While she never actually said it, Diane Foley could have opened her face-to-face meetings with one of her son’s four killers this way:
“Hi. I’m Diane Foley. Jim sent me.”
And in a sense, Jim Foley had, indeed, sent her. He was a photojournalist from New Hampshire who was executed by Islamic State fighters in Syria in 2014. Diane met Alexanda Kotey, one of four men convicted of Jim’s murder, at the Department of Justice in Virginia, twice last October and again just weeks ago.
The meetings in October, Diane said, began awkwardly, then moved to what she sensed was a hint of remorse — or close to it — shown by Kotey.
She said her most recent meeting was different.
“I was more irritated with him,” said Diane, cradling a cup of coffee while a blue shawl cradled her shoulders. “This was his agreement, he had to speak to victims’ families, but this last time it’s like he was almost enjoying the celebrity of it. He kept talking about his moral compass. It made me sick.”
This was part of Kotey’s sentencing. It was part of Diane’s healing process, albeit a tiny piece, and it was part of the legacy that Jim embodied before he was killed by the Islamic State, a brutal act recorded on video and posted online to the horror of the world.
Sometime after his death, Diane’s vision of Jim, her knowledge of him, became clearer. So altruistic and meaningful were Jim’s actions, stored securely to shield his family from worry, that even his own mother had underestimated the depth of his character and empathy.
Jim didn’t say much when visiting his family in Rochester, N.H., at Christmas, one of the few times during the year that he wasn’t reporting on wars in dangerous places. He preferred to listen. His life was a bit too complex and dangerous to provide light conversation during dinner.
“He’d interview us,” Diane said, “He’d say, ‘How ya doing, Mom?’ He’d want to know what the little guys (nieces and nephews) were doing. He really didn’t talk much about what he was doing and how he was becoming the man he became. I was kind of clueless.”
After his death, after Jim’s inner self, cloaked in modesty, had surfaced clearly, and the meeting with Kotey had been proposed, Diane knew that her son “would have wanted me to meet him, that he would not have wanted me or anyone else to be afraid of him, and he would want me to be able to see him as a person.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t a challenge, though,” she said.
She had Jim to lean on. His soul called to her, nudging her toward forgiveness and faith and humanity and meetings with a killer.
Jim’s killer.
“Jim was about trying to see the goodness in everybody,” Diane said. “That was one of his gifts. He was unusual. I didn’t realize how unusual he was.”
Unusual enough to be taken hostage by Muammar Gaddafi’s henchmen in 2011 in Libya. A fellow journalist was shot and killed during the attack.
Unusual enough to be held captive for 44 days, then return to Libya later in the year, in time to witness the rebels kill Gaddafi.
And unusual enough to return to combat journalism in Syria the following year. Civilians were dying. The world needed to see. Jim, a freelancer, had built a great following, filming and writing for major outlets in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Diane said Jim had a lot of female friends, yet he never married, uncomfortable making a commitment when his long-term focus, dangerous and unpredictable, lay somewhere else.
He dedicated his life to photographing the horrors of war. CNN interviewed him. The fighting in Syria and the plight of refugees there called to him. His mother worried about him.
“He was very careful and took safety courses, but he had two master’s degrees and he could have done anything,” Diane said. “He could teach, he was great with kids, but he felt a call to do this. We thought it was becoming so dangerous.”
Jim was kidnapped in November 2012. He was killed 21 months later. The video released by ISIS prompted angry words from the Obama administration.
By then, however, Diane and her family had become disillusioned with the U.S. government. She called herself naive for believing that officials had made the release of Jim and other non-combatant hostages a priority.
She went to Washington, D.C., alone, with no hint of where and whom to visit, searching for anyone who could provide useful information.
“I was determined, but I failed,” Diane said. “I failed because there was no one who is accountable for the return of Americans. There was no entity that I was supposed to talk to.”
Her sense of abandonment continued when the U.S. refused to pay a ransom demand and threatened the Foleys with prosecution if they tried to raise the money themselves. She met with federal officials, who she said paid her lip service but did little else.
She mentioned former National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
“She was kind, but she really deceived me,” Diane said. “She knew it was not a national priority but was not candid with me or able to be transparent. When other hostages (from other countries) started to come out, I realized this is not a priority for our government at all.”
Instead, she made it her own priority, two years after Jim’s death. She quit her job as a nurse practitioner and started the James Foley Legacy Foundation, dedicating her life, full time, to advocating for the return of American hostages and promoting safety for journalists who report during wartime.
She remains disappointed in her government.
“As far as a priority, it never was,” Diane said. “It’s appalling. I was mad. I felt, as an American, we had to do better. After he died, I was speechless about how we had been treated, and I was angry. I felt determined to do better, or we at least had to try.”
Jim inspired her to meet Kotey. His voice and heart followed her into a big conference room with bright lights and members of the prosecuting and defense teams, and the FBI.
She was satisfied with the discussions during the second meeting in October, saying, “I felt like he was beginning to feel some remorse. He did not say he was sorry. He said this was all part of war, but he has a mother, he’s close to his own mother, so he could relate.”
Diane said any goodwill created last fall faded during the final meeting last month. She said Kotey had begun to rationalize his behavior, yet her previous dialogue with him convinced her that she had continued her son’s work.
That’s her focus.
“I felt a human connection,” she said. “I think Jim would have wanted that. He was precious to me, but I really didn’t realize what an amazing man he had become.”