"Hostage Review Will Make It Easier for Families to Pay Ransoms"

"The White House is about to change how Washington tries to save captured Americans"

The shift, which was first reported Monday by Foreign Policy, will be detailed Wednesday as part of the administration’s long-awaited review of U.S. hostage policy, according to two government officials and others familiar with the matter. The White House launched the probe last year after coming under fierce criticism for failing to do more to bring back missing American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and aid worker Peter Kassig, all three of whom were beheaded by the Islamic State. Three other Americans — journalist Luke Somers in Yemen, and aid workers Kayla Mueller in Syria and Warren Weinstein on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan — have since been killed while in militant custody.

In a statement Tuesday, Warren Weinstein’s widow called her family’s interaction with the government “inconsistent at best, and utterly disappointing” during more than three years of his captivity. Elaine Weinstein offered lukewarm praise for the creation of a fusion center but said the White House should have more oversight of the process.

“We hope to be the last family that fails to receive the level of coordinated government support that those who serve abroad deserve when trouble finds them,” Elaine Weinstein said.

When it publicly releases the results Wednesday, the administration will reiterate that the U.S. government itself will not negotiate with, or pay ransoms to, terrorist groups. The so-called “no concessions” policy has been in place for decades and is a key difference between how Washington and its European allies deal with captured citizens. Many key American allies, including Germany, Italy, and Spain, freely admit to paying money to militants to bring back their hostages. The United States, by contrast, believes that ransom payments would encourage kidnappers to grab more Americans.

This is crazy.