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Every 20 minutes someone in the world is kidnapped. HISTORY™ goes inside the shadowy world of hostages with journalist Terry Anderson who was held for seven years in Beirut by Muslim extremists longer than any Western hostage in history.

On the 20th anniversary of his release, Anderson shares his gripping story in an exclusive interview that reveals the full story of his ordeal. Combined with new perspective from Anderson’s fellow hostages, including Brit's John McCarthy and Terry Waite and also hostage negotiators, we go inside the world’s most iconic hostage crisis to reveal the intimate story of one of the most harrowing experiences imaginable…

...16 March 1985,  Beirut, Lebanon. Terry Anderson, the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, has just finished a tennis game when he is ambushed by three Muslim extremists, Hezbollah Shiites, and forced into a sedan at gunpoint.

It is only the first of what will be 2,454 days in captivity. Surprisingly, it’s not the filthy conditions, the beatings, or the physical chains that prove the most difficult, but the psychological effects loneliness, boredom and a feeling of total helplessness that nearly drive Anderson over the edge. Throughout his ordeal, Anderson comes face to face with his captors, his fellow hostages and himself in unexpected ways. He recalls moments of despair and uncontrollable anger, but also of compassion, finding God and even forgiveness.

Yet it’s an experience that marks him, and any other hostage, for life. What goes on in the mind of a hostage? What is the psychological and physical toll? Why do some survive their ordeal while others descend to madness and suicide? How do they endure the days – and years – of isolation and abuse?

HISTORY explores Anderson’s plight as a jumping-off place to explore what happens when the world is ripped away without a second’s warning and deconstruct the physical and psychological toll this traumatic experience extracts. We’ll go inside the minds of those held hostage to uncover the effects of constant fear and helplessness on the brain as we ask the question… once a hostage, are you ever truly free?

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