Reddit mentions of Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator

Gary Noesner is THE negotiator for the FBI, helping found their negotiators training program and spreading the techniques to almost every allied country of the United States. He notes in his biography that after SWAT has used forceful tactics or gone back on their word that it becomes almost impossible for him to negotiate with the subjects. This is the best negotiator in the world, and all modern negotiation techniques are based on his seminars. If he has trouble with people after SWAT acts like jerks, imagine how much harder it is for CIA Charlie to get info out of someone who has been beaten and tortured.

> Gary Noesner

His book is wonderful too.

I've read this and "Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator." They are both very good companion pieces.

https://www.amazon.com/Stalling-Time-Life-Hostage-Negotiator/dp/1400067251

What I enjoyed most was how it changed my perspective on negotiating. Especially hearing stories where someone gives a hard deadline that is essentially meaningless, it's hard to create a mental model to map the Stalling for Time into real life scenarios, but Never Split the Difference does create these models and they are very useful.

We talked about this in a negotiation class that I was in this past semester. There's an interesting behind the scenes balance between using force and buying more time for negotiation, with people on the same side disagreeing more often than not about what should happen next. In the case that I remember reading about, the perpetrator was promised to be let go if he let the hostages go. An FBI helicopter was flown in to take the guy away to fulfill the 'promise', but they actually took him down en route between the building and helicopter.

I highly recommend Stalling for Time, as it's a book written by a hostage negotiator answering these specific kinds of questions.