The Curious Case of Austin Tice
The Biden Administration expresses confidence the Marine veteran is alive and well, but the public evidence, or lack thereof, tells a very uneasy story.
U.S. Marine Corps veteran-turned-journalist Austin Tice arrived in Syria in May 2012 at the very height of the insurgency during the Syrian Civil War, with the hopes of documenting the carnage and upheaval that was unfolding in both Syria and the greater region.
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Tice, who had frequently taken to Twitter (now X) to post dispatches from what he had seen on the front lines of the war, suddenly stopped tweeting on August 11, 2012. One month later, a 47-second video emerged on a pro-Assad Facebook page, featuring a blindfolded Tice surrounded by seeming Islamist militants shouting a series of jihadist war cries.
And that short clip remains the last time the public saw evidence of Tice being alive.
It has been over 12 years since we last saw Tice, but the Biden Administration has expressed incredible confidence that Tice is alive, public evidence be damned.
Following the fall of the al-Assad regime, the Biden Administration has said it is launching a renewed effort to secure the whereabouts of the longtime missing person. While many of al-Assad’s prisoners have been accounted for, Tice remains missing. That hasn’t stopped the Biden Administration from expressing incredible confidence that he is alive.
Last week, Debra Tice, the mother of Austin Tice, said she was confident her son was alive because the Biden Administration told her they had a “vetted source” on the ground confirming the information.
"We have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government that Austin Tice is alive, Austin Tice is treated well, and there is no doubt about that,” Debra Tice said Friday.
President Joe Biden added Sunday at a White House press briefing:
“We believe he’s alive. We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet. And Assad should be held accountable.”
“We will want to get him out,” Biden said. “We have to identify where he is.”
On Thursday afternoon, Secretary of State Antony Blinked echoed the president’s remarks, noting that the White House is “determined to find him and bring him home his family and loved ones.”
The past twelve years have been rife with confusion about Tice’s true whereabouts, his vital status, or even his original captors.
The September 2012 video of Tice has led to lots of confusion and inquiry in the U.S. intelligence community about the true nature of Tice’s captors. Bashar al-Assad’s now-collapsed Syrian Arab Armed Forces (SAAF) presented itself as a modern military, with matching camouflage uniforms and equipment, and the apparent jihadists in the video certainly don’t represent that traditional look. On the other hand, the video did not align with the production standard of the propaganda videos distributed by jihadist militias in Syria during that timeframe. The video led to more questions and answers, and these questions remain unanswered (at least publicly) to this day.
Since 2012, there have curiously been no direct quotes or public statements from now-self-exiled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, specifically on Austin Tice. Up until the Trump Administration, officials in Damascus had unanimously denied that the Syrian government ever held Tice. Furthermore, they rejected having any involvement in his disappearance.
Tice went missing in 2012 at the end of Barack Obama’s first term. The Obama Administration was in a unique position to learn more information about Tice, given their relationships with the parties that kept the al-Assad dynasty afloat. At the time of Tice’s capture, the White House had already engaged in initial negotiations with the regime that rules Iran over its nuclear program. Tehran was al-Assad’s second most influential backer behind Russia, which was also on relatively good terms with the Obama White House until Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Despite the favorable relationships with al-Assad’s regional patrons, the Obama White House failed to make any public progress on the Tice case. When Barack Obama left office, he had nothing to show for his administration’s efforts to bring the Marine veteran home.
During talks with the Trump administration, Syrian officials changed their tune about Tice, saying “they would provide proof of life in exchange for sweeping demands,” ABC News reported, but still did not acknowledge holding him. In the final months of the first Trump administration, two US officials, top hostage negotiator Roger Carstens and current FBI director nominee Kash Patel, made a clandestine trip to Damascus hoping to secure further information about Tice. The Trump White House gambit was the highest-level organized effort in years, but Syrian officials failed to deliver any new information.
The Biden Administration has made no discernible progress in answering any of the aforementioned questions.
In 2022, on the 10th anniversary of Tice’s kidnapping, the Biden State Department pledged to get to the bottom of the Tice case. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Damascus “denies it had kidnapped or is holding any American citizen on its territories.”
“The U.S. issued last week misleading and illogical statements by the American president and secretary of state that included baseless accusations against Syria that it had kidnapped or detained American citizens, including former U.S. Marine Austin Tice,” the statement said.
Over the past twelve years, the United States military and intelligence community has had extensive access to large swaths of Syria and the surrounding region. If we are to hold out hope that Austin Tice is alive, we must also believe that despite the best efforts of the American government and its sophisticated intelligence apparatus, some rogue jihadist or al-Assad-aligned entities have successfully kept him in the shadows this entire time.
Either way, the curious case of Austin Tice continues to remain unsolved. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad, it remains to be seen whether we will finally obtain answers about this twelve-plus-year mystery. For the sake of the Tice family, many are holding out hope that a miracle is on the horizon. The evidence, or the lack thereof, of Tice’s whereabouts seems to indicate that a miracle is going to be needed.
Anything assured of by the Biden regime is a lie and if Tice is alive, he’s likely been indoctrinated and among the Turkish/US sponsored jihadists.
If he is ever found it will be in the area where the video was taken in a shallow grave. Terrorists have no use for journalists they have kidnapped except to behead them. Likely the only reason we didn't see that is the goat humper with the camera didn't hit record. Journalists that can write about how the terrorists are just "oppressed" are legion and of far more use than those they have kidnapped.