Hostage death exposes problems in U.S. response
The death of aid worker Kayla Mueller is fueling charges that bureaucratic infighting and poor communication among U.S. government agencies have hampered efforts to save U.S. hostages held by ISIL or other militant groups. Some family members of hostages say the governmentâs system for dealing with hostage negotiations lacks coordination and leaves desperate families in the dark. At the White House, the Obama administration faced new questions Wednesday about whether it did all it could to save Mueller, a 26-year-old peace activist from Arizona. Story Continued Below On Capitol Hill, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who has pressed the White House to streamline the handling of international hostage crises, told POLITICO he will soon introduce legislation that would shift leadership from the FBI to a governmentwide coordinator. The coordinator, he said, might put the Defense Department or the Central Intelligence Agency in charge of responding to a hostage-taking that takes place in a conflict zone overseas. With their larger footprints abroad, those agencies stand a better chance of avoiding the bureaucratic tangles and inertia that have plagued the U.S. governmentâs response to the plight of captured Americans, the congressman argues. âThe administration has to have a coherent policy that uses the people who have the best chance of getting American and allied hostages home alive,â said Hunter. âThatâs not the FBI, unless the hostages are in the Capitol building or somewhere else in the United States.â Hunter contends that the FBI is ill-suited to investigating and resolving hostage situations that take place in chaotic places like Syria, Libya or Yemen. âIf the FBI wants to close down some of the stuff theyâre doing here in the U.S. and move 2,000 agents to each of these hot spots, I guess that could work out â in the next 20 years or so,â the congressman said sarcastically. âWhat weâre talking about is actually having a shot at hostage recovery and the only guys who have a shot at it are the ones running networks tracking down terrorists and [their] organizations,â such as the military or the CIA, Hunter added. âWhat you donât want are people who are not out there talking to them every day, paying people off and getting information.â Families whoâve pressed or are still pressing for the release of loved ones overseas seem to disagree about whether thereâs a major problem with U.S. hostage recovery efforts or the FBIâs role. The mother of James Foley â an American journalist held hostage in Syria for more than a year and a half before being beheaded by ISIL in August â said Wednesday she doesnât fault the FBI in particular but does favor a strong governmentwide coordinator to handle hostage cases. âI think the FBI is good at getting information. I think the problem is they didnât know what to do with it,â Diane Foley said in an interview. âEverybodyâs hands seemed to be tied, and nobody was accountable to get them home. â¦ It was really bungled big time.â Muellerâs family expressed praise for the FBI in a statement released Tuesday. âWe would like to thank the FBI agents that have been working with â¦ the family. They have been amazing,â said Lori Lyon, one of Kayla Muellerâs aunts. By contrast, the parents of freelance journalist Austin Tice â still missing after being captured in Syria in 2012 â complain of disarray in the response of government agencies, including the FBI. âAmongst the agencies, the FBI, the intelligence community, the State Department and some elements of the White House, information sharing is very poor,â Ticeâs father, Mark, said last week at the National Press Club. âIâm not telling you secrets because each of those agencies have told us the same thing. Thatâs something that needs to be fixed. â¦ You need to [have] clear driving lanes. Whoâs responsible for what. Whoâs in charge. Whoâs accountable. Itâs not there yet.â Ticeâs parents have called for the same type of post Hunterâs legislation would establish â a permanent, designated office in the government to coordinate response to hostage-taking overseas. âItâs appalling to us that no such entity currently exists,â Ticeâs mother, Debra, said. âThere is no agency, no person solely committed to the singular objective of the safe return of the hostage. That has to change.â The Tices have also complained that the FBI reluctantly shares information with families, citing classified information concerns. However, families of U.S. military prisoners whose cases are handled by the Pentagon have received detailed intelligence briefings, a Hunter aide said. Last fall, after complaints from hostagesâ families about their dealings with the government, the Obama administration launched a âcomprehensive reviewâ of how such cases are addressed. However, there are questions about the depth of that review. A letter the Pentagon sent in November seems to pre-suppose that the FBI will retain its key position in hostage cases. âThis review will seek to integrate innovation and non-traditional solutions to result in recommended actions to improve interagency coordination and strengthen the whole-of-government approach led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department,â