"Never, ever, EVER ask why."
That's the first rule of hostage negotiations from Charles Baker, an expert in the field.
And you must leave all your history behind, he says. "You can't be thinking about your wife, your kids. You can only think about the guy, and keep control of yourself and the situation." Baker succeeded so well that his nickname in the law enforcement community and later in the community at large was the Iceman.
"Basically," he says, "you walk in as a nonentity, no pulse, don't get excited. Focus on everyone coming out alive. I figure I've got thirty seconds from when I walk in the door to make a plan."
He was very lucky, Baker says. "I never lost anybody."
Giving the January Alaska SinC meeting more tips on how to conduct a hostage negotiation, he said, "Never look at the weapon, only look at the eyes. Sit on your haunches, keep your hands wide." It drives hims nuts to see the way they do it on TV. "That'd get somebody killed if they did it in real life."
He got his start as a drug counselor in Greeley, Colorado, working with heroin addicts at what he calls a "hippie drop-in center." He decided to go out on his own, and "called the newspaper and got them to do a story. I'll be in Sambo's Restaurant every day between ten and two if any kid wants to talk." They printed it, and Baker was in business.
"The radical right thought I was a dope dealer," he says, "and the hippies thought I was an undercover narc." But gradually they learned to trust him. His most reliable informants, he says, were the real drug dealers. "They want their world to stay the same. It's good for business."

His degree was in industrial arts and earth sciences, but eventually the FBI said that since he was managing people with doctorates he had to have a degree of his own relevant to the profession he was in, and arranged for him to take a master's degree. The title of his thesis was Personality Traits of Terrorists.
Asked his opinion of what went wrong at Waco, Baker says, "When I was called in on a case, I was the authority." The problem with Waco was the hostage negotiators and the ops team had never worked together before and they didn't like each other. "That situation would have been done and those people would have been out of there with a good team." He says the FBI is now training hostage negotiation and ops teams together to avoid such situations in the future.

Asked about Columbine, he says, "Anger comes from one place--pain. The one thing that was clear about those kids at Columbine and at the other killings around the country is that those kids were incredibly angry."

Somebody asked if he was conscious of the sharpshooter aiming over his shoulder. "I'd like to say I was," he says ruefully, "but the truth is I never knew where he was aiming." He adds, "I got shot at twice in one night because of that, once by the bad guy and once by the good guy."

Getting back to his number one rule of hostage negotiations, why not ask why? Because, Baker says, "The guy has to come up with a justification for his behavior. He'll get defensive," and the situation will deteriorate. "You want to direct their thought processes to your goal, everyone getting out alive."