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.It turned out coalition forces had detained aman wearing American-style military boots inscribed with thename Coté. The FBI wanted to make a forensic comparison.Butnothing more was heard.The families felt powerless, desperate, their lives suspended.TheState Department had assigned a representative from the Office ofAmerican Citizens Services and Crisis Management to keep theminformed.Her name was Jenny J.Foo, and at first she called eachfamily once a week from her office in Washington, DC.After sev-eral months, Francis organized a Monday conference call so thatFoo could update everyone at the same time.But there wasn t much to report.Foo would discuss why U.S.au-thorities refused to distribute leaflets asking for information aboutthe hostages ( too dangerous ) or tell the families that the FBI was0306817434.qxd 9/22/08 2:09 PM Page 146146 BIG BOY RULESpursuing leads she wouldn t describe ( unfortunately they didn t panout ) or offer words of comfort ( that must be so hard ).Foo wascheerful and compassionate, and she appeared every week withoutfail.But the families soon realized that she was a functionary, herprimary role to placate them, and their frustration only grew.TheFBI, not the State Department, was running the investigation outof Baghdad s Green Zone, and that, too, was confounding.It wasthe largest kidnapping of Americans since the start of the war, andyet the probe was centered 350 miles from the crime scene, nowherenear the region where the hostages were thought to be held.Agentswould spend ninety days in Iraq, then hand off the case.The CIA,the Brits, the U.S.military, and the Austrian government were alsoinvolved, but even Foo had to acknowledge to the families, Theytend to be territorial.They re supposed to be coordinating.butthey don t always do that. Jenny, why can t the government just tell us whether our boysare still alive? Sharon DeBrabander, Young s mother, asked her onemorning.By then, Foo knew everyone s voices. Sharon, we just don t have the answer to that question, shereplied. I ll tell you one thing: if it was a congressman s son theywould have answers, Sharon said to me one day.It was terrorism in full.Sometimes in Iraq, people would talkabout the things that could happen to you, a fixation on the grimperversities of smut and death, as the writer Chris Hedges calledit, and debates would break out: was it worse to be beheaded orblown up, to lose your arms or your legs? But, to me, this was themost terrifying fate imaginable: to be erased, disappeared, leavingyour family and friends to fill in the blanks of your existence, nei-ther alive nor dead, forever wondering.The families clung to anyone who claimed to have informationabout their loved ones.In Minneapolis, a gun shop owner namedMark Koscielski announced that he was opening his own investiga-tion in response to what he called the inaction of our US Govern-ment/FBI. Koscielski was an old friend of Reuben s; he hadprovided the tricked-up M-4 that Reuben carried with him into0306817434.qxd 9/22/08 2:09 PM Page 147HOSTAGE AFFAIRS 147Iraq.For years, Koscielski had fended off attempts to shut down hisdowntown store, Koscielski s Guns & Ammo, while at the sametime working up a frothing contempt for the federal government.Koscielski spoke with a speech impediment, and he filled thefamilies heads with conspiracy theories and grandiose plots.Oneafternoon, he called me in California and said he was planning totravel to Kuwait, and then Basra, to gather information and negoti-ate the hostages release with $150,000 he claimed to have raised.Heasked me if I wanted to go.I laughed and politely declined, tellinghim that I didn t think it was a good idea for two Americans towander into one of Iraq s most dangerous cities alone.But soon Ko-scielski was informing the FBI about his plans.When the head ofthe Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force warned him not to go,Koscielski employed the word fuck in its many grammaticalforms.Before long, he was in Kuwait.His first three days were a total waste due to the fact that noone.would accept American Express Travelers Checks, hewrote in a six-page trip report to the families.Once Koscielski fig-ured out how to exchange money, he set out to meet with my con-tacts, who he identified only as James, Ricky, and Abel.Theyprovided startling revelations, such as the Iraqi police were a bunchof fucking thieves and a gang called Ali Baba was behind the kid-nappings.Koscielski apparently didn t realize that Ali Baba was thegeneric Iraqi phrase for bad guys. Koscielski ended his trip inter-viewing random people in the departure lounge at the Kuwait Cityairport.He walked up to them and announced, I m here fromAmerica, looking for information on these five guys and here aretheir pictures. He never made it into Iraq
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