group, an issue manager, a family and a german team and a new presidential envoy for hostage affairs. ..

families trust and confidence. so now we've seen maybe not a change but certainly a significant orientation and how we are doing. this is all part of a change in policy over the last few years since 9/11. we had first and intensification of policy and the militarization to move to the acceptance of the complicated conflict. it had too much effect on the hostage policy accept the stuff i just talked about and that's been on a tactical level. however, many of the practitioners' is taken on the transnational character as another talked about.

exacerbating the transnational political development in the insurgent activities with other types of transnational time for weapons of mass distraction and on and on. criminal organizations as well as terrorist groups have gone global preventing a new challenge to government. some of whom are overmatched and outgunned. the result is a global transnational exodus of political and criminal threats. the evolution of insurgency movements and terrorist tactics reflects what is happening to other organizations and is providing a situation with more or less solid nationstates now coming under attack by actors representing the self proclaimed entities as borders have become more open all of this legal

trafficking activity is increasing exponentially. it's the system itself. in the terrorist and terrorist policy we have to focus on the strategic level in fact it is rapidly simple. now we have a self-proclaimed hostage state. so we are returning to the older tradition in the geneva convention to become relevant again. in addition to the necessary

national response by governments it must be a coordinated response by the community of several levels government acting as group and in the international organization. much easier said than done of course as the current situation demonstrates. the middle east is in political social collapse into anarchy. the major regional players that are standing on the scene with an ability to act in any degree took to saudi arabia and israel as the group and only one of them is arab. they all opposed the hostage taking and have a common enemy and isis but all engage in the crosscutting competition among each other. but in the end it's all about politics. you can deplore the special operations teams from now until

doomsday and you will not solve the problem. they are now dealing with hostage taking in the middle east particularly this is the challenges of dealing with the middle east for. how to sort out the enemies from our friends. [applause] [inaudible] it was designed to be the size. we have to continue by the way i think we have to discuss not only the islamic state and

others but also the lone wolf and particularly now that we are seeing the takeover in the people that came to watch a movie and all that, obviously we have to think about also the future in terms of the involvement of the so-called lone wolf now to weaponize and take over the entire communities let me move on to our friend and colleague as i mentioned with his experience for decades but also academically as a doctorate from nyu on iran to share with

us the experiences in the middle east and elsewhere. >> thank you professor. when i took the negotiations course in the fbi in the early '90s, it was focused basically on criminal hostages and when i asked the instructor what about the terrorist situations, he said he would handle it the same way. i am going to go through this and show how i believe it was incorrect at the time as it is now. they taught us that when you have a hostage negotiation or barricade situation where the crime has gone wrong and they've taken hostages were there is a

domestic dispute and there's a feeling of desperation by the people or somebody that wants to commit suicide by cop and there's hostages and hope they said that the first thing that people tend to want to do this work on problem-solving independent behavioral change. hopefully the behavioral change our hands up and believe. but that rarely works if you proceed with three other things to do. the first is active listening. they basically mirror the hostage taker is saying and affect letting them tell their side of the story. then you bring empathy into it and you want to determine how they feel and then you want to gain rapport and gain their trust.

once the process gains momentum you get into the influence part which is working on problem-solving with the hostage takers and bringing about the behavioral change. however this has little relation to the modern-day hostagetaking when you're dealing with islamist extremist terrorism. before i go into the ideology, in the 1980s president ronald reagan transferred arms for the hostages in lebanon and he finally enacted and admitted that both said that it wasn't to gain the hostage release, it was to foster better relations with iran. but in effect this became a revolving door. you pay for hostages and they

release some and then they get more hostages and that is what was going on in lebanon at the time. in 2002, president bush had a policy that ran what could be paid if they could gain intelligence about the terrorist groups or the individual terrorists but not for the purpose of freeing american hostages because you don't want to encourage terrorism but this did allow for negotiations ended it all out for using the rationale hoping to gain intelligence about the terrorist groups. as the ambassador mentioned there is a statute about the detaining of u.s. citizens outside of the united states and basically as he mentioned, the policy in some ways remains the

same. you can negotiate with no concessions, no ran some kind of change in the u.s. policy to the hostage takers. however as you mentioned, the one change is we can buy we urge the citizens ought to pay ransom if they want to do it anyway, we provide basic logistical support and help with those governments. it should be noted that the department has never prosecuted anyone for paying ransom. now recently, president obama swapped kelly and commanders. the rationale that he used us for our own soldiers we do not leave anyone behind once the

conflict is over. however in my opinion, the sergeant lost this when he collaborated with the enemy. in that case i think that he lost the right to have the united states release the top taliban commanders. in 2002, the national criminal justice reference service pointed out the civilians for the release of the prisoners. my colleague will go into this in further detail that it should be noted that the policy was no concessions and they rely on hostage rescue operations. however, due to the public pressure it's a small country and people tend to know each other and as a result, israel

began releasing prisoners and some, there was criticism from releasing those in return for releasing hostages. getting into the hostage initiations for the islamist extremists i must note they are not concerned about the public opinion. they are not concerned. their audience is and what the public says. their audience validation comes from god. as a result there's no need to minimize casualties. in fact it's fine for them to maximize. it's fine for them to do barbaric things like beheadings, drownings, crucifixion's. the leadership believes to know what god wants of them.

the religious scholars rule on behalf of the returns are they are tied in so once the citizens of a country and power the clergy to speak they are forever precluded from criticizing the clergy it would be like criticizing god himself. as a so tourism becomes an act of religious expression. one time, people at the book which would be like jews and christians were a protected status while they were persecuted and while they had to pay exorbitant tax rates at least they were protected from being killed. however islamist extremists get around this, to back. instead of people of the book they refer to jews, christians were fellow muslims who don't agree with them which is pagan.

so by changing the label from people in the buck, anyone can become a terror target. christians, jews, muslims. now they were once islamic and they are part of the islamic entity until the end of time. so it's not negotiable. for example, it was under the islamic rule so they are precluded from dissociating or giving up any part of that and it's an obligation on them so that people are either willing to be ruled under islam or they become muslim. what's my solution?

