Via Teleconference
(July 18, 2022)
MODERATOR: Thank you. And thank you all for joining this evening's NSC background call on President Biden's new executive order to bolster efforts to bring home American hostages and wrongful detainees.
As a reminder of the ground rules, this call is on background attributable to "senior administration officials" and embargoed until tomorrow morning, Tuesday, July 19th at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
For your awareness but not for your reporting, today's speakers are [senior administration official], [senior administration official], and [senior administration official].
With that, I'll turn it over to [senior administration official], our first speaker.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you so much, [moderator], and thanks to everyone for joining this call. We are eager to share how the Biden-Harris administration is expanding the toolkit that the U.S. government uses to help bring home American hostages and wrongful detainees.
Foreign states that engage in the practice of wrongful detention, whether it's for political leverage or to seek concessions from the United States, threaten the integrity of the international political system and, moreover, the safety of US nationals and other persons abroad. And the same can be said of terrorist organizations, criminal groups, and other malicious actors who take hostages for financial, political, or other nefarious gains.
The U.S. government maintains its unwavering commitment to bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained.
And so that is why we are proud to announce that tomorrow, President Biden will be signing a new executive order that will provide new and expanded tools to help bring our citizens home and impose costs on the culprits as well as provide greater transparency regarding the risks.
The new executive order is entitled "Bolstering Efforts to Bring Hostages and Wrongfully Detained U.S. Nationals Home." It reaffirms the fundamental commitment of the President, of the administration to bring home those Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad.
The executive order draws on the 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage Taking Accountability Act. And just as the name itself suggests, that law is a credit to the perseverance of the Levinson family and others who have turned their family's extraordinary hardships into constructive and meaningful action.
Frankly, all of us who work on these issues are blown away by the courage and the leadership the families in these awful circumstances show in an effort to make our government and all of us better in resolving these cases.
The new EO builds on those efforts and the efforts of others who have worked diligently to bring the Levinson Act to fruition, and it expands and strengthens the government's toolkit in key ways.
For example, this EO reinforces U.S. government efforts to support the families of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas by directing parts of the federal government to bolster their engagement with such families and their sharing of relevant information, including intelligence information, with families regarding their loved ones' status and the government's efforts to secure their release or their return.
The new executive order also authorizes departments and agencies to impose costs and consequences on those who are involved. That includes financial sanctions and it includes visa bans, and it can apply whether the individual subject to those costs and consequences has acted on behalf of a state or a terrorist network or some other non-state actor.
This EO reflects the administration's commitment not just to the issues generally, but to the families in particular, and it has been informed by the government's regular engagements with them and other stakeholders who have and continue to undertake important, constructive advocacy efforts on behalf of their loved ones.
President Biden and those across the administration will now draw on this EO to advance our efforts, and we hope to do so in active conversation with family members and outside stakeholders.
In addition to the EO, tomorrow, the Biden-Harris administration will introduce a new risk indicator, the "D" for wrongful detention indicator, to the State Department's travel advisories, which exist for all countries around the world to warn Americans of risks they may face in traveling to particular destinations.
This new "D" indicator will, in particular, inform American travelers of the risk of wrongful detention by a foreign government, will highlight the elevated risk that Americans face in particular countries, and provide Americans with comprehensive safety and security information to use in making informed travel decisions.
Its transparency will also show to governments that engage in this sort of reprehensible practice, and indeed to the world, our commitment to calling out this sort of behavior.
The "D" indicator joins the existing "K" for kidnapping indicator that covers the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking by non-state actors as well as a range of other existing risk indicators.
State Department travel advisories are continuously revised and updated based on a comprehensive review of all available safety information and ongoing developments.
I should emphasize here that this work to punish those responsible for this sort of behavior, to increase transparency, to share risks about hostage taking and wrongful detention, all of this is in addition to the very hard, very important work that we do with the NSC, with State Department, the FBI, and other colleagues across the government every day to resolve particular hostage and wrongful detainee matters. This isn't a substitute; it's in addition. And it is a way to increase transparency through the indicator, impose costs through the executive order, and overall, try to prevent the next set of families going through this horrible ordeal.
