James Wright Foley (October 18, 1973 – c. August 19, 2014) was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in north-western Syria. He was murdered by beheading in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen to be murdered by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Before becoming a journalist, Foley was an instructor for Teach For America. By spring 2008, in Iraq, he became an embedded journalist with an Indiana National Guard unit, writing a story for In These Times about condolence payments paid to Iraqis. In 2008, he became an embedded journalist with USAID-funded development projects in Iraq. He was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and in January 2011 he began writing for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes from his post there. Later in 2011 he reported for GlobalPost in Libya. There, he was captured by Gaddafi loyalist forces and held for 44 days. The next year, Foley was captured in Syria while he was working for Agence France-Presse and GlobalPost.
Foley was born in Evanston, Illinois, the oldest of five children born to Diane and John Foley of Rochester, New Hampshire. He grew up in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where he attended Kingswood Regional High School. He was raised as a Catholic. In 1996, he graduated from Marquette University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and Spanish, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2002, and a Master of Science from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2008.
Foley began his career as a teacher in Arizona for Teach For America. In 1999, Foley decided to pursue his MFA in creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Upon completion of his MFA in 2003, Foley returned to Phoenix for one year before relocating to Chicago in the summer of 2004 and taking a job teaching writing to young felons at the Cook County Boot Camp. In 2007, Foley enrolled in Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.
Starting in 2008, Foley worked for USAID-funded Tatweer development projects in Baghdad. He helped organize conferences and training seminars for a program designed to rebuild Iraq's civil service, crippled by decades of isolation and autocratic administration. He also became an embedded journalist in Iraq with the U.S.101st Airborne Division and the 76th Infantry Brigade of the Indiana National Guard. In 2009, he became an embedded journalist, in Nuristan, Nangarhar and Kunar, Afghanistan, with the United States 4th Infantry Division and 10th Mountain Division. He continued his work as an embedded military journalist in Afghanistan in 2010.
In January 2011, Foley joined Stars and Stripes as a reporter on assignment in Afghanistan. Two months later he was detained by U.S. military police at Kandahar Air Field on suspicion of possessing and using marijuana. On March 3, 2011, Foley admitted that he had marijuana in his possession and resigned his position. Shortly thereafter Foley began working for the Boston-based GlobalPost and went to Libya to cover the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, embedding himself with rebel fighters.
According to media reports, on the morning of April 5, 2011, Foley, fellow American Clare Morgana Gillis, a freelance reporter (Atlantic Monthly, Christian Science Monitor, and USA Today), as well as Spanish photographer Manu Brabo, were attacked and captured near Brega, Libya, by forces loyal to Gaddafi; fellow photojournalist Anton Hammerl was killed. When the shooting started, Foley and Gillis both heard Hammerl yell out, "Help!" Foley, Gillis, and Brabo were beaten by the pro-Gaddafi forces and then taken as their prisoners. Foley stated: "Once I saw Anton lying there dead, it was like everything had changed. The whole world has changed. I don't even know that I felt some of the blows." Gillis said, "We all glanced down at him as we were being taken by, and I saw him just lying in a pool of blood. And then we were put into the truck and our heads were pushed down. We weren't able to see anything that happened after that to him."
Foley was released from jail 44 days later. On May 18, Foley, Gillis and Brabo, as well as Nigel Chandler (an English journalist also being held), were brought to the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli after release. Foley returned to Milwaukee to thank the community for praying for his safe return. In an interview, he said, "You go through different emotions when you're in captivity... These weird extreme ideas of where you are based on this capture. You don't want to be defined as that guy who got captured in 2011. I believe front line journalism is important [without it] we can't tell the world how bad it might be." Foley also wrote an article for Marquette Magazine about how rosary prayers helped get him through his captivity. His experience of being captured did not deter him; he quickly returned to Libya, and was at the scene of Muammar Gaddafi's capture with GlobalPost correspondent Tracey Shelton on October 20, 2011.
Kidnapping in Syria, hostage negotiations, and rescue attempt
During the Syrian Civil War, Foley continued working as a freelancer for GlobalPost, in addition to other media outlets, such as Agence France-Presse. On November 22, 2012, Foley was kidnapped by an organized gang after departing from an internet café with British journalist John Cantlie, in northwestern Syria while on their way to the Turkish border. Their taxi driver and Foley's translator were not taken. Foley and Cantlie were reportedly working on a film depicting Cantlie's previous abduction and dramatic rescue by four members of the Free Syrian Army in July 2012. Sources close to the family said that they believed Foley was kidnapped by the Shabiha militia, a group loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He was later reportedly held in a Syrian Air Force Intelligence complex in Damascus.
During negotiations from November to December 2013, Foley's captors demanded €100 million in ransom (approximately US$132 million) from Foley's family, GlobalPost (his employer), and the U.S. in exchange for his release. The chief executive officer of GlobalPost, Philip Balboni, stated that the company spent millions on efforts to bring Foley home, including hiring an international security firm, Kroll Inc. In September 2013, the firm was able to locate Foley and track his location. He was moved many times during his captivity. Kroll's research led to GlobalPost reporting that Foley was being held in a Damascus prison run by Syrian Air Force Intelligence, along with at least one other Western journalist, possibly Austin Tice. This information turned out to be false—Foley was never held by the Syrian government or Syrian loyalists and was instead in the hands of the Islamist group that would come to be known as ISIS.
In June 2014, ISIS released Danish photojournalist and fellow hostage Daniel Rye Ottosen, and Ottosen called Foley's family to recite a memorized message that came to be known as Foley's final letter. In it, Foley addressed members of his family, and described his captivity in a cell with seventeen other hostages, who passed the time with improvised strategy games and lectures. The family released the letter on their Facebook page shortly after Foley's death.
In July 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized a "substantial and complex" rescue operation after the U.S. intelligence community said a "broad collection of intelligence" led them to believe that the hostages were being held at a specific location in Syria. However, the mission failed because the hostages had been moved. The operation involved special operations forces from multiple branches of the US military, including: the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, and drones. When Delta Force commandos landed in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, they were met with gunfire, and it became apparent that the hostages had been moved. ISIS suffered numerous casualties, while American forces suffered a single minor injury. The operation was only declassified after Foley's death. It represented the first confirmation of U.S. troops operating on the ground within Syria during the Syrian Civil War.