Hostage affairs official says Biden administration has made ‘hard decisions’ to bring Americans home
The top US hostage affairs official said Monday that the Biden administration had to assume some risk in order to bring three Americans hostages home last week in a historic trade with the Kremlin.
“You always assume a risk in these situations, and the president has been willing to make these hard decisions,” Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” when asked to address criticism that Russia may be more likely to take US hostages for leverage if the White House continues to approve prisoner swaps.
Carstens, who was also involved in the high-profile releases of former Marine Trevor Reed and WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russian detention, has served as the US’ top hostage negotiator since 2020. Last week’s prisoner swap involved 24 detainees in total, including fellow freed Americans: Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan.
The diplomat told Tapper that he once had 54 hostage cases that are “now down to just over 20.”
“So we’ve made hard changes. We’ve traded some bad people to get good people, innocent people back,” Carstens said.
“And you would think that my numbers would be skyrocketing up and yet they’re not. They’re going in the opposite direction. So the math proves that assertion to be wrong,” he continued. “When we make these hard decisions and the president makes the tough call to send someone back in a trade like this, our numbers are actually going down.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested on Fox News on Sunday that the deal has increased Putin’s leverage on the West, saying there is a “cycle” that incentivizes the Kremlin to detain Americans on “trumped up charges” so they can exchange them for “Russian spies and killers.” The South Carolina Republican said that the “cycle needs to stop.”
Asked Monday whether President Joe Biden plans to contact the family of Marc Fogel, a US teacher in Russian prison who was not included in the swap, Carstens said that he can’t speak for Biden and has called on the Russians to release Fogel on humanitarian grounds.
Though Fogel has not been designated as “wrongfully detained” by the Biden administration, the US has brought back people that have not had the designation before, Carstens explained.
“Just because someone’s not necessarily designated wrongful doesn’t mean that we’re not also trying to work behind the scenes to bring them home as well,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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