YouSaid · the spoken record

Roger Carstens

lines on the record: 72
first: 2024-09-19
most recent: 2024-09-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's hard to let it go because it becomes so important in your life. So I'm grateful for, I'll say this, I'm grateful to be a part of a team, the US government. It's not just a campaign slogan or what have you. I'm grateful to be a part of a team that takes this so seriously. And I would say regardless of who wins the election this year or four years after that or four years after that, this is something our country does. If you have a blue passport and you're taken by a terrorist group or a hostile state, the United States of America is going to work tirelessly until you're home. And that's something that I'm very proud to be a part of.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's funny. It found me. If I would have known about this job, I wouldn't know how to get it. But it dropped into my lap. And I'm very grateful that President Biden and Secretary Blinken asked me to stay on because I think I'm not sure what I'd do. We talked about the campaigning. Once you do it,”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. I tell you, the heroes in this story, me, my wife, and my kids. But they've been incredibly supportive. They've had a chance to see people who, number one, got their loved ones home. Number two, the people that actually came home. But number three, they've witnessed people coming up to me saying, I don't understand why this is taking so long. Why can't you bring my loved one home? And they're in tears. And so when an 11 and 13-year-olds see, you know, their dad, you know, talking to people that are in that much pain, I hate to say it, but they tend to cut you a little more slack. But I've been grateful for the fact that they've allowed me to do this job because it's pretty all-encompassing.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I felt the same thing when I saw you. I think maybe getting ready to whine and complain about how hard the last three weeks are. And I thought I'm whining to the wrong person because you can't shut that off. It goes on for years, right? And then even when you walk away. That's now what you do and have done and what you think about. So when I look at people like you, you know, we're living the same life. We just have different missions and focuses right now, but it's no sleep. It's full on. You have to give 110%.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When neurotic person speaking up from the peanut gall We're trying to find the people that don't just leave at five and then erase it. We want people that put this in their heart. And I know it's maybe a tough thing, but we want people to feel this if they're working. They got to know that this is just, it's life and death. And so how do I sleep at night? It's a rough sleep because I feel like I have 25 people right now that are waiting on me to get the job done and the job's not done.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to say something that my staff will hate because they've counseled me against this for four and a half years, but I go to sleep knowing I'm failing right now, about 25 families. There are 25 families that expect me to get the job done, and it's never done until an American steps off a tarmac or off a plane onto a tarmac on U.S. soil and falls into the arms of their loved ones. That's a win. Everything else, you're not winning. And so I go to bed with a huge weight on my back because I feel like I go to bed like, what else can we do? What haven't I done? Where did I fail? How do we get this started next morning? And frankly, we hire people like that. We have an assessment and selection process where my chief of staff is trying to find empathetic, compassionate, hardworking, almost zealous people. To an extent, I think if you're”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are not in the negotiating room on Gaza, but I think I've met with 90 of the families, so the 12 American families, but we've also met with roughly 78 of the other families because we want to hear their stories and get a sense of what they're going through. And so we've had deep connectivity. And so when Hirsch was murdered, boy, that was like a punch to the gut in a big way. We, of course, reached right out to John and Rachel as parents. But he was such a sweet boy, one who was poetic, loved music, loved to travel.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is one of those full court presses, but it highlights a few things. Number one, it's not always mine office that's in the negotiating room. In fact, to us, we have a saying in my office. We don't care who comes up with a plan. We don't care who negotiates, and we definitely don't care who gets the credit. If I'm in a bar with a drunk guy next to me and he gives me a plan that makes sense, I'm running with it. And so we don't really care who comes up with this. And in this case, I would dare say that it also showcases the fact that everyone gets involved in this. It's never just Speha. It's always this big government effort. And there are also people on the sidelines that are contributing greatly. Congress, for example, NGOs, other countries.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not much. What I've done is, this is one where when it happened, the Israelis selected David Barnay, their head of intelligence, to conduct the negotiations. We mirrored that by selecting CIA Director Bill Burns, who was former ambassador to Russia, former ambassador to Jordan. Exceptional talent. And then, of course, supported greatly by Secretary of State Blink, and he's made numerous trips over the region to try to further the framework agreement that they're working on. Jake Sullivan's been over there. As you know, the president's been over there.