![]() ![]() Soon Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others in attendance exited the room, and the Tices had time alone with the president. “Listen to them, find out what they want, and work with them,” Biden said at least three times, in Debra’s recounting. The Tices were buoyed when, during the meeting, Biden instructed his National Security Council to engage directly with the Syrian government. By August, after 83 intense days inside Syria, he decided to head to Beirut for a break.īiden told the Tices he had reached out to officials from prior administrations about Austin’s case, then exchanged ideas with the family about what might help secure his release. Soon, he was also stringing for the Washington Post and appearing on CBS News and BBC Radio. Nine days later, despite his lack of formal journalism experience, Austin wrote his first dispatch for McClatchy, a publishing company that owns dozens of papers across the country. #WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE THE HOSTAGE FREE#In late May, he ducked under a fence along the Turkish-Syrian border and embedded with a group of Free Syrian Army rebels. In 2012 the thirty-year-old second-year Georgetown University law student and former Marine Corps captain had decided to spend the summer reporting from Syria on the country’s civil war. The president, who sat in a nearby armchair, was well versed in the particulars of Austin’s case. There, they were whisked directly to the White House by the FBI agent assigned to their son’s case and ushered into the Oval Office, where they took a seat on one of the two beige damask couches in the center of the room. So Debra roused Marc, and they dashed to board a nonstop flight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. ![]() But recent travel be damned: a chance to press the president on bringing their missing son safely home was not one the Tices were going to pass up. But this time the email came from Washington, D.C.: White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer wanted to know if Debra and her husband, Marc, could meet with President Joe Biden in his office that afternoon.ĭebra had returned to Texas just a few hours earlier, after a week of briefings in Washington on developments in her son’s case. Given the time difference between her home in southwest Houston and the Middle East, she was accustomed to receiving messages in the dead of night from sources and friends she’d gotten to know in the region. on Monday, May 2, the 3,548th day since her son Austin had disappeared in Syria. ![]()
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