Stalling for Time

by Gary Noesner

  Having a loving and supportive family is the key to my success in life. This book is dedicated to my wife, Carol, but I was never more grateful for the investment of college tuition than when my daughter Katie Salzman used her English degree to proofread the early chapters put together by dear old dad. She offered many helpful suggestions and provided me with a much needed critical review of the book’s tone and content. Katie, her younger brother, Rusty, and her older sister, Kelly Brady, remain the true joys of my life. No father has ever been more proud of his children and their successes in life. I also want to thank my sister, Nancy Kennedy, for always encouraging and supporting her little brother. It’s also appropriate to thank my oldest and dearest friends, Keith Naumann, Larry Collins, Tom Broner, and Bill Strate, for forty-five years of camaraderie and endless laughter.

  Finally, I want to recognize Bill and Doris Noesner, my wonderful parents. I only wish they were alive today to read this book. I hope they would be proud of it and what it stands for. It could never have been possible without their enduring love and constant support. Starting out with good parents has been the best good fortune in my life. I recommend it to everyone.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  GARY NOESNER (pronounced Nes-ner) retired from the FBI in 2003 following a thirty-year career as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator. A significant focus of his career was directed toward investigating Middle East hijackings in which American citizens were victimized. In addition, he was an FBI hostage negotiator for twenty-three years of his career, spending the last ten years as the chief negotiator for the FBI. He retired as the chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Critical Incident Response Group, the first person to hold that position. In that capacity he was heavily involved in numerous hostage, barricade, and suicide incidents; covering prison riots, right-wing militia standoffs, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and over 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens.

  Following his retirement from the FBI, he became a senior vice president with Control Risks, an international risk consultancy, and most recently spent five and a half years working a kidnap case involving three American defense contractors taken hostage by the FARC in Colombia, South America. He speaks to law enforcement and other groups and continues to do kidnap-management consulting work for Control Risks part-time.

  He has three grown children and resides in Virginia with his wife, Carol.