we can't win a war if we worry about political correctness. it's true that we have to identify the enemy, and islamist extremist. and while it is important to try our best to limit civilian casualties we cannot become paralyzed to take action for the worry that there will be some collateral damage. if we were paralyzed in this way and world war ii we would have lost the war. we must identify the enemy and allow the military to succeed in its mission. in world war ii if we worry about the collateral damage we wouldn't have been bombing japan and we wouldn't have obtained the unconditional surrender. so basically what i'm saying i am saying is that they end very badly. we must fight to win and obtained the unconditional

surrender. if we go back to the position of military and economic strength we can deter the war with weakness or as an affordable - in a inevitable. [applause] >> thank you very much. we will come back to some of the issues that you raised. the next speaker was a minister and counselor as i mentioned before in the middle east and counterterrorism and is a graduate of tel aviv university and the school of law so in cairo in the embassy several times and she will deal with the israeli response to the hostage

taking to address a couple of days they declared that they do have some parts of the soldiers that are killed during the year ago with a lot of questions. we have to say from the start will offer more dilemmas than

answers and i simply don't have - we don't have good answers for what is the toughest most difficult situation for the decision-makers anywhere. another opening remark is i want to be discussing the situation of the border with al qaeda but we still have bigger breasts and bigger problems that we face from those organizations that have been targeting for decades now mostly the organizations. this is an ongoing challenge, an

ongoing experience and one that has gone through different phases and i think it's fair to say that they are we are still in the midst of the learning curve and while we have reached several conclusions this is probably not the end of the process unfortunately. but i would like to begin with first of all the understanding that while we face the unique aspect of the ransom which is to say we are mostly faced by the ransom which is to release prisoners into terrorists and this is not for the ransom that is paying money so the people that are kidnapped are not faced with this the mama and both were speakers spoke about whether to

pay out of pocket or to get the money in another way so this is an issue to the states. israel this is the responsibility of the state to deal with this issue and that families can do a lot in terms of public relations in terms of making this issue remain very much in the news but it's not the capability to do what is needed to release their loved ones. so this is an important remark which is unique to our situation. but i would like to give a background in saying that the whole issue for ransom is actually a very old one in the tradition or at least the tradition of the jewish people

they pretend the bible and this is one of the most important commandment that you have in the jewish religion and it was extensively debated in the literature because not only does it refer to a very tough phenomena that was going on the jewish communities facing the situation where people were put in jail by hostile authorities in order to pressure the communities to pay ransom. there was such a commandment that was considered much more important that adult with helping the poor in helping the

weak. so we have discussions that they are going back almost 2,000 years ago. [inaudible] but the most important rabbis from both years and the questions are mostly how do you weigh the life of a person and individual and the benefit of the whole community and how do you put value on human life? could even be possible?

wouldn't that be counterproductive because it would just bring about the next incident where a person from the community with the object of and get back into salon. the answers have been given by the way. there was even an attempt to actually say you can pay ten times the fair value of the hostage and who is to tell what is the fair value of a human being and how can you even presume that apparently people found ways to do that but i have to say even those who were not exactly maintained there were exceptions for example in the case of husband and wife and they have the duty to pay

everything they have to release his wife at least for the first time. there are no limits to what you pay because the people's value to the community is much higher and so on and so forth. there is some kind of logic for the community to operate according to the reality always stronger than those attempts in the rules. if i go now to our time, the modern state of israel, again the nature have changed and it is mostly the release of prisoners and the babies of terrorists. that is another set of competitions and dilemmas of course decision-makers because mostly it is a question of

motivation and a if you do paid this price what happens next and what about just encourage the next hostage taking and we have to take into consideration. those themselves have the potential. the decision-maker is facing again how do you weigh the lives against life if you know there is a citizen or a soldier that has been kidnapped they have a face and a name and parents and family and friends. there's a small country and everybody knows everybody. but at the same time, you are asked to release the funds

released will probably go back to terrorism and then they might kill an independent number of people that you still don't know their identities and their families. so it is a result of the terrorist activities that some of the people who were released during the last have been a bold and different levels. this raises a huge dilemma for the society and for the government. so, beats are questions that are very, very difficult to answer and there are no good answers. this is the ongoing effort.

[inaudible] there been changes in the way that the organization conducted the kidnapping activities as a result of the way that the government of israel chose to react to them. so there is a significant difference between those kidnapping and the ones that we experience since the 80s to this day. the main difference is if you had this incident where there would be a takeover by the terrorists in and the facility it could have been school, bus

house and they were would take hostages and then they would start making their demands and bargaining yes or no would start. that allowed for a situation where instead of actually starting the negotiation to release the hostages, the government of israel chose when it was possible to try a military option, a military takeover taking down the characters in releasing the hostages without paying the ransom. so, not yielding to terrorism. and that in fact was the policy that has put forward in the 70s by the late then print mr.. whenever there is a possibility to try to take down the terrorists and release the hostages, you do not negotiate. you do not start the negotiation.

however, the second part of it was when this possibility does not exist, you in fact do start negotiations and you start to see which of those demands you can answer and the reason you cannot leave people in the situation and just abandon them completely. so we never really had a policy of no negotiation because that would have been i think for the israeli society almost unbearable. ..

because we have a general and poison girls when they turn 18 go to the army especially from the jewish population both boys and girls. they go to the army and a list. the country sends them to defend itself and when they are taken hostage were kidnapped in this context, a country has an additional duty to get them back. this is part of what was mentioned here with respect to the u.s.. he don't leave a wounded soldier behind. you don't leave soldiers behind and it is i think a very strong notion in israel somewhat argue it's more than a -- that the

state of israel has with its soldiers then israel has for the parents of the soldiers. the former generation because it's the mother and father in the state of israel expects to send kids at the age of 18 and they expect to do his best to make sure that there is a possibility for them to come back home this is what the state should do. so what has happened in the 80s was that since the different terrorist organizations saw that the government preferred to do everything forcibly and ordered not to conduct negotiations but is actively trying to -- by the way with a terrible price. we have cases of both hostages and soldiers that participated in the release of hostages. i'm sure we are where of the case where we had airplanes that were affected to uganda and the israelis held hostages at the

