9. “The Hardest Thing”

The team get answers. Then Josh tells Debra what they’ve found.

Josh and Sara track down a witness who says he knows what happened to Austin Tice. He says people are trying to stop the truth from coming out, but that he has been trying to find Austin for years and knows what really happened. Josh and Sara test his story. As the pieces begin to fit, Josh talks Austin’s mother Debra through their findings.

Archive: United Nations; NPR; The White House; BBC; Voices Unbound.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker

Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat

Series producer: Simon Maybin

Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein

Additional producing: Lucy Burns

Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen

Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman

Series editor: Clare Fordham

Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon

BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke

NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva

NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon

NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi

BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel

Composer: Firas Abou Fakher

Additional music: Karim Chehoury

Theme music: Sam Slater

Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell