had been replaced.
My boss Gary Noesner had, in a previous kidnapping,
pointed out to me that a change in negotiators by the other
side almost always signaled that they meant to take a harder
line. What I didn’t realize at the time was this meant Sabaya
was going to play a role as a deal breaker if he wasn’t
accounted for.
Our new tack was to buy the Burnhams back. Although
the United States officially doesn’t pay ransoms, a donor
had been found who would provide $300,000. The new
Abu Sayyaf negotiator agreed to a release.
The ransom drop was a disaster. The kidnappers decided
that they wouldn’t release the Burnhams: or, rather, Sabaya,
who was physically in charge of the hostages, refused to
release them. He had cut his own side-deal—one we didn’t
know about—and it had fallen through. The new negotiator,
now embarrassed and in a foul mood, covered himself by
claiming that the payment was short $600. We were baffled
—“Six hundred dollars? You won’t let hostages go because
of six hundred dollars?”—and we tried to argue that if the
money was missing, it must have been the courier who had
stolen the money. But we had no dynamic of trust and
cooperation to back us up. The $300,000 was gone and we
were back to rarely answered text messages.
The slow-motion wreck culminated about two months
later with a botched “rescue.” A team of Philippine Scout

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Rangers walking around in the woods came across the Abu
Sayyaf camp, or so they said. Later we heard another
government agency had tipped them off. That other
government agency (OGA) had not told us about their
location because . . . because . . . why? That’s something I
will never understand.
The Scout Rangers formed a skirmish line from a tree
line above the camp and opened fire, indiscriminately
pouring bullets into the area. Gracia and Martin were taking
a nap in their hammocks when the fire started raining down.
They both fell out of their hammocks and started to roll
down the hill toward safety. But as a sheet of bullets from
their rescuers fell on them, Gracia felt a searing burn flare
through her right thigh. And then, she felt Martin go limp.
Minutes later, after the last rebels fled, the squad of
Philippine soldiers tried to reassure Gracia that her husband
was fine, but she shook her head. After a year in captivity,
she had no time for fantasies. Gracia knew her husband was
dead, and she was right: he’d been hit in the chest, three
times, by “friendly” fire.
In the end, the supposed rescue mission killed two of the
three hostages there that day (a Philippine nurse named
Ediborah Yap also died), and the big fish—Sabaya—
escaped to live a few more months. From beginning to end,
the thirteen-month mission was a complete failure, a waste
of lives and treasure. As I sat in the dark at home a few days
later, dispirited and spent, I knew that something had to
change. We couldn’t let this happen again.

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If the hostages’ deaths were going to mean something,
we would have to find a new way to negotiate,
communicate, listen, and speak, both with our enemies and
with our friends. Not for communication’s sake, though.
No. We had to do it to win.