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I would say overall, when we've made some pretty tough deals and the people that usually do take our citizens are not going out and as we say restocking the pond, I think I'd really like to get the numbers down perfectly, but there was a time when I had 54 cases on my desk. I'm down now to about the mid-20s. And that's not an accurate reflection because we've got more than 30 people home. Because you get 54, you know, you get a few more cases. But the bottom line is the numbers are going down. So it defies common sense. But in making these swaps, we're not seeing an increase in the amount of people that are taken.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. We've taken more precautions. The D indicator, which warns people they may be wrongfully detained if they go to that country. Travel advisories like Russia, level four, don't go there. If you're there, leave. So we've tried to take a prevention role. We're working on deterrence, which is a much bigger effort.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Russia takes an American and we do a swap, then Russia is going to go, aha, now I'm just going to take 10 Americans because I can keep leveraging the United States. And yet my numbers keep going down.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think on the first, not much. The war in Ukraine is not really made it more complicated. There are one or two examples I could give where that's not true. But I'd say that Russia and Ukraine are fighting a horrific war, and yet they still make time for prisoner swaps. The Americans and the Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, in what, 73, did POW swaps? The United States in times of great tension with Russia, Venezuela, and other Iran has still found ways to meet, talk about their prisoners and wrongful detainees and conduct exchanges. So even though the war in Ukraine has caused a lot of international curfuffles and maybe asked to put a small wrench or two into what we do, overall, it's not really impacted it because both sides have still been willing to meet and still try to figure out what they're trying to do here. But on the other question, common sense dictates that if”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've asked myself if no one argues for this, then I'm doing a disservice to the present and everyone else. So there are times when we do advocate whether we really believe in it or not, because someone has to suss out the argument to see if it's worthy of going to. Secretary Blinken, the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and then maybe on to the president.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both. The real mission is to go suss out what the bad guys want. I'm not allowed to say bad guys, but it's that the opposing team has. Suss out what it is they want, find out what it's going to take to get there, at least we think, but eventually you want to put course of action one, two, and three before senior leaders with all the math that supports all that and the path the roadway. But I will say absent just that pure staffing function of negotiating and then providing the courses of action, there are times when you're at a table and it's a really tough option and there are 20 people around it and even you are not sure it's the best option.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I can't tell you that before anything goes up to the president, we're taking a look deeply at will this person fall back into their life of crime? How much time did they already serve in a prison? What are ways to mitigate the damage they might cause if they go off? I mean, you can actually, I mean, hypothetically, you could release someone from a U.S. prison and yet still freeze their assets by sanctioning them if you wanted to. So you could actually find ways to mitigate anything that they might do. And these are things that we do because the president wants to make the best decision and we own that. It gets into what you asked earlier. You said, are we a staff function that provides courses of action to the president or do we articulate and argue?”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So rather than maybe answering whether the president says no or not or ever, what I can say is he said yes a lot. And as a result, there are 50 Americans that have come home that have been specifically on my desk. Another 20 for a total of 70 that were a little askew, a little off on my desk, but still fell into the president's lap in terms of making a decision. And without the present rendering these decisions, those people just stay in jail or they're held by terrorists. They die. And so you have to, you really have to come down to like, I think a phrase that Jamie Rubin once threw at me is that at times the moral imperative outweighs the moral hazard.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dying to answer that, but it's the presence of, I would say, Perve, and I wouldn't want to jump into that just out of respect for decisions he makes in the office.