Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion 20240704

Next, deborah tice spoke about her son, austin, who has been detained in syria for 11 years. The discussion focused on journalists detained internationally and strategies the u. S. Government can use to bring them home. This conversation was hosted by the National Press club and runs an hour and 15 minutes. Of and s one hour 15 minutes. Will do that. Well do that. Good morning, everyone. Im eileen oreilly, president of the National Press club, managing editor of standards and training at axios. Today we meet in a light filled comfortable room surrounded by friends and colleagues. 6000 miles away, austin tice is marking his 11th year away from family, friends, and colleagues and is likely not in a comfortable situation. He was doing very important journalism, covering what was happening in syria when he was taken august 14 of 2012 and has not yet been freed. This is a tragedy of unthinkable proportion. Let us pause for a minute to give our thoughts to austin and his family today. Thank you. That one minute seemed to take forever, didnt it . Just imagine how the 11 years or roughly 5,781,600 minutes felt to austin. Today we have to do some good for him in this case by doing something for his beloved profession, journalism. While american hostages are coming home, journalists being held hostage or not. Today we have a panel to address the issues around that today we have a panel to address the issues around that problem and make recommendations. There has been some progress in his case since he was taken but he is still not home. Home. Before we start the panel i would like to introduce someone representing a strong force for press freedom. Executive editor of the washington post, sally busby. Some of the progress in his case has come as a result of the massive and effective ad campaign by the press Freedom Partnership of the post under the leadership of fred ryan. Last year he addressed the idea and busby is taking up the mantle, kind enough to stop by and say a few words. Thank you for joining, sally. [applause] sally good morning. Thank you, eileen. Thank you to everyone on the panel. Thank you to the National Press club for hosting the event. Its great and meaningful to see all of you joining in support of austin. I obviously want to call out our colleagues at mcclatchy, very nice have you here. On behalf of all of his colleagues, our house our hearts go out to all members of the ibew of the tice family. What you have endured is unfathomable. We stand with you today and everyday in calling on the u. S. Government to press forward and make good on the promise to secure his release from syria. As a part of our press Freedom Partnership we have run a sustained campaign over the years to support austin. Fullpage photos showing awareness of his situation to keep him in the publics i and hold accountable eye and hold accountable those who have the power to bring him home. Today we talk about substantive, practical, real ways progress can be made. We are grateful that progress today is focused on substance in this way. Keeping him front and center in the attention of the public and in the attention of the government officials is critical and we hope that deborah, mark, and the entire tice family know that we will continue to stand by them and that they are in our hearts august 14 and every day of the year and we pledge our campaign will continue until austin is home and we will be unrelenting until that happens and we look forward to the day when this gathering of his friends, family, colleagues and supporters can be a celebration of his return. Thank you so much. [applause] eileen thank you, sally. Thank you to our interim publisher for continuing that significant support by the post for their reporter, austin tice. Austin did great work for mcclatchy and many in the mcclatchy family are here today or are with us on the livestream, thank you for your support as well. [applause] publisher tony hunter cannot join us today but last year he was here to highlight the event. We know he feels the same today. Now i will turn it over to bill mccarron to introduce our panel for the day to look at the challenges Government Faces when the hostages they are trying to free our journalists. First i want to say hi and thank you for coming to deborah tice, austins mom, here today all the way from texas. I know that this is a particularly tough day for you and your family. I want you to hear it from all 3000 members of us that we are here for you today and every day and we will continue to be here until we get austin home. Thank you. Eileen of course. Thanks, eileen. We are going to go through the panel. But given that this is the 14th of august and what it means, we wanted to start with deborah, who i think has traveled the furthest to be here in both practical and spiritual ways. You have a statement . Deborah i do, i have a statement. Im going to stand up. Do you want to podium . Deborah i want to stand up. Go ahead, hes got you. Debra thank you. I want to start with how glad i am that you are here. I just have to tell you that the agreement that you and fred ryan made to Work Together to bring evan and austin home has really made a significant distance difference for austin. I appreciate that camaraderie, especially in light of the fact that you guys are so different and your news is so different and its just beautiful to see that you can Work Together for these men. Thank you. [applause] now i would like to speak to our president. President biden, it is encouraging to see the pragmatic approach of the United States in its effort to secure the release of u. S. Hostages. The negotiation and return of assets to their original owners in order to achieve the return of hostages is a positive development. Such pragmatism, recognizing the interests of all parties has a proven history of being the best way forward. Today austin tice, my son, has been held captive in syria for 11 years. He deserves this pragmatic vision and effort that has been deployed for the iranian hostages. Mr. President , actions speak louder than words. Show me. Show austin that he has value to you and to his country. That he is worth bringing home. I implore you, reject a hollow posturing. Deploy the effective pragmatic policy in syria and bring austin home for the holidays. [applause] its bill thank you, debra. That was wonderful. We hope President Biden is listening and indeed, this special breakthrough that happened over the last week we hope it can have meaning for both austins case and others. The iran question that debra was addressing, that news came up after we planned this event. Still in some ways fresh. Do you want to give us your thoughts today . First i want to take a moment to help us try to wrap our heads around what 11 years was like. I had been working at the post for a handful of months when austin was taken hostage in 2012. 