- Roger Carstens, 59, is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs
- He works tirelessly to bring back the nearly 40 Americans currently held abroad
America’s top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, has revealed how he uses ‘wizards’ and the Bible to free people from the hellhole ‘House of Dreams’ prison.
Carstens, 59, is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs responsible for retrieving Americans who are wrongly detained or held captive by foreign governments and terrorist groups.
He is known by the hostages’ families as ‘Captain America’ and works tirelessly to secure their release, telling Vanity Fair: ‘If this job turned into what it should be, we would be forward in a full-time negotiation, drinking Red Bull, popping Adderall until the job gets done.
It’s therefore no surprise he finds bureaucracy frustrating, saying: ‘Every day I have a Starbucks coffee at my desk and I’m wearing a suit and tie, I’m thinking, This is total bull***t.’
In the past two years, he has secured the release of 19 Americans from Venezuelan prisons alone. But there are still nearly 40 others detained in six countries around the world.
Carstens grew up in a Christian family and is driven by a strong desire to help the less fortunate.
He joined the US army believing it to be ‘the most successful human rights organization in history when it comes to liberating vulnerable people’.
After initially finding it hard to fall in line – he ‘walked 158 punishment tours’ for misconduct infractions – Carstens progressed quickly through the ranks of the special forces, traveling to war zones on four different continents.
He then started his work in government as deputy assistant secretary at the State Department.
Now he is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs with a team of 25 people responsible for retrieving Americans who are wrongly detained or held hostage by foreign governments and terrorist groups.
He told Vanity Fair: ‘The bottom line for my office and this president and secretary of state is that if you have a blue passport and you are wrongfully detained or held hostage, your country’s coming to get you.’
There are nearly 40 Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained in six different countries around the world.
Some of the most famous cases include Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges and the five Americans believed to be alive in Gaza.
In December 2022, WNBA star Brittney Griner was released from Russia after being sentenced to nine years in a penal colony for possessing cannabis oil.
Carstens works with everyone from heads of states to clergymen and aid workers to negotiate the release of the American citizens.
He uses a range of tactics, both direct and indirect, in his efforts to bring them home.
He told Vanity Fair: ‘I pray a lot for the people that are being held. I also pray for the people holding them.
‘I’ll lift a dictator up in a second to God and say, “Lord, whatever this man is going through, please give him whatever he needs to release our citizens.”‘
Carstens works closely with victims’ families, flying to meet them and giving them his personal phone number to call at any time.
A quarter of the prisoners and hostages he works with are held in Venezuela in a prison known as the ‘House of Dreams’.
One man who was kept there in 2022, Los Angeles public defender Eyvin Hernandez, described the prison as a place that’s ‘meant to break you psychologically and spiritually’.
He added at the time: ‘The uncertainty, the isolation, the daily human rights violations, are taking their toll and are having their intended effect on us. Two people have already tried to commit suicide and one is on the brink.’
Another man, Osman Khan, whose release was secured by Carstens, told Vanity Fair about his time in the prison: ‘One of the guys starts pricking me with something. I was screaming and then I started feeling needles going through my body.
‘They started electrocuting me. I fell to the ground, and I started throwing up. And the guys start making fun of me and they forced me to eat my own vomit.’
When Carstens secured the release of seven American nationals from the prison – including Khan – in October 2022, Biden delivered the news personally to their families, saying: ‘They’ve been through a lot, and we’ve been working like the devil to make sure that this happens.’
But Hernandez had been left behind and was still in the House of Dreams.
Carstens continued working tirelessly for his release, employing every tactic he could think of.
He met with a ‘wizard’, a term he uses to describe a well-connected, out the box thinker who can find solutions to difficult questions.
He told Vanity Fair: ‘In the world of kings, wizards are the people underneath them that can meet, close the gaps between different positions, and start to pull deals together in a way that the kings can’t.’
He turned to the Bible, telling Vanity Fair that when he goes to a negotiation with ‘an adversary about trying to release an American, I’ll just read and meditate and pray to God.’
One of his favorite verses is Matthew 10:16, which he summarized as: ‘Help me be as wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove, and please give me the words that you want me to offer in that moment.’
In December 2023, after months of negotiations, Carstens secured Hernandez’s release.
In total, over the last two years, his team have recovered 19 Americans from the House of Dreams and other Venezuelan prisons.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Carstens to Vanity Fair as ‘unstoppable’, he said: ‘I’ve rarely, if ever, worked with someone who is so absolutely determined every single morning he wakes up to bring another American home.’
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