Brian Mast Grills Witness: Is The US Giving 'Carrots' To Countries With American Detainees?

6 months ago

During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Thursday, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) spoke about giving US aid to foreign countries that illegally detain American citizens.

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Transcript

00:00I'll recognize myself for five minutes. Primarily I'm gonna speak to you right

00:03now Mr. Carstens. You have the perspective of just timewise of multiple

00:08administrations and I want to start with this and maybe even go beyond the

00:12administrations that you've worked in. Carrots and sticks are things that you

00:18deal with and trying to get back those wrongfully detained and when you look at

00:23this how many of those nations in either administration would you say were

00:31recipients of US carrots already? US aid, US grants, US whatever from from a number

00:38of different agencies. How many of these countries that whether it's the 40 you've

00:41dealt 40 plus you've dealt with in the Biden administration or previously that

00:45are already receiving some kind of American support? Mr. Chairman there

00:51might be a little bit outside the scope of my duties here but let me see if I

00:54can scratch the itch here. Most of the countries I would say we don't really

00:58have a great relationship. As I think I was joking with you a few days ago the

01:02Canadians aren't taking our Americans it's usually some people that are a

01:05little bit tougher on us and so we're not necessarily providing you know

01:09assistance or aid to those countries. There are countries like I think you

01:13mentioned Afghanistan where the United States is working through broader policy

01:17issues and there might be humanitarian assistance for example that's applied

01:21but I think in terms of humanitarian assistance having spent time in the

01:24human rights field as well we're always very interested in taking care of the

01:29most vulnerable and by providing them with humanitarian assistance regardless

01:33of the situation involved. But I think in terms of tying it into the broader

01:37policy I might actually in a way flip that and I would say that some of the

01:41success that my office has had is by trying to distance it distance itself

01:45from some of those broader policy discussions so that we can silo it off

01:49and have those conversations that focus purely on the hostages. But your point is

01:53well taken. Not that you have the authority to unilaterally correct and

01:57some level of assistance but given the fusion cell given everybody this is a

02:00whole-of-government approach meant to bring all options to bear on anybody

02:04that is holding Americans wrongfully so it still bears as a part of what could

02:09be the negotiation. And I would ask one more specific question on this before I

02:14move to a different topic. Can you identify specifically any that you have

02:19had to deal with in either administration that you've worked in

02:23where they specifically rejected the idea of some kind of aid or having some

02:31aid taken away from them said we're not interested in that as a negotiation we

02:35just want this person or this group of persons or whatever. Mr. Chairman yes

02:39I've had that happen before I can think of negotiations where we went in hoping

02:44that a certain policy option in this case we decided a policy option might be

02:48the way to go forward and in and yet putting that on the table the other side

02:52wanted to conduct a person-to-person swap. I think as we talked on we try to

02:58take a look at many options and at times we want to do something that's not

03:02necessarily a person-to-person swap because they're so unpalatable but I

03:05have had times where we've tried something that's a little more

03:08policy-related and the other sides rejected it and pushed us back into the

03:12realm of person-to-person swaps. PPD 30 speaks about incentivizing behavior

03:17right we could be incentivizing things in either direction and so it's

03:22certainly a thought that if somebody is rejecting aid as a carrot or is already

03:28receiving aid and does not care if that is removed we should incentivize that

03:34behavior that we will recognize that and make sure that that is removed or never

03:38offered to them because that has been their policy like I said I do want to

03:41move to something different if you look again over your ten years can you give

03:46us an idea of how detainment wrongful detainment has evolved over the years

03:53that you've been a part of this directly or even what you've studied it

03:56historically with your predecessors. Mr. Chairman I think when I was in the

04:01Trump administration we we didn't yet have the Levinson Act and it it was more

04:07of just trying to make a good calculated guess as to whether someone

04:10was wrongfully detained or not on the hostage side in a way a little bit

04:13easier because just the process there which of course Raj could talk about

04:17Rajman could talk about but I when I showed up you know we had roughly about

04:2230 cases I think there was a time during the Biden administration that we went up

04:27to 54 cases both of hostages and wrongful detainees and here's what's

04:31interesting because you talked about that incentivization if we were to make

04:36a swap then you would think it's common sense actually that our numbers would

04:40keep going up that the other side would figure out that this was a way to

04:43leverage us and they would keep taking Americans but strangely I've gone from

04:4854 I'm now in between 20 and 30 so our numbers are actually starting to go down

04:53one thing I'd love to do as time goes on is really throw some heavy research

04:59resources into this problem set so that when I say something before a body like

05:04this we have the mathematics and the hardcore research research to back it

05:08up but right now what I can tell you is when I showed up without the Levin snack

05:13we had roughly 30 we went up to a point of 54 and now we're down hovering

05:17between 20 and 30 depending on how you slice and dice that very good now okay

05:24we do have the request at a member chair asks unanimous consent that the

05:29gentleman from Texas mr. cloud be allowed to sit on this dice and

05:32participated today's here without objection so ordered now the chair will

05:37recognize mr. Allred for five minutes well thank you mr. chairman I want to

05:40thank you for holding this important hearing and for

Brian Mast Grills Witness: Is The US Giving 'Carrots' To Countries With American Detainees?

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