Sep 20, 2026 · 33 min
Regime collapse opens a perilous search for Austin Tice
An American journalist missing in Syria: what happened?
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government may create the first real chance in years to investigate claims that Austin Tice survived in detention.
- 1Deborah Tice’s campaign keeps pressure on Washington to resolve her son’s disappearance and bring him home.
- 2Sources told Josh Baker that Austin may have survived and been held inside Syria’s intelligence detention system.
- 3The Assad regime’s collapse removes guards from suspected sites but leaves investigators facing danger, uncertainty and no functioning state.
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After Assad’s government collapses, Josh Baker receives GPS coordinates for sites where Austin Tice may have been detained.
The brief
Austin Tice, a former Marine and American journalist, vanished while reporting in Syria in 2012. His mother, Deborah, has spent years pressing officials and the public to keep searching.
Josh Baker’s investigation tests claims from Syrian journalist Sara Obeidat and an intelligence source known as Salam, who says Tice may have been alive inside a Syrian facility.
The evidence remains contested: Tice may still have been imprisoned, escaped, or died. The episode traces how competing accounts persist without direct proof.
When Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapses in December 2024, Baker travels into Syria through abandoned checkpoints and a landscape without functioning government or police.
A trusted source gives Baker GPS coordinates for possible detention sites, turning the regime’s collapse into a dangerous but potentially decisive opportunity to search for Tice.
Featuring
Josh Baker
Austin Tice
Bashar al-Assad
SyriaListen to the full episode and explore every guest, topic, and moment on PodLume.