U.S. May Make a Big Change to Hostage Policy
The White House-ordered advisory group on U.S. hostage policy is expected to recommend, senior officials told ABC News last week. The Obama White House has ordered the National Counterterrorism Center to interview many of those who have experienced tragic events. Such as the parents of journalist James Foley, who were among several families alleging they were repeatedly threatened by administration officials with prosecution last summer for moving to raise millions in ransom demanded by ISIS and other groups in Syria.
On Aug. 19, 2014 James Foley was beheaded on video by ISIS executioner and spokesman Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen nicknamed “Jihad John” in the West. Neither of the officials who confronted the Foley family, at the National Security Council and at the State Department, were in law enforcement positions.
Two Britons, two Japanese, two Americans and one Jordanian hostages were slaughtered subsequently one by one on video by ISIS. Officials have said that Kayla Mueller, an American hostage, who was given as a gift bride to a senior ISIS leader was killed last February in what the terrorist group claimed was a Jordanian airstrike in Syria, a claim American officials have disputed.
Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother, told ABC News last September her family was “told very clearly three times that it was illegal for us to try to ransom our son out and that we had the possibility of being prosecuted.”
“We felt compelled. We had to attempt to raise money… What would anyone do? Give me a break,” she said in the interview last year. “We don’t want other American families to go through what we have. There’s a lot that needs to be fixed,” she told ABC News on Saturday.
She said she intends to press President Obama to accept the recommendations of the NCTC team, which will soon be “on his plate.”
Obama administration officials publicly denied the Foleys’ allegations, after James Foley’s death which multiple sources throughout the government’s hostage recovery programs had confirmed to ABC News. During a stop in Turkey in September Secretary of State John Kerry said that he was “really taken aback” and “surprised” that the Foleys were saying publicly that they felt they had been threatened by their own government prior to their son’s murder on video in August.
But after Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was freed by the Haqqani Network in Pakistan a year ago for five Taliban leaders incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay’s military prison, many hostage families later cried foul over no swaps being offered for their loved ones. Bergdahl, who now faces life in prison if convicted of desertion, was considered a prisoner of war and therefore his case was different.
The hostage policy review team is headed by Army Lt. Gen. Bennet Sacolick, a former commander of the elite Delta Force counter-terrorism unit, and his NCTC staff. He told the Daily Beast last week that “we can do better” at informing hostage families about developments in their cases, which has been another criticism by the Foleys who complained they were kept in the dark during their son’s captivity.
The Foleys said last year that they had been told by Obama aides that any effort to pay ransom would be viewed as providing material support to terrorists. But, in reality, the payoffs are often pocketed by middlemen and hostage-takers rather than used to buy weapons or support terrorist operations, Cloonan said.
“They should be allowed to do whatever they can as a civilian to get their victim or family member out of harm’s way,” former FBI agent Jack Cloona who has been involved in hostage negotiations, told ABC News last week.
Experts say that threatening hostages’ families with prosecution who already are suffering excruciating pain, which eventually was subsumed by grief when their loved ones were murdered by ISIS was not only reprehensible, but sticking to a cookie-cutter policy of outlawing ransom negotiations or payments also mistakenly restricted options rather than risked encouraging more kidnappings.
Another retired agent, former chief FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, said the alleged strong-arm tactics used by some government officials “was a horrible thing to do to the families” and was “the symptom of an uncoordinated government response.”
Besides the four Americans killed by ISIS in Syria, one American and a South African were killed during a hostage rescue attempt by Navy SEALs in Yemen in December. American Warren Weinstein and an Italian hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto, were killed accidentally in a CIA drone strike targeting Al Qaeda in Pakistan in January. A person familiar with Weinstein’s ordeal said the family attempted to pay around $250,000 to the men believed to be holding him, but it came to nothing.
There are at least two more Americans, Caitlan Coleman and her toddler child, publicly known to be Taliban captives in Pakistan.
Voss said he’s concerned that a negative affect of looking the other way when ransoms are collected and paid by families is that they won’t have FBI input on the mechanics of a process the victims have never engaged in previously.
Two former officials told ABC News that payoffs to hostage-takers in some cases are allowed under the secret National Security Presidential Directive-12 if a ransom is paid as part of a sting operation or to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Another conceivable benefit to paying a ransom is to gain intelligence by tracing the cash and how it is spent.