23 months later, i was taken hostage along with my wife, arrested at gunpoint from our home, thrown in prison in iran, where i spent a year and a half. My colleagues at the National Press club, the post, and a whole community of friends, family, and colleagues around the world fought relentlessly for my freedom. It took a year and a half. We look back at that as sort of the best Case Scenario in these cases. Which is not good enough. Its actually pretty darn terrible. After a year and a half of convalescing, almost two years after my return, i return to fulltime work at the washington post. I remember taking the bus to work one day, sitting next to a woman on the bet on the bus. On her backpack she had a free austin tice pin on her backpack and i started to weep and she said sir, whats wrong. I said i used to be the name on one of those pins. That was almost six years ago. In the time since, i have had a child. Hes almost three. I have moved three times. I have been afforded the opportunity to live my life. Austin deserves that opportunity. Hed deserved that opportunity for every day of the last 11 years and he will continue to deserve it until he comes home. My considerations on this are not whether the points of a deal are good or in someones favor or not. My position is that im thankful i live in a country and does o bring us home. So far, they failed often and continue to fail often. And that is not a secret. It is time to do better. It has been far too long that these five americans have been held in iran. During all of that time, austin has been waiting to come home. Paul beckett, we are so glad to have you here today. Paul is the bureau chief for the wall street journal and the Evan Gershkovich case. What we are going to try to get to today is that one of the things we have in common is that they are cases of journalists being held and other special problems that need to be addressed. Why dont you start about telling us where you think evans cases today. Thank you. We appreciate everything you have been doing to raise awareness of this issue. Between the three of you, the National Press club, the posts efforts, we do have other track records to build on and that has been an extraordinary source of very good advice, very good, very helpful guidance and support since march 29, so the few months we have been dealing with this. The one thing that makes journalists exceptional in this regard is the environment of community that has been built up through austins case, through jasons case. I think that is very good in keeping awareness high. If you are asking what is different about journalists in these cases, journalists are going to be by nature higher profile. The regimes that take journalists take them for a reason. They stand for things that the people who capture them do not respect. We automatically as journalists become symbolic in addition to a tangible hostage asset that someone in any walk of life saved the military or diplomacy, we become targets and we become valuable targets and i think that presents a difficult conundrum for any government trying to secure their release because they become symbolic of it is typically dictatorships that take hostages and a free press is anathema to dictatorships. You very quickly get spun up into a very meaningful much more. This is governments taken americans hostage for leverage and anticipate again. I do think journalists occupy a special position to some degree. But i also think winning against that is the fact that there is a huge amount of Institutional Support for this kind of thing. It is incumbent upon all of us to figure out what more we can do, what pressure we can bring to bear, how we can get the government even more focused on this. Perhaps we are new enough to this, the response has been very receptive obviously as in all of these cases, we would like to see action, but i think there are complicated factors here. In addition to the symbolic value, there is a practical aspect to this. When evan is in russia and writing about russia, this is fuel for americans understanding of the world. For us to have a participatory democracy, the citizens need to be informed. When you take a journalist, you are cutting down on the ability our way of life to function. I will make one of her general comment about cases of journalism. Particularly in early days of austens case, journalists are very reluctant to cover themselves. They do not want to be the story and that extends to journalists who were taken hostage. In jasons case, it was like, how much is too much . With austins case, covers would be centered around anniversary dates. I think the journal has done an outstanding job of keeping the story going, but i know it is an issue between the people who are writing the news of day stories and the general newsroom, which is advocating strongly for evan. These are all issues. They are hard to resolve. I do not know if they are always recognized in the culture of the newsroom or in the government. We have one more panelists. That is sonya smith. Are you there . Yes, i am here. She is on what i think would be a vacation, except she has a threemonthold and a threeyearold. But we are glad you can join us today. If you do not know sonja or her work, she has written two of the most important