airport there and there was a very heroic release of them. actually most of the hostages got back safe and sound. there was a lady who was hospitalized and she died but actually we took losses and the famous one was a prime minister. so in the 80s they saw a change in the strategy and tactics of the terrorist organization. they understood that as long as they operate in a known place there would be some attempt to release the hostages so what they tried to do from then onwards was actually kidnap an israeli citizen be it a soldier or a citizen and take him somewhere unknown preferably outside the state of missouri where would be difficult for the

security organizations to find him. and there actually you leave the state noted a chance but to start a negotiation. if indeed there is a moral religious what have you commitment to bring our citizens and our soldiers back home. there started were a lot of people to see nowadays as the slippery slope for you had some very famous deals and you could see a trajectory where the prize just goes higher and higher. the ratio between the numbers of the hostages or the kidnapped people that were released in the number of prisoners that were released by israel to security became bigger and bigger and in fact in the last 30 years or so we release more than 7000 people

and god 16 people back so the ratio is something like 450 to one but in fact some of those still for example the last deal we actually had 1027 people released in order to get him back. having said that, there's a lot of criticism in israel on the deal, on the ratio on this slippery slope. one has to say for each deal with all the criticism there was a lot of popular support. i think in the case it was 80% in each deal was applauded by the society because no one could release a picture of a young soldier going back to his father and mother. it's the human thing, does the human reaction so you have the very irrational and logical

analysis of the state of israel and then you have the emotional where everybody thinks of their own son or daughter when they go to the army and you cannot compare between the two. but it's a heartbreaking issue. we had families of victims of terrorism that tried to protest and again for the decision-makers this is a very very difficult dilemma. i should add to that and this is something that is also unique i think to the state of israel, but one of the things that you should consider when releasing prisoners to get a kidnapped person back is not just that you are encouraging or creating incentive for the next kidnap or hostage taking, not just that you are releasing terrorists that by the way when in jail our experience shows they only get more radicalized, more

experienced. they get operational training from other comrades and they become much more dangerous and by the way when they are released they become a role model for young people in their community. their release actually helps recruit new members to that terrorist organization. there's a whole myth that is created around them and it has the impact that is much more than releasing one individual or a thousand. but the fact is an interesting question is what does it do for the turn of the state of israel against these different enemies and the problem is that hostage taking as our terrorist actions are part of an automatic four. an automatic or you don't adhere to any accepted rule of international law and that place against the rules. this is the way of getting more

and we as a country that defends itself against different threats need to deter our enemies from continuous -- continuing down this path. there's a lot of questions in israel when a country accepts that the money release 1000 people for one person does that in fact hurt and curtail our deterrence because there are lots of nonstate active terrorist organizations in the region. they are all watching. they are all drawing their conclusions and their conclusion isn't look, this is a society that is so sensitive to the lack of one individual so we should try to do our own actions or our own hostage taking and maybe get more or make israel do this or do that and in fact the leader

of hezbollah likes to talk about the fragile society of israel and compare us to all kinds of descriptions but i could also argue and i think that this is something that a lot of people share in israel that this is actually a sign of strength of the society that if a society is willing to take such big risks and knowingly, knowingly released terrorists and the bloodiest murders you can think of that kill children and babies knowingly and intentionally to get one person back, this is a sign of strength, this is a sign of solidarity, this is a sign of commitment and that make society actually stronger. when a society is stronger the country is also stronger. with all the vulnerabilities that this creates, i cannot

answer one or the other. this is not going to bait area i would say though that there has been some attempt lately in the last three years or so to try and set new rules, rules that would in a way limit the discretion of the government and of the prime minister actually when deciding on such sensitive and complicated cases. we are all hoping not to face this situation again. i should add by the way that this type of kidnapping, this episode that we have been experiencing usually takes a few years because it's so complicated to conduct this kind of negotiation. this is not days or hours like was the case with the hostagetaking that took place

inside of israel itself that people can be in captivity for years. actually -- was in captivity for five years of his life and while this is going on the family is going through unspeakable misery and those people who know them and those people who get closer to them in the broad sense, they are all going through very emotional and very painful situations and this is something that is very much, is very much present in the daily life in israel while it is taking place. every few years we have such an episode so we are hoping not to reach a new one. we are going to attempt to set new rules. then minister of defense committee chaired by the chief

justice of the supreme court justice and this committee was charged with carving out new rules not just about the price but all the relevant questions. who should we do go shape but who should be responsible for conducting the negotiation and what would be the limitation and so on and so forth. the idea, the decision from the very start that this will not affect the initial deal because this was an ongoing case and they didn't want to risk it and so they did not publish but they concluded, their conclusion a short period after he returned to israel and the conclusions were submitted to the minister of defense and they are abiding and confidential. the reason they are confidential as we do not want our enemies to understand what they are dealing

with that if they have the manual it would just make it easier for them to come up with the most efficient ways for them to apply the next incident. a lot of people present that the idea is to limit the price and arrive at a much more reasonable ratio so you would still have room for maneuvering for the government to conduct the negotiation. you will never reach a situation where a person is taken hostage and the country says i'm sorry i cannot negotiate. this would be unacceptable in israel but the government could not be extorted and the way it has been in recent years by the terrorist organizations that confront them because they know there are limits on the numbers and i should say here we were asked and we paid a price also for some idea on the medical conditions of the kidnapped

soldier. is it alive or dead? we were asked to pay for dead soldiers, for remains. there was no limit of the use of this kind of extortion and

who is getting more power and authority from this issue in a new effective rules. to conduct this in a way that might be more reasonable in the eyes of the society and the government. but again i have to say no easy answer. nobody knows how that would actually work. this is an ongoing dilemma because it is a dilemma that cannot be solved. when human life pits one against the other nobody can say that the answer is a or b. hopefully i won't discuss this next time and say what was our experience and what were the lessons that we have learned but i leave you with this hope and

i'm open to take any questions. [applause] >> okay, now we are coming to our last but not least speaker. doctors dr. warren olney as i mentioned before is a senior adviser to the political council and also the business executive or international security. i think i should really mention that most recently he is also a distinguished fellow, a good friend and a very distinguished journalist and strategic thinker he had.

