The Emergency Rescue Jet Charter Edition

Following up on yesterday’s conversation with author and hostage negotiator Mickey Bergman, we’re excited to present this excerpt from Bergman’s new book. In the Shadows: True Stories of High-Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad is out next week.

The Signal text flashed on my phone on November 9: "I got instructions from my Minister regarding the sensitive issue. Please kindly confirm that the governor can come back to Myanmar on Monday 15 November."

I lit up. This was for real. We were going to collect Danny Fenster. I quickly updated Guv [Governor Bill Richardson} and started working the timeline backward.

After months of painstaking preparations, now we had to fly into action at lightning speed. If we were to be in Naypyidaw for a release on November 15, we had to be in Qatar early on November 14, which meant that we had to depart the US the night of November 12. We had only three days to get this together, to find a new charter flight, to sign a contract, to wire payments, to secure landing-and-departure permits, to book the commercial flights to Qatar and back and get hotels, cars, and everything else we needed.

But wait. How could I book a return flight for Danny when I didn’t have a copy of his passport? I didn’t even know his full name or date of birth. And I couldn’t ask his family, since they didn’t know we were going back to get him.

I decided to ask my counterpart at the military government in Myanmar. Could he send a scan of Danny’s passport? In addition to providing me the information I needed, that would also serve as further evidence that the government in Myanmar was preparing for Danny’s release. I asked. And... a passport copy arrived right away.

But that wasn’t all. We also needed to put Danny on a commercial flight from Qatar to New York, and we hadn’t taken COVID tests. We would have only four hours on the tarmac in Doha between flights, and I couldn’t ask the US embassy in Qatar for help, since the US government didn’t know about our extraction mission.

After brainstorming with Guv, we concluded that we would have to rely on our Qatari partners,  who’d been strong supporters of the work of the Richardson Center for the past couple of years. “Once we are air-borne from Myanmar,” I told Guv, “I will call Abdulaziz from the plane and tell him that we will need an ambulance in six hours on the tarmac for a COVID and wellness check. That should work, right?” I knew it would. Abdulaziz Al Thani was my point of contact at the Qatari  Embassy in  Washington, a genuine partner who had become a good friend. I had no doubt we could count on him. When we needed something, even in a rush, Abdulaziz delivered.

We were barely able to find a plane. Only one aircraft was available to make such a long trip on such short notice with pilots willing to do the round trip with a brief rest period in between. The owner was Lebanese. There it was: a Lebanese-owned plane, with a Lebanese crew, flying a former Israeli officer to an anti-Muslim country to rescue a Jewish American journalist. You can’t make this stuff up. Relieved that we found a plane, I rushed through the paperwork and the coordination with the officials in Myanmar.

Before takeoff, we still had two more surprises waiting for us. First, the plane did not have an internet connection. Not a big deal for an ordinary mission. But if we didn’t have connectivity on this plane, how could we warn the Qataris that we were coming and ask for the COVID test? How could we handle communications mid-mission? We had no choice. We paid to install an entire new internet system on the small jet, certainly the most expensive fee I have ever paid for Wi-fi.

Even more complicated was the second surprise. Twenty-four hours before takeoff, the owner of the jet asked the operator, “Why is there a fifth person on the flight manifesto for the return flight?”

“It’s a prisoner they are rescuing,” the operator naively responded.

The owner flipped out. He imagined us taking his plane on a violent extraction mission, guns blazing. He demanded a letter from the State Department saying the mission was legitimate. That was an issue. How could we possibly get a letter from the State Department when they weren’t even aware of the mission? I understood the plane owner’s anxiety. So I offered a signed affidavit that no weapons were involved, that the release had been authorized by the Myanmar government, and that I would provide a release letter in English before the prisoner ever boarded the plane.

Thank God, that satisfied the owner. (MB)

In the Shadows: True Stories of High-Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad is out next week.