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The White House and the Secretary, and I would say all members of the interagency, the Department of Justice, CIA, Defense, they are also intensely involved in this, and they all care so deeply. And when we have discussions, there's always this healthy tension that usually produces something that's of value in terms of decision-making. So when you see someone that's being released, I can assure you that Secretary Blinken's been following it deeply. Jake Sullivan's been following it deeply, and the president knows what's going on and been following it deeply because at the end of the day, the president renders the decision. And I have to say that he has rendered some courageous decisions. I mean, there have been decisions that no human being on earth would want to be put on their desk, freeing an American who's innocent, who's languishing in a horrible prison, but maybe making a deal with a bad person being taken out of our legal system in exchange, no one wants to make that decision. But the president makes us do our work. We have to brief him on why that might be.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Under salt there. That's probably one I probably have to leave off the table. The White House did a lot of the majority of the conversation with Germany, so I wouldn't feel comfortable getting into that because I wasn't privy to that part of it. But what I can say is this, a few things. Number one,”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every case is different, but I would say overall, I'll say something that's maybe indefensible, but this is how I feel. Number one, they know we care. So the price is already starting high. Number two, the other opponents usually have a pretty good sense on day one what they want out of it. So it's not like it's going to raise. They usually just stay at what they've asked for, almost always. And number three, we're the United States of America. You know, we're the most powerful nation on Earth. If someone wants to charge us a price, we probably can pay it. We just have to make sure that we're dealing with the hard issues, the moral hazard question, the questions about assaults on our rule of law. If we take someone who's been properly prosecuted and sentenced and then put them in a trade, what does that do to our legal system? We have to wrestle with those problems.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Held. And I think what we think now is like, look, everyone knows that this country values its people. That's no secret. So we're already starting from a high price. But secondly, there's a significant amount of damage that can be done to a family by trying to restrain their First Amendment rights to talk publicly about what they're experiencing or how they feel their government's doing. I don't feel that we're threatened by that. In fact, if anything, we want them to feel free to have that voice. It's healthy.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say yes. In fact, sometimes the families will ask, should I go to the press or not? And what Secretary Blinken tells them and what I tell them is, you need to do what you feel is right. So if you need to feel you need to go to the press, even if you want to go to the press and say that Roger Carsons is not doing his job, we don't care. You need to do what you think is best. And we're the government. We'll figure out ways to work around it. In four and a half years in this job, there's only been two times where I've gone to a family member and said, it is so sensitive right now. I'm going to ask you to lay low. In both cases, that period lasted like three weeks. In three weeks, I was able to call them and say, okay, that period's over. If you feel you need to go on TV or write an op-ed, please do. So we try to be supportive. There was probably a time in the government where the government would say, be quiet, don't say anything. We don't want to raise the value of the person that's being.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's better to say here's, I'm going to tell you what I can. And by the way, we're declassifying some information so I can give you a better brief in a few weeks because we want them to know the families don't leak. You know, they have a vested interest in safeguarding that information. And we never give them secret or top secret information. But we do want to find that information that's meaningful and give it to them. And when you do that, you can suffer a horrific negotiating failure, but when you talk to the families, they'll know that, look, we're in this together and we're just going to dust off plan B and put it into action and push forward.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was just going there. So, what we do is we have two people from the ODNI, the Office of Department of National Intelligence, our director of National Intelligence, they work in my office part-time. And one of their main jobs is to declassify information as appropriate so that we can give it to the families So, what doesn't fly with the families is telling them, you know, I can't tell you what's going on in the case because it's all classified.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To bring your loved one home. Now that's our job. So I want you to go to sleep tonight knowing that someone else has their hands on the steering wheel. It's going to be a long fight, but we're going to get it done. We just don't know when. But that's my responsibility now. But the second thing is.