>> it was a real pain as a naval officer. he was so smart they got rid of him too. >> it's all yours. >> thank you. don and yonah it's good to be here and it's always good to be with a 20 not, not of the main car à la gray and i've learned a lot of things from al. most importantly taught mama battlefield brains rather than bullets when wars but don't ever discount the power of a bullet. i'm going to be fairly brief and i have to apologize because i have another meaning i have to go to so i'm leaving a little bit early. i want to provide some ideas that i hope our thought-provoking ideas that you may not apply that appeared one of the greatest dangers posed to us by al qaeda is not so much physical threat to american citizens but the threat to the constitution. what al-qaeda has done through terrorism has highlighted the tensions between protecting

civil liberties and protecting the nation and we do not have a good response. what you see at guantánamo bay is a question of whether these captured individual should be treated as criminals or as enemy combatants. we have not resolved that one way or the other. you see the dilemmas the national security agency. how far can they go in trying to protect the nation and get violate civil liberties? this is ongoing. it's going to get a lot worse and is something we tend to ignore at our peril. second, the best armies, navies air forces and marine corps and i say that singularly, marine corps, al, are incapable of defeating an ideological enemy that has no army, navy, air force let alone a marine corps it. we see that in afghanistan. we have seen that in iraq and we see that in the islamic state. the third is while we talk

about resolving these things with a comprehensive approach, any of you have not heard the term comprehensive approach for all aspects of government, not just the department of defense but it does the department of defense is the best resourced us to organize most functional agency in u.s. government of size by default it takes on all these issues and they can do that. they cannot solve the terrorism problem unless you get to the root of the terrorism problem which are a combination of ideology and physical need whether deprivation or psychological satisfaction. you are not going to be able to deal with it and we have not been very capable because our government system the way it's organized right now is not organized for this very massive comprehensive detailed series of dangers. we are still very much comfortable he oriented on the cold war and the kind of bilateralism with a huge enemy

such as the soviet union or nazi germany and we have to change your mindset raid i've been arguing for a brain space strategy for a very long time and perhaps as beethoven was deaf said, i shall perhaps hear in heaven. but they talk about a couple of challenges you may not considered like terrorism and hostages. first, cybercrime. anybody not aware of cybercrime corrects anybody not read the headline of -- who stole $100 million by getting data? i have news for you, that's going to get better and better because what happens when i get into the records of companies and let's say i want to bet the stock market data share price goes up or down my command is being played -- manipulate that data. i'm a 12-year-old terrace living in romani and i have access to the internet was going to prevent me or my colleagues are making huge amounts of money by

cybercrime and leveraging these things. it's happening today and tomorrow is going to get a lot worse. this is going to be the next effort terrorism. the annexed to that is cyber lack mail. supposing i'm a member of the islamic state and i decide i'm going to threaten because i can shut down the power grid in northern virginia and in washington d.c.. what happens if i am with petco might get a threat that i know is valid from the terrorists and they want $100 million or $200 million. what do i do and by the way they just happen to shut down toward my power grid. this goes a step further because i believe the islamic state is going to be conducting cyber blackmail. let me give you a great case. this is not the islamic state but a bunch of cyber beads. a very very rich woman, hugely rich personal assistant got an e-mail from this lady sang would you please than $250,000 because i just bought abc and d and by

coincidence this assistant happen to run into this lady and said i'm going to take care of the suthersby deal. the woman said what deal? what happened was they were able to get into these e-mail accounts and were able to forge this woman's way of speaking, had all sorts of access. what happens when the islamic state decide is going to now commit this kind of blackmail? is going to call a family abc and d and unless you do the following we will kill your relatives, we will kill your family and do whatever we do. these are things for which we have to repair. a final point i will make about hostages what happens have been prepared in when the first american serviceperson is captured by the islamic state and worse supposing it is a woman and supposing they have three or four or five or 10 american service captives. they going to say we are going to crucify them one at a time

and show it on youtube and what's the response liable to be and how are we going to react to that or are they going to say we have captured 10 of your servicemen and we will sell them back to you for $100 million a copy and every hour or every 24 hours we will execute one of the most vile ways. what does the president of united states to? this may never happen. this may be a fixture of hollywood movies but it's something we have to think about in the album of thinking about as we have such a divided government in such animosity between both parties that even if a president irrespective of party would have sent members of congress said look, here are four or five what or five what is to think about an opinion piece transpire we have to be able to have a nonpartisan way of responding. can you imagine what happens if an american serviceperson hostage and now the president says we have to do abc and d. i can guarantee that the parties going to say you were the worst

most cowardly president a world defeating whatever policies the president may have. there are solutions but those solutions require immature responsible government and quite frankly undone was quite kind and mentioning my book a handful of olives and what i argue in the book is arising from that war the starter 101 years ago for new horsemen of the apocalypse were invented. we see it in washington, we see it in afghanistan and syria we see it virtually around the world. how do you deal with that? the second is economic disparity and dislocation similarly has global consequences. religious ideological extremism is what we are talking about an environmental calamity. these are the greatest dangers but the biggest danger right now when we are dealing with this issue of hostages and terrorists how do we make of our government

work under these circumstances? i will leave you with the answers to find out how we should do that. thank you very much. [applause] >> do you have a minute? >> i will have to leave in about five minutes. >> let me take the opportunity to take questions. speaking about the scenarios of cyber lack mail let me ask you this, should we actually rethink the conception him and definitional aspects of the house which thinking because if the scenarios we raise the ante and for example that's why mention for example even the lone wolf but we know they are isis and their statistic thinking and al-qaeda as well and by the way it's the

anniversary of the declaration of war by the al-qaeda against the united states going all the way back and it seems to me when we think about the future we cannot discuss only individuals, groups of people that entire nations. that is to say the escalation to the weapons of mass destruction, the biological, chemical, the radiological of a dirty bomb to entire nations hostage and then their demands. how were going to do it that? >> for that? >> first of all we can exaggerate many threats. i have always taken as a disaster that's probably not going to happen for any number of reasons so that's one of the things i believe is more function of movies and

literature or fiction and reality. that's one of the things i'm not really worried about. what i'm most worried about is that we lack the strategic approach. we do not have a strategy. take for example the islamic state in this is critical. we have a coalition of 62 countries that are joined up against the islamic state but what we have not done is put in any kind of oversight mechanism. we have not told these countries what they are responsible to do and how they are going to do it so you have nine lines of effort in this particular approach to which our military which the department of defense is doing quite well as are some of our allies but for example the counternarrative we are talking about an ideology to take on the other ideology. we have not done anything about that. we are being destroyed in terms of propaganda not only by the islamic state but look at vladimir putin in ukraine. they are killing us in terms of the propaganda battle. this is one area we have to do a

lot more because we have to defeat the ideological basis for this in one way to do it, where all are all the imams and mullahs and ayatollahs? you have people like the grand ayatollah who is in iraq. why are these people not issuing marshak was? fatwa. ..

