alabama is the favorite to win it all, but get this the team that has won it all has now won 29 straight games. florida state is poor betting choice. >> next on al jazeera america. >> the u.s. launched a hostage rescue attempt only when they figured murder was near and as a process may have precipitated a killing of a prisoner close to be released. >> hello, i'm ray suarez.

what the challengingcaing calculous in up freeing a hostage. the united states does not pay ransom to the shadowy networks of kidnappers around the world. that would put americans at a greater risk of kidnapping. this crime on inside story, how you make the decision for the potential terrible consequences. from this scenario and other pieces of sel intelligence, the american had only hours to live. he had been captive the

militants heard them coming. >> there was an attempt to save them, but unfortunately they shot the hostage before and during the attack. they were freed but unfortunately died on the way. >> somers was held with a teacher from south africa. both were evacuated with u.s. forces with injuries but died from their windows. coryies family had just raised the money needed to pay the ransom they had received. >> we had hoped to have pierre for christmas. so have criticized the u.s. after the failed raid.

>> his life was clearly in danger. and we are, including. president on down, we made the recommendations to the preside president, of course, we have to take responsibilities for any actions or inactions that we didn't take. >> president barack obama issued a statement saying luke's life was in imminent danger. based on that assessment, and as soon as there was reliable intelligence, i authorized the rescue attempt yesterday. >> this comes just months after the murder of james foley. the u.s. tried to rescue foley, too, but that mission had failed

because foley had been moved to a different location. the u.s. has a long-standing policy of not paying ransom to terrorists. this raises this question, how do you figure out negotiations are over and it's time to exercise a military option? hostage takers, negotiations, and attempted rescues this time on the program when the country in charge cooperates and when it doesn't the conditions that push planners into deciding a can you mission is worth a try. joining us for that conversation christopher boss, former lead negotiator for the fbi's international kidnapping response team. samaa, a yemeni political analysts, and christopher sweat. he was in yemen in 2012 researching al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula. christopher, let me start with you. if the president is right, and

people who were in a position to know had concluded that luke somers' life was in imminent danger what goes into the choice of going in to extract him. >> i think they were planning it all along. they would begin calculating how many intelligence they have and how risky it is. they have to think of the consequences, the chances of success, whether or not they can get in and out successfully. they've been working on this for quite some time. as they provide that information to the president, then the president has to gauge, based on the information that he has, what is imminent death, and what is the possibility that they'll be murdered. >> these are all flexible values. if they have a reasonable

suspension that they might lose a lot of personnel to extract against one person, that pushes against it, doesn't it? >> absolutely. you're relying on intelligence from a variety of different sources. it's a difficult thing to gauge accurately, and sometimes it's not as successful as we would like it to be. >> now christopher swift, with the killing of pierre korqi. owe first admit they didn't know that the two men were being held together. >> well look, it's a very difficult environment to begin with. yemen is a complicated, fluid dynamic place with sources of instability. that was happening out in a remote province where even the yemeni security services don't have a good lay of the land, who is connected to who.

the fact that multiple countries are involved, you have all these different victi vectors need to be coordinated. it's very easy to get these wires crossed and create a false expectation and see the kind of discounty that we're seeing from the family. >> some areas are more secure than others. there are parts of yemen that were never controlled by the

government. those are the areas that the kidnappers are likely to keep hostages in because they can create a little empire of their own there. if you look at yemen you have a lot of things going on now. in the north you have the houthiy rebel movement trying to dominate sanaa, and in the south you have other movements and you have little areas where you have insurgents from al-qaeda, and other groups now trying to operate as militant or militias, and they're trying to carry out operation there is. >> what about expecting to get help when you're trying, for instance, figure out where someone is, from local people? is there a social sanction against kidnapping? is it thought to be a bad practice? or is it one that sort of understood and at least tacitly approved so that maybe the people in the town nearby where this person is being held and can be relied on. >> the history of yemen changed

drastically. before hqp was created been before osama bin laden had supporters in yemen, they would kidnap forts and negotiate with the government. that was traditional practice. when the person was kidnapped, the hostages were treated with the utmost respect, well-fed and even some tourists would come to yemen to get the kidnapping experience because it was part of getting to know yemen. since terrorism began to take place and alqaida members came into yemen, things have changed drastically. since 2011 the fact that military collapsed, the structuring rather than building the military into a stronger military, these groups were allowed to carry out more outrageous actions.

