2025-07-19
48 分钟The Economist. Today on the Weekend Intelligence,
we bring you the second of our three-part series, The Hunt for Austin Tice.
If you haven't listened to part one, I urge you to go back and do so.
You can find it in our feed from July the 12th.
For months,
my colleague Gareth Brown has been investigating the disappearance of an American journalist in Syria in 2012.
a case that has haunted Syria's dealings with the West.
When the Assad regime fell in December last year, Gareth started trying to trace him.
Last week we looked at who Austin Tice really was, and his journey into Syria's nascent revolution.
He became the first foreign journalist to travel from the rebel-held north to the capital, Damascus.
Then he planned to take a break in Beirut.
But he never turned up.
This week,
Gareth finds out what the Americans knew about Austin's whereabouts and why the Syrians weren't playing along.
Gareth can take the story from here.
Clearly, the President of the United States and me,
Roger Carstens, we both felt that Austin Tice was alive.
and that we needed to get to Damascus and sort out where he was so that we could bring him back.
He, Roger Carstens, was a top official in the State Department the day the Syrian regime fell.
It was December 8th, 2024.