Advocate for Terrorism Victims Was a Victim Herself

Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008 9:00 AM

Clutching tender ribs, her kidney pocked with shrapnel, school teacher Patsy Spier came to Washington in early 2003 seeking justice, only a few months after her husband was killed in an overseas terrorist ambush.

The Colorado woman, whose main grasp of government came from a high school civics class, strode through the halls of Congress and the State Department and used a light touch to secure help from lawmakers and diplomats.

"She was a neophyte but she had an authenticity that set her apart," recalled Tim Reiser, a senior aide to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "She just started pounding the pavement and knocking on doors."

Ultimately Spier prevailed. Her dogged pursuit opened doors for FBI agents to gather evidence near the site of the attack in a remote Indonesian province, where she and her husband, Rick, had been teaching the children of American mining workers. After years of investigation and diplomacy, the lead shooter was convicted.

The experience transformed Spier. A few weeks ago, the woman admiringly described by friends as a "bureaucracy buster of the first order" joined the federal government in a role that allows her to help other victims of overseas attacks.

As coordinator in the Justice Department's Office for Victims of Overseas Terrorism, Spier, 51, will locate terrorism victims and assess whether they need money, counseling, or other services. She'll also help train FBI agents and prosecutors to work more effectively with grieving families. In no small way, she will advocate for people who lack the tenacity and diplomatic skills that helped her win justice.

No such assistance existed for her in late 2002, let alone for victims of Middle East attacks dating back decades, Spier noted.

"I believe I've come to terms with Rick's death," she said from a Washington office bedecked with gifts and photographs collected during exotic travels. "I could either focus on the 20 years I had with Rick or focus on the 20 years I won't have with him. Well, I've chosen to celebrate the time I did have. He should not have been killed, but he was. Everything was taken away from me in that instant. I had to make sure that what happened to us that day wouldn't happen to anyone else."

Spier's nightmare occurred during an August 2002 picnic to view tree frogs and exotic orchids, in a remote area in the Papua province. She and a convoy of other international teachers came under violent rifle assault for 45 minutes. Eleven people were injured and three were killed, including Spier's husband, the school's American superintendent and an Indonesian colleague.

Since returning home, she made more than a dozen visits to Washington, entertaining job offers and accepting awards from the highest levels at Justice and the FBI. Now, Spier greets the government officials who helped her as old friends.

Matthew P. Daley, a former deputy assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, wrote her a recommendation letter for her new job. Former Indonesian Ambassador Robert Gelbard admires her "patience and perseverance where most people would have either given up or more likely blown up." Brad Deardorff, who first interviewed Spier only days after she was medically evacuated, has become so close to Spier that she calls him "my FBI agent."

To be sure, Spier sometimes clashed with her carefully cultivated mentors. State Department officials at first balked at her demand that the federal government withhold funds and military assistance to Indonesia until the country's law enforcement agreed to cooperate with U.S. investigators probing her case. She and Deardorff had some "tough conversations" about his slow responses to her emails, then the FBI agent showed her the old personal computer shared by him and 15 others in his squad.

Still, Spiers collaboration with investigators has been cited as a model for other victims, many of whom succumb to rage and desperation as months, even years, pass without criminal charges and recompense, said Kathryn Turman, a victim rights official at the FBI who has handled dozens of tragedies. Just last week the Libyan government forwarded its final $1.5 billion payment to victims of terrorist attacks over Lockerbie, Scotland, and a German nightclub dating to the 1980s.

International settings add another layer of confusion and expense for victims. Long distance phone calls, air fares, and the vagaries of search warrants and arrests in a foreign land can appear as insurmountable obstacles to a grieving family member, experts say. Dealing with such issues can drain the time and resources of investigators, who also have to answer questions in the politically sensitive cases from superiors and Congress.

"When she suffered the attack...rather than becoming a victim, she became a survivor," said Deardorff, now a counterterrorism supervisor in the FBI's Houston field office. "She made an internal decision very early on that she was going to behave in that way."

The transition to Washington, however, is not without road bumps.

Mary Lou Leary, a former prosecutor and Justice Department official who now leads the National Center for Victims of Crime, said Spier sees the bureaucracy with an outside perspective and is already asking her new colleagues, "how come we do it like that?"

For her part, Spier remains confounded by "acronyms. Truly. Everybody speaks in acronyms. When you see me taking notes, I'm writing down acronyms and taking them back to the office. That's something I will definitely not do when I'm on the phone with victims and their families....Thank God for Google."

Among Spier's first priorities is spreading the word about government services available through her office. Earlier this year Congress extended financial benefits for victims of international terrorist events dating to 1983, offering as much as $150,000 to each family for certain medical, travel and funeral expenses.

Heather Cartwright, a former federal prosecutor who directs Justice's victims services office, said the department has designated 15 such attacks that are eligible for the reimbursement plan, including the Pan Am 103 explosion, the East Africa Embassy bombing, and more recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Relatives have up to three years to apply.

Spier says she is confident she can slash through red tape, just as she crafted a plan to help solve the mystery behind her own attack.

"Dealing with the bureaucracy will be the hardest part," said former Ambassador Gelbard. "There's often a default position of not wanting to do anything."

Reiser, the Senate aide, said time will tell whether the victims office wins "the authority, the support and the budget to be effective."

"We hope that something really meaningful comes of it, both for her and those who need her help," he said.