traditionally yemenis do not like kidnapping. and it's sad because the average citizen cannot do much about it when there is a strong, heavily armed group trying to dictate what will happen. >> christopher boss, these missions failed quite often as high failure rate. are there just some things with all the planning and with all the gaming and all the assumptions, you just can't know until you're right there to bang down the door? >> that's very true top to say that it's a high flurry rate. any glitch on any of these where any hostage is killed or none of the kidnappers, if the kidnappers are the only ones who get kid, those are the successes. but the levels of failure, of course they want to go out and they want all the hostages to be urned about but they operate with a high degree of success also.

they don't go out unless they feel they're going to do well. there are missions they've gone out, ran into more problems than they expected, and then they would come back because the collateral damage to innocent people in the area was too high. you have to look at the perspective and say that there is a high level of failure because there are many that are successful. >> but maybe not a high level of failure but a high chance of failure. you're guarding them, keeping them in secret locations. once you know you're understand attack as we've seen in the last several days there becomes an incentive to kill these people. >> it becomes an incentive to kill the people sometimes. it depends on how quickly the special forces can get in there, and speed, surprise and action is the equation of a successful mission.

if they can get in there quickly enough, and they know this, kidnappers will defend themselves before they kill their loss stages. they have to defend their own lives. speed and surprise is what is necessary to make these missions successful because the kidnappers will get out of the way to preserve their own lives. unfortunately, in this instance they were discovered earlier on. but if there wasn't a high degree of success, they wouldn't go out there at all. >> we'll continue our look at hostage rescue mission, when to try to avoid them, and when you can't. stay with us.

there are tens of thousands of mostly men of countries not their own, fighting for causes that they apply themselves with, but there is a hodgepodge of people from all kinds of cultures, motivations, groups, fighting in all kinds of places. how do you know who you're dealing with, and what their reason for pulling off a kidnapping is? >> well, a couple of things. first of all, any movement like a sitting groups attracts three types. you're going to have a favor amount of true believers who believe in the cause. you're going to get lovely rabble who want to kill people

and they have support in what they're doing, and then there are the misfits. they don't get acceptance anywhere else. you start inviting from those three categories. when you begin to communicate in the hostage business, in the kidnapping business, and for the kidnappers it is a business. for understanding you have to look at what their business model is, a division of labor, and your question earlier about if it's not money they're after, what is it that they're after, there are different types of currencies and political advantage is one of those types of currencies. the most negotiations is one that you don't know you're in, when you don't understand what your adversary is really after. in many cases they're after publicity other than money because thin it becomes a currency that they trade for other types of influence. >> i like that division of labor between crusaders, criticals, and crazies, but i can look at some organizations and say, mm-hmm, they're run by

crusaders, they employ criminals and make use of crazy because these are people, for instance, christopher swift, people who are not afraid to die when it comes down it. >> it's important to look at though distinctions. don't mistake an organization's initial position. and sana has done a good job in distinguishing interests in kidnapping. it's important to understand the distinguishing of groups and what groups get out of kidnapping when we look at different theaters in the middle east. if we look at what aqap has done in the space of two and a half, three years with what we've seen with james foley in isis in syria we have serious motives

involved. we have a better sense of the lay of the land, and in the foley situation it was much more drawn out, much more complicated and you saw the u.s. government being much more timid in its response. >> we'll be back with al jazee a inside story on al jazeera america in just a minute. we'll look at the fight of al-qaeda, and the uncomfortable triangulation between groups and the united states. stay with us.

