A Year After His Death, James Foley's Family Honors His 'Challenge'

One year after a video emerged showing the brutal murder of James Foley at the hands of ISIS, Foley's parents said they'll be observing the anniversary with prayer and thoughts of how their son would want them to live now.

"He challenges us to live a life of courage and commitment and compassion," Diane Foley told ABC News Tuesday. "That's how we will remember his passing, to remember his life by leading a better life ourselves and to inspire Americans to care about freedom and justice.... This has challenged John and I to think bigger and to really care about people who don't have freedom and justice."

James listened to others and revealed little about his own acts of human compassion overseas, even to his parents, his father John Foley recalled. "But we've discovered what a great person he was. He's become our hero," John said.

Foley, a freelance journalist, was on assignment for GlobalPost when he was captured and the news outlet called Foley a "dedicated correspondent" and a "dear friend."

"Jim was the kind of extraordinarily brave and dedicated journalist you might be lucky to work with once or twice in a career," GlobalPost Founder and CEO Phil Balboni said. "He believed that telling the human stories in the conflicts was vitally important and his respect and affection for his subjects set his work apart."

It's unclear exactly when Foley was killed, but on Aug. 19, 2014, a gruesome video appeared online showing the young journalist in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling next to a black clad figure with a knife. The White House said President Obama had no forewarning that Foley had been murdered until the video appeared online.

Later, some ransomed Europeans recounted a group of four particularly brutal thugs, including Foley's purported killer "Jihadi John," who were Britons nicknamed for the Beatles by the hostages.

After months of mystery, Jihadi John was identified publicly as Mohammed Emwazi in April. But the identification has apparently not brought authorities closer to apprehending the alleged murderer. A U.S. special operations task force targeting ISIS has devoted resources to finding Emwazi but so far has come up empty, two counter-terrorism officials said.

The Foleys, who had been in email contact with their son's captors, said that a week before his death, they received an email expressing ISIS's expressed anger over the American military airstrikes that had begun that week against the group in Iraq. The email said that ISIS intended to kill James Foley in retaliation, a former official told ABC News on Tuesday.

"The captors, when they did reach out to us, were insulted that our family was getting back to them. They obviously wanted to interact with our government," Diane Foley said. "We lost the few opportunities we had to get our hostages out because there was no one accountable in the government to use our skills and intelligence to actually interact with them. They were never allowed to interact with them."

Foley's death, along with the killings of 12 other foreign hostages in three countries within a horrifying six-month stretch, exposed terrible missteps by the U.S. government such as what Foley's mother calls an "appalling" lack of coordination and accountability on hostage response, as well as threats to prosecute any families who negotiated or paid ransom.

"We were very upset because we hadn't been helped to get our loved ones home," Diane Foley told ABC News.

Amid their grief over their son's murder by a masked executioner, John and Diane Foley for a year have led the push to ensure such a disaster never happens again. Their latest effort is launching Hostage U.S., a nonprofit similar to Hostage U.K. intended to help families of captives understand resources available to help them. The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which the family launched last year, focuses on advocating for the return of American hostages.

"There was no one in the government whose mission it was to look for and bring the American hostages home. There was no one accountable for their return," Diane Foley said. "They continued to say Jim was a high priority but that was never the practice. So that was why we came out really in a critical way, because it was appalling. No one was accountable for American citizens in this situation."

The Foleys' public criticism of the Obama administration began last fall when ABC News and others reported that a National Security Council counter-terrorism official and a State Department official each had repeatedly told the Foleys and other families they could be charged with giving "material support" to terrorists if they raised money or paid ISIS ransom for their loved ones -- even though no family had ever been prosecuted in history for such a thing.

Hearing these complaints by hostages' families and the Foleys in particular, President Obama ordered the National Counterterrorism Center to conduct a hostage policy review -- which began last fall even as ISIS was continuing to publicly execute or claim the killing of eight western hostages in all. In December and January, four additional western hostages were killed during counter-terrorism and hostage rescue operations, including American journalist Luke Somers, who was gunned down by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula guards as U.S. Navy SEALs moved in to save him in Yemen, and USAID aid worker Warren Weinstein, killed accidentally by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan targeting al Qaeda.

The single greatest disaster in the history of American hostage policy since the 1970s ended in February with the reported death of American aid worker Kayla Mueller, 26, in ISIS hands under unknown circumstances. On Friday, the Mueller family confirmed to ABC News accounts by counter-terrorism officials that their daughter was imprisoned and repeatedly raped by the top ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The NCTC review, led by Lt. Gen. Bennet Sacolick who had once commanded the Army's elite counter-terrorism and hostage rescue unit known as Delta Force, recommended making it clear to officials and families alike that ransom payments shouldn't lead to threats of prosecution for material support. The group also advised Obama to create a hostage fusion cell and family engagement team, which the President adopted immediately.

The Foleys said they were very pleased with the NCTC review but are awaiting appointments of at least two senior officials.

Other Americans remain hostages today in Syria, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.

"August 19 will always be a difficult day for our family and Jim's friends," the Foleys said in statement circulated by the James W. Foley Foundation. "But Jim's spirit of goodness has touched our world and his Foundation is committed to inspiring others to promote freedom and justice."