>> political realities, you have to talk about politics. let me take three interesting situations in history. the americans in the

philippines. the fight against the 30s and 40s. that ended when the political situation changed, and then you have vietnam. you can talk all you want about ideology. the problem in iraq and syria is there's no political legitimacy and competence. even ideology isn't going to get you very far. >> we'll get you some other time. okay. we are going to open up a discussion and if you have a question comment, please

identify yourself for the record. yeah. one second. get a mic there. >> thank you very much. i worked on counter terrorism for many years. i would like to try to correct the record on a couple of things, if i might. first of all, on the statement that dr. ullman mentioned when people are held hostages. general higgins were killed. we did take some of actions, unfortunately they violated the policy that mark talked about. every time one hostage was

released, another would be taken. so there was that dilemma that we faced. you know, there wasn't quite the video of beheadings, etc. that was a dilemma that we faced. we made the wrong choices by making the deal. is part of the dilemma that you layed out. hostage situations is a classic case of short-term gain versus long-term. you can solve the short-term problem but you can create long-term problems down the road. there's do dividing line that's not always easy. i would raise the question to y'all, the elements that we faced in state department and elsewhere, is the issue of publ

-- publicity, sometimes it goes very public like they did in the time of lebanon. then increase the value of hostages in terms of hostage takers, raises the currency. it's something that has to be dealt with. a question for you, realizing tradition against death penalty which is only used in a case, is there any consideration in israel that perhaps they should use death penalty against terrorists who were clearly involved with blood in their hands? i just wondered that issue.

>> thank you. >> technically we have death penalty in israel. it was implemented only one time. we were talking about maybe the most famous nazi criminal of all. this is something that -- and the trial was really disturbed as a lot of holocaust survivors had the opportunity to participate. we do have death penalty in -- in extreme cases, but nobody even dreams of implementing the things. were there maybe voices here and

there, i was not familiar with any serious discussion in israel. i think one reason would be that there is a lot of death penalty for various reasons, but also i think for practical reasons i'm not sure, yes, it would prevent the situation of hostage taking for purpose of releasing prisoners, it would create a generation and might create problems. but i think we will really have a problem, this is something that's just not party of the judicial and moral in israel. it would be very difficult. bare in mind that even here in states that you do implement the death penalty, it takes years for modern judicial system to

get to the final appeal, and using that on terrorists, you kind of lose the momentum. i'm not sure that this would really be seen as most efficient tool we can -- we can use. again, in this situation where there are no easy answers. >> thank you. >> wait for the mic, please. >> from the center of internal relations. my focus is the area. my initial question, why i actually came here, was mostly to examine the degree which ransom displaying a role in changing, is a game changer, if you like, in deciding terrorism. there was a study that estimated 90 million dollars from 2000 to

2010 and debate whether the money actually made it. on the other hand, after the french intervention it became obviously that people that were hired by al qaeda by payment were easy to convert, all they did was surrender. money is a big factor. it goes down because i have huge respect for the service what the fbi has done to the world for preparing people for incident, people who, you know, are trapped in a situation that they need to escape. but isn't it about time to examine, when it comes to collateral damage, for example,

very interesting discussions in may, big ohs -- biggest problem in yemen is collateral damage from drones. it's very moderate supportive of mission in yemen, of course, same problem in yemen today. isn't it time to start deconflicting, if you like, strategies and tactics based on the actual situation in the ground and becoming flexible in dealing with complexity of each separate case? i mean, we have experience from lebanon with hostages, some were released sus -- successfully and some of them didn't. if you remember.

so we have successful cases on that. successful cases of release of hostages that pirates are taking, ransom or sell them to terrorist or in outside somalia. we have a lot of successful cases in a lot of different settings. there's a lot of work to be done in how to adjust to each setting and how to respond successfully. i think might be even counter productive. i want to bring it to this panel, how far would it be confident in our capacity to deal with complexity and how much are we conflict in our capacity to respond in each separate case based on what we know from before? >> anybody wants to -- your comments are obviously very interesting whether we discuss

the drone policy and strategy, but one of the areas that we did not go into the rescue mission of israel. so it seems that since that time every country prepared capability and so forth, and sometimes it works and sometimes it didn't worked. depends on the situation. any other questions? >> yes, please. >> regarding drones, one of the problems is when you don't have troops on the ground to examine the targets and cooperate all the information they had and direct the attacks, you're going to have this kind of problem. as far as money is aa factor, depends on the situation. for example, colombia, it's a

business. money -- in the middle east, money is not even ways, it's done strictly for shack value. as far as what yonah said about terrorism, that is a serious problem. there was a office -- all it takes one nuclear device which would just fry all electronics in the country. it'll just fry everything, which will put it back to stone age. that's a serious problem. as far as what dr. ullman said

about ideology, i couldn't argue with extremist ideology. so, you know, i give the best logic in the world, it's not going to do any good. you need to have respected islamic that can talk to them from their own point of view. when i spoke with they had people they captured before they commit the terrorists acts, they had them counseled by a clerk, who is respected and he says to them, why are you doing this, well, kill the enemy where you found them, he says, everything has its time and its place. muslims were per sec -- little

by little you send them back as agents for their intelligent service. i think you need to have somebody who is well versed that can sit down and -- and look at propaganda, counter propaganda. >> very important point. when we talk about the islamic state, again, you can defeat of some capabilities, but you cannot eliminate the ideology. some places like morocco they try to encourage dialogue and

