The Weekend Intelligence: The hunt for Austin Tice

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1:06The Economist

1:14Today on The Weekend Intelligence, we're bringing you something a little different. The first episode in a three-part series we've been making for months. It's a groundbreaking investigation about an American journalist who went missing in Syria over the summer of 2012. The search for him has lasted more than a decade. His name? Austin Tice. Can I just ask you a question in English? And you try to answer in English, if you can. Who has the answer to Austin Tice's case? Who knows what happened to Austin Tice? For the past six months, The Economist's Middle East correspondent Gareth Brown has been on Austin's trail, trying to find out who took him, why they held on to him, and what Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad knew about the American detained in his country.

2:04It's an attempt to shed some light on a decade of darkness in one of the most mystifying and oppressive dictatorships of the modern era, a story that could only be reported since December 2024, when Syrians finally got their freedom and the state's secrets began to unravel. I'll hand over to Gareth.

2:39On December the 8th last year, rebel fighters seized the Syrian capital. Their advance into Damascus after 13 years of revolution stunned the world. The country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was finally gone, escaped on a Russian plane to Moscow early that morning. One of the first things rebels did as they swept through cities was open up the prisons. People run down the streets after being released. The disappeared reappearing. Under Assad, the Syrian regime had kept a labyrinth of jails, torture chambers and secret cells to lock up enemies and dissidents. As city after city fell, guards abandoned their posts and prisoners came streaming out.

3:22Many had spent years inside with no contact with the outside world. They looked gaunt and starving. Some bore signs of torture. A few were so traumatised they'd forgotten their own names. In Damascus, the final prison doors were flung open in the early hours of Sunday morning, after an eight-day campaign to reach the capital. I arrived in Damascus during the evening of December 8th. I followed a crowd out of town to a prison called Sidnaya, 19 miles north of Damascus. This is the road to Sidnaya. Just so much traffic. Thousands of people trying to get to the prison. some who have had relative friends missing for more than a decade.

4:06Sidnaya was notorious. It was known by a grim nickname, the Human Slaughterhouse. Many of the people who went in never returned. Activists say tens of thousands of people had been murdered inside. We are walking into Sidnaya prison. Traffic was jammed for miles that evening, so I walked up, into the hills along with hundreds of Syrians and went in through the open prison doors.

4:36The cells were emptied by then but I followed the crowds, exploring the building with the lights on our phones.

4:48It was sickening. The filthy cells were full of piles of sodden blankets and bottles of urine. Desperate graffiti was scribbled on cell walls

5:01Rebels had smashed through concrete looking for hidden chambers It's not a place to keep even an animal, so what about the human? Like every Syrian who had been forced to flee their country during the war Wasim Enawi was anxiously watching the news Waiting to see who might come out Now is the moment of having an answer for the question, where is the person? Where is my relative? One of them was Austin. One of them was Austin. Austin Tice had entered Syria in May of 2012 as a freelance journalist to report on the war. He'd become a friend to Wasim. But after several months reporting in the country, he disappeared.

5:50He hadn't been heard from since. One of the first things I thought about was Austin. If he was alive, this was going to be the moment. CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward was also tracking events, searching for any mention of Austin. I think there were a lot of people who were holding their breaths and desperately hoping that we might see him walk out of some facility or another. Why did Austin's case attract so much attention? He was just one of many thousands of people who disappeared over the course of Syria's war. Sure, he was unusual. An American journalist disappeared in Syria. But it was more than that.

6:37For years, Austin's case had haunted Syria's dealings with America and the West. Through official meetings and back channels, intermediaries had been raising Austin with the Assad regime. They had reason to believe that Austin had been held in secret for the past 13 years as a potential bargaining chip. Years of trying hadn't produced Austin, but now the regime's fall presented an opportunity. In the chaos, maybe, just maybe, Austin might finally emerge from whatever godforsaken cell he'd spent a decade in.

7:16Good afternoon. What happened in the Middle East? As Bashar al-Assad was settling into his first day as a fugitive in Moscow, in the White House, standing in front of a Christmas wreath, President Joe Biden held a press conference. He revelled in the end of Assad. He called it a historic moment of opportunity for the Syrian people. After the address, Biden turned from the podium and headed for the door. Reporters shouted questions after him. Thank you very much. God bless America and God protect our troops. Thank you. To Assad now, Mr. President. What does the U.S. know about where Austin Peiss might be and if he's safe?

8:04That last question caught Biden's attention. Just as he was stepping through the door to leave, he stopped and turned to answer. We believe he's alive. We think we can get him back and the slides will be held accountable. We believe Austin Tice is alive and we think we can get him back.

8:27The hunt for Austin was on.

8:32On December 8th, private detectives, diplomats, spies, relatives and journalists like me started searching for him. We didn't know what we were looking for. A dead body. A prisoner. A ghost. Finding answers would prove to be fiendishly difficult. Understanding Assad's deep security state. A place where lies and conspiracies flourished. Only since the regime has fallen have we come to understand just how confounding it all was. And because of that, truth and reconciliation will probably elude Syrians for a long time. But finding out what happened to Austin, that could be a watershed. Because if we can lay bare what happened under Bashar al-Assad during 13 years of war and half a century of brutal dictatorship, if we can put names to orders to deeds, then perhaps a pathway to justice can be opened for all the Syrians who were victims of the Assad regime.