Undersecretary of Defense Christine Wormuth wrote to Hunter. At the White House, President Obama said that a U.S. military raid he ordered in July was aimed at rescuing Mueller, in addition to others being held captive in Syria. Press secretary Josh Earnest said the president did not dawdle in green-lighting the rescue mission, as some reports suggested. No prisoners were found by the U.S. commandos who stormed the site. âI can confirm for you there was no delay in the presidentâs decision to order this military raid as soon as he and his military advisers and his national security team had confidence, based on a high degree of confidence, where exactly she was,â Earnest said. âAnd that is why the president can say unequivocally that he and his administration and this government did everything that we could to try to secure the safe return of Kayla Mueller.â The White House and other administration officials did not respond to questions about what actions they took in Muellerâs case between the July raid and the familyâs receipt of an email over the weekend with photographic proof that Mueller was dead. ISIL has claimed she was killed in a Jordanian air raid, but Earnest said he doubts that is true. The drive to shift overseas hostage cases away from the FBI and toward the military dovetails with a recurring GOP critique of the Obama administration: that it treats the battle against terrorist groups too much like a traditional law enforcement operation rather than a military campaign. A White House spokesman said he would have no comment on Hunterâs legislation until it is officially introduced. However, a U.S. official defended the FBIâs role in the process and called the congressmanâs proposal misguided. âI donât know where the congressman is going because it doesnât make any sense,â said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. âTo say the FBI ought to be taken away because [theyâre] nice or whatever doesnât make any sense because itâs not [the FBIâs]. â¦ Itâs an interagency effort where itâs all hands on deck.â The official said the FBI brings a âskill setâ in dealing with families, handling ransom demands, conducting interviews and collecting evidence, but works closely with the military in conflict zones. A former FBI official said the July raid to try to rescue Mueller and other hostages confirms that the FBIâs role doesnât inhibit assertive action to recover hostages. âWhatâs the problem? The FBI didnât stand in the way of multiple attempts to rescue American hostages,â former FBI Assistant Director for International Operations Tom Fuentes said. âThe fact that [Mueller] got killed or wasnât rescued had nothing to do with whether the military or any one agency had the lead. If the intelligence is there, the president is going be the one that has to authorize the mission because it is so risky and requires so much coordination.â Some officials suggested that the challenge in recovering hostages held in Syria isnât a problem of interagency cooperation or communication. They say it centers on very limited intelligence about where prisoners are being held and by whom. âIt is a tremendously challenging collection environment for all of our intelligence agencies because weâre not present on the ground there [in Syria] in the traditional way,â National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen said Wednesday at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the so-called foreign fighter threat. âWe donât have the footprint on the ground that we would have in many places around the world with a diplomatic, military and intelligence presence. And so, weâre forced to be more creative, more innovative, more entrepreneurial in trying to close that gap.â âI would not argue, though, that we have closed the gap on where we need to be in terms of our understanding with granularity whatâs going on on the ground in Syria,â Rasmussen added. Still, some officials whoâve handled hostage cases say Hunterâs proposal for a dedicated leader of hostage recovery efforts outside the FBI has merit. âItâs probably not a bad idea,â said former CIA officer Bob Baer. âThe problem with leaving the FBI in charge is they are looking for an indictment and that isnât really tied to your first interest. We donât need to worry about indicting Jihad John. â¦ The problem with having the police in charge of this is theyâre really not geared towards intelligence collection.â Former National Security Council official Dane Egli said he doesnât object to the FBIâs current role but believes there is wisdom in designating a government-wide coordinator. âYou need a neutral arbiter who can bring together interlocutors across the interagency, which is a complex web sometimes,â he said. âThe point is to have a more visible, active coordination.â Hunter said he plans to offer the legislation as an amendment to this yearâs National Defense Authorization Act. He said he expects the measure to have wide support in the House Armed Services Committee, on which he serves. But he also expects a fight from others on Capitol Hill, including the FBI. âI expect them to be even more resistant than they have been to giving up any turf, even if itâs for the betterment of the families, the hostages or our country,â Hunter said.