Efforts to free missing Americans in Syria won’t involve a change in US policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said today, brushing aside reports that the Syrian government’s demands include a full withdrawal of US troops from the country.
The Wall Street Journal first reported this week that White House officials Kash Patel and Roger Carstens were dispatched to Damascus earlier this year for rare high-level negotiations with Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk. The American delegation was reportedly there to broker the release of freelance journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while covering the civil war in 2012, and Majd Kamalmaz, a psychotherapist from Virginia missing since 2017.