family hey, we think he might be dead. i don t have a specific time frame for that. but what i can tell you is that as the intelligence community began to develop information pointed to the death of dr. weinstein. that information was briefed to the president and that information was share would the weinstein family. you don t have the information because you don t have it or because what would the security risks boof ss be of telling us with more precision of when some of these things happen? as it relates to it is hard for me. i guess the strike itself but be more precise about this seems to be in the interest of what the president just promised the american public about transparency. there s no doubt that we are having a rather detailed conversation about a previously classified operation. and that is consistent with the spirit of what the president talked about in the statement this morning. i do think that for me to talk
location of these hostages. and that is why, unfortunately, that near certainty assessment was wrong. and that is why the president has directed a review to determine if the are any changes that we can make to determine or to make it less likely that these kinds of unintended consequences would occur again. al qaeda make a trade and the u.s. making a similar trade that they made for bowe bergdahl for the life of warren weinstein and was one ever offered? peter, the u.s. government went to great lengths to try to rescue dr. weinstein. that there was significant resources dedicated to trying to determine his whereabouts. did we offer a trade? we have been very clear about the policy of the united states as painful as it is. it is a policy that prevents the united states from negotiating with terrorists.
perhaps that wasn t the case here in recent months and recent years, especially following the trade for bowe bergdahl. that the president took a political hit on. well i can t tell you what getting into specifics into the search of dr. weinstein. that this is a top priority for the intelligence community. certainly for the administration and the president whenever there is american held hostage to do everything possible to locate them to figure out if there is a safe way to rescue them. it s often very difficult and these hostages were held for a long time and the fact that this compound was under surveillance for as long as it was without any indication that hostages were present gives you an indication of just the kind of operational trade craft that al qaeda uses. they know that these are valuable hostages for them. they know we re looking for them. they know we ll try to rescue them. so, they take a lot of precautions. the other point i would make and this is something that you
important one to have. it s one, frankly, that we have continually continually, as you know and as you ve been describing. different kinds of counterterrorism operations. some where you know the identity of the target. a high-value target and others where you know there are members of al qaeda and important members but you don t know who the identity of those members are and the latter is, obviously, been a subject of far more scrutiny and concern over the years. and that is the case in this. we understand and that s what some of the questions in the briefing we re getting at. was perhaps the target here is discriminating as it should have been. you know when we think about, in particular this american warren weinstein. what can you tell us about where the search for him was? because we heard from josh earnest that the administration had put in a lot of effort to finding him, but still other reports we re hearing say that
either local civilians or militants militants? josh i won t be able to provide specific numbers on this. i can tell you that in the specific strike that resulted in the death of dr. weinstein and mr. lo porto, there was one other al qaeda leader who was among those who was killed. that is the ahmed farouq the american citizen al qaeda leader. this was a strike against an al qaeda compound. and the result was the death of at least one al qaeda leader. i can tell you that the assess assessment that we have right now does not raise questions about additional civilian loss of life. again, the reason for that is that the standard that was in