Bring Them Home: Inside the Secret Missions to Free Americans Held Hostage Abroad

From a Navy SEAL rescue in Nigeria and secret negotiations with Iran and Syria to diplomatic showdowns with Turkey, Sweden, Russia, and Japan, Robert C. O’Brien takes readers inside the high-stakes missions to bring Americans held hostage overseas home.

When an American is taken hostage or wrongfully detained overseas, bringing that person home can require diplomacy, intelligence, economic pressure, personal relationships—and negotiations with some of the most dangerous governments and organizations in the world.

In Bring Them Home, former National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien takes readers behind the scenes of America’s efforts to recover citizens held abroad. Before entering the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, O’Brien served as Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, leading US diplomatic efforts on hostage cases and working directly with families, foreign leaders, intelligence officials, diplomats, and the president himself. His official role included coordinating closely with the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell and advising senior US officials on hostage policy.

O’Brien recounts his involvement in over a dozen missions, giving readers a front-row seat to negotiations involving hostile regimes, terrorist organizations, and sometimes even American allies, rand evealing the extraordinary combination of persistence, leverage, personal diplomacy, and improvisation required to bring captives home.

Part memoir, part geopolitical thriller, and part inside account of modern statecraft, Bring Them Home tells the story of what happens when an American disappears into a foreign prison—and the people charged with getting that person back.