train even women to discuss this issue with religions from other countries. it's a long process. i think the point that you made is a practical, a very important one. we are looking at the clock and the clock is ticking. i'm going to ask general gray to make the final remarkses for today's seminars. i want to add my thanks to what i think was a great panel today and certainly many, many very fine comments. i think, again, we have to remember that, you know, we are a great country and with great people in the united states, but there are other great countries

in around the world, all of them have many pluses as well as minuses, all of them have distinct cultures and distinct languages, as i've said in every seminars, unless we do a far better -- a far better performance in understanding what other people are doing, what they're thinking about and looking at these challenges that we face through their eyes as well as ours, we're not going to be successful as we have to be, and i think this is crucial. our strategy to go forward must be adapted, flexible. it must be on a high moral ground and all that type of thing. i get a kick about all of this on discussion on policy. we heard a very goodies cushion on policy today, every time how

many define challenge, define terrorism, define what's legal and it goes on and on and on. and yet, policy, i believe, is only a guide. you really do what you have to do when you have to do it for the reason you have to do it. i was known for violating policy many different times. i got put on report many times than you need to know about. we thought we were right, and i'm still around. [laughs] >> i think that when i grew up in the military, for example, we had a strategy of both acceptable and unacceptable acts and the like. they weren't good at all. you didn't like them. you didn't want to see them happen. you wanted to try to stop them. you can live with them. there were some that were considered unacceptable like nuclear attacks, et cetera, et cetera, that's when you go out

to keep that thing from happening. one of the problems we had with terrorism, first of all, terrorism as i've said is a tactic, a tactic and nothing else. you can't have a war against tactics and all that kind of thing. you can take actions so that it becomes no reason for them to do it anymore. in other words, they're not getting what they want out of it so they're going to stop. it's been around since we all know since the bible and it's going to be around in the next century as well. it was loaded, we were loaded with terrorist-type tactics in vietnam. in 1965 alone 1,000 chiefs were assassinated. that was terrorism to the first degree. i told a story many times in october, if you were with me you

had a little vietnamese girl crying, her father was a chief and was killed the night before and her arms had been severed at the el -- elbows. you never heard about this in the press and all that. they were out to lunch. the comments of rules of engagement, we have to forget all that kind of stuff. you don't need rules of engagement. the average fighting men or women, all the people in all the elements on national power they understand what's right and what isn't. you don't have to worry about that kind of thing. in 1965 we fired one million shells in south vietnam at the enemy. we killed 20 people by mistake. 20 friendlies and they were killed because south vietnamese

tried to fire instead of actually knowing where the enemy was. and yet, you didn't hear those kinds of things. combat is combat. it's tough. it's nasty. we ought to have a strategy that doesn't say too much about what we are going to do. what we are going to do is different in every situation. it's different because as i met the culture, climate, count -- country, etc. we can't handle all these things in one kind way of doing things. that's one of our great strengths. there are certain things that are unacceptable regardless of rules of engagement, collateral damage or anything else like that because it's totally unacceptable. that's the way it is. you're going to pay the price. that's the way we want to do it. we want to be quiet about it.

we want to do what we think when we think we ought to do it, etc. progress -- problem -- prop >> we are losing the war and it's a way of life and the enemy and all the people that don't like us, they're fueling this with the use of internet and social media. so we have to get smart about that kind of thing. >> i'm not going to say much. >> you want me to sit down? >> i'm not going to sit down so you better say it. we have to get out of here. >> very tough coming after al gray. i'm not going to say anything. i thought the minister had kind

of shown us what the terrible dilemmas are. the book was quite interesting. we have to make problems bigger. probably go beyond the episodes of hostage taking. you have to take as general gray said -- historical moment when these things place. yonah has made pretremendously aware of terrorism. but i agree with the general, i mean, terrorism is a tactic. we're really talking about ultimately kind of the political configuration of this world, and can we really tackle -- i'm a great behavior in the iran nuclear dear because when i'm not suggesting, i know it's

going to happen, one of the hopes is that it will change the basic political configuration in the middle east over time. it's the only way that we get the correlation of forces in turkey, iran and israel that we have a chance. then we could have the seminars, and i also agree with the general that, you know, each case will handle with good judgment. that isn't going to solve the world's problems. it makes me aware of terrorism and interested about underlying situations that create the conditions of terrorism. if i was israeli i wouldn't be as calm as being an american. what i am going to do is thank everybody else except al gray.

>> i want to add my thanks to his thanks. lets get out of here. remember that if there is an emt attack and we lose, to me that's an unacceptable act. whoever does that is going to lose for more than electronic grid if i have anything to say about it. thanks for being with us. [applause] >> tonight. >> that pushed them. we heard and dreamed about getting to america at a very young age. that's what he planned to do. he ran away from home and did it.

>> invented leaders. >> i actually like that for sure, you have attention to detail, he pushes workers very hard. he's a guy who gets the thousands of engineers, kind of the brightest of the brights and these very hard-working individuals and really is able to get products out of them that can be commercialized and change stray. if you look at -- to me he's the guy who has -- combined software and hardware in a way that nobody else has. >> tonight on the communicators on c-span2.

>> while, congress is on break this month book tv on prime time. tonight military lines on his book green on blue. for safe, love mom. military mom stories of courage, comfort and surviving line of the home front. team of teams, rules of engagement. that's tonight 8:30 eastern. they talked about employers estimated medical trends and how employers are plan to go reduce cost. this is a half hour. >> my name is brian marcotte. with me today is karen marlo who is our vice president of

benchmarking and analysis and karen and her team are responsible for putting the survey together. we're here to talk about the 201 -- 2016 large employer health plan survey results. that's when large companies finalize the decision for the upcoming year. the significance of that is this is a survey about what employers will do in 2016, not what they're considering to do in 2016. that's one of the reasons we do the survey in the time frame that we are doing. we will be tag-teaming the presentation this morning. karen is going to come up and talk about key tactics employers will be implementing to help with costs then we will go to q

and a. it's a nonprofit organization that is devoted to working with employers on national health policy issues and working to optimize business performance through health improvement and management. these are primary large companies. they provide health coverage for over 50 million employers, dependents and retirees. the survey is mostly of large employers. it cots -- costs across all industry sectors. it's large employers. more than 70% of participants

