Moral Courage with Diane Foley, mother of executed journalist James Foley

0:00In 2012, American journalist James Foley was kidnapped while covering the civil war in Syria. For two years, ISIS held James captive and tortured him and demanded a hundred million euro ransom for his release. And then the unthinkable. In August of 2014, the world watched in horror when ISIS uploaded a video to YouTube of a group of British jihadis beheading James. And what happened next would surprise most of us. Foley's mother, Diane, found the moral courage to meet one of her son's murderers, Alexander Cote. She has gone on to write a book, American Mother, about her experience and also start the Foley Foundation to help advance the need for others to be able to find the moral courage to do difficult things.

0:48If Diane can find the moral courage to see the humanity in her son's killer, then it should be easy for the rest of us to find the moral courage to see the same humanity in people with whom we so vehemently disagree. This is a bit of optimism. How long ago did ISIS take Jim? Thanksgiving Day of 2012. 2012. So, yeah, this fall will be 12 years. This summer is 10 years since he was killed. The big question is, look, no parent should ever have to outlive their children ever. I agree. And even less so in such a horrific manner and such a publicly horrific manner as well. Does talking about it help?

1:40It's the one thing as I was getting ready to talk to you, like the burning question I had is, you know, do you still want to talk about it? Sure. Because Jim has challenged me to be a better person. He's challenged me to be more courageous and to dare to take on things that I thought was right in a way that I've never been challenged before, to be honest. And I'm very proud of Jim's legacy and grateful. I enjoy when he can inspire others to do good and make a difference in the world. So in which case, I mean, this is sort of the giving back, isn't it? You know, I mean, he lived a life of giving as a journalist and now his legacy continues.

2:28I knew Jim's story. I remember playing out on television. I understand all the science and I've read the studies and heard the stories about forgiveness. and when people meet the killers of their family, where holding this animosity hurts you more than it hurts them. But still, I want to understand, where did you find the courage to decide to meet one of his killers? I'm not sure I have that courage. Well, I've been blessed from the time I was young with the faith in a higher power, Simon. From the time I really was a teenager, my parents challenged me to choose what faith to follow when I was a teenager because my dad was Unitarian, my mom was Roman Catholic.

3:18And they said, we'll let Diane decide. So it kind of made me quite interested. What is the idea of God and what is a relationship with such a higher power? So I've been blessed by that. But then when this happened to Jim, his courage and goodness challenged me even further to have more courage to act on my inner convictions, if you will. So I really think it's the God had been preparing me for this moment in a way and Jim in his own way. And he kind of handed me the torch and I've done my best to continue Jim's legacy. But at what point did you find that courage? Because obviously, sadness is the denial, sadness are the first things, the anger.

4:09How long did it take for you to sort of take that deep breath and say, I think I need to meet this guy? Well, first of all, that was not the first thing that happened. I met Alexander seven years after Jim was killed. So time helps. In the beginning, I was shocked and angry. I felt very betrayed by my government. And that is what propelled me and many of Jim's friends and supporters to insist that our government could do better and to do our part by starting the Foley Foundation to prioritize the return of innocent U.S. nationals, Americans who are targeted simply because they're American. And also to work, well, we had three goals primarily was to prioritize the return of a fellow Americans taken hostage or wrongfully detained abroad to improve safety for journalists and international travelers.

5:06And also to inspire our moral courage in all of us, ourselves included, to try to use what gifts we have to do the right thing, if you will. So it's been kind of that three pronged approach that has fueled our work over the years. And when Alexander Cody pleaded guilty to all charges without a fight, he just pleaded guilty to all eight charges and offered to speak to victims. I just felt very strongly that Jim would have wanted to talk to him, hear his story, hear him out. And as a mom, I kind of wanted to share who Jim was, to be honest, with him so that he might understand too. The first time you met with Alexander, can you share sort of how it came about and where you had the first meeting?

6:04I'm very curious how you felt walking into the prison that day. Sure. I was convinced that Jim felt very strongly that Jim would have wanted me to go. But then when it actually was time to do it, I had my own doubts and I thought, boy, I don't know. And so I really had to pray a lot about it for the grace to be able to, first of all, see him as a flawed human being like I am. To see him as a person, not as a terrorist who kidnapped and tortured my son, but as a person. Right. My family wanted no part of it. They really thought it was ridiculous. They had no interest. And it was over three days we met, two days in the fall of 2021, quite soon after his guilty plea.

6:57And then later in spring of 2022, after the trial of his colleague El Shefie El Sheik. So the first time I met with him, I was nervous. He was too, was very awkward. word. We had an audience of people around us in both defense teams and FBI and other people present. But you know, the interesting thing, Simon, is once we sat down and started to talk, it's like they all melted away. And I found him a good listener and I tried my best to be a good listener of his story, there was a grace in the meetings. He expressed a lot of remorse, particularly one of the best meetings was the middle meeting. It was the second one.

