And so the ones birthdays for this younger guy rising older imply one thing past marking any other travel across the solar. They’re a manifestation of religion and hope, at the same time as they tumble previous with out him, the milestone years — his thirty fifth, his fortieth final yr when the piñata gave the look of the easiest contact — and the others. Each has arrived with out complete solutions however now not with out a deep-seated trust that his tale will sooner or later finish smartly.

On Wednesday, President Biden added an larger stage of specificity to the decade-long saga, pronouncing in a observation that “we know with certainty that [Austin] has been held by the Government of Syria.” It used to be a shift from the previous when U.S. officers tended to hedge about whether or not they imagine Austin is held via the Syrian executive or teams allied with the federal government.

With Biden’s consideration so obviously educated on their son, this yr’s birthday, so on the subject of the 10-year marker of his captivity, is a bit of other for the Tices. Debra Tice is commemorating her son’s forty first in Washington with out a large birthday celebration, however nonetheless doing what she’s accomplished with endurance and consistency: Pushing. Hard.

At quite a lot of occasions, the Tices had been livid with the FBI, the State Department, the White House, the media and themselves. They’ve pressed 3 presidents and nonetheless not anything. They’ve clamored for extra engagement with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Both Tices had been within the public eye, difficult the federal government do extra — Marc, a clean-cut 64-year-old who’s typically the extra measured and soft-spoken one; Debra, the fiery embodiment of a circle of relatives’s torment. She has now not been afraid to confront bureaucrats, particularly those that she deems unhelpful, lazy or uncaring.

“I’m Austin’s mom — I will be able to now not be intimidated,” she stated in an interview this week. When she is going to Washington, she’s there to call for motion on the best ranges of presidency. “I’m now not there for tea and crumpets,” stated Debra, a 61-year-old with dazzling white, shoulder-length hair and a piercing gaze.

Her blunt and unflinching way, her boundless power and maternal intuition to give protection to her son, can also be inspiring and energizing, stated Bill McCarren, government director of the National Press Club, which has taken up Austin’s cause with gusto. “She has gumption,” he stated. But he additionally worries that her confrontational taste would possibly from time to time paintings towards her.

“She’s now not the perfect particular person to get along side,” McCarren stated. “She does now not undergo fools.”

McCarren has attempted to coach her within the ordinary and disconcerting mores of Washington: how the capital can regularly be a spot of evasions and empty guarantees. But those truths she can’t abide, a trait McCarren admires in her. In her personal means, she is not just pushing for her son, but additionally pushing for Washington as a spot, and the U.S. executive as an establishment, to do higher.

Not way back, Debra met with a big team of State Department officers in Washington. She’s concluded that many within the division have made up our minds it’s “now not viable” to safe her son’s free up, even if Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been publicly and privately supportive. Internal “hindrances,” because the Tices describe them, had been erected as a result of such a lot of other people inside the division have necessarily given up on bringing their son house.

“You’re going to be stunned whilst you see [Austin] stroll loose,” Debra advised them.

She hired some colourful language to call for that they paintings tougher quite than, as she sees it, sitting again and claiming that there’s little or no or not anything they are able to do. They weren’t pushing. Not like she pushes. “It’s simply your little corridor move that you just’re writing out for your self,” she advised them.

Recounting the assembly, her voice builds to a crescendo: “Bam!” she stated emphatically in that Texas drawl. “Oh, my goodness. They had been stunned.”

State Department officers declined interview requests or to handle main points of the assembly. “We are broadly engaged with Syrian officers to carry Austin Tice house,” a senior management legit stated in an emailed observation. “But Syria hasn’t ever even said keeping him.”

An invitation and a call

Austin used to be a “difficult” child, his mom recollects with affection. Never an uneventful second in his lifestyles, all the time charging out into the sector.

“He’s so intense,” she stated. “He’s so totally alive, he’s so able to head.”

He used to be an Eagle Scout. He joined the Marines as an infantry officer and served in Iraq and Afghanistan, then stayed on within the reserves. He graduated from Georgetown University’s college of overseas provider and used to be attending the college’s legislation college in 2012 when he made up our minds to visit Syria as a contract journalist, changing into one of the most few newshounds on the time inside of that the majority unhealthy of countries for newshounds. While there, he contributed to The Washington Post and CBS News, and he gained a Polk Award, one in all journalism’s maximum prestigious honors, for his reporting on Syria’s civil conflict for McClatchy newspapers.

Those first terrible weeks of his captivity have stayed together with her, even now. She castigates herself for now not getting on a aircraft instantly, quite than following recommendation she used to be receiving from U.S. officers to take steps as underwhelming as making plans a information convention.

“I will be able to’t inform you, with seven youngsters, how repeatedly I’ve jumped within the automotive and pushed to a spot the place they’ve had a automotive coincidence, jumped within the automotive and flown to anywhere they had been in class as a result of they had been in poor health,” she stated within the interview. “When one thing occurs, I display up. Why did I stay my ft at the mistaken aspect of the sea?”

