Biden’s top emissary Roger Carstens goes to Syria to ask for help finding Austin Tice

Roger Carstens, the top official of the Biden administration for the release of Americans held overseas, went to Damascus, Syria, on Friday to carry out a very dangerous mission: to communicate face-to-face for the first time with the ruling government and ask for help. missing American journalist Austin Tice.

Tice was kidnapped in Syria 12 years ago during the civil war and brutal rule of Syria’s now-deposed Bashar al-Assad. For years, US officials have said they don’t know for sure whether Tice is still alive, where he is being held, or who.

After his trip to Syria, in an exclusive interview on Friday with “Face the Nation” from Amman, Jordan, Carstens revealed that the US President’s Office of Special Abduction Affairs today conducted a “joint search of the facility” Hay’at Tahrir al-Shamknown as HTS – the rebel group that recently overthrew the Assad regime and is emerging as a leading force – “that we all thought we would have some kind of relationship with Austin Tice.”

He did not disclose details of the search or its outcome, saying only that HTS “was instrumental in the search for Austin.”

“We’ve had a lot of information over the past 12 years that points to different resources,” said Carstens. “And in putting that down over 12 years, we came up with a priority list of six sites. And of those six sites, we felt that these had the highest probability of holding Austin at the same time.”

Carstens said he was “surprised” by the number of prisons used by the Assad regime.

“I mean you can think that if you run the country, you want to arrest your enemies, you’re going to have one prison, and it’s not going to be secret,” Carstens said. “But to have 35 or 40 secret prisons, I find it scary, disturbing, but also fascinating.”

The State Department’s top diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, accompanied Carstens to Damascus as part of an outreach to HTS.

Eastern Senior Counsel Daniel Rubinstein was also with the team. They were the first US attorneys general to visit Damascus in more than a decade, according to a State Department spokesman.

They had planned to meet with HTS representatives to discuss the terms of the transition approved by the US and regional partners in Aqaba, Jordan, the spokesman said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken he went to Aqaba last week to meet with Middle East leaders and discuss the situation in Syria.

Security for the American team was provided by DSS Mobile Security Deployments, according to a State Department official. US special forces also provided support as they motored across the Jordanian border and en route to Damascus. HTS has given assurances that it will be allowed safe passage while in Syria, but there is still the threat of attacks by other terrorist groups, including ISIS.

CBS News withheld publication of this story due to security concerns at the request of the State Department.

While finding and freeing Tice and other American citizens who disappeared under the surface the Assad regime is a major goal, US officials downplayed expectations of success for the trip. Multiple sources told CBS News that Carstens and Leaf’s goal was to convey US interests to top HTS leaders, and to learn whatever they could about Tice.

Rubinstein will lead US diplomacy in Syria, dealing directly with the Syrian people and key organizations in Syria, a State Department spokesman said.

The political connection to HTS comes in a volatile, war-torn environment at an uncertain time. Two sources even compared the potential risk to travel negotiations by the late US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who led communications with rebels in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and was killed in a terrorist attack on a US embassy and intelligence post.

Sending high-level US diplomats to Damascus represents an important step in reopening US-Syrian relations following the fall of the Assad regime less than two weeks ago. Operations at the US embassy in Damascus have been suspended since 2012, shortly after the Assad regime brutally suppressed an uprising that turned into a 14-year civil war and forced 13 million Syrians to flee the country in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The US officially designated HTS, which had ties to al Qaeda, as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018. Its leader, Mohammed al Jolani, was designated a terrorist by the US in 2013 and was previously imprisoned in a US prison in Iraq. .

Since toppling Assad, HTS has publicly shown interest in a new moderate trajectory. Al Jolani even destroyed his own nom de guerre and now uses his legal name, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

US sanctions on HTS linked to those terrorist positions have made contact somewhat difficult, but have not prevented US officials from contacting HTS directly at the behest of President Biden. Blinken recently confirmed that US officials had been in contact with HTS representatives before Carstens and Leaf’s visit.

“We’ve heard good words from Mr. Jolani, the leader of HTS,” Blinken told Bloomberg News on Thursday. “But what everyone is focused on is what is really happening on the ground, what are they doing? Are they working to create a transition in Syria that brings everyone in?”

In that same interview, Blinken appeared to raise the possibility that the US could help lift sanctions on HTS and its leader imposed by the United Nations, if HTS forms what he calls an inclusive government and eventually holds elections. The Biden administration is not expected to raise the designation of American terrorists before the end of the president’s term on January 20.

Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder revealed on Thursday that the US currently has nearly 2,000 American troops inside Syria as part of the campaign to defeat ISIS, a much higher number than the 900 troops the Biden administration had previously admitted. There are at least five US military bases in the north and south of the country.

The Biden administration is worried about that thousands of ISIS prisoners held in a camp known as al-Hol can be released. Currently guarded by the forces of the Democratic Republic of Syria, the Kurdish allies of the US are wary of the newly powerful HTS. The situation in the world is changing rapidly since Russia and Iran withdrew their military support to the Assad regime, which has been reorganized. Turkey, a sometimes problematic US ally, has been a conduit for HTS and is emerging as an energy broker.

A high-risk mission like this is unusual for the vulnerable Biden administration, which has consistently used restrained diplomacy. Blinken approved the trip Carstens and Leaf and relevant congressional leaders were informed about in the past days.

“I think it’s important to have direct communication, it’s important to speak as clearly as possible, to listen, to make sure we better understand where they’re going and where they want to go,” said Blinken on Thursday.

In a news conference in Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had not met Assad, who fled to Russia when his regime fell earlier this month. Putin added that he would ask Assad about Austin Tice when they meet.

Tice, a Marine Corps veteran, worked for several news organizations including CBS News.