The search for Austin Tice that stumped the U.S. government for 12 years has entered a new, hopeful stage — but 12 days on since Syrian dictator Bashar Assad fled the country, U.S. officials remain without answers on America’s longest-held hostage.
It is the latest, perhaps most torturous chapter in the quest for Tice, a former U.S. Marine and freelance journalist for McClatchy and other publications who went missing in 2012 while covering the outbreak of war.
Images that flooded out from Syria of Assad’s prisoners being freed and reunited with their families — some after decades in captivity — filled U.S. officials and the Tice family with optimism in the immediate aftermath of his departure.
For all those years, Assad and his innermost circle had been Tice’s gatekeepers, refusing to discuss his case or even mention his name despite U.S. knowledge that the Syrian government had held him in its custody.
Now, Washington finally has a cooperative partner in Damascus — the rebel group that forced Assad’s ouster — offering to help track Tice down. But they don’t know where he is, either.
And each day that passes without a breakthrough is increasing concern within the Biden administration over Tice’s welfare.
With many of Assad’s military intelligence and political prisons known to the West now swept and searched, U.S. officials are growing anxious they are running out of their most promising leads. They do not believe that time is on their side. One U.S. official said that fragmented tips continue to stream in and are being analyzed and feverishly pursued by the administration on the ground.
The Biden administration’s approach to the search has created yet another point of tension with the Tice family, which has questioned why the U.S. government has not sent diplomats or search and rescue teams into the country to help with the manhunt themselves. Tice’s parents, Debra and Marc Tice, have frequently criticized the Biden administration for not prioritizing Tice’s case over the years.
State Department officials say that Roger Carstens, the U.S. envoy for hostage affairs, has been in Lebanon working on Tice’s case, and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made finding Tice a top priority. But the State Department also says it cannot send diplomats into the country yet for a host of reasons, including their obligation to ensure the security of their personnel.
Two U.S. officials said that Defense Department assets are on the ground, noting the U.S. military has a permanent presence in the north and deployed to bring Travis Timmerman, another American found in Syria in recent days who was initially confused for Tice, back home. FBI agents that have spent years investigating Assad’s war crimes remain there and are working their sources. And intelligence officials are running down leads, as well, one of the officials said.
The National Security Council and the CIA declined to comment. The FBI referred to a Dec. 9 statement renewing its call for information on Tice, adding, “we have no comment regarding FBI personnel and this matter.”
The manhunt for Tice has focused on the capital of Damascus and its immediate suburbs. Leaders from Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the rebel group in control, have been in direct touch with U.S. officials and are assisting in the search for Tice, including for Assad government and intelligence documents that could help point them in the right direction.
Debra Tice wrote to the Israeli government in recent days asking them to refrain from bombing Syrian military and intelligence facilities where Tice may be held, after the Israelis struck a security complex last week in the Kafr Sousa district of Damascus where another inmate claimed to have seen him. An Israeli official told McClatchy that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli Defense Forces to work with Washington to avoid bombing facilities that are targets of interest in the Tice search.
Debra Tice also wrote this week to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking him to press Assad — who is now in Moscow — for information on Tice’s whereabouts, and offering to fly out to the Russian capital herself. At an event on Thursday, Putin said he intended to ask Assad about Tice when he gets around to seeing him.
Other U.S. nongovernmental groups and American journalists on the ground are also helping in the search, communicating with U.S. officials outside the country with tips on potential locations.
The FBI is offering a $1 million reward to anyone who provides information that leads to Tice’s safe return, and has released an “age-progressed” digital image of what Tice would likely look like in his 40s.
White House officials have said they are operating on the assumption that Tice is alive, without any evidence to the contrary and based on intelligence from earlier on in his captivity that he had been processed through the Syrian court system.
Just days before Assad fled Syria, the Tice family traveled to Washington for meetings stating they had obtained a new, credible source that had confirmation Tice was “alive and well.” U.S. officials were unable to verify the family’s claims.
But shortly after Damascus fell, an NBC reporter followed a tip from a former inmate in the Syrian prison system who said he had seen Tice while in captivity in 2022. The report captured images inside of a prison cell that showed clear markings on the walls of an American.
Tice’s case is already on the minds of those in the incoming Trump administration.
“Austin Tice has been missing for far too long,” Trump-Vance Transition spokesman Brian Hughes told McClatchy. “President Trump is committed to determining his whereabouts so Austin can reunite with his family immediately.”
Hostage Aid Worldwide, a non-profit organization working closely with the Tice family to locate him, says the Biden administration is still not doing enough to aid in the search, and has called on the White House to send a formal delegation to Damascus.
“Now, when there’s an opportunity for the (U.S. government) to be on the ground, using all available tools, intel, & personnel to #BringAustinHome, the opportunity is being wasted,” the organization wrote on social media.
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© 2024 McClatchy Washington Bureau
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