Ex-Al Qaeda Hostage: FBI ‘Uses’ Journos

Incoming Daily Beast national-security correspondent Nancy Youssef reports that one former al Qaeda hostage was faced with a nightmare of FBI bureaucracy upon returning home. Freelance photographer Matt Schrier was forced to reimburse the State Department $1,605 for his ticket home just weeks after landing back in the United States, his assigned psychiatrist canceled five appointments in the first two months, and when he had no money to rent an apartment (jihadis emptied his bank account with purchases on eBay while he was in captivity), the FBI recommended New York City homeless shelters. The FBI never informed Schrier’s father of his captivity and waited six months into his seven-month-long ordeal to make a wanted poster—and even then, it was only after Schrier’s mother asked for it. Schrier accuses the FBI of using him to gather intelligence on al Qaeda, rather than finding a way to find and free him. “They use us,” he said. “They use journalists as chum to bring sharks to the surface.”