POLITICS_ In wake of beheadings, National Security Council to review U.S. hostage policy

UNION LEADER

November 20. 2014 9:53PM

In wake of beheadings, National Security Council to review U.S. hostage policy

NANCY A. YOUSSEF McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Within days of a video emerging that showed the beheading of journalist James Foley, his mother, Diane Foley, bluntly told President Barack Obama what she and the families of other hostages held in Syria had been feeling for months: The government failed them.

It was a stunning flash of candor from Diane Foley, who for the nearly two years of her son’s captivity consistently had urged the families of other hostages to maintain restraint and not make any enemies in the U.S. government.

Foley, a New Hampshire-based journalist, whose family lives in Rochester, was captured in Syria and beheaded by ISIS in August. He was one of several American hostages held by the group.

The families, feeling isolated under the circumstances, had formed a group committee of sorts among themselves, discussing ideas of how to get their children back and, in between, their shared frustration with the government, according to several families who spoke about their experiences with McClatchy on the condition of anonymity because they don’t want to offend the Obama administration.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon said the National Security Council was leading a “comprehensive review” of the hostage policy in the face of three Americans being beheaded by their Islamic State captors in Syria. According to the letter written by Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Wormuth to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the administration’s review was, in part, on “family engagement.”

It is unclear who will carry out the review, what the hostage policy is or whether the review committee will try to change practices or craft a better-defined policy.

But for the families of those held, the agencies involved in the review are the problem.

Family members blame them for repeated government refusals to give them details about their children’s cases. The agencies often said that revealing the information could hurt the case or demurred because the family members don’t have security clearances. Often, family members said, that they would ask for information from each agency involved — the FBI, the White House and the State Department — then have to share that information with the other agencies because the agencies had not communicated among themselves.

At critical junctures in their loved one’s cases, families often learned key details from the news media.

The Foleys, for example, first learned that the video of their son’s death had been posted on Twitter from an Associated Press reporter, not from the FBI agents in charge of his case. They heard that the government had authenticated the video by watching television, Diane Foley told McClatchy.

Just two months before Foley’s death, Obama refused a request from several families to meet with him, in part to voice frustration at the government’s approach. Often the families have said that they cannot get replies to questions that could help them in their own independent efforts to get their loved one released.

The families told McClatchy that they feel they are treated as a nuisance by the administration or, worse yet, as a security risk, rather than the people most committed to a shared goal of getting an American back.

Indeed, there is nothing to suggest that the families will be included in the review, though some have asked to be included. Nor has the National Security Council reached out to any released hostages, such as Peter Theo Curtis, who was held captive for nearly two years but was released in August, or American photographer Matt Schrier, 36, who escaped in 2013. Both Curtis and Schrier told McClatchy on Thursday that they have not been contacted.

“Nobody has told us we want to review the policy,” Curtis said.The White House declined Thursday to respond to questions about whether the review would include members of the hostage families or confirm the assertion from Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steven Warren that the National Security Council would lead the review.An NSC spokesman, Alistair Baskey, defended the administration’s dealings with hostage’s families. “The administration has had regular interactions with all of the families of Americans held hostage by ISIL,” he said in an email, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “These interactions included representatives from all the relevant agencies, including the Department of State, the FBI, the intelligence community and the White House.”

Baskey added, “We do not discuss the details of our conversations with families of those held hostage, but I can say that the administration’s goal has always been to do whatever we can within our capabilities and within the bounds of the law to assist families to bring their loved ones home.”

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