Thursday June 22, 2023
In February 2011, ignoring warnings of high-seas piracy, Jean and Scott Adam and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle sailed across the Indian Ocean in a 58-foot-yacht called the Quest. The Adams were members of the Del Rey Yacht Club in Marina Del Rey, California.
About 200 miles from Oman, 19 Somali pirates stormed their vessel, taking the Americans hostage.
Now an FBI agent involved in the hunt across Africa for the negotiator who coordinated their ransom is opening up for the upcoming edition of the Paramount+ series "FBI TRUE." (Paramount+ is owned by CBS News' parent company, Paramount Global.)
"A sailboat with four Americans was pirated off of Africa," said Rob D'Amico, then the FBI's liaison to the Department of Defense Special Mission Units. "They thought, 'Well, that's America, we'll get that money.'"
A joint operation involving the FBI and the U.S. Navy rushed to the scene to try to save the hostages. D'Amico, then based in North Carolina, raced to Virginia Beach to get aboard a plane to reach the Navy ships in the region. He was aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier nearby when the pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade.