Slate has partnered with Brooklyn Brewery and RISC to bring its hit war correspondent interview series to our readers. In this fifth installment, Steve Hindy, founder of Brooklyn Brewery and a former Associated Press foreign correspondent, sits down with Terry Anderson, former Associated Press chief Mideast correspondent and author of Den of Lions, a memoir detailing the horrific six years and nine months he spent in captivity in Lebanon.
“I think that Stockholm syndrome is a bunch of crap,” Terry Anderson says. “I’m not going to like somebody who chains me up and blindfolds me every day, and on occasion thumps on me.” In the clip above, Anderson describes his Hezbollah captors—men he grew to know well during his near-seven-year stint in captivity—and the relationships he and his fellow captives did (and didn’t) form with them. He delves into the captors’ last-minute need for approval on jailhouse food, the psychology behind the more abusive tendencies, and how, despite their actions during the war and then-current role as captors, none of the men who had taken him hostage saw themselves as terrorists.
