![]() We use a diagram in training that looks like a child’s teeter-totter. The first task of a negotiator is to bring down the emotions. If you can’t control your own emotions, how can you begin to influence someone else’s? If you get angry at what the person has said or done, if you overreact when they don’t follow through on what they said, if you overreact to a verbal attack, that’s self-defeating and self-destructive. The most damaging thing for a hostage negotiator is losing self-control. Here’s what Noesner had to say to Kerry Shaw of The Trace about self-control, how guns made his job more difficult, and why actually listening to people is such an important part of preventing violence. ![]() Noesner is author of Stalling for Time, which chronicles his 23 years as a crisis negotiator. For years, critics have condemned the FBI’s over-aggressive tactics, arguing that negotiations should have continued). (In July 2000, a report found that Koresh started the deadly fire, but criticized the government for initially denying that it had used tear gas. In all, 76 people died in the fire - the exact count is in dispute - including Koresh. Weeks later, he watched a live feed at FBI headquarters as his organization launched a tear gas attack on the compound, which subsequently erupted in flames. ![]() About a month into the standoff, Noesner was replaced and sent on another assignment. The strategy was expensive - by one account costing as much as $128,000 a day - and slow. Among his most notable accomplishments: In 1993, he led a team that negotiated the peaceful release of 35 hostages at the Waco, Texas, compound where Branch Davidians leader David Koresh holed up with his followers after a shootout with agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that left nine people dead. Over his career, he was the agency’s lead negotiator in trying to resolve dozens of standoffs with armed groups and individuals, often with the lives of hostages on the line. Few people understand the fraught combination of high-stakes negotiations and guns better than Gary Noesner, the former chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit.
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