Roger D. Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, at a Washington, D.C., mural honoring detained U.S. nationals last summer.
Photo: Craig Hudson for The Washington Post/Getty ImagesWhen a hostile foreign nation or group releases an imprisoned U.S. citizen, the first American to welcome them home is typically Washington’s hostage deal maker in chief, Roger D. Carstens.
The special presidential envoy for hostage affairs was on a tarmac Dec. 8 in the United Arab Emirates to meet Brittney Griner when she arrived on a Russian plane after almost 10 months in captivity. Mr. Carstens told the freed basketball star that he was there to escort her home on behalf of President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a senior Biden administration official.
It was a similar story two months earlier on a Caribbean airstrip where Mr. Carstens met a clutch of U.S. oil-industry executives at the end of their five-year odyssey through Venezuelan prisons. And once China lifted a three-year exit ban on a brother and sister from Massachusetts in September 2021, Mr. Carstens was on the scene when they landed back in the U.S.
Mr. Carstens, 58 years old, is the public face of the U.S. government’s detainee diplomacy, an undertaking that in the past few years received its own office. His ambassadorial position was established by law in 2020, and his team gets involved when the U.S. government officially determines that an American citizen has been “unlawfully or wrongfully detained” by a foreign government.
Mr. Blinken said Wednesday that he had “no doubt” that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, an American who was detained by Russian security services last week while on a reporting trip and accused of espionage, was wrongfully detained. The process to reach an official determination on his detention is pending.
The Journal and the U.S. government have vehemently denied wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Gershkovich and have called for his immediate release. Mr. Gershkovich is accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the country’s Foreign Ministry.
A formal wrongful-detention designation is rare and can take months. Ultimately, the decision rests with the U.S. secretary of state.
Such a designation would shift supervision of Mr. Gershkovich’s case to Mr. Carstens, whose office has one primary task: winning the release of detained Americans.
Since assuming his position in March 2020, Mr. Carstens has had a hand in the release of more than two-dozen American detainees and hostages, sometimes following negotiated swaps such as the one that allowed Ms. Griner to exit Russian custody.
More Americans in recent years have been detained by foreign governments on what the U.S. considers to be bogus or politicized charges than have been taken captive by terrorism groups or criminal gangs, according to U.S. authorities and private assessments.
The growing practice of what the U.S. has called hostage diplomacy—by Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea—prompted Mr. Biden last summer to declare it a national emergency.
Brittney Griner arriving in San Antonio following her release in a prisoner swap with Russia last December.
Photo: Miguel A. Negron/Associated PressWhen a foreign government detains an American citizen, release negotiations can often be conducted over diplomatic channels. But such detentions bring new layers of geopolitical complexity to those conversations. The terms of securing a release could involve a prisoner exchange or U.S. concessions such as policy changes, diplomatic attention or humanitarian aid.
And when the deal-making is occurring between rival superpowers, the stakes grow higher.
Mr. Carstens declined requests for an interview for this article. A West Point graduate and veteran of U.S. conflicts—including Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia—Mr. Carstens is on the road regularly and has visited such places as Venezuela and Syria, where normal U.S. embassy services are suspended.
Roger D. Carstens navigates the needs of the families of detained citizens and the U.S. government.
Photo: karim jaafar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images“My office is like a hospital emergency room,” he told a conference audience last month in Qatar, meaning it does what is necessary. “We want this to be government not as usual.”
That horse-trading can be risky because it is seen as inviting repeat actions if hostile governments perceive U.S. policy as being pliable. Mr. Carstens in public comments has conceded that negotiating with captors might appear to break with traditional American convention to not negotiate with hostage takers—though the Biden administration has repeatedly said it has “no higher priority than the recovery and return of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.”
Mr. Carstens’s job requires that he navigate the needs of the family and government.
“He spends time with families in the worst circumstances imaginable, often instead of spending time with his own family because of his dedication to this,” said a senior White House official who works with Mr. Carstens.