7:48It was after we got some of the awkwardness out of the way and he tried to make his case of why he had done what he'd done. And I tried to tell him a bit about who Jim was and such. So it was in that second meeting, which was the following day, those two day meetings were back to back. That was the most authentic, if you will. He showed me pictures of his family and started to cry. Three little girls who at that time were in a refugee camp in Syria. So there was a real connection, a healing connection. And like I say, he expressed a lot of remorse for what we'd gone through. and subsequently sent me several letters, which I never received till many months later.

8:37But nevertheless, it was a good thing. I was glad I went. It was important. What did he say? How did he justify his case? His case was mostly based on our country's mistakes, the times in our country when innocents had been killed in bombings or drone strikes. He talked about a specific time when one of his friends' little ones was killed in the midst of such a strike. He was very resentful, even about the movie, Jim, the James Foley story. Why should this white American have a movie done about him? No one's going to do a movie about his friends' loss of their child, kind of thing. And he was angry about a lot of the arrogance of the United States, the times we've made mistakes.

9:31Look at Abel Graham. We certainly have Guantanamo. And all of that was focused. Jim was not seen as a person. None of their captives were. They were the epitome of anything the United States has ever done wrong. Western partners ever done wrong. So that's what's his justification. And yet remorse. So those two seem incompatible to be able to justify one's actions and yet also feel bad for them. Usually when we rationalize it's because we're trying to distance ourselves from guilt. Right. He justified what he did. It was a war. This was a war. And even though Jim and the other captives were total noncombatants, which I pointed out to him, they never carried a gun or anything.

10:17also were there to tell those stories, like his friend and their losses for the Syrian people and the aid workers. But he just felt it was war. And this was jihad against the Western oppression, Western arrogance, Western bad deeds, and all those things. Everything we've ever done wrong was part of the reason for this intense hatred. And all that hatred was embodied in these innocent folks they held captives. You said that you were ultimately grateful and glad you did it. Have any of your family seen the impact that it's had on you and then thought maybe they should reconsider and go and meet him too?

11:05I don't think so. You know, everybody grieves differently, Simon. and his remorse was more to do with me as a mother. He wasn't sorry that he'd done those things. He felt those were justified in war, in jihad. But he felt sorry for my suffering. I think he's fairly close to his mom. His dad left when he was a kid so he was raised by a single mother. So I think he had some respect for my role and my own suffering. So that was the area he expressed remorse. My family, everybody has grieved in different ways. You know, Jim was the older brother. His presence is sorely felt by everyone in the family, but their grief is different.

11:56For me, I guess I need to walk through the grief somehow. And part of talking to Alexander was in hopes of gleaning some insight into what Jim's last two years of life were. and kind of a hope that maybe Alexander could come to some remorse for his deeds and his own healing. But it was healing for me to see him as a person. I think we need to do more of that, as you said before, Simon, that we need to somehow have the courage and patience to listen to people who may hate us or who may disagree strongly, who may, and that's why the Foley Foundation seeks to be totally nonpartisan. We want to work with everyone.

12:47We want to do our best to hear everyone out because that's the only way forward, I think. To me, it's very clear that hate is never the answer. I mean, if we hate one another, in the end, people suffer. The greatest challenge is to love one another, right? The greatest challenge is to hear one another and empathize with one another. Just this last year, we always give three awards in areas of moral courage. You know, one for hostage advocacy, who dares to really help bring people home. One for journalists who dare to report the news in spite of issues. And the other for humanitarians, because Jim really cared about people.

13:31And that's the way Jim was, I think. He really wanted to keep us to understand someone else's suffering, someone else's story that we might care and better understand. The missions of the Foley Foundation, the first two are very specific to people who are traveling abroad and who find themselves in trouble. But it's that third one, which is to help people find moral courage that I find the most universal. And if you look at the world that we're living in today in our country today, moral courage seems to be, dare I say, desperately lacking. And we're not talking about the moral courage to meet your son's murderer.

14:12We're talking about the moral courage to listen to someone you disagree with. Exactly. We're talking about the moral courage to allow someone else to feel heard. So what has happened to our moral courage? Why are are we in such a deficit of moral courage today? Well, that's a good question. Some of it, I think, is because we have a dearth of spirituality in a way. I think we tend to think all the answers come from ourselves. We've lost some of the wisdom of knowing that we don't know it all, that we need one another. We need the inspiration of the Almighty, our creator, if you will, to teach us, to help us, to come to wisdom about what our next steps are in our life.

