America’s top hostage negotiator reveals his secret tactics – including using ‘wizards’ and the Bible to help people escape ‘House of Dreams’ prison hellhole

America’s top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, has revealed how he uses ‘wizards’ and the Bible to free people from the hellish ‘House of Dreams’ prison.

Carstens, 59, is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs responsible for retrieving Americans wrongfully detained or imprisoned by foreign governments and terrorist groups.

Known to the hostages’ families as ‘Captain America’, he works tirelessly to secure their release. says Vanity Fair: ‘If this job turned out to be what it was supposed to be, we’d be in full-time negotiations, drinking Red Bull and popping Adderall until the job was done.

It’s no surprise that he finds the bureaucracy frustrating, saying: ‘Every day I have a Starbucks coffee at my desk and wear a suit and tie. I think: this is total nonsense.’

In the past two years alone, he has secured the release of nineteen Americans from Venezuelan prisons. But nearly 40 others remain incarcerated in six countries around the world.

Carstens grew up in a Christian family and is driven by a strong desire to help the less fortunate.

He joined the US military, believing it to be “the most successful human rights organization in history when it comes to liberating vulnerable people.”

After initially finding it difficult to stand in line – he ‘walked 158 punishment tours’ for misconduct offenses – Carstens quickly rose through the ranks of the special forces, traveling to war zones on four different continents.

He then began his government work as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of State.

Now he is the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs with a team of 25 people responsible for retrieving Americans wrongfully detained or hostage by foreign governments and terrorist groups.

He told Vanity Fair: “The premise for my office and this president and secretary of state is that if you have a blue passport and are wrongfully detained or held hostage, your country will come for you.”

Nearly 40 Americans have been held hostage or wrongfully detained in six different countries around the world.

Some of the best-known cases include Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter jailed in Russia on espionage charges, and the five Americans believed to be living in Gaza.

In December 2022, WNBA star Brittney Griner was released from Russia after being sentenced to nine years in prison for possession of cannabis oil.

Carstens is working with everyone from heads of state to clergy and first responders to negotiate the release of American citizens.

He uses a range of tactics, both direct and indirect, in his attempts to bring them home.

He told Vanity Fair: “I pray a lot for the people who are being held. I also pray for the people holding them.

“I will raise such a dictator to God and say, ‘Lord, no matter what this man is going through, please give him everything he needs to free our citizens.’

Carstens works closely with the victims’ families, flying to meet them and giving them his personal telephone number that they can call at any time.

A quarter of the prisoners and hostages he works with are held in Venezuela in a prison known as the ‘House of Dreams’.

One man held there in 2022, Los Angeles public defender Eyvin Hernandez, described the prison as a place that is “designed to break you psychologically and spiritually.”

He added at the time: ‘The uncertainty, the isolation, the daily human rights violations are taking their toll and are having the intended effect on us. Two people have already tried to commit suicide and one is on the brink.”

Another man, Osman Khan, whose release was secured by Carstens, told Vanity Fair about his time in prison: ‘One of the boys starts poking me with something. I screamed and then I started feeling needles going through my body.

‘They started electrocuting me. I fell to the ground and started throwing up. And the boys started laughing at me and they made me eat my own vomit.”

When Carstens secured the release of seven U.S. citizens from prison — including Khan — in October 2022, Biden personally delivered the news to their families, saying, “They’ve been through a lot, and we’ve been working like hell to make sure this happens.’

But Hernandez had been left behind and was still in the House of Dreams.

Carstens continued to work tirelessly for his release, using every tactic he could think of.

He met a “wizard,” a term he uses to describe a well-connected, out-the-box thinker who can find solutions to difficult questions.

He told Vanity Fair: ‘In the world of kings, wizards are the people among them who can meet each other, close the gaps between different positions and make deals in a way that the kings cannot.’

Turning to the Bible, he told Vanity Fair that when negotiating with “an opponent about trying to free an American, I will simply read, meditate and pray to God.”

One of his favorite verses is Matthew 10:16, which he summarized as, “Help me to be wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove, and please give me whatever words you want to offer me at that time.”

In December 2023, after months of negotiations, Carstens secured Hernandez’s release.

In total, his team has extracted 19 Americans from the House of Dreams and other Venezuelan prisons over the past two years.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Carstens as “unstoppable” to Vanity Fair. He said, “I have rarely, if ever, worked with someone who is so determined every morning that he wakes up to bring another American home.”