WASHINGTON — The CIA detected an apparent Western hostage being held by al-Qaeda in Pakistan but did not keep the person under drone surveillance, according to U.S. officials who said they now suspect that the captive may have been an American aid worker who was killed in an agency strike this year.
The surveillance lapse is being scrutinized as part of an internal CIA investigation of the death of Warren Weinstein, U.S. officials said, describing the sequence as a potential missed opportunity to avert that outcome.
Officials said that senior lawmakers have voiced concern in classified hearings that the CIA abandoned a potential lead on an al-Qaeda captive to remain focused on hunting terrorists — despite President Barack Obama’s promise the government was doing everything it could to find Weinstein.
“The agency’s main purpose is to go kill terrorists,” said a U.S. official familiar with the inquiry. “They will tell you it is not to rescue hostages.”
Weinstein, of Rockville, Md., and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid worker, were killed in a CIA strike on an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan in January after each had spent several years in captivity. The agency did not know that Weinstein, 73, and Lo Porto, 39, were at the compound until their bodies were removed from the rubble.
Obama issued a public apology to their families in April and called for an investigation of the errant strike to determine whether any changes to U.S. targeting processes could have prevented the deaths. That inquiry is ongoing.
“We believed the president when he told us that rescuing American hostages was his highest priority,” Elaine Weinstein, Warren Weinstein’s wife, said in a statement provided to The Washington Post. “How do I explain to my grandkids that the government could have saved their grandpa but decided not to?”