pieces of journalism about austin tices case. She did Exhaustive Research and travel. I recommend them to you. We handed them out last year. One of the things i am surprised about is that when i talk to people in journalism about his case, they are not aware of these stories. And i think that is also true by and large of government. It is surprising to me. Let me ask you this question. You write some stuff about the fish and wildlife service. When you do a cracking story about that, what happens . I did a story a couple of years ago about a few whooping cranes that had been killed in texas and had developed a source that was very responsive and reaches out. With the austin tice story, there has been nothing but silence. So your phone rings when you write about whooping cranes, but when you write about austin tice, you do not hear from your government or from your colleagues in journalism. That sounds about fear. Fair. In one of your pieces, you discuss the important fall 2020 meeting in damascus between representatives of the u. S. Government and representatives of the government of syria. Raise your hand if you know what i am talking about. About half of the hands went up. In that story that you wrote, why dont you tell us what you think are the important outcomes. I wrote a story last year about the 10th anniversary of austins capture. Catching up on the piece from 2015. In the piece from last year, i reached out to lebanons security chief. He is the person who brokered that meeting in damascus between Roger Carstens from the white house hostage affairs. When i spoke to him last summer, they note told me something that had not been reported elsewhere. That they would provide proof of life of austin. [indiscernible] those talks ultimately stalled out. What i found interesting is the american presence in that meeting never told his family that they had offered to provide proof of life. Yes, was conditional. The big question is why keep that from them . Who benefits . Thank you. The audio is a little rough. The u. S. Government meets with the Syrian Government. The Syrian Government offers proof of life with conditions and this is news. Mrs. Tice finds this out from the article. They did not offer proof of life, they promised to offer proof of life, which is one step of proof of life. Still information that should go to the family. Yes. Does not go to the family and does not make a big impact in journalism in general. One of the problems we have in austins case is that you cannot see austin. We can see evan occasionally. And we know his zip code. Here is an important ingredient to how people think, feel and are mobilized about this case that is withheld. The question i get from citizens all the time and think you all for not asking mrs. Tice this question, how do you know he is alive . This is syria drop in at the front door a proxy answer to that question and it is withheld from the bloodstream of the conversation. And it is withheld from debras heart. And it is something we only know because we know it through journalism. When we are looking at the problem of what are the special issues related to journalists being held hostage, i would say this is one of them. That for whatever reason, the decisions made by the government on which information to share, is ratcheted up when the family or the company is one of journalism rather than something else. And getting past that is something we have to explore. Recognizing that it is a problem is step one. We asked many people in government to participate today. I understand nobody wanted to be here. Getting up this problem starts with recognition on behalf of the government that there is a problem. I think they would officially say we treat every hostage case the same. I do not think that is the case. There are some benefits journalists might get, but there is more downside, particularly when you look at things like this. Anybody else want to sonja, thank you. We will come back to you a couple more times. Did you want to say anything . Ok. Anyone else have thoughts on this discussion of the problem of trying to get information forward to hostage families when the hostage is attached to a journalism enterprise. At the beginning, they would not share anything with us about austin because he is an emancipated adult and he did not give them permission to speak with us. We had to jump that hurdle and get security clearance. I met going to name names, but a top guy in the fbi told me it would take more than a year and a half and cost 100,000 to try to get security clearance to try to find out about austin. There was not even a grain of truth in that. After having a really rigorous conversation with me on the phone, he refused to work on the case anymore or to have anything to do with it. Just that first step, who else are you going to tell . He is not married. He has not given this permission to anyone. So is this your way of keeping your secret . And why would you keep it secret . And thanks be to god that the Czech Republic ambassador in damascus could not really get anything going with the state department in the United States and so she went to prague and she went on the news and had their news man asked her, what can you tell us about the journalist austin tice . God bless her soul, she said he was detained at a checkpoint in syria. And so we no longer had to be under this do not tell anyone that austin is missing, keep this quiet. Why do they want to keep this quiet . Because if we are quiet, it is one less thing they have to deal with. And that is the only motive and it is disgusting. And that is part of what president obama was addressing in 2015, that with a new hostage enterprise was trying to resolve some of these issues about how families are treated in this kind of a situation. For the seven or eight years that i have been watching, there has been some change in the culture and the information sharing with families and with journalists about other journalists and other types of hostages. There is a bit more trust there, but that does not solve the problem right now. It is a work in progress and