have 10,000 employers or more. so these are big companies. these are companies that are typically self-insured. hay pay claim out of general assets and contact with health insurances and to administer the plan, leverage provider networks and provide medical management services, but claims are paid out of general assets of these companies. i think the first take away that first health costs are expected to increase in 2016 in the rate of 5% after companies implement certain changes to health plans. that's consistent that we've seen over the years. it's still from employer perspective unacceptable increase risk. when you think about what a 5%

increase means to a company that spends a half a billion dollars on health care, $25 million additional healthcare cost for next year and $25 million translates 100 million of additional revenue that a company has to generate to offset. when i know you factor it's a business is growth cycle, they may have to increase price, they may have to affect jobs, they may have to impact the amount of wage increase that they provide for employees. even 5% is a significant burden as they look for upcoming year. some of the key drivers, we see

high cost claims as being one of the top drivers of medical costs. that's really not a surprise. what's a surprise is that pharmacy, pharmacy affects about 3% of the population. in a situation where specially traditional in terms of how much it costs a company year in and year out. one of the things we did this year in this survey when we asked about the excise tax -- we asked employers when they will hit the excise if they weren't making any additional changes. and the interesting feedback

that we got is that at least one of their plans will trigger the excise tax in 2012 when it goes into effect. in 2020u over 70% of companies would trigger the excise tax. one plan that would trigger the excise tax. the interesting about the data is when we went out to 2028, ten years of the excise tax in effect, that nearly all plans would trigger the excise tax by 2028. the excise tax is not all plans as oppose to cadillac tax on which plans. as we think about what companies are doing to minimize excise tax, one of the main tactics over the last couple of years move to consumer-directed health plans.

50% increase in the number of companies that went to a full replacement high deductible plan in 2015. by full replacement, the only option. they may have other consumer directed options in place but consumer directed plans are the only options that they are making available to employees. we expect to same jump in this survey, we didn't see that. we saw a portion of companies moving to only option consumer directed plan for 2016. when we stepped back and try to understand what was going on with that, you know, from my per spective, i think what we see a number of companies that prefer not to go to con -- consumer directed plans. we see a calm before the storm. companies are looking to see what is going on in washington. they see energy around possibly

repealing the excise tax. if the excise tax is repealed the data showing us that about 26% of the companies will look to implement consumer-directed plans as the only option in 2017. so this year will be a quieter year from a plan change perspective as we go to 2016. if it isn't repealed we are going to see another rush in 2017. some of the other tactics companies are deploying to mitigate the impact of cadillac tax or minimize or delay the impact of cadillac tax is a continued investment in consumerism, continue investment, transparency tools, help employers make decisions,

continue investment in wellness and well-being. if the spouse has coverage through employer, looking to move them to get coverage under their own employer and would reduce the company's cost as it relates to the excise tax. we are beginning to see if you look in the future an interest in delivery system reform. as we think about -- as we think about the impact on employees -- and i'll stop there and look over the karen. we expect that it'll be fewer planned disruptions, modest increases around 5% similar to

what large companies are experiencing, and we'll talk a little bit at tend about what employees can do during enrollment to maximize benefits. so, karen. >> thank you, brian. brian already stated employers are increasing 5% costs for next year. we wanted to see what tactics that are using to control and help employees. what we found that it fell into three groups, include aggressive management of specialty of pharmacy cost, more focused on employee tools that help with claims services as well as

optimizing the delivery system as brian mentioned around accountable care organizations. we also saw tactics decline or interest around these management programs, condition management programs. one of the drivers of healthcare costs are chronic conditions. the programs where employees connect with a nurse does not seem to have an impact as had hoped for. in addition, interest in private exchanges seem to be on the decline as well. they're continuing to be a tactic that employers are using but they are not growing. brian talked a little bit. one of the tactics that seem to be holding steady. we have about 83% employers indicating they offered at least as an option. one of the interesting things

is, those are do offer them are investing more heavily in terms of helping employees with their savings account. a vehicle by which employees can save money when they have not met their deductible. last year we saw that an employee can earn for savings account. that number jumped 217 this year. we have seen other tactics. traditionally over the last several years employers have struggled with increasing costs, not only if you have 5% in healthcare costs everyone's premium goes up. employers have shifted by increasing percentage pay. this year we did not see a lot,

rather one and three indicated that they will make small increases in the amount that they are going to pay to their health care. 20% said that they were going to increase deductible that employees would face. from a employer perspective, there's not much change. while employers are not changing their plan offerings and they're not doing -- making substantial increases one of the things that are doing is aggressive managing pharmacy costs. it's a major driver of their costs. new medications have come out. they've seen costs skyrocket. you have to use one medication before you can go to the more expensive one. we have seen them look into

other tactics. these medications are complicated to administer, require monitoring by clinicians. employers have looked to move specialty to special pharmacy. the medications are being monitored, ensure that the right medication is to the right patient. not only is that happening but there are high-touch care management, meaning that you are spending the time to make sure that the employee understands what the medication is for, the fact that they have this particular disease that this medication is helping them with, how do you take the medication and also how to report back if they have a problem not to just simply stop the medication.

they have offered as a way to help with diabetes, heart disease, better manage their condition. they have struggled a bit with that in terms of getting employees to engage with nurses and we've seen decline in terms of deciding that that's the way to helping employees with their care. instead, they are focusing on medical decision support services. if the physician says you need back surgery, another physician reviews. we should get a second opinion, but for most consumers who are busy taking the time to find another physician and go to the offense and have that second opinion isn't something that always happens.

