White House won't rule out hostage 'czar'

WASHINGTON — The death of an American aid worker in a U.S. drone attack is prompting calls for a hostage "czar" to coordinate the government's efforts to release captives overseas, but the White House stopped short of endorsing that approach Friday.

The family of Warren Weinstein, the Maryland man killed in January in that attack, echoed the complaints of many hostage families that communication has been inconsistent and uncoordinated. Weinstein's widow, Elaine, said in a statement that the government's assistance is "inconsistent and disappointing."

The government was already conducting a review of how it deals with hostage situations following similar complaints from the families of James Foley and Kayla Mueller, who were killed last year in Syria.

"These families are in a terrible situation. It's unthinkable to imagine what it would be like to have a loved one, a family member, being held against their will by a terrorist organization," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday. "So there is a premium on clear, direct, specific, regular, reliable communication with these families, and that can be difficult when you have a wide range of agencies that are involved in those conversations."

Those agencies can include the the CIA, FBI, the State Department, the Defense Department and the White House.

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That bureaucratic tangle begs for a single point person — a hostage "czar" — to coordinate those efforts, said Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., whose congressional district includes the Weinstein's Rockville home.

"I want someone who can walk into the office in the morning, look at the white board that has all the names of hostages, and say, 'How do we move the ball today?'" Delaney said. He's working on legislation to create such a position in the National Security Council, where the hostage czar would have the ear of senior administration officials and even the president.

"Don't get me wrong, I think the people in the White House care deeply about this issue," he said. "And it's really important to me not to be at all critical of the men and women who are doing this job. But they work in a bureaucracy. It's an institutional problem."

Earnest said he wouldn't rule out a "czar," but the White House is also considering what he called a "fusion cell."

"This would be a working level, operationally focused group of federal employees that would enable a whole-of-government response to overseas hostage events," he said.

He also said the review is still happening, and promised that "there will be an opportunity for the families themselves to offer some feedback based on their own personal experience."

Diane Foley, the mother of slain journalist James Foley, was one of the 40 hostage families that's been consulted on the new guidelines. She said she expects a report within a month. "It's encouraging to me that they understand that they failed our son," she said.

Before her son was beheaded by Islamic State militants in Syria last August, she said the government convinced the family to keep quiet about her son's abduction — a decision Foley now says she regrets.

"None of them seemed to have the return of the American hostages as their mission. The FBI was primarily getting information out of us," she said. "We weren't in the loop at all. To completely leave families off the team without any communication about anything at all, was wrong and really added to our anguish."

Weinstein's family had a similar complaint Thursday after President Obama revealed Thursday that the aid worker was killed in January, the accidental victim of a U.S. counterterrorism operation against a known al-Qaeda compound along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. officials said hundreds of hours of surveillance of the compound failed to produce intelligence that Weinstein and an Italian aid worker were being held hostage there.

Elaine Weinstein said she hoped her husband's death "will finally prompt the U.S. Government to take its responsibilities seriously and establish a coordinated and consistent approach to supporting hostages and their families."

At the State Department, spokeswoman Marie Harf denied Thursday that there's been any clear and consistent criticism from families of how the government handles hostage situations. "I think these families have gone through the worst thing they will ever have to go through, and I think you hear a lot of different statements from them," she said. "We've heard people talk about how supportive the U.S. government has been."

She said Secretary of State John Kerry has played a role in personally seeking help from other countries to locate hostages. "Unfortunately, sometimes those things aren't seen publicly to protect security and safety of these efforts," she said.

One option not being considered is a change in the U.S. ransom policy. "Paying ransom or offering a concession to a terrorist organization may result in the saving of one innocent life, but could put countless other innocent lives at greater risk," Earnest said.

Foley said she's worried that the government is looking only at the communication with families, and not the underlying hostage policies. The ransom policy should at least be discussed, she said, and be coordinated with other Western countries that do tacitly allow ransoms.

She said the government's no-concessions policy prevents hostage negotiators from even talking to abductors. "If in fact our FBI and intelligence agencies had engaged the captors, they might see what they wanted, what they were thinking, what they were planning," she said. "I think that's where we need the research. We need to see the evidence about what works."

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