Let Ashcroft Do It

‘AUSTRIA?” President Bush asked when Tom Sylvester requested his help for “our American stolen children”—including his only child, Carina, who was abducted to Austria by her mother in 1995 when she was a year old. After expressing his surprise at the complicity of a friendly European country in international abduction, Bush encouraged Sylvester to tell his story because “a lot of people are watching.”

The heartbroken father has been tirelessly telling his story for seven years. (See my “Without Their Daughters,” May 20.) Sylvester’s brief encounter with the president in early October, at a White House conference on missing children, followed a private meeting he had had in June with secretary of state Colin Powell, and a personal appeal on his behalf in July by the U.S. ambassador in Austria to the Austrian justice minister. Sylvester had also previously met with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. But despite all the top-level sympathetic attention, after these seven years, Tom Sylvester concludes that “as a practical reality, Carina’s not coming back.”

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Kate O'Beirne

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Department of Justice

‘AUSTRIA?” President Bush asked when Tom Sylvester requested his help for “our American stolen children”—including his only child, Carina, who was abducted to Austria by her mother in 1995 when she was a year old. After expressing his surprise at the complicity of a friendly European country in international abduction, Bush encouraged Sylvester to tell his story because “a lot of people are watching.”

The heartbroken father has been tirelessly telling his story for seven years. (See my “Without Their Daughters,” May 20.) Sylvester’s brief encounter with the president in early October, at a White House conference on missing children, followed a private meeting he had had in June with secretary of state Colin Powell, and a personal appeal on his behalf in July by the U.S. ambassador in Austria to the Austrian justice minister. Sylvester had also previously met with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. But despite all the top-level sympathetic attention, after these seven years, Tom Sylvester concludes that “as a practical reality, Carina’s not coming back.”