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“25 people working for me. I would say seven people overall that are devoted purely to the cases and the families and other people who do other tasks. But yeah, we embrace the families. In fact, I've seen, I've been to everyone, how about us to say this? If we determine that someone's wrongfully detained, I've been in their house, you know, or I've visited them. That includes flying to Tbilisi, Georgia. We've flown to Australia. We've flown to Kiev. But we've also gone all around the United States because when we get a case, we feel it's important to forget face-to-face with our customer, our client, the family, and explain to them what it is they're going through from our perspective. Tell them what the government's architecture is for dealing with this, tell them what our thumbnail sketches about how we want to proceed, at least at that point. But maybe the most important thing is we want them to feel like they're a part of what we're doing. They're not distant. And what we want to say is like for the last few months, you felt that it was your job.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, and I'm grateful to carry that weight. We think about the most important thing we do other than trying to actually get someone home is to just embrace these families. We meet them where they are. I have families that are angry at me 24-7. I have others that are very embracing and supportive. But regardless, we consider them partners in this process. We meet with them regularly. We talk with pretty much every family every week, and oftentimes more, like phone calls, physical meetings, Zoom calls.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've heard that argument many times, and what really is kind of fun is to say, okay, explain what you mean by money is fungible. And that usually grinds the conversation to a halt because it's actually a hard thing to really jump into, I think. But if you also said to yourself or said to someone who asked that, look, the Iranians absent any money that could be used for humanitarian items that's being held in Qatar. They're going to spend money on bad things anyway. I mean, they are not sitting there putting money right now as much as we probably think into their health system. That money is going to go to other items that might be more nefarious in nature. And so to give them a chance to access money that could go to humanitarian goods, to me, it's just going to be apples and oranges.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It spent on vendors' external to Iran, but then they can get these things like baby formula into Iran if they need it. But that's not yet been used. So what I find interesting is I've heard that from a lot of my friends saying, oh, you know, we essentially given the Iranians 6.2 billion. I'm like, absolutely not. We actually. We actually took it in a place where it could have been spent, I think, to a place where it's only going to be spent on humanitarian items because we have made it very restrictive.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think on the Iran deal, there was a time when there were four pots of money around the world that the Iranians could access, and that was set up by the Trump administration, and three of those had been spent down overtime by the Iranians. It was Iranian money that they had in foreign banks, and they were allowed to access it. The money in South Korea, they just could never really spend. It was in won. And so I would argue that it was kind of restricted, but not really that too restricted. And what we did in this deal is we allowed it to go from South Korea to a much, much, much more restricted bank account, banking system with US Department Treasury monitoring everything that's happening. So as of now, not one dollar has been spent. Now, if the money wants to be spent for humanitarian items like baby milk or medical goods, COVID vaccines, then there's a path in the process to have that done where the money never goes into.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kill people, and yet that might be, this will sound strange, one of our stronger deals. And here's why. And I'll get into the president's role and Jake Sullivan's role in my boss's role because that's very important. I want to make sure I communicate that. Jake Sullivan, the manager, National Security Advisor. Secretary Blinken, you know, Secretary of State.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I'll get a call, or else I'll call them like, hey, you guys just took this action. Are you trying to send us a message? And sometimes it's yes, and sometimes it's no, but at least we don't have to wonder anymore. So it's just a personal phone call to someone on the opposing side if you want to call it that, to get a sense of where we are and what they're trying to achieve.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I loved my job of having judgment and haranguing bad people. And I've found this job. Sometimes I'm talking to the very same people. But when I meet them, I'm like, look, I have a mission. My mission is to build a relationship, find out what this is going to take, see if the White House is willing to do it, and then bring these Americans home. So I try to just go in with a huge sense of humility, try to bring every part of myself to every negotiation. I try to, I would say be non-threatening. I try to listen. I want to really be, I guess, mindful of what the other side is trying to communicate. And I also want to be very practical. You know, say, look, I think one time I said, look, we're going to keep sending these messages to each other through you doing this or saying this in the press. Here's my phone number. If you're going to do that, that's fine. But just call me and say, hey, here's the actual thing that we're trying to communicate to really just try to shorten up the cycle. Do people do? They do.