Citgo 6 families despair of policy
U.S. is pressed to ease hard line on hostage talks
The most powerful people on the planet haven't brought Cristina Vadell's dad back. She's tried two U.S. presidents, the Vatican, the United Nations and one of the world's largest energy companies.
Yet her father, Tomeu Vadell, remains behind bars in Venezuela with other highranking Citgo employeesturned-hostages, more than four years after they were arrested by the Maduro government. Their best hope came last month, when one of the so-called Citgo 6 was allowed to return home to Katy as the U.S. renewed talks with the oil-rich country after years of sanctions and tension. The negotiations resumed as American officials sought new fuel sources after Russia's invasion
Deepening political divisions in the U.S. have only added to the problem, deterring politicians from making deals with groups or nations that could be weaponized against them during their next campaign, experts say.
of Ukraine tightened global supplies and sent energy prices soaring.
Vadell says it shouldn't take a distant war and the threat of pricier fuel to bring home Americans held captive. After 1,600 days without her dad, she and other Citgo 6 relatives want the U.S. to reconsider its hardline policies for hostage negotiations, and for everyday Americans to mind their roles in our increasingly divisive politics, which they say have created gridlock that's left their loved ones and countless more innocent Americans in cells overseas.
“If it was their father, son or loved one, they would not have let this happen,” she said.
Tomeu Vadell was one of six executives of Houstonbased Citgo lured to Caracas in 2017 for what they were told was a budget meeting for PDVSA, the state-owned Venezuelan oil company of which Citgo is a subsidiary. The country was at the time facing an economic collapse, political violence and state crackdowns at the direction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás
Maduro, who has violently maintained power since the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013.
Alexandra Zambrano Forseth said she was among many who voiced concerns about her father, Alirio Zambrano, suddenly being summoned, but “he just said, ‘What can I do? I have to go.’” Her uncle, José Luis Zambrano, also was requested at the meeting.
Her dad expected to be back in Corpus Christi for Thanksgiving and his father’s birthday party. But upon landing in Caracas, the group — nearly all Texas residents and dual citizens — were taken to a meeting room, where they were arrested by masked men with rifles and accused of conspiring to sell off $4 billion in Citgo bonds for their own personal gain.
The men pleaded innocent, but were sentenced to prison terms of at least eight years, stints that have all but cut them off from their families as they survive on food and water their loved ones arrange to have delivered.
“It’s felt like being in purgatory forever,” Forseth said.
‘Have to know somebody’
Since then, the men’s families and friends have spent countless hours trying to prove their innocence. They say the Venezuelan government captured the men to use as bargaining chips in future negotiations with the U.S.
When she heard of her father’s arrest in 2017, Forseth tapped her vast, well-connected network of Rice University professors and alumni to raise alarm. She’s pressured officials in Washington and courted the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church for help. She’s written op-eds, had an indirect line to the Trump and Biden administrations and has connected with other leaders, spending immeasurable hours and energy cultivating relationships with them just to see her dad again.
“It’s absolutely necessary, because that’s how things get done in this country — you have to know somebody or be wealthy,” she said. “And it’s just like, wow, this is not the illusion of democracy we’re taught in school.”
She is not alone in her despair. Families of American hostages have for decades said the U.S. government has left them in the dark about the status of their loved ones, many of whom are unknown to the public.
Deepening political divisions in the U.S. have only added to the problem, deterring politicians from making deals with groups or nations that could be weaponized against them during their next campaign, experts say.
“There used to be a day when we, as Americans, said we never leave anybody behind,” said Mickey Bergman, vice president and executive director of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement. “But we are no longer doing everything possible to bring them back home. And part of it is a political calculation.”
Bergman is among experts who say it’s time for the U.S. to rethink its long-standing “no concessions” policy in negotiations for American hostages, a policy that was thought to deter kidnapping.
Research, however, indicates that’s not true. In two studies conducted 40 years apart, the Rand Corp. found that kidnappings are rarely part of a calculated plan and occur simply because opportunity presents itself.
In 2015, after a spate of hostage deaths, including ISIS’ high-profile execution of American journalist James Foley, President Barack Obama announced a reboot of American policy to make U.S. agencies more responsive to hostages and their families. The directive also created a Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, or SPEHA, that now leads diplomatic efforts.
SPEHA was bolstered last year with the passage of the Levinson Act — named for American Bob Levinson, who died in 2020 after 13 years in Iranian custody — which mandated that a coordinator work to keep the families of hostages connected with federal agencies, among other things.
The act also allows the State Department to determine when an American is being held overseas unlawfully or wrongfully by considering the legal and political dynamics of their situation, and to refer such cases to SPEHA. Officials hope the changes make the U.S. more nimble in a world in which a growing number of hostages are taken by groups with political goals.
So-called hostage diplomacy has been on the rise in recent years, as American foreign policy has shifted from a war on terror to “strategic competition” with global powers, said Dani Gilbert, assistant professor of military and strategic studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Former President Donald Trump’s embrace of autocratic rulers — who also had American prisoners at the time — likely worsened the problem by signaling that bad actors could get the attention of the Oval Office by arresting Americans on bogus charges, Gilbert said.
‘A clear case’
That’s precisely what happened with the Citgo 6, she said. Citgo is controlled by a board appointed by Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who challenged Maduro in a 2018 election, the results of which remain contested. Reuters later reported that Venezuelan authorities had signed off on the deal for which the men were arrested, and a 2021 United Nations report found that the warrants for their arrests were not issued until after they were detained.
On numerous occasions since then, the men have been moved between prison and house arrest in response to American political developments — including after Trump hosted Guaidó at the White House in 2019.
“In my personal opinion, it’s a clear case of hostage diplomacy,” Gilbert said. “I think it’s as simple as looking at the way that the Citgo 6’s treatment has changed over time. And specifically, what appears to happen to them in response to actions by the United States.”
The latest such example came last month, when Katy resident and Citgo 6 detainee Gustavo Cardenas was released. State Department officials have said little about what led to his surprise return home, but it came days after a secret U.S. visit to the country and a televised speech in which Maduro signaled a willingness to negotiate with American officials as they mulled a ban on Russian oil imports.
Forseth was happy to see Cardenas’ return, and like others said she appreciates SPEHA Roger Carstens’ efforts to help them. Still, she said it was gutting to think that a faraway military conflict in Ukraine and the threat of an energy shortage were the keys to her father’s release. The highly politicized responses and critiques from Congress members only added to the exhaustion and dismay she’s felt about American politics since her father was seized nearly a half-decade ago.
“If this is how we handle hostages,” she wondered, “what does that say about our values?”