we have dozens of americans being held hostage right now. We often have a culture that anyone coming in and we are 11 years, you cannot imagine the turnover in the people we have worked with in 11 years. The longer we are in this, the more people feel like, i am not sure i feel comfortable about all of this sharing. And so they have to be trained, it is the parents, it is austin s only representative. You have to share with the family, but it is something we have gone through over and over again. Peter, can you put the slide up for the points about special problems . This is just a few of the things we identified that could be more problematic for journalist hostages than other hostages. The first point is what we are addressing now. The strategy may not work strategy of silence may not work for families of journalists. I think what debra was saying here is that this is a Management Strategy for government and maybe was not jason, when you were taking, how many hostages . Around the world . Maybe fewer than 10. And now we are at 64 cases depending on who that we know of. So the scope of work has gone way up in terms of this. The need to manage that workload is evidence. We are Getting Better at some of these things, but we still have this issue that it is easier to manage a quiet family then it is someone like jasons brother who is out talking every day or debra who is out talking every day. In evans case and my case, we are people that are either already high profile or work for high profile organizations and the hostage taking has evolved. Doing something astounding in public is part of it now. And evans case, in my case, it was the local state meet at that announced our capture. Kind of advertising it. And in russia too. How can you have a strategy if the hostage taker is saying i have your person. I think all of it is evolving. In the recovery process, but also in the strategy of the hostage takers. There were certainly people after evan was taken who said do not say anything that will drive the price up. That is the most common argument for that strategy. I think there is genuinely among people who believe that a belief that if the hostage taker is a private organization, terrorist organization, maybe there is ways to deal with it quietly and may be publicizing will only make things more complicated. So that was the line of thinking early on for us, one line of thinking. We got that advice quite a lot. The flipside of that and the advice we ended up taking was once the russians announced that they have seized your reporter on patently bogus charges, what choice do you have . What were we going to do . Someone falsely says your god is a spy guy is a spy, you have no choice but to go to bat as quickly as you possibly can. It was important to us in the first few days that we had very strong verifications of that from the National Security council, from the president. That was the initial blast that you get is not should we Say Something . When the russians said they have your guy on patently false charges, you have to counter that and not have people take you aside. That is when you really need the government to help you because you will see every story about evan says the wall street journal and the u. S. Government vehemently deny that he was doing anything but reporting for the wall street journal in russia. I told people i would love it if the government said keep it down a bit because it would mean that we were getting somewhere. It would mean that there was something under way they were worried about jeopardizing. We have always retained the ability to say less rather than more, but on balance, i do not think there is any question that when someone says they have your reporter, the only option is to go as loud as you can for as long as you can. With Brittney Griner in russia, secretary blinken came on television and fully explained the process they were going to use to bring her home before they did any of it. So they were absolutely saying we are going to negotiate and we have already prepared our concessions. And that was before any engagement had happened, anything had been done. This happened right around the time that austin had been detained 10 years. 10 years we have been hearing we will never engage, we do not negotiate and there will never be any type of concession whatsoever. And then we shared the secretary of state iterating bat before they had done any part of it. Next to the mothers heart, quite likely. You are not saying he handled that right or wrong, you were saying it is handled quite different. I am saying that is the news. Like walter cronkite. I am not giving you any opinion, that is the news. Here is the secretary of state saying we are going to make a deal, they should take it and it is on the table. Very different. Jason, do you think the shush strategy is from days gone by one most of the hostage was done by terrorist pirates, someone looking for financial consideration . I definitely think that. I have watched a lot of these cases, not only in the United States. Yes, i think we are light years ahead of some countries in terms of engage in more quickly. I think most governments choose to engage one it becomes a political liability not to. And i think the strategy of trying to keep people quiet is useful for something that debra alluded to in the beginning, not wanting to pile on more to your workload. As someone who was part of that workload, that is why we are here today. Just to be clear, you are good with all the noise that was made . I am more than good and ive never had any other hostage come home and say i wish you had not written about me or going on tv and talked about me. Just to be fair, there may be some room for the government to absorb and begin to maybe understand the value of noise. Are we there yet . In these cases . I think they understand there is value in noise sometimes. I have seen instances where people in government have said there is no reason for you to be quiet. Say whatever you want. I have heard that too. The second point, mistrust of journalists makes candor challenging but the