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 Obtaining timely intelligence on hostages has always been
difficult, especially in volatile regions where the United States
has limited access and where militants have well-established
operations.
But as unrest spreads, militants are acquiring more safe havens,
from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq,
complicating and often hampering U.S. intelligence-gathering. This
is especially so in the wake of the Arab Spring as militants exploit
the vacuum left by shattered institutions.
That has forced American intelligence operatives to become more
dependent on electronic eavesdropping and spy satellites rather than
using informants and on-the-ground human intelligence, say the
former and current U.S. officials.
The inadvertent killing of American doctor Warren Weinstein and
Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto in a January U.S. drone strike,
acknowledged by U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday, follows two
failed U.S. attempts in the past nine months to rescue Western
hostages. Those efforts apparently relied on dated or incomplete
information.
Last July, U.S. Delta Force commandos swooped into eastern Syria to
try to rescue U.S. journalist James Foley and other hostages, only
to find they had been moved. Foley was later executed by his Islamic
State captors.
A December attempt to free American photojournalist Luke Somers and
South African teacher Pierre Korkie in Yemen failed when their al
Qaeda captors were alerted to U.S. commandos' approach and executed
them.
Of all those regions, few have remained off limits for as long as
Pakistan's rugged northwest North Waziristan, where Weinstein and Lo
Porto were held and where a generation of Taliban and al Qaeda
militants have built a stronghold for launching attacks on U.S.-led
forces in Afghanistan.
Some former U.S. officials say the problem is too few U.S.
informants on the ground in danger zones such as Pakistan or Yemen.
"You can't do intelligence operations without HUMINT," said one
former senior U.S. intelligence official, using the acronym for
"human intelligence."
Rescue missions in enemy territory are inherently risky and,
officials say, based on imperfect information.
"The rule is, you almost never know where these guys are," said a
U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"NO ONE SILVER BULLET"
The latest killings re-ignited criticism from hostages' family
members about White House efforts to protect their loved ones, and
stoked controversy over the lethal drone program.
In the drone strike that killed Weinstein and Lo Porto, sources said
the Central Intelligence Agency had no idea the two were being held
there despite hundreds of hours of surveillance of the al Qaeda
compound.
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White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that before the strike, U.S.
government assessments had arrived at "near certainty" that
civilians would not be harmed. An internal review of the operation
is underway to see if reforms are needed to prevent similar
incidents, Earnest said.
Whether mistakes were made or not, it is very difficult for U.S. spy
agencies to acquire timely information about where and how hostages
are being held, the officials said.
"It's a very complex proposition," requiring the stitching together
of multiple streams of intelligence from various data collection
methods, said Dane Egli, a former senior White House advisor for
hostage policy under President George W. Bush. "There's no one
silver bullet."
To militant groups, hostages are an extremely valuable commodity and
kidnappers make their captives' security a top priority, the
officials said.
Egli said that opportunities to learn information from local
inhabitants or interrogating detainees have been reduced as the
United States has withdrawn troops and intelligence assets from Iraq
and Afghanistan. Another obstacle is the expansion of safe havens
and ungoverned spaces, from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to
Yemen.
"Any time they have secured real estate ... it's harder for us to
penetrate the (U.S. military) Special Forces for us to do a surprise
mission" and attempt rescue, Egli said.
Sometimes there is virtually no information at all. American
journalist Austin Tice disappeared in Damascus in August 2012, and
has not been heard from other than a brief video that surfaced five
weeks later.
U.S. officials have given Tice's family no indication they know
where he is, a person familiar with the situation said on Thursday.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Julia Edwards. Editing
by Jason Szep and Stuart Grudgings)
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