this week detained Wall Street Journal reporter and New Jersey native Evan gershkovic appeared before the press for the first time in months standing behind glass walls in a Moscow City Court as officials declined to consider his latest appeal to be released from jail on Espionage charges charges he and the U.S government deny and have been designated a wrongful detention the decision means the 31 year old gershkovic will remain jailed until at least November 30th but behind the scenes a group of Highly skilled diplomats and negotiators have been working around the clock to secure his release being led by U.S Special presidential Envoy for hostage Affairs Roger Carstens who joins me now Mr Carson's you've been called Washington's hostage deal maker in Chief at this point to the extent that you can tell us do you see a clear pathway for Evan Gershwin which is release well Brianna so it's good to be with you and your audience uh as far as my title goes what I can tell you is that when we work on bringing someone home it's a huge team effort uh involves uh people from all over the US government from Department of Justice uh FBI CIA Department of Defense uh Border Protection it's amazing how many people throw themselves into this in terms of the path forward uh I think to my mind I see a path board uh but it's these paths are always tough uh they're most of the times they're not very linear um and a lot of times you have to get alignment uh from not only within the US government but within partners and allies so to my mind I see a path but it's it's still going to uh be a challenging one uh having said that if you've seen uh based on what we just did with Iran in the last few days the president of the United States and the Secretary of State they have a strong purpose and they want to get all this work done so my marching orders are clear find a way to bring Evan home and then go go get it done yeah the Gin did just took in in Virginia of course you were there for that where do discussions stand though because as you're alluding to these are very complicated matters what does Russia want in exchange well those are the things I'm in a way I would love to talk about but at the same time I have to be mindful that uh when you start to negotiate in public and start talking about what it is that's going to possibly get a deal done you're in a way negotiating in public the Russians would be uh listening to uh that or that that information would be passed on and it just wouldn't benefit uh Evan so uh what I can tell you is uh we have an open Channel with the Russians uh as you well know we were able to bring Trevor Reed back and bring Greiner back so there's a pathway forward to discuss uh this issue with them of that of that I can just uh tell you straight up can you say though whether it seems as though this will result in some type of prisoner exchange or perhaps a policy Exchange in the case of Iran of course it was a bit of a dual uh situation there where money was unfrozen and um there were prisoners released but yeah Brandon you're asking all the right questions again it might be something I really can't discuss uh but I want to share this at times you don't really know I think uh I can I could probably give drench up uh drudge up a few examples of some negotiations we've had in the last three years to where you go in with a strong feeling that the other side is going to want x and by the time you're done talking to them you realize they actually want B uh and so what we're going to do is we're going to go in with um uh uh I would say uh I want to say a strong offer that might not be the right verbiage we're going to go in prepared to discuss and we think we know what direction it might go but the Russians you know they're tough negotiators and they may take it in another Direction and that's fine we're going to find a way to meet close the gap between two sides and find a way to bring Evan home how concerned are you about this what seems to be an increasing practice of Hostage diplomacy well you know Brianna it's interesting uh uh anecdotally you would think that's true but the Foley Foundation just released a report last week that showed there's actually been a 22 percent decrease in uh wrong for the tensions by other nation states so uh I can tell you that as we bring people back and the Biden Administration right now has brought 35 people home to date the numbers aren't really going back up the numbers are actually going in the other direction Roger Carstens is the U.S Special presidential Envoy for hostage Affairs thank you and we wish you good luck in your work Brianna thanks so much and to your viewers thank you all