9:31I've been on Austin's trail for over six months now spending days in dark rooms with shady characters trying to separate kernels of truth from hours of lies It's taken me from Washington DC to Beirut to Baghdad and to every corner of Syria in an attempt to piece together what happened What follows is everything I've found out

10:10Are we rolling? Yeah. So what we're seeing here is the olive grove where they put all the victims of last Wednesday's violence. This is one of the few bits of video that exists from Austin's time in Syria. His parents sent it to me. He's in a loose, buttoned green shirt. It's opened down to his chest. They said that the cemetery in town is actually oftentimes a target for government attacks. So they buried him here. The video's from the summer of 2012, not long before Austin went missing. It's from a town outside of Damascus. This was one of the most dangerous places in Syria at the time. Austin's walking away from the camera, passing a long plot of turned up dirt by a row of trees.

10:59He's a freelancer from Texas. He's only just become a journalist. And watching the video, you can tell he's sort of new at this. He hunches and turns away from the camera. When he talks, he walks out of frame at one point. I guess this is a practice video, but apparently it's one he's trying to sell to the American networks. I'm Austin Tice for CBS News. Jaday Dog 2's Syria. Austin's a good-looking guy. Tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, boyish with dark hair and eyes. He'd be 30 years old in the video, the same age I am now. He'd been studying law at Georgetown, about to head into his final year.

11:40And before that, he'd been a captain in the US Marine Corps. He's still finding his feet journalistically. But this might be his new calling. He carried himself like you'd think a U.S. Marine officer would carry himself. I mean, he had a presence about him. He does have a presence about him. He holds your attention, even in practice mode. Brian Bruggemann was an officer in the Marines. When they met, Austin was a reservist, called up for duty in the unit Brian commanded. I would still, I need to go on the record right now, I'll still outbench press him. But, you know, that's just an aside. You can take that out, Gary.

12:21But yeah, he was physical and he was a bit of a character too. I asked Brian to give me a sense of what Austin was like. The memory that sticks out most to him was from a quiet spell on base. As a bit of a morale builder, we actually got the military police unit that was right next door to us to bring their working dogs over to our compound. and give us a bit of a demonstration. We had a vote as to who would dress up in the protected padded gear as to who would be attacked by the dog. I was one of them. And then Austin was actually voted by his peers to be the other officer to get attacked by these German shepherds.

13:08And, you know, these two dogs were just all over him, pulled him down to the ground. They pulled the dogs off. He gets himself up, he takes off the helmet, and he yells to the entire unit, are you not entertained, from the famous line from Gladiator. I'll never forget that. Everyone laughed, and it was vintage Austin Tice, I'd say. Marines, eh? Austin deployed with Brian's unit to Afghanistan in May 2011, a year before he went to Syria as a journalist. Every day, Austin would knock on Brian's office door at the base to ask when he was going to be given his next mission. I definitely understood very quickly that all he wanted to do was be in the middle of the conflict.

14:00Not necessarily the hot conflict and fighting, but where in the world was there the friction? And he wanted to understand it. deeply. Brian says that's what really set Austin apart from other Marines, his curiosity. The very first time I noticed it was when we got a local interpreter assigned to our unit soon after we arrived in Afghanistan. His name was Mohammed, we called him Mo. And Austin made him essentially part of our unit. Austin would take his team out for physical training in the morning and Mo would be there. Mo showed up wearing whatever Mo wore and Austin said, nope, tomorrow you're going to be wearing what the Marines wear when we do physical training, our familiar green over green PT outfit.

14:57And there was Mo the next day, green over green, part of the unit. Austin was using Mo as just a fountain of information to learn more about what it was like to be in Afghanistan. Just like a journalist, Austin was cultivating his source. What was it like before 2001? What's it been like since we've been here? What do people think and why? And that's where I saw something different for the first time with Austin. One day there came another knock at Brian's door. He was holding a box that he had just gotten from Mail Call. and it was some kind of fancy camera. And he's like, you know what? I'm going to learn how to use this.

15:48And I think I want to become a photojournalist and go to where the friction is and write. I thought, good for you, Austin. Deployments are certainly the place where we have epiphanies like this. And that was Austin's. Epiphany in hand on the 8th of May, 2012. Austin tweeted, this is either going to be wildly successful or a complete disaster. Here goes nothing.

16:19And so he headed to a country which at that time held the epithet of most deadly for journalists. Austin's new career in journalism started in Turkey but his goal was to be the first foreign journalist to travel from the rebel-held north into Damascus. It had been a year since the revolution started. The Arab Spring had threatened the rule of Bashar al-Assad, whose security forces were using lethal violence on protesters that had led to war between the regime and the rebels. Within a couple of weeks, Austin had smuggled himself across the border from Turkey with activists. Over the coming months, he zigzagged between rebel-held enclaves in Syria.

