Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

One of the things I failed to fully appreciate then was
that the kidnappers had changed negotiators themselves.
Sabaya had been replaced.
My boss Gary Noesner had, in a previous kidnapping,
pointed out to me that a change in negotiators by the other
side almost always signaled that they meant to take a harder
line. What I didn’t realize at the time was this meant Sabaya
was going to play a role as a deal breaker if he wasn’t
accounted for.
Our new tack was to buy the Burnhams back. Although
the United States officially doesn’t pay ransoms, a donor
had been found who would provide $300,000. The new
Abu Sayyaf negotiator agreed to a release.
The ransom drop was a disaster. The kidnappers decided
that they wouldn’t release the Burnhams: or, rather, Sabaya,
who was physically in charge of the hostages, refused to
release them. He had cut his own side-deal—one we didn’t
know about—and it had fallen through. The new negotiator,
now embarrassed and in a foul mood, covered himself by
claiming that the payment was short $600. We were baffled
—“Six hundred dollars? You won’t let hostages go because
of six hundred dollars?”—and we tried to argue that if the
money was missing, it must have been the courier who had
stolen the money. But we had no dynamic of trust and
cooperation to back us up. The $300,000 was gone and we
were back to rarely answered text messages.
The slow-motion wreck culminated about two months
later with a botched “rescue.” A team of Philippine Scout