Congressman: Attempts to rescue Kayla Mueller failed

PHOENIX — Sometime after Kayla Mueller was taken hostage by the Islamic State, a man arrived at the Syrian terrorist camp where she was being held. The envoy told the militants that he was the Prescott, Ariz., woman's husband and demanded her release.

But Mueller, the 26-year-old aid worker kidnapped 18 months ago, denied being anyone's wife. Mueller wasn't in on the ruse, said U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., whose district includes the Mueller family's home. Unknowingly, she had foiled a chance at freedom.

The maneuver was one in a series of failed attempts to liberate Mueller, Gosar said, efforts that reached across thousands of miles into a chaotic war zone where Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has killed at least three Americans and numerous other aid workers and journalists in brutal displays of violence.

But the efforts were frustrating and ultimately futile, he said.

Mueller's family wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to approve a prisoner swap. Sen. John McCain flew to meet with heads of state across the region. One of Gosar's aides, as a last-ditch move, traveled to a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey to search for leads.

Gosar, who has been in touch with the family and briefed by the State Department since the beginning, said at times the agency's response appeared anemic and U.S. intelligence was spotty. But at least one report indicates some American military rescue plans were vetoed by Mueller's parents as too risky.

The U.S. military said Tuesday there is no evidence suggesting that Mueller was killed in a Jordanian airstrike, and it held the militants who captured Mueller responsible for her death.

"We have no indication that there were civilian casualties as a result of those strikes or collateral damage," said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. "Let's not forget in whose hands this woman died."

The Pentagon, however, could not say with certainty what caused Mueller's death.

Jordan has been a stalwart U.S. ally in the bombing raids against the Islamic State. It ramped up its participation in the air campaign after a captured Jordanian pilot was shown being burned alive in a video the extremist group posted last week, more than a month after his capture.

The Islamic State said Mueller was killed last week in a Jordanian airstrike on a target in Raqqa, Syria, the militant group's headquarters.The target was a building that held weapons and had been targeted before, the Pentagon said.

The airstrike was conducted in coordination with the United States, which provided surveillance and intelligence help. Kirby said all such missions are carefully planned and vetted to guard against civilian casualties.

Gosar said Arizona officials, including McCain, and Mueller's parents had tried everything they could think of.

Gosar spoke to The Arizona Republic at length about the efforts to free Mueller before her death was confirmed. The newspaper delayed publishing those accounts in response to pleas from a family spokeswoman that if Mueller were still alive, publicizing them could endanger her.

"We racked our brains trying to figure out what else we could do," said Gosar. "We're half a world away with very limited resources. ... Finding a way to solve a problem is limited even for a member of Congress."

McCain said on Monday, "I feel in a way that I've failed them, because of what apparently has happened."

ASKING FOR HELP

Mueller was kidnapped by Islamic State in August 2013 after leaving a hospital in Aleppo, Syria.

The Spanish Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group said, in a statement, she did not work with their group but had arrived there with a contractor.

"A technician sent by a company contracted (by Doctors Without Borders) ... arrived at one of the organization's structures in Aleppo, Syria to perform repairs," the statement said. "Unbeknownst to the (Doctors Without Borders) team, Kayla, a friend of the technician's, was accompanying him. Because additional time was required to carry out the repair work, the technician and Kayla were harbored overnight at the (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Aleppo, due to safety concerns.

"Upon completion of the repair work on August 4, the (Doctors Without Borders) team organized transportation for Kayla and the technician to the Aleppo bus station, from where they were to depart for Turkey. Kayla's detention occurred during the drive to the bus station."

Mueller's family said in a statement Friday that she was leaving the hospital when she was taken. A family friend said one of the border aid groups Mueller had worked with was the first to inform her family of the kidnapping.

Soon after, father Carl Mueller approached a small group of Arizona officials for help, insisting on complete confidentiality.

He was put in touch with Gosar and McCain, the senior member of Arizona's delegation who earlier in 2013 had made a surprise visit to Syria to meet with members of the Free Syrian Army fighting President Bashar Assad's government in the country's bloody civil war.

The two Arizona lawmakers set to work.

McCain, who recently has become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he remained in close contact with the Muellers, visiting their home in Prescott and meeting with them in Washington. He personally spoke to Secretary of State John Kerry on behalf of the family.

In an interview with The Republic, McCain detailed his international efforts on behalf of the family. In Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdistan capital, McCain personally met with President Masoud Barzani and stressed the need to secure Mueller's release. In Qatar, McCain discussed her situation with the emir of Qatar and the country's head of intelligence. He tapped his sources at the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army. As recently as last month in Saudi Arabia, McCain raised the issue.

"All of these leaders and intelligence people pledged to me they were doing everything they could," McCain said. "Some few details did emerge from these sources, but obviously not enough."

SEARCHING FOR HELP

Gosar said Mueller was captured with another person who was released while Mueller was not.

Later — it's not clear when — either that person or an acquaintance went to the Islamic militants and, in the husband-wife plot, requested they turn over Mueller, Gosar said.

An account in the Telegraph in England describes a similar encounter.

Mueller's "part(n)er, and two other Syrians had also been in the car when they were stopped at a checkpoint by the kidnappers," the story says. "He was detained and then released. After he was freed he did not give up: again at enormous personal risk, he went back into Syria to plead with her kidnappers but to no avail."