15:07So some of it is the secularization and some of it is just a lack of values in terms of the value of listening to one another. I think perhaps some of the electronics have taken us away from just plain having deep conversations with one another and instead just doing things instantly and quickly on our phones or whatever. So I don't know it's a complex challenge, but certainly the challenge for our future. No question, Simon. It's a good insight. People still have the desire to believe in something and people still have the desperate desire to feel like a part of a, I call it a belief community.

15:52Though I think the church has lost relevance in a lot of people's lives, we can see people trying desperately to find something, some sort of movement, whether it's what's going on in the Middle East, whether it's vaxing or masking, when people are feeling disenfranchised perhaps. It's all anti-establishment anger, all of it, whether it's on the left or the right. And they're finding these communities of belief in these movements. But it's not a higher power, nor is it a moral guidance. But it does provide some of the – it does act as a salve and provide some of what faith provides. It seems like we've got some of the wires crossed.

16:42Exactly. Exactly. We do. But a lot of times some of those movements are fueled by fear, anger, you know, alienation from one another. Yeah. Resolved that we're right and everyone else is wrong kind of thing. It's not based on a wisdom or a desire for good in the world necessarily. So I feel in many ways we've lost our moral compass. We also haven't had any war in country. You know, we've been able, our generation of Westerners have not had a war. We've not felt, we've kind of grown kind of lazy, self-satisfied, and we are a little spoiled. We're not used to sacrificing for one another and all those other things that come in hard times.

17:36Let me push a little bit. You know, when you say, you know, they're against things and they're against each other. No one thinks they're on the side of wrong. Everyone thinks they're on the side of right. Even the jihadis, Jim's killers. Absolutely. They were driven by love and they were they fundamentally believe they were on the side of good. And so if if everyone in all of this anger still still believes they're on the side of good, like just reconcile that for me. Well, but then you've got to look at their actions. If what they're promoting isn't good, and yet it results in thousands of people suffering and being killed in poverty, how is that a greater good?

18:23I mean, I think you can see the fruits of the actions of some of these groups, the results tell you in a way that they're misguided, that they, yes, you're right. They may believe and that community feeling makes them feel righteous and strong about what they're doing, but it results in suffering and suffering for the world. So I think there you can see that the results do not bear fruit for good in the world. This idea of moral courage, you know, I've also become sort of quite fascinated with the idea of moral obligations, which is the number of times I talk to leaders or hear leaders and I see the short-term financial decisions they're making sometimes that come at the expense of human beings, their livelihoods, or the communities in which they operate.

19:16And when you question their decisions, they'll say, they'll justify their decisions like, Simon, I have a fiduciary duty to my shareholder. I have a fiduciary duty to whatever it is. They talk about their fiduciary duty. But I think it's correct that leaders should start also considering their moral obligation. And it seems to me that a moral obligation is higher than a fiduciary duty. Moral obligation comes first. And once you have fulfilled your moral obligation, then you can fulfill your fiduciary responsibility. Lizzie. Well, that's why I was so angry when Jim was killed, because throughout Jim's captivity for nearly two years, I was told that Jim was the highest priority.

19:55I was sent in circles. People essentially patronized and lied to me, partly because they didn't know what to do with me. We had no hostage enterprise, no way to, no structure to handle when any U.S. nationals other than a soldier is targeted abroad. So they didn't know what to do with me. So instead, they just kind of lied to me, if you will, and told me, oh, he's our highest priority and just sent me to another person. They literally sent me in circles. So I was angry. I was angry at our government. I had voted for Obama. I thought he was a great leader, but I was so angry that he considered Jim and the other Americans collateral damage that he didn't feel any higher moral obligation to at least be honest even just tell me we can't do anything about it we can't help you or just tell me the truth instead of sending me in circles I wasted a lot of time and Jim died so I felt sure that we could do better and so it was kind of a anger I had that gosh this is I was appalled the way I was treated and the way Jim and the other Americans were treated.

21:14And the fact that we didn't even try to do a coalition with Western partners. I mean, there were at times 20 to 22 Westerners held all together. Every country did their own thing. And all the Westerners negotiated, all their people came home. The Brits and the Americans were all horrifically killed and used for propaganda. And so I was, I really felt our country could do better. And many people did after that. And so thanks to many good people, we were able to at least begin to change that. That now 122 Americans have returned home since 2014. We now have some experts working on the problem. Far from perfect.

22:02We have a lot to do because now some people are targeting Americans. Nation states are particularly like Russia and others. It continues to be a problem. But at least now we have a dedicated group of people who are working on it. And we are and other nonprofits have sprung up to help. Why did they lie to you as opposed to what were they afraid of? What were they afraid that you would do? Why not just say, look, please understand this is a complex situation and we can't do anything. Well, part of the problem was I never spoke to anyone in real authority. I always spoke to middle people. They didn't know what to do with me.

