The White House has yet to push back against the specific assertion by James Foley’s mother that government officials threatened her and her family with prosecution if they raised money for her son’s ransom.
Diane Foley Thursday told CNN and other news outlets that she thought that the administration viewed her efforts to free her son and those of her family’s as “an annoyance” and on several occasions even threatened them with prosecution if they tried to raise ransom money to pay the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria for the release of their son James Foley.
The extremist terrorist group beheaded Foley and another American journalist, Steven Sotloff.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Friday repeated his condolences to the Foley family and said, “everyone here at the White House has them in our hearts and prayers.”
“The grief that they are feeling right now is unthinkable,” he told reporters during his daily briefing.
When pressed about whether U.S. officials had threatened the Foley family with prosecution, he said only that he’s “not in a position to detail the kinds of conversations that took place so often between the administration and the Foley family.”
“It’s the policy of this administration and previous administrations not to engage in ransom paying,” he said. “Ransom paying only puts other Americans in a position where they are at greater risk.”
When reporters asked whether the U.S. government would prosecute families for raising money for ransoms, he referred questions to the Justice Department.
Earnest also tried to show that the U.S. government was deeply committed to finding Foley and the other hostages.
“The U.S. was in contact with two dozen countries and representatives from across the government … and even officials here at the White House were in regular touch with the Foley family to continue to tell them that his rescue continues to be a priority,” he said.
He pointed the the “high-risk” rescue mission the president authorized as further proof.
“The president ordered a high-risk mission that was successfully executed. … Unfortunately, it did not end in the release of Mr. Foley,” Earnest said, noting that the U.S. government spent significant resources and time on trying to free him and others held by the Islamic State.
The statement followed a similar one by Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, that aired on CNN’s AC360 Thursday night.
From the White House briefing room, Rice addressed Diane Foley’s complaints that freeing her son didn’t seem to be in the government’s “strategic interest.” But Rice also didn’t address the charge that government officials repeatedly threatened the Foley family with prosecution if they tried to raise the money and offer a ransom themselves.
CNN didn’t ask Rice any questions afterward.
“I’ve gotten to know Diane Foley well … as she and I have met on a number of occasions when I was ambassador in New York and at the White House,” Rice told CNN. “She’s an extraordinary woman and she’s done an amazing job on behalf of her family … to do everything possible, leave no stone unturned, to bring Jim home safely.”
“We’re all heartbroken that that wasn’t possible. But I and others in the U.S. government worked very hard with Diane Foley to try to be supportive, to try to provide what information we could, and as you know, the president offered a very daring, a very well-executed rescue operation on the only occasion we had when we had what we thought was fresh and actionable intelligence … but unfortunately, [the hostages] were no longer there.”
“But I think that effort, which involved hundreds of personnel and a very sophisticated effort, underscores the importance we attach to doing everything we can to bring American hostages home,” she said.
In her interview on CNN, Diane Foley lamented the way she and her family were treated and said she was “appalled as an American” and “Jim would have been saddened.”
“[We were] asked to not go to the media — to just trust that it would be taken care of,” she said. “We were told that we could not raise ransom, that it was illegal, we might be prosecuted.”
“That that was a real possibility, told that many times,” she said. “We were told that our government would not exchange prisoners, would not do a military action. … So we were just told to trust that he would be, be freed somehow miraculously, and he wasn’t was he?”