u. S. Government. For the u. S. Government. There are times when you will give an interview and then all of a sudden it is very quiet. There is no response. There is no engagement. There is no information flow. There are times when you can feel in these instances that information from the usg is a currency which is metered based on the behavior of the hostage family, company, what have you. It is not overt, but i have seen it. I feel that way. I cannot tell you factually that this is what their motives are. But i can tell you how it feels and that is how it feels, that it is a currency. And you get little stars for Good Behavior and Good Behavior is silence. I do not care about those stars. I want my son home. I want my son home. That is the reward. I want my son home. Single motive. I am not sure we can suggest a solution for this point, but the club would be happy to be a place to sponsor a dialogue about the issues of distrust of journalists and how that can become problematic in information sharing in hostage cases. Open invitation to the government. On the first point, i think a solution could be we recognize the strategy for what it is and government must accept the value of noise and not punish with information withholding. This is not the panacea solutions, but they are directional solutions. Anybody want to say anything else . Number three has fear of how the process will look if exposed in the press and fear of coverage after the hostage returns are disproportionate issues for journalist families. What i would say here is government moves heaven and earth to get jason home. The newspaper stories are about the source of the funding. And so there is in journalism a strong focus on the price paid for somebodys return and i think that is something where i think journalism needs to improve. Is that important . Is it a story . Does the focus . Does it need to be a deterrent and in the mind of the government staff who were trying to achieve an outcome . It should not be. They should be free to negotiate as a best can do. And not have to worry about third, fourth, fifth day stories, dr. Stories. Gotcha stories. We had it with Brittney Griner. Who thinks we gave too much . It is a part of the journalism and it is confounding. Do either of you want to say anything on that . Understandably, the government does not want to do something for which it believes it will take a significant political backlash. One of the things to think about is to try and seek other Government Departments who may have worked for decades to get victor boop behind bars. Do they need to at some point come on board with his release, yes. Is that the job of the government . Sure, it is also the job of those campaign in. I think that is the case with congress as well. You have to have some reassurance that it is not going to from the governments perspective blow up in their face and congress can play a big role in that. I do not think it is just an executive branch exercise. There was congressional input as to is that everybody on board with this and what will be the reaction . It is understandable that the government thinks about this as they work for someones release. I just want to say that the rancor in our political atmosphere is really i do not know if it is unprecedented, but it is certainly astounding. They have to campaign to keep their jobs, right . The campaigning has already begun for next november. In this period, you do not dare to do anything at all. You make promises, but you do not do anything because in this atmosphere, you have been wearing brown shoes for 10 years. And i saw yesterday you were wearing white shoes. What is the message . And that is going to be the headline. When they can go after anything to make someone look like bad guy, imagine an airplane full of money landon in landing in syria. We are going to nail you in that and we are going to get five more of our people in congress. We have face that too. This fear of losing my job. It is no longer about the detainee or the hostage. It is about my career. And that is just the way it is. I think a lot of the onus is on us as journalists, on how we report these stories. My colleague was here today. She and i did a lot of reporting on hostage cases of the last few years. The approach we took to it was to do no harm. When you are dealing with people stuck without a voice somewhere else in the world, you have a responsibility to not make their situation worse than it already is. When we talk about the headlines, i saw this a lot, some of the headlines were wall street journal charged with espionage in russia. You will not see me write a headline like that. As a subject of headlines like that, that did not help me. The presumption of innocence, our commitment to the rule of law in this country, chicken our sources and having multiple sources, i think about all of those things. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues do not do that. That is changing. We have seen great progress on this. Most notably in the coverage of evans case. Nine years ago when i was arrested, that was not the case. I am glad to see that shift, but we can do so much more. Can we jump to the last point there, which touches on what you have been saying. This is about the wait time on unjust attention. Just experienced it most recently in evans case. Land speed record set by the government to declare evans case unjust attention. It was 13 days of work, probably a lot of people did not sleep getting that done. That has got to be the fastest that this mechanism can move and it is not fast enough with respect to the timing that is required. So when evan is dictating, there was 13 days where the russians can say he is a spy or he is caught redhanded. You cannot fight back. Even though the secretary of state came out and said there is something wrong about this. I talked to reporters and they would say we are not going to go until we heard the government declare unjust attention. We are going to say what the russians are saying until we hear unjust attention. Part of that is on journalism to fix that problem. We are floating