>> we're back with inside story on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. when american forces try to extract a kidnap victim

somewhere in the world, the stakes are not just high for the u.s. president and forces, the governments with nominal control in territories where terrorists operate end up being a stakeholder in the mission, sometimes reluctantly. still with us, christopher voss, former leader negotiator with the fbi kidnapping response team. sana, yemeni political analyst, and christopher swift, professor at georgetown. sana, would yemeni government have had a role in green lighting something like this? or is this something that the u.s. would pull off on its own. >> i doubt the u.s. would pull this off on their own. yemeni government is considered an ally of the united states. sometimes i do believe in the yemeni government does not know everything going on with the drones, but they have okayed and

endorsed the use of drones in yemen. because they're allies any mission like that would have to be okayed by the president first. >> does saying okay undermine his position in the country? >> no, because the current president in yemen, his main allies are the international community. that's who is backing him up on the ground. but the more likely he'll allow missions like that take place, it's more al-qaeda will gain more popularity because they don't want to see foreign missions moving on the ground. we have to keep in mind how the public will react to outside presence. >> christopher voss, how important is country cooperation when you're trying to do something like that? >> it's essential. we try to set up a system where we collaborate as much as we can with the existing government in the country. even if the government is not that official. they're all down stream consequences that we have to worry about with continued

collaboration. we cooperate as much as we possibly can. and-- >> are there some worries that in some cases in a leaky governmental structure the bad guys know you're coming? >> yes, and ideally people are vetted in advance, people we can trust. i've been in countries where we've worked on these operations, and we've had local officials that we placed our own lives in their hands. you get in that kind of relationship, you can move forward with the government successfully. >> christopher swift, whether you want to get money or not, you can make the president of the united states look a little impotent if you pull off one of these things, hold someone for a long time, and america just can't get bob jones out. >> that's a real risk. and it's one of the risks that the president and th the national security council and his advise advisers, special forces, other organizations,

within the national security apparatus have to secure. again, if you can't handle the big chair, you community nobody the big chair. every government has a duty to protect its nationals. that's something that they need to do. you know its important to remember that that duty to protect your nationals are so fundamental in international law it's one of the very few exceptions that allows you to go in and violate the sovereignty in are a country in order to get your own people out. if the foreign government decides they're not cooperating with you or if they're the cause of the problem. they mentioned something, and that is relationship. i can't underscore how important that is, in diplomacy or counterterrorism, how important these relationships are. not just out in the national

level but out in the field where people live, governor and try to raise their families in the communities they live in. if we don't have relationships in those places it becomes difficult in situations like mr. somers and mr. foley, it doesn't matter what country you're dealing with, or what group you're dealing with. >> sana, before we go, looking at yemen and the operation. the kidnapped people were killed, but the kidnappers were killed, too. is this a disincentive in the future? >> i don't think so. in the past three years we've seen kidnappers go wrong, the hostages resist and the hostages are killed. i think kidnappings will continue. i think americans can take precautions before going to yemen. they can go there and know who they're going to be with, know where they're doing.

i think if foreigners stick with yemeni families, the families feel an obligation to care for them. i know a bunch of foreigners, werners, who have been living there for a while, and they're safe. >> thank you all, that brings us to the end of this edition of inside story. in washington, i'm ray suarez. >> coming up at 6:00 p.m. eastern on al jazeera america. a report that outlines c.i.a. torture methods used after 9/11 is due to be released. we look at the political and

security issues at play. also after weeks of protests across the country. justice department unveils new rules. and party pictures that have clemson university doing some damage control. that and more coming up tonight at 6:00. >> she's known as baby veronica, and she was at the center of a high-profile custody battle. her adoptive parents are white; her father is native american and has been fighting for her alongside his tribe. the case was tried in the united states supreme court. at the heart of the case is the indian child welfare act, or icwa, which mandates that every effort be made to keep native children with their relatives or tribe. congress passed icwa in 1978 in response to an alarmingly high number of native children being removed from their homes and placed with non-native families - the tie to their cultures and co