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New York Times Now Shilling for Paying Ransom to Al Qaeda

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On December 28, 2014 @ 9:04 am In The Point | 4 Comments

The official paper of treason never rests.

Even by New York Times standards, Rukmini Callimachi’s article, “The Cost of the U.S. Ban on Paying for Hostages” is a mess, stumbling as it tries to somehow sell its completely unacceptable agenda.

Instead of coming right out and saying, “The US should pay ransom money to terrorists”, Rukmini dances around by claiming that the FBI and State Department didn’t pay much attention to information about hostage locations. This may or may not be true, but it’s irrelevant to his thesis.

It takes pages until the rotten thesis at the heart of the piece is reached.

Relatives of the victims, as well as retired law enforcement officials who oversaw hostage negotiations under previous administrations, say the post-9/11 policy has meant not just that the government will not pay cash to kidnappers, but that it will not participate in any negotiations. Critics argue that this runs counter to longstanding instructions in the F.B.I.’s operations manual, which provides guidance on how agents can help families pay private ransoms.

They say, moreover, that the way the policy is currently applied is at odds with a classified 2002 presidential directive that allows the government to pay ransoms in special cases, so long as the money is used as a lure to catch the perpetrators, according to two officials who were involved in drafting the order.

1. Conventional kidnappers are not enemy forces at war with the United States. Paying the money will not finance the next 9/11

2. The ransoms are paid in cases where it can be used to catch the terrorists

Retired officials with decades of experience in hostage negotiations said there were a number of tools short of paying ransoms that Washington could have tried. For example, officials could have asked a third country to intervene, a role that Qatar often plays, or used diplomatic channels to push for an exchange of prisoners held elsewhere. France successfully persuaded Mali this month to free four members of Al Qaeda’s North African branch in return for the French hostage Serge Lazarevic.

Pressing another country to release Al Qaeda terrorists is the equivalent of us releasing Al Qaeda terrorists. The only difference is plausible deniability.

Another possibility would have been to allow the hostages’ families to pay ransoms themselves, as was the norm through the early 2000s, according to two former F.B.I. officials. Instead, the family members of the four Americans say they were told they could be prosecuted if they paid.

Paying ransoms to terrorists endangers Americans by making them an even  bigger kidnapping targets and finances terrorist operations.

You’re not allowed to send money to terrorists for really obvious reasons, no matter what the justification is.

The New York Times fails to acknowledge this obvious problem. Instead it continues acting as if the US is being irrationally stubborn by refusing to help fund terrorists.

Soon after the failed American raid in July, one fighter said, the Islamic State sent an envoy named Sheikh Abdullah al-Jarrah al-Nasir to Gaziantep over the summer with a letter authorizing him to negotiate on behalf of the group. The rebel, who asked not to be named, brought the sheikh here to see an American intelligence official whom he knew only as Darren. He said he was not sure if this was the official’s real name.

“I met Darren, and he came out, but he refused to meet Sheikh Abdullah,” the fighter said. “I told him, ‘The sheikh is here to negotiate.’ Darren blamed me and said, ‘We don’t meet with terrorists.’ I told him, ‘If you don’t meet with ISIS and deal with them as a state, this will end very badly.’ ”

The mistake here was letting the Sheikh leave.


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