another way we can work on speeding up the unjust attention declaration. Did you want to touch on that . It was very fast. We are very grateful for that. It is very important. And we were pleased to hear the steps along the way. The secretary of state said there is no doubt he was unjustly detained. We have no complaints about that. It was very important that they were out there countering the nonsense the russians were saying. The sooner that can be done the better. The flip side is there are lots of people who do not get that designation. And if you do not get that designation, you are going to ask, how can you do it that fast . Their checkpoints the government has to go through. They have to make sure nobody can say you left off some points. They have to go through them all and for good reason. One of the things that is what happens next . You get a lot of focus on your case, there is a family lesion pointed, those are all things that existed for all that long. It is a very welcome Area Development for new cases. It probably feels very distant for you, debra. The tricky thing is what does that do for the People Holding your reporter hostage . Nothing, really. It does not deter them. It makes it a bureaucratic change within the u. S. Administration which is beneficial to the recipient and beneficial for us. As soon as the designation is made, one of the things we want to see is something happening with the person who was taken. Can you put sanctions on specific individuals involved in the seizure of your reporter or your wrongfully detained person on the understanding that when your persons release they will come off. Person is released they will come off. It would be very conditioned on this persons release. If there is anything like that that would take away the leverage for the regime. Anything like that would be very welcome. The designation of unlawfully detained should have ramifications for the people [indiscernible] who [indiscernible] it is important the u. S. Government comes out and says this person did not do anything wrong. That did not exist when i was arrested. It is an imperfect checklist of boxes that need to be fulfilled and that is also part of the problem. But i think, going back to this idea of what is right for the person in trouble, we have thousands of americans arrested and detained sign legitimate charges. On legitimate charges. It is a small number of people that can be handled very quickly. If you find out some information later on after the designation, we will take the designation off. It is a very new and imperfect system. I hope we can help refine it. Refining it does not do anything for austin at this point. We are going to go to questions from the cards in the room. We will get to them. I think it is a very interesting discussion, the idea that we can somehow alter this and save the family the two or three weeks where they are having negative things said about their loved one. It is well past time we take a look at that. Again, the club is happy to host if we want to have a discussion related to that. I have a couple of questions related to syria which relates to austins case. How can the government say no to syrian demands after returning billions to iran . I am not sure those two things are linked, but certainly it was the pragmatic process that debra referred to that timing is interesting. It would be interesting to see, the secretary of state said no sanctions were lifted in relation to the money that was transferred. But certainly we are Holding Assets that are syrian assets. You have anything you want to say about that . I have a lot to i want to say. [laughter] i think you have to go back to the beginning of the beginning. The sanctions that were put on the Syrian Government, especially in december 2020, were not well thought out. I just want to give you a small example. In this ukrainerussia business, there is the will to impose sanctions on various russians and the russian government. Each sanction has to be debated with our allies at nato. In december of 2020, it was a double digit or triple digit number slammed on syria. One evening, i wrote out the names of anyone who had anything to do, including ngos, i am going to put sanctions on there. Where is the justice in that . Those were not to thought out. Those were not even discussed. They came out of somebodys head through their pen, all done, merry christmas. There does seem to be an opportunity now if not to look at sanctions, look at creative ways that were used in this case in iran which they technicallys were not left enough sanctions. They had a role in several americans who were released at that time. It is generally a part of it. Any other questions from the audience . A year ago we were here at this juncture, 10 years in for austin. Debra and mark had a meeting with the president and were very moved by his knowledge of the case, his interest and his instruction. That was in may. We met in august to recognize the 10th anniversary of austins detention. In the runup to that, there was an effort on the part of the government to say we were having substantive meetings with syria in the way the president had instructed staff to do. The podium from the state department was used for this, the podium from the white house was used for this. And the message that day was going to be, we loved the meeting with the president , but there has not been enough achieve because we have not had engagement in meetings. We did not say that a year ago a year ago because our government said from the podium substantive meetings are going on. That may be true now, but that was not true then. The interest in the government to manipulate the press and the families through the press is substantial. So we returned to sonja, who mentioned to us an important revelation about austins case was printed and not really discuss and not passed to the family. There is a lot of repair that needs to be done, but one year ago is not a long time. And because of how it was done, there was no price paid by our government on this. Yes, there is distrust of journalists and concern about