DAMASCUS — The Central Intelligence Agency changed its assessment in 2024 to indicate, with low confidence, that journalist Austin Tice is likely dead. Tice, a freelance journalist, disappeared in August 2012 while reporting on the Syrian civil war.
Weeks after his disappearance, a short video surfaced online showing a distressed Tice blindfolded with his apparent captors. That footage remains the last verified sighting of him.
Efforts to locate and recover Tice spanned multiple U.S. administrations and involved numerous intermediaries. According to a new book by former U.S. national security adviser Robert O'Brien, U.S. officials sought Russia’s help during President Trump’s first term after intelligence suggested Tice was still alive. O'Brien, then a hostage negotiator, asked Russian national security adviser Nikolai Patrushev to use Moscow’s influence with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Patrushev agreed to assist. “Even Assad's allies ran into a brick wall,” O'Brien wrote.
Other attempts included outreach by Kash Patel, actor Sean Penn, the Vatican, the king of Jordan, Czech officials, Gulf states, and a Lebanese businessman. In 2019, Penn told O'Brien that a Lebanese contact claimed to have recently seen Tice alive in Syria. O'Brien met with Penn and businessman Elias Kwaham to explore using them as intermediaries. “But the hoped-for connections never materialized,” he wrote.
In the fall of 2020, O'Brien dispatched Patel—then National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism—and Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, to Damascus to meet Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arranged armed drone and satellite coverage for their protection due to kidnapping concerns. “Again, despite their best efforts, Kash and Roger could not procure Austin's release,” O'Brien wrote.
O'Brien also discussed the case with King Abdullah II of Jordan at a counterterrorism conference in Napa Valley. “The king was gracious, knowledgeable about the Tice case, and receptive of some additional case details. He promised to task his security services to look for new leads, although he expressed concern that we had not received proof of life for several years,” according to O'Brien’s account.