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've talked to people, some of the people I've talked to have truly killed their way to the top or stolen elections. And I came for this job at state. I was at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then go back to DC and then try to make sense of what our next engagement is going to look like. Yeah, it's fascinating. There's, I would say, a mathematical aspect to it, but there's also a very intuitive part that goes along with that.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. And yet, you often, it's going to say something, it's going to sound weird, but there's math and then there's science and art. I think you can do all the mathematics and understand what motivates someone based on different analysis. You can understand the tangible things that you could throw on the table, but a lot of time when you walk into room, you're now playing on intuition, gut feeling, and trying to just read something that you can't grab onto. And I think that's been an interesting part of Job, not the hardest part, but maybe the most interesting is you can do all your preparation. But once you walk in that room, you're in the boxing ring and you've got to be able to feel it and adapt to it and then come back. And by the way, while you're feeling and adapting it, keep in mind that the White House gives you right and left limits. You can't just freelance out there because it's an interagency effort. It's not Spiha. It's really the US government trying to get it done. But to walk out of a room,”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, I think in meetings sitting down with President Maduro, Venezuela, Jorge Rodriguez is number three, number three kind of in the government's food chain and trying to hash out a way that we can bridge the gap between our two positions over time. Sitting down with, I would say, gosh, I could go down a long list of folks here, but it's funny that it's not always those people that are the most interesting, though. The people that are tangential to the process, but without them as success wouldn't happen, absolutely fascinating. I've often said that if you have a thousand people that contribute to an American coming home, and usually it's a thousand or two thousand, you can sometimes just pull one person out of that, and it's not going to happen. And so some of the most interesting people I've met are those quiet analysts at the CIA that bring up that point that no one would have thought of, and that's what you end up drilling down in on the negotiation. It's meeting with a world leader.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, I was asked many months ago if I could tell a really interesting story about something I've done. And my press guy, Sam Ostrander, and I, and I think another gentleman, sat there for probably about the better part of an hour and couldn't come up with one story because they're all so deeply classified.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A hard thing about that title, though, is that I've been surprised that some of the people I've met with would meet with me. Because as we're planning to go meet someone and say Venezuela or pick your country, we're wondering if that title hostage will actually bother them because most of these countries start from the position that the person that they're holding is not a hostage. They're not wrong for the Tainee. And yet I've been surprised we've been still able to sit down with other sides and discuss that. They've not really let that be a hindrance to these discussions. But yeah, it does target it. I mean, it's pretty clear in what we do when you see the title.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The acronym. Yeah, forgive me. I know it's horrific. It's the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. And then there's that old joke in D.C. that the longer your title is, less important you are. But it's a mouthful. So everyone just calls it Speha. Yeah. It's probably important to.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And without boring everyone, we came down to the essential tasks. They're kind of simple. It's number one, get people home, bring these Americans home. Number two, take care of and support the families. Give them information. Connect with them. Embrace them. Be human. Don't be typical government. Make that a priority of bringing the families in and making them a part of this as opposed to the cold, hard voice of the government saying, I'm sorry I can't talk about it. That's classified. So we made that a priority. The third thing was expanding the network. We felt that the hostage recovery enterprise, as it was called, was simply three government entities. My office, the hostage recovery fusion cell, which is housed over at the FBI, and then the hostage response group at the White House. Caroline, I thought we'd have to expand this so that everyone felt like they were part of this team. NGOs, congressmen, senators, their staffs, empowered individuals bring people closer like Governor Richardson, the late Governor Richardson.