José Pereira, one of those freed by Venezuela, recalled how Mr. Carstens visited him and fellow Americans in a Caracas prison every three months, and when the U.S. official didn’t show up as expected on Sept. 30, they grew nervous. A day later, they were released. Once they were airborne toward the U.S., Mr. Carstens lent Mr. Pereira his mobile phone to alert folks in Texas that he had been freed. (Mr. Biden had already telephoned Mr. Pereira’s wife.)
Mr. Carstens also shepherds detainee cases through Washington bureaucracy and assuages their family members.
José Pereira and his wife, Mervis, in San Antonio last October shortly after his release from Venezuela.
Photo: Pereira FamilyMany detainee families, a major constituency for Mr. Carstens, give him high marks for personal attention to their plight, including quick responses to their questions. Mr. Carstens has said one of his goals is to respond to email within 24 hours.
The U.S. has become increasingly willing to engage nations despite strained relations when the freedom of citizens is at stake. “We separate the idea of diplomacy and our efforts to free Americans who are held overseas,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in December.
Last September, Mr. Carstens drew attention to the work of the Vatican on behalf of hostages with a visit there that the State Department described as a chance to “engage with Holy See officials and stakeholders on matters related to the prevention and resolution of wrongful detention and hostage cases worldwide.”
Appointed in the final year of the Trump administration, Mr. Carstens stayed on to serve in the Biden administration. Known in Washington parlance as the SPEHA (pronounced SPEE-ha), Mr. Carstens has an ambassador rank at the State Department with a staff of around 30.
Designation by the U.S. government as a wrongful detainee is relatively rare. Some 99% of Americans held overseas face legal troubles where the U.S. doesn’t conclude that they have been treated improperly, though it does provide them with consular assistance.
A U.S. law codifies wrongful detainees according to 11 parameters, including whether the person has been arrested at least in part because of U.S. citizenship. Human-rights groups count more than 50 Americans being wrongfully detained abroad in more than a dozen countries, led by Iran and China. The government doesn’t disclose the specific numbers of hostages or wrongfully detained Americans, “as the numbers are fluid, and due to privacy concerns and the sensitivity of ongoing efforts to secure the release of all U.S. nationals,” a State Department spokesman said.
Mr. Carstens is the third permanent hostage envoy, a position created after three American hostages in Syria were killed in 2014. Before the position, several government agencies had a hand in detainee cases, but each wasn’t eager to share information with the other. And, families said, no one advocated on behalf of the detainee.
Robert O’Brien, Mr. Carstens’s predecessor as SPEHA, said Mr. Carstens formalized how to handle hostage issues between often territorial U.S. agencies.
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“Roger institutionalized it,” Mr. O’Brien said in an interview. “Nothing plays like success.”
In reality, Mr. Carstens is operating within the framework of broader administration policy, not setting it.
Sometimes, for instance, a prisoner swap might help advance U.S. goals—such as Mr. Biden’s desire to restart a deal aimed at slowing Iran’s nuclear-weapons program or hopes Venezuela will pump more crude oil. By contrast, the war in Ukraine has complicated negotiations with Russia.
“The decision is not at his level,” said a former American detainee who has interacted with Mr. Carstens. “It’s a much larger political game at play.”
Deterring hostage taking is the SPEHA’s ultimate goal. Last year the State Department began appending its travel advisories for certain nations with the letter “D” to indicate that Americans face an elevated risk of wrongful detention by the government in those places, expanding its warning system beyond “K” for kidnapping risk. Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar, North Korea, Nicaragua and Eritrea today carry the “D.”
—Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.
Write to James T. Areddy at James.Areddy@wsj.com, Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com
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Appeared in the April 7, 2023, print edition as 'Envoy Works Quietly In Hostage Diplomacy.'
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America's Top Hostage Envoy Pursues Freedom for Detained U.S. Citizens in Increasingly Hostile World - The Wall Street Journal
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