Biography

During the 1993 standoff with the Branch Davidians led by cult leader David Koresh in Waco, Texas, the negotiation effort was coordinated by FBI Quantico SSAS Gary Noesner from February 28 to March 25. He was replaced by agent Clinton R. Van Zandt during the second half of the siege, from March 23 to April 20.

The last case he worked before his retirement from the FBI was the D.C. sniper attacks.

Special Agent Noesner was the chief negotiator with the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group, Crisis Management Unit, at the FBI Academy. Apart from many Middle Eastern terrorist and counterintelligence investigations, Noesner negotiated more than 120 kidnappings for the FBI, experiences that led him to travel from Africa to the Philippines. He also played key U.S. investigative roles in the hijackings of the Achille Lauro, TWA Flight 847, Pan Am Flight 73 and Kuwait Airways Flight 422, and was deployed to Lockerbie, Scotland, after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. He retired in 2003, after 30 years in that position, and became Vice President of Crisis and Security Management of Control Risks Group, LLC in Washington, DC.

Graduated from Florida Southern College in 1972.

At Waco, there was a fundamental strategy disagreement on what was the best way to proceed. In Waco, the negotiation team wanted to have a lower-keyed approach and the tactical team's approach was more to apply pressure. ... I do not awake from nightmares or have trouble sleeping at night ... because everything that I predicted would happen, did happen. [on the fact that the U.S. Justice Dept. ignored his advice on how to handle the situation in Waco, Texas]

Negotiations are the most noble of police endeavors.

Unfortunately, a lot of law enforcement agencies view [the press] as the enemy. Their initial inclination is to cut off information from you. 'If we don't talk to them, maybe they'll go away.' That doesn't happen. You won't go away. ... When I teach negotiators and crisis managers, I say: 'You either feed the shark or the shark will feed itself'.