Meanwhile, Gosar and his aides were brainstorming what they could do.

Gosar got in touch with a friend from college who had family in Syria, but they were fleeing for their own safety and couldn't help.

In December 2013, Gosar's chief of staff Tom Van Flein was invited on a congressional trip to visit the region. He went to Turkey to meet with moderate Muslim activists opposed to Turkey's more conservative government, Van Flein said.

While there, he met with an experienced State Department official at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. The official offered little help, Van Flein said, shrugging his shoulders and telling him to deal with the issue in Washington. The response irked the congressman.

"It's just pretty stupid," said Gosar, a Republican who is frequently critical of the Obama administration. "Some folks working in this realm were not really understanding of the situation."

After Mueller's death, McCain said he wasn't really expecting a further update from the U.S. government.

"Frankly, I learned more from my connections in Qatar and Erbil than I did from the administration," McCain said.

A State Department spokeswoman said the agency had no comment.

Van Flein, as a final recourse, traveled to a refugee camp in Sanliurfa, Turkey, to search for leads near the Syrian border. But he came up empty-handed.

RESCUE ATTEMPTS

U.S. officials tried to plan other rescue operations, Gosar said. But each time they got close, militants would move the hostages.

"They thought they knew where they were and before they could implement a plan, (the hostages) would be moved again and separated," Gosar said.

Months into Mueller's detention, her parents said, they first heard directly from Islamic State. The militants confirmed their daughter's captivity in May 2014 and provided "proof of life."

Two months later, they received an e-mail that warned Mueller would be executed in a month, said Carol Thompson, a Northern Arizona University professor who taught Mueller and is close to the family.

Thompson said in July 2014, the extremists told the Muellers that Kayla would be executed in August. The threat was deemed credible by authorities, she said. "It was a very specific one-month deadline," Thompson said.

Though Kayla's fate after that is unclear, Islamic State executed American journalist James Foley that August. His beheading was captured in a video distributed by the extremists. Afterward, Thompson said there was a period of silence from Mueller's captors.

After the Aug. 19 revelation of Foley's murder, U.S. officials revealed a rescue operation had been undertaken but had failed to locate Foley and other hostages.

Accounts vary on whether Mueller was a target included in that rescue effort.

Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force, said it was his understanding that Mueller was one of the hostages the U.S. had hoped to free. Moustafa accompanied McCain on a May 2013 trip to Syria, before Mueller was captured.

"From the human-network intelligence that we've got, there was an attempt to rescue American hostages, but there was faulty intel when it came to that rescue," said Moustafa, whose organization advocates for U.S. intervention in Syria. "Other than that, I think it has been a very limited effort."

McCain isn't sure Mueller was part of that rescue attempt.

"I've heard both: that there was a possibility that she was there and I've also heard that there was a possibility that she wasn't," McCain said. "Frankly, I can't confirm or deny that, because I've heard both stories."

Diane Foley, mother of James Foley, told ABC News she believes the federal government didn't do enough.

"Kayla, along with our son and others were held for nearly two years and there were many opportunities along the way: several times when the captors reached out, several times when returning hostages brought sensitive information," she said. "And yet nothing was done to save our young Americans."

'BRING THEM TO JUSTICE'

Gosar said Islamic State demanded a ransom of $5 million for Mueller's release. Media reports in August 2014 about an unnamed female Islamic State hostage described a ransom of $6.6 million.

United States policy does not allow paying ransoms to terrorists.

A short time after the ransom demand, Gosar said a State Department official told him Islamic State had proposed a prisoner swap. The militants wanted Aafia Siddiqui, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained scientist imprisoned in the United States who was accused of working with al-Qaeda and convicted of trying to kill Americans.

Islamic State had asked for Siddiqui previously, in return for Foley and American journalist Steven Sotloff, whom Islamic State murdered in a videotaped beheading released in September.

The Muellers wrote a letter to the president requesting he approve the swap, Gosar said. It's unclear how the president responded, but Siddiqui was not released.

A family spokeswoman could not confirm a letter was sent. A White House spokesman and a National Security Council spokesman said they could not comment.

"No one can know the agony that they went through, so anything that they tried to do is fully understandable," McCain said of the parents.

In November, Gosar introduced a bill offering $5 million for intelligence leading to the arrest or conviction of foreign terrorists involved in kidnapping and murdering Americans. The legislation made no mention of Mueller, whose identity was still a closely held secret, but noted the murders of Foley, Sotloff, aid worker Peter Kassig and "any other citizen of the United States."

"We need to find these thugs and bring them to justice," Gosar said at the time. "This reward money will give incentive for these terrorists to turn on each other. The first to come to us will be rewarded well so we can bring the others to justice."

A similar bill passed the Senate, but the legislation never went to the House for a vote. Gosar reintroduced the bill Thursday, one day before the Islamic State claimed Mueller had died in the air attack. The timing was coincidental, he said.

Gosar said his aim is to keep up the pressure on the terrorist organization, for Mueller's sake.

"Maybe this is a way to get good people to do the right thing," Gosar said. "I'm tired of these people existing on the same planet, breathing the same air as I am. They shouldn't be around."

Contributing: Shaun McKinnon, The Arizona Republic; Jim Michaels, USA TODAY.