It wasn’t till 3 months later that she and her husband were given on that aircraft, touchdown in Beirut, the place she used to be making plans to organize to force to Damascus on the invitation of Syrian officers.

Then they were given a choice from an FBI agent operating their son’s case. The agent, who they declined to spot, berated Marc Tice, pronouncing the street used to be unsafe and so they had been about to make their different six kids orphans. Journalists had been telling them the other; the Tices imagine they had been being fed “incorrect information.”

Under drive from the FBI agent, Debra stated, she made up our minds to not move. A decade later, she nonetheless laments following the agent’s recommendation. She’s long gone out of her technique to make an apology to the Syrian executive over time.

“To now not settle for that invitation, we don’t have any thought what the continuing repercussions of which can be,” she stated.

FBI officers declined to be interviewed or to handle Debra Tice’s account. In a observation emailed to The Post, the bureau stated: “The FBI and our U.S. executive companions within the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell are continuously operating to carry Austin Tice and different Americans held out of the country, again house to their households. The FBI is dedicated to this challenge, in shut coordination with the sufferer’s members of the family, regardless of how a lot time passes.”

Debra Tice eventually got to Damascus in 2014. She met with everybody she may just, together with Syrian executive officers. Finally, she won a message from a extremely positioned Syrian legit: “I will be able to now not meet with the mummy. Send a United States executive legit of suitable identify.”

Questions and considerations stay

Years handed and the Tices by no means heard of any conferences about their son involving U.S. and Syrian officers. And the fundamental questions remained: Why this actual journalist? What would the Syrians have to realize from keeping him this lengthy with none public acknowledgment? Why no pleading hostage movies? Why no ransom request? In that data vacuum, information organizations, together with Reporters Without Borders, took up his motive. The Post featured Austin in a 2019 Super Bowl advertisement.

Finally, in 2020, there gave the look to be a damage: Kash Patel, the Trump management’s National Security Council counterterrorism leader, and Roger Carstens, the presidential envoy for hostage affairs, traveled to Syria for what they described as the primary direct U.S. diplomatic engagement with Syria in a decade. “It used to be a one-and-done roughly factor stated,” Marc Tice stated. Instead, he stated, the United States must lean into the basics of hostage dealings: engagement, negotiation and concession.

After the Syria travel got here to mild, Debra Tice accused then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of “undermining” President Donald Trump’s directive to carry her son house as a result of he had stated he would “compartmentalize” prisoner problems from overseas coverage writ huge. Carstens came to Pompeo’s defense.

In The Post interview, Debra leveled any other raft of considerations at Biden’s management, singling out nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan for, as she put it, now not following his boss’s directives. She thinks again to a May 2022 assembly she and her husband had with Biden. Right there in entrance of the Tices within the Oval Office, Biden advised his the nationwide safety body of workers within the assembly to touch the Syrians and to find out what they would like in go back for Austin’s free up, Debra recalled.

Three months later she believes no contacts had been made. “I’m now not certain if the entire telephone strains are down in D.C. or if there used to be some roughly, you recognize, sun flare,” she stated. “They don’t have web anymore? I’m actually now not certain what the hindrances are. But they are able to indisputably fly down right here and use my telephone in the event that they want to.”

She and her husband have realized over the direction of 3 White House administrations that individuals operating beneath the president can thwart his targets, Debra stated. (Sullivan didn’t reply to interview requests.)

All the whilst, she is at a loss for words about what turns out like stagnation. The United States doesn’t acknowledge that new approaches want to be hired to avoid wasting their son, she asserts. She seethes that she is aware of of no calls from U.S. officers to Syria at a time when Biden has even fist-bumped for the cameras with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who has been connected to the homicide of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Post’s writer, Fred Ryan, has been a vocal advocate for the go back of Austin Tice. In 2021, Ryan wrote an editorial published in The Post pronouncing: “The United States must by no means stand via when dictatorships take our electorate hostage. But the offense is particularly outrageous when the sufferers are newshounds, who give you the data and standpoint our democracy must serve as, regularly at nice non-public chance.” On Tuesday, he unveiled a 12-foot-by-8-foot banner above the primary front to The Post that reads #DeliverAustinHome. The White House used to be additionally taking realize. In his observation the following day, Biden went lengthy on guarantees and hope, however brief on specifics about what’s or can also be accomplished: “I am calling on Syria to end this and help us bring [Austin] home.”

In their anguish, the Tices know what is going to occur every yr as Aug. 14 approaches; they know the drill. The newshounds will name. Cascades of them. These “quote-unquote anniversary interviews” are favored, Austin’s father stated. But then the newshounds most commonly move away. It’s a temporary downpour, when what they hope for is a “secure rain,” Debra stated. The type that lasts throughout the year, that lasts till Austin comes house.

They plan to seem on the National Press Club on Sunday for an match marking 10 years. An invitation went out some time in the past. It’s billed, expectantly, as a “Welcome Home Party for Austin Tice.” But the development will move ahead whether or not he’s house or now not.