the second opinion services can be done electronicically so that they can make better decisions. in addition, we've seen some interest in about a third of our -- of the people surveyed indicated they implemented high-touch service. as an employee you need a new insurance card, you might call and the person on the phone will be happy to help, i need to see a physician, can i help you find that physician, what condition do you have and sort of extra steps to navigate the healthcare system. one year that we've seen significant on the rise is tele health. these are people who may end up

in the emergency room or urgt -- urgent health facility, both which are expensive u. and so, last year we had about 48% of large employers offer tele health. they either directly contract with an entity or they are doing it through their health plan. another area that there's a lot of interest in but we have not sign huge movement yet is accountable care organizations. this is about improving the supply side of health care. the idea that we need to ensure the employees get the right care but the idea that they can get care in an integrated system

such as organization. employers have a lot of interest in understanding how these things are working, providers throughout the country are connecting together to create organizations. but this year is new for us, in in 2016 are you going to be pursuing strategy, and what we found is about 20% are saying, yes, we going to directly contact or we are going to be looking very closely with our health plans to ensure our employees get access to them. 60% said, well, our health plan probably has and it's not something that we looking at this point. will they be able to deliver change to our health system and help impact appropriate care, reduce unnecessary care and improve -- control healthcare

costs. what we are seeing significant growth in is private exchanges. it came out a few years ago and we have a lot of our members really interested in understanding whether they should move to private exchange. we see about 3% this year, private exchange that hasn't changed significantly from year to year. what we did see a drop, last year we had 35% of employees saying, we are evaluating them for the next few years, maybe we'll move in a few years. that dropped to 24%. so i think a lot of employers feel that -- a large employers feel that private exchange is not the right vehicle for them at this time, for their active employees i should say. employers who still have --

provide health coverage for retirees we have seen a jump. 10% has moved retirees into private exchange. that number has come increased to 24% for 2016. ..

>> employers continue to contribute and increase contributions. there will be a factor in determining whether or not you hit the threshold or don't hit the threshold and could come into play when employers reducing contributions.

questions? yes. >> you said you're not seeing a lot of disruption in big changes in plans, yet, you're also seeing companies expressing a lot of them thinking that they're going to hit the excise tax by 2020, it seems like there's a disconnect there in terms of why they are not reacting to avoid that. any thoughts on why that might be? >> there's been a lot of movement in the last several years. significant movement to full replacement for only option. a number of companies do not prefer to go that route. that's what the survey tells us as well. they're wait toing to see. they're waiting to see if

something happens and it does get repealed, they probably won't move in that direction. if it does not go into effect, it's a big move of activity for next year. yes? >> can you be a little bit more precise about what do you think would be the successful strategies ployed by companies that wish to avoid the excise tax and can you give us an idea how long they can hold it off? >> sure. the interesting thing when you look at the companies that do the best job at managing their trends, it's not anyone thing, it's everything. obviously moving to consumer-directed health plan is one of the bigger opportunities to -- to minimize impact in cadillac tax. it's a combination of everything

that employers are doing investing in wellness, well-being and decision support, consumerism to pharmacy management to condition management. the companies that have consistently run between 0-2% in terms of trend have done just about everything that they can do to affect healthcare management. we're asking to what extent initiatives could delay the impact of the cadillac tax and their plans, they feel that the best they can do is delay it by two years. other questions? yes?

>> i haven't gotten to it. what proportion -- you said, differentate one plan and the largest plan, right? >> yes. what proportion of companies in your survey are going to hit the excise tax, about half of it, is it? >> about half for one of the plans. i think by 2020, half of them feel that they all hit it for their largest plan, and so you can see that one plan comes earlier and affects all of the plans as we continue to move down the road here. >> thank you. >> you'll see in the materials that were sent out there's a -- there are a couple of different graphs that illustrate when companies will hit and the timing that that will be. >> can you talk a little bit

about the price of drugs that's going to increase more with high cholesterol drugs coming to the market, what other ways are companies looking to avoid to kind of mitigate impact of these high-cost drugs? >> specialty pharmacy management to being a core focus. if you do prior authorization to ensure that all of the people who mainly need the medication get that medication, that's the first step. while you have that employee you're looking at where is the most appropriate side of care for that person to receive that medication. and you get a sense of tra pa -- transparency in price. you can see 4x and 7x difference

in terms of where to go to receive that medication. you see a cig -- significant difference. we bring that side of care, what is the most efficient -- what's is the most efficient price. you see a wide-range of price within that side of care. that will be a big focus. you see in the survey significant increase in the survey. for the first time over the last couple of years, we're getting transparency of what these things costs where employees never had visibility to that data in the past. so those are two ways prior authorizations, care manage rent and the whole overall coordination of care of that

individual beyond getting that special drug and reaching back out to the rest of that individual's community and providers to make sure that everything is being coordinated. >> a quick follow-up, do you think they're going to stop providing these type of specialty drugs if costs continue? >> i don't think they'll stop providing. many specialty drugs are cures, some of are -- many of them have very good. it's really try to go -- trying to manage that the right people get them, compliant with them, build programs around them, right dosage so there's no waste. some of them are challenging from a cost perspective. there are efforts for lack of a better term kick around

different reimbursement models. there are other ways to reimburse that wouldn't be such a burden in a particular year for a particular drug, and so i think there's efforts to look at reimbursements to pay for these. if you have a drug that's a cure, that's the right thing. you want to make sure the right people get it and you want to make sure that it's affordable and employers will continue to work with health plans and sigh how we can best le -- leverage that. any other questions? >> hepatitis c drugs. that's a fast-changing market. everybody is talking and it is

yesterday's news. any insights on the survey on that? >> we didn't focus on any particular, try to get a sense of how it's trending, how employers are going to manage, focus on managing. i couldn't tell you on that particular question. no more questions. thank you for your participation. if you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. thank you. >> follow the c-span city store as we travel outside the washington bellway. >> to take the programming for

american history television and book tv out on the road to produce pieces that are more visual, provide, again, a window into the cities the viewers would normally go to that also have rich histories and scenes as well. >> new york and la, chicago, but what about the small ones like albany, new york, what's the history of them? >> over 75 cities. >> most of our -- they're shorter, they take you some place, they take you to a home, historic site. >> explore history and culture of various cities. >> capable operator that contacts the city.

>> what we are looking for is great characters. you want viewers to identify with the people that we are talking about. >> we are taking people on the road to places where they can touch things, it's not just the local history, a lot plays into the international story. >> somebody is watching this, they should get the idea of the story but also feel as though this is just in our backyard. lets go see it. >> we want viewers to get a sense that, oh, yeah, i know that place just from watching one of those pieces. >> as we do with all of our coverage leads into what we do on the road. >> you to be able to communicate message in order to do this job. it's done one thing which is build relationships with city

and capable partners and that's great programming for american history tv. >> watch the city store to see where we are going next. see schedule. ..