Gary Noesner (pronounced “ness-ner”) retired from the FBI in 2003 following a thirty-year career.  Twenty-three of those years were spent as an FBI hostage negotiator, where he retired as Chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Critical Incident Response Group, the first person to hold that position. In that capacity, Gary was heavily involved in numerous hostage, barricade, and suicide incidents; covering prison riots, right-wing militia standoffs, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and over 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens.

Following his career with the FBI, Gary joined Control Risks, an international risk consultancy, assisting clients in managing overseas kidnap incidents.

Gary is the author of Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator, one of two books used as the basis for the television mini-series, Waco.