how you will come out in the story, but the government also really is doing quite a bit to be misleading in use in its methods of communication. I think more attention needs to be paid to that if we are going to make progress in any of these areas. We have set a lot today about the government. There are missing people working in the government that have austins case in their hearts. We also think the president is genuine in his interest in solving this problem. The problem becomes once the president has given the directive, is the middlemanagement following through . The president needs to follow up. This is something that is grueling to know. Donald trump was rabid to get austin tice home. Austin was on his mind all the time. After 2020, john bolton and mock mike pompeo wrote books and both of them gave themselves a pat on the back that they ran interference on donald trump engaging with syria to bring austin tice home. I do not think the president was aware of how they were obfuscating him and manipulating information to him that made him think they were working hard and it was just very complicated. I do not think he would have ever guessed that of his own staff. And now they consider that something to be very proud of. I too believe that President Biden is sincere in wanting to bring austin home. I wonder how much he is in the weeds of why is that not happening . I think that will be the last word. It has been great to have all of you here today. We appreciate your interest in austin and his case. We need your support Going Forward to make progress. We had a couple of good ideas. See and if there are ways to reduce unjust attention for future hostages. We had the idea of the press club possibly hosting a dialogue about government and journalists hostage families. Making a better understanding between them to be able to make progress. We have the idea that management in government must ensure there is followthrough rn directives from the president. And what the president wants this policy and should be carried out. Maybe that is a job for the Harvard Business school. That would be a great case for one of our Business Schools to take on about management of government in crises like this. We do not pretend to have all the answers. I think it was important dialogue. I am grateful for sonja smith joining us. Wouldnt you like to say anything at the end here . I think i am ok. Thank you so much for having me. Please read her two stories about austin. In one of them, 2016 was the last time austin was seen at the hospital in damascus getting treatment for dehydration. That is not widely known or shared. Please read sonja smith. Paul beckett, thank you for coming on and sharing the status of evans case. Thank you for the outstanding article from the journal about the ongoing discussions right now related to the u. S. And syria. The journal was really alone in covering the fact that we are making a possible breakthrough and having discussions. The United States government unwilling to confirm as one of the two parties in the discussions. Good work on the part of the journal. Jason rezaian, who taught us more than we will ever know from any other source about what it is like to be a journalists and a high stakes and how to come back to the community and make things better through your voice and your writing. We appreciate it. [applause] debra tice, you are the strongest person i know and we appreciate your heart and we appreciate your strength for austin. We will do what we can to support you Going Forward. You are always welcome here. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] a healthy democracy does not just look like this, it looked like this. Where americans can see the mark see at work and where citizens are influenced and republics thrive. On cspan, word for word, from the Nations Capital to work every you are. To get the opinion that matters the most. This is what democracy works looks like. Powered by cable. During the 20222023 Supreme Court term, the justices announced decisions on consequential decisions. We go over the cases, on monday august 21, involving georgia maps alabama maps and voting rights. Watch key Supreme Court oral arguments, starting sunday august, 21st, on cspan and online at cspan. Org. American history tv, saturdays on cspan two. 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Watch a live coverage on the house on cspan, the senate on canwo, and you can watch all of our congressional coverage with our free video app cspan now or onlinet cspan. Org. Republican president ial candidate Vik Ramaswamy sat down with Iowa Governor kim reolds. He discuss his plan to reduce the number of Government Agencies and how his campaign is centered around reviving pride in national identity. Today i saw a sign for lemonade. They were on the microphone. I forgot what i was doing here for a moment. Oh, my goodness. What a great crowd. Thank you so much for being here for the third day of the fair side chats. Its so exciting. This is an opportunity for me to interview republican president ial candidates as we move to the first in the nation caucus on january 15. So thanks for being here. Im so lucky to have joining me today, vivek. Yes. So entrepreneur, business owner, welcome back to the iowa state fair. Welcome back to iowa. Youve been here a lot. Uh i look forward to having the opportunity to chat this morning. Im excited to be here with you guys. I feel like i live here these days and were, were feeling right at home. Thanks to the warm welcome. We get every time as most of, you know, i actually dont have a ton of experience in this realm of politics. Im not a politician. Im a business builder. I enjoy meeting many farmers, business builders, entrepreneurs across the state. I think we have a lot in common. My view is that im also here as a member of my generation, i just turned 38. They said 37 was a little too young to be president. So i said fine, im going to turn 38. So i got that problem solved. But speaking is a member of my generation. I think we are in the middle of this national void where young people like me, we j