22:41They knew there was no one to help me. I don't know why they didn't dare to be more honest with me. So there was a lack of moral courage on their part, too. Yeah. And there was one individual when all the American families came together in April of 2014. who did very callously, very unkindly tell us the truth. At the time, I was appalled at what he said. But in reality, he was the one person who told us the truth at the end, just before Jew was killed. Yeah. Yeah. How do we ever find a moral courage to listen with somebody with whom we want to hate? Where do we find the courage or the obligation if there's no foundation of unified belief?

23:33And in your case, Alexander still justifies and believes, feels justified in his actions, but, or and, he can still see you as a mother simultaneously and recognize that his actions have caused incredible pain to a mother. And at the same time, his actions can never be justified to you, but you can at least see him as a human being with little kids who also has a mother and misses his family. And those things don't have to be in opposition. Those sometimes conflicting feelings can live simultaneously. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wish more people had your courage. i'm just a very ordered i'm a mom of five kids a nurse a nurse practitioner i'm not anything i've you know it's really my faith in god and the faith in the goodness of people yeah and jim believed that everyone down deep has a bit of the divine if you will and so if you look hard enough and listen hard enough and care about them um you can bring it out.

24:49Jim believed that. And he's taught me a lot of that. And I've seen it. I mean, none of the work of our little group would have been possible without many, many good people who stepped up about after the horror of it in Africa. So good things aren't possible without one another. We can't do anything alone, I don't think. One of the lessons I'm learning from you is is when I want to judge someone and describe them as evil or describe them as bad or wrong or whatever negative words we use to describe each other, to ask myself, what good are they motivated by? Maybe it's they feel lost and they're trying to find love.

25:36Maybe they feel they're just trying to do the right thing for their family. They're loving parents who believe this is the right thing to do for there? Like, can I find anything that I could at least agree with or find understanding for, as you said, what good is there? Well, and the other side of that, Simon, is we're all very human. And so we all have a negative part of us that's self-centered, that's selfish, that's greedy, that all those things. So there's always that inherent tension in living. So we're also capable of horrible, evil, horrible, bad things too. And so my goal, and I think our goal as people who care about the world is to try to nurture the good.

26:25And that's what good, authentic communities do. So, you know, that's what good business cultures do, that they try to emphasize what's good in their employees and praise them for working together and doing the next right thing together. So whenever we do that for one another, I think good is magnified, if you will, and sinful. Yeah. Oh, you're amazing. Hardly. I mean, I'm just, you're amazing. I mean, I think we need to use whatever platform we have to inspire others, Simon, to do the right thing. And so I applaud you. I applaud what you're doing in this regard. And if I can be of any use, I would love it just because I think it's important.

27:19The world is so need, needs this. You know, when you said the three things that your organization focuses on, moral courage was third on the list. And I actually think moral courage is the first thing on the list. I do too. I think the primary reason for the existence of your organization is to help teach us the importance and how to live with moral courage. You happen to do it through this mechanism of helping us rescue Americans who are kidnapped around the world. You happen to do it by helping journalists who get taken around the world. That is the manner in which you're demonstrating moral courage.

28:01But I think fundamentally what your organization stands for and what it exists is how to have moral courage. Well, I think you're making an excellent point, Simon. The things we actually do are kind of niche things that sometimes people can't relate to, whereas the moral courage is what inspires our events and a lot of the people who donate to our work. I have no personal experience with anyone who's been taken hostage in a foreign country that would warrant me to support an organization like yours if you described it as such. However, if you talked about it as an organization devoted singularly to advancing moral courage in the world, hook, line and sinker, where do I sign up?

28:46How can I help? And how you bring it to life through this rather niche thing becomes secondary to me because I desperately want to support you in your effort to teach us and advance the philosophy of moral courage. But Simon, what gives me the authority on moral courage? Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, to me, God gives me the authority, you know, but it's just that's the part. You are not the authority on moral courage. You are a preacher for moral courage. You are a messenger for moral courage. And your organization is a teacher of moral courage and an example setter of moral courage. And by the way, you have moral credibility by the mere fact that you have demonstrated moral courage in the work that you do.

29:34You have the credibility. You are about as good as a messenger as anyone could be for the cause of moral courage. Thank you for that. You've taught me today, too. So, yeah, I would love, I love what you're doing. If I can be of any use, please let me know. Thank you. And the feeling's mutual. For us to work together to advance moral courage is a fight worth fighting for. It is, Simon. So, you know, we can always use the help of incredible people like you. So thank you for that kind of work. Thank you so, so much. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

30:16And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsynic.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.