Joshua Hammer:
Two years ago, when I began researching a piece for Outside about Moore’s abduction, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which had given Moore a grant to report from Somalia, as well as the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, which had once employed Moore on its English-language website, asked us to stop pursuing the story. David Rohde, who had been in touch with Moore’s mother, also requested that we respect the blackout. “The family and both news organizations think publicity at this time will increase the captors’ expectations and complicate negotiations,” he explained via email. Outside respected the family’s wishes and published nothing. In 2013, the Daily Beast assigned a freelance journalist to go to Somalia to investigate the Moore kidnapping, but the reporter backed off when he became aware of the family’s objections. Updates on Moore’s abduction did appear from time to time in Slate, the Huffington Post, Medium, and L.A. Weekly, and on surfing websites like The Inertia and The Cardiff Kook, but for the most part, the blackout held.
As Moore’s captivity dragged on, however, some close to him began to question the wisdom of the policy. “The American government needs a kick in the ass,” one journalist who knows Moore well told me about a year into his captivity. Frustrated at the pace of the negotiations, and suspicious that the U.S. was blocking efforts to pay a ransom, he believed that a magazine piece would increase pressure for a rescue mission or a deal. Moore’s mother wavered as well. “There were moments when she seriously considered lifting the press ban,” says a source close to the family. At one point, the source says, Saunders contemplated making a public cry for help—possibly a video addressed to her son’s kidnappers. The FBI, sources say, was camped out at her home, monitoring the negotiations between her—or, more likely, a private security contractor representing her—and a Somali negotiator hired by the pirate gang. Those close to the situation speculate that the FBI talked her out of going public.
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