Mudd on N. Korea Asking for $2 Million for Warmbier’s ‘Care’: ‘Looks Like a Hostage Negotiation’

EXCERPT:

MUDD: "Oh, heck no. If I were sitting there and someone said, 'We won’t give you somebody who is injured, maybe deadly injured, unless you sign a piece of paper,' I’d say I don’t care what’s on that piece paper. I think there’s one broader policy question about whether you pay something like this. And again, no indication we have. This looks like a hostage negotiation. Not the return of an injured American. If you start paying — and the Americans typically haven’t done this — hostage money, somebody is going to say, 'Why don’t we take some hostages because they’ll pay up?' This has been a big debate forever in my old world of counterterrorism. You don’t pay for hostages and typically we’ve said we won’t."