17:01His career as a journalist was off to a good start. His work appeared in the Washington Post and the Miami Herald. He was doing radio hits for the BBC. And he phoned in to CBS News. Syria rarely allows reporters into the country. So first-hand accounts are rare, but we have one this evening from reporter Austin Tice, who is inside Syria on assignment for the Washington Post. I need to interject here. Austin hadn't been allowed in. He had snuck in, illegally. Other Western journalists were doing the same at the time, smuggling themselves in with local reporters and activists who were desperate to get the revolutionary message out.

17:43In his call to CBS, Austin described a rebel attack he'd witnessed on a Syrian secret police base. It was quite a scene when they struck the government flag on the roof and raised the free Syrian flag. There was quite a bit of celebration in the streets. You can just imagine the scene. He tweeted in the middle of June, I sincerely hope I'm doing some worthwhile stories that otherwise wouldn't get out. Because seriously, this is the dumbest thing I've ever done.

18:16I first encountered Austin early in the summer of 2012. The summer Austin travelled to Syria, Clarissa Ward was a correspondent for CBS, based in London. There weren't very many Western international journalists who were able to get into Syria. And I suddenly saw a mention on Twitter flash up from somebody called Austin Tice, which said, hey, Clarissa Ward, drop me a line. Clarissa was a seasoned conflict reporter in the region, and Austin was looking for advice. Clarissa was intrigued by Austin's profile. Former Marine captain, law student, now travelling through war-torn Syria, trying his hand at journalism.

19:06Austin did not have any journalistic experience. He was very smart and very savvy, but he had never been to Syria before. He did not speak Arabic. This might all sound a little crazy, but it's not so unusual. This is how many budding war correspondents get their break. You don't just walk into a foreign correspondent role at the Washington Post. You have to prove yourself. It's also pretty similar to how I started out in 2016. Except I went to Iraq, not Syria. I had just graduated. I had a little bit of experience working with newspapers. But I figured that the best way to learn how to be a journalist was by doing journalism.

19:53It was thrilling and dangerous, and yes, probably a little stupid. But I was 22, and I was desperate to be out in the world reporting. And I felt it was worthwhile. Freelance journalists in conflict zones often play an unsung role. They tend to get access others can't. From my experience, they also tend to be more committed to the story. so clarissa took notice especially as austin started racking up bylines in big newspapers she too was desperate to get into syria but at the time she and austin were communicating she was stuck in turkey waiting for the go-ahead from her editors to enter she had time to kill

20:39So I replied pretty much immediately to Austin. And that really marked the beginning of a very intense correspondence between the two of us. This was before the days of WhatsApp and Telegram. So we were basically ping-ponging emails back and forth, sometimes 16, 18, even 20 emails a day. He wanted to learn how to write articles. He wanted to, and he did learn how to write articles and how to write them well in an astonishingly short period of time. I think what resulted or the reason that our communication correspondence became so intensive was that in the process of mining for information and nuggets and hacks, he realized that he had found someone who was also very attached to Syria, very intensively emotionally invested in what was happening in Syria.

21:43And for both of us, it became an outlet. And I think if I'm being honest, I was a little bit in awe of Austin.

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23:26Lots was being written about Syria at this time, but most of it was being reported from outside the country. Austin's access was unique. He was producing vivid first-hand accounts of rebel advances, documenting what the regime didn't want the world to know. Indeed, later that year, Austin would win the George Polk Award as part of a McClatchy newspaper's team for their work chronicling the complexities of the war. Here was a guy free of the bounds of cautious editors. He was charging towards the story, relying on his wits, which he had honed in the military. Every single time we talked, I was just so incredulous as to how far he was going and how fast he was going.

24:12Not as a warning, but I was kind of amazed and taken aback that, man, he's just doing it. Here was this young, idealistic American aspiring journalist who had seemingly bought himself a ticket to Antakya. and done the whole thing on his own with very little fanfare and kind of improvising along the way.

24:49By early July, he'd made it all the way to Yabrud, a town an hour north of Damascus. At the time, all eyes were on the capital. With the rebels managed to take the city and topple the dictator, Austin wanted to be there if and when it happened. All he wanted to do was be in the middle of the conflict. Looking back on it, I can't help but to think, there was probably some naivete in how he approached where he wanted to go, where he wanted to be a journalist. He wanted to go to the toughest spots. You know, I don't think he knew perhaps the risks that he was taking. Or he knew and he thought he'd be just fine.

25:37Austin would spend most of July in Yabrud, plotting a way into Damascus. It was a chance to catch his breath. Yabrud was unusually peaceful. Assad's forces were leaving it alone. It was self-governing. And the revolution was alive and well. In a story for the Washington Post, Austin called Yabrud an oasis of calm in the conflict. Austin turned out to be a talented writer, and his love of the town comes through in the story. He wrote about how Yabrud's idyllic farms and bustling urban life stand in stark contrast to much of the rest of the country. He admired the revolutionary artwork covering public buildings and the weekly demonstrations by thousands of local Syrians.