Hostage Negotiator Reveals Secrets to Dealing With Iran
Giandomenico Picco worked with the notorious Imad Mughniyeh to free Western hostages 20 years ago. The talks were so secretive that Picco has only just revealed that Israeli intelligence confirmed Mughniyeh's identity. As Iran nuclear talks escalate, the veteran negotiator suggests using "out of the box" solutions and showing a little respect.
In my efforts to free Western hostages in Lebanon in the early 1990s, I often had to do unorthodox things—such as allowing myself to be blindfolded and taken by masked men to unknown places in the middle of the night to meet masked interlocutors.
According to an Israeli intelligence official who I subsequently met, one of my hosts was none other than Imad Mughniyeh, the notorious Hezbollah intelligence chief and liaison with Iran who was killed in Damascus, most likely by an Israeli hit team, in 2008.
