Within a few hours of his arrival that Saturday, Ingwerson received a call from an FBI agent. “I’m on my way,” she told him. Ingwerson says, “We didn’t even initiate that.” ^[13] He figured someone from the State Department had notified the Bureau of Carroll’s kidnapping. When the FBI agent arrived, she stationed herself in his office, where Ingwerson was fielding phone calls from the news media, many of whom he knew. “They were asking me what’s really going on,” he says. He told them the details. “The FBI agent was wincing, saying, ‘You’re telling them too much,’” he says. But he disregarded her advice. At that point, Ingwerson found her unintrusive. After a few hours, she sat at another desk in the newsroom, occasionally going back to Ingwerson’s office.


FBI Seal, Courtesy FBI.gov

Her arrival was not unusual. Kidnappings of US citizens abroad triggered the involvement of various federal agencies: the FBI, CIA, State Department, and others as relevant. In high-profile cases, such as Daniel Pearl, pleas for the release of a hostage might be raised at the highest levels of government, between presidents or ministers.

But even for lesser-known cases, the government stepped in as a matter of course to protect the interests of US citizens overseas. The State Department, for example, organized an interagency unit known as the Hostage Working Group (HWG) to monitor individual kidnap cases in Iraq. While the US government had a policy of “no negotiations” in response to terrorists’ political or financial demands, federal agencies did investigate and provide assistance in such cases. As soon as the FBI learned of Carroll’s abduction, it assigned agents to her family and to the Monitor to offer help and to gather information. Meanwhile, the agencies’ affiliated offices in Iraq carried out investigations there. However, the FBI agents stationed in Iraq were essentially limited to the Green Zone, the heavily guarded diplomatic/government area in central Baghdad where US occupation authorities lived and worked. Because of the dangers, the FBI agents could leave the zone only if accompanied by an armed military escort.

Each federal agency played a different role in kidnappings. “[The FBI] were all about the body, that is, free the person,” Ingwerson says. The Monitor’s dealings with the Bureau were direct—consultations, phone calls, and so forth. However, “the FBI knew nothing about Iraqi politics or the place itself,” he says. Within days of Carroll’s kidnapping, FBI Director Robert Mueller called Bergenheim to see if the newspaper was getting the help it needed from the FBI and told Bergenheim to feel free to call him if he needed anything else.

Watch Ingwerson describe the FBI’s area of expertise

The Monitor editors’ relationship with the CIA and the State Department, on the other hand, was indirect—through sources or officials in Iraq. For example Faye Bowers, who had covered the intelligence community for the Monitor , worked her sources who were inside the CIA or had just left. Because of their thorough knowledge of Iraqi politics, her CIA contacts could tell her who might be holding Carroll, or have knowledge of or be able to influence her captors. Bowers then passed the information along to the Baghdad Boys, who could pursue leads in Iraq. Murphy and Peterson also dealt with the State Department’s embassy in Baghdad . They had face-to-face meetings with US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad or spoke to his staff. The State Department officers indicated that Carroll was a “high priority.”

Watch Murphy discuss the Baghdad Boys’ role in Iraq