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, he was graduate number one in the class, smart guy, and he called me up one day and just said, I want you to take this job. And yeah, so I embraced it even not sure, not quite sure what I was getting into. And my first step was my chief of staff, Caroline Walker, who had already been in the position as the chief of staff for like two months, not very long either. And after two weeks, I tried to gain information from her. She told me everything that she knew, but we eventually I had a chance to talk to two previous Bihas, Jim O'Brien, who served under President Obama, and then Robert O'Brien, who was serving under President Trump. And I think after two weeks, Caroline I sat down and what eventually became a big whiteboard exercise and said, look, we have to institutionalize what we're doing. We have to make sure that we have, I would say, troops to task, enough people to handle the workload, and we have to understand what our essential”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, you blundered into it. Someone asked me, like, how did you prepare for this role? And what was your path? And I didn't prepare for this role. And my path was getting a phone call one day saying the secretary wants you to take this job called Speha. And I said, oh, well, I pretty much said yes right away because, you know, your boss asked you to take a challenge, you take it. But I think I hung up the phone and went down the hall and I said, what's Speha? What is that again? I think I've gone by a door, but what does that mean? And people were explaining the role of it after the fact. And the job didn't become clear to me.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To stand and see what would happen if there was a smaller footprint, still people worrying about everything, governance development, rule of law, and then the military component, but as their way to have a counterterrorist effort that chases down those that threaten the society, while still with a smaller putprint supporting civil society, government, the rule of law, I would argue yes, but it's only because I spent my life studying it. So in Afghanistan popped, I think most people in special forces were thinking it would be a very quiet war. And instead it became a very big thing. And you really can't fault the leaders because the things that they knew at that time that I didn't, information that I did not have access to, you know, you make the decisions you have to make at the time you have to make them. So it's hard to fault any decisions in the past. But I am curious to see how a smaller footprint would have played out.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't. I spent three and a half years in Afghanistan as a civilian advisor on exactly that counterinsurgency. And yeah, I think these are the hardest decisions that leaders make, how to solve big problems like wars, especially wars that are of this nature. And I think, yeah, I mean, I'd hate to get into the policy realm, especially looking back on it and considering my role as so narrow now. But I think what I've actually gone on record and writing about when I was at CNAS or New America Foundation as a senior fellow was that at times some wars less is better. And if you build something for another country, you may not get it right. You may put too much money into the system and start corrupting the system. Sometimes it's better to have a smaller footprint, a smaller approach. And that at times engenders a different way of building the architecture than the way that we would in America or Europe. And so if I could go back in a time machine or if I could see what an alternate universe would look like, it would be interesting to go back to Africa.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would have happened if instead we would have sent a special forces group of 3,000 people and then maybe some helicopters and a strike element or two. In other words, fight your war cheaply if you don't have to, but you have to know the war you're getting into”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a few things I'll say is Klausewitz, a German war philosopher, says the most important thing you do is know the war that you're getting into. And I think if you think of it like that, there are wars that are suited for special forces and others that are not. Conventional combat against the Nazis in World War II, battalions, brigades, regiments, et cetera. El Salvador, 55 Green Berets. There was a cap, and yet El Salvador for a great many years definitely was training in the right direction because we didn't spend much money and we put the right people on the ground. We actually limited the amount of people. Colombia, there was a cap, I think, at 1.200 green berets, nothing else, other than aviation support. And often wonder in Afghanistan, where at one point we had 168,000 troops in addition to contractors and other supporting elements from 49 countries.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never wanted to be a general, a poet, a rich man, I instead wanted to follow a mission, and the mission's always been something like, you know, Dioprest Libert to free the oppressed. And to me, even I'd say at age 15, in Spokane, I didn't know much about nonprofits. I didn't know anything about the United Nations. I read newspapers, but didn't understand what journalists really did. Had I known all that, maybe I would have selected another path. But at age 15 and 16, I thought to myself that the United States Army is the greatest human rights organization that's ever existed, the most well funded human rights organization. They've liberated people across Europe and other places. And when something goes wrong, the military, they're the first ones to show up with the devices that can make water pure to give to people. They can build things. They can build runway strips. They can feed people. So I look at age 15 and 16, I thought to myself, if I want...”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think on the personal side, I think when I got to special forces, I love the work, but I always love the motto, Dio Presso Libert, to free the oppressed. And I felt like if there's a line of continuity that I fall, it's that.”
2024-09-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 594 — Amb. Roger Carstens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source