Private Rescue Teams Challenge State Department’s Claim Every American Got Help

Clear Facts

• Private rescue operator Bryan Stern disputes State Department claims that all Americans requesting evacuation assistance received it during the U.S.-Iran conflict
• Video evidence shows a State Department evacuation flight from Israel operating with mostly empty seats while hundreds of Americans reportedly sought help
• Rep. Nancy Mace joined private rescue operations and now proposes government reforms to streamline evacuation procedures

The State Department’s account of its evacuation efforts during the U.S.-Iran conflict is being challenged by private rescue teams who worked on the ground to extract American citizens from dangerous zones. Bryan Stern, founder and CEO of Grey Bull Rescue, a nonprofit evacuation service, contests official government claims.

Stern is pushing back against assertions that the State Department offered assistance to every American who requested it. He maintains that thousands of U.S. citizens were left trapped by missiles, bombs and security threats in the region.

“It’s not for lack of effort. Our State Department colleagues are tremendous. But their process doesn’t work. There is also no one — there’s no job specialty,” Stern told Fox News Digital.

He noted a critical gap in government operations: no dedicated position exists specifically for handling evacuations. The contrasting claims raise serious questions about the logistical efficiency of American rescue efforts and have prompted lawmakers to call for more specialized government capabilities.

Stern believes bureaucratic inefficiency is preventing the government from fully utilizing available rescue resources. As evidence, he pointed to video footage sent to Fox News Digital showing a mostly empty State Department flight from Israel to Florida during the early days of the conflict.

The source who recorded the video confirmed being evacuated by the State Department from Israel on flight LY1017 from Tel Aviv to Miami on March 8. This occurred at a time when Grey Bull Rescue was reportedly being flooded with hundreds of evacuation requests from Americans desperate to leave the war zone.

When asked about the video, State Department officials did not address why only a handful of seats were filled. While the government sometimes purchases individual tickets on commercial flights for evacuations, they rarely buy an entire aircraft’s capacity, according to sources familiar with the Department’s evacuation practices.

Beyond that specific instance, Department officials insisted their offers of assistance exceeded demand on the ground.

“The State Department has reached out to every American who has registered interest in our support,” a State Department official said.

“Most Americans who requested assistance have declined seats when offered, opting either to remain in country or book commercial flight options which offer greater flexibility in terms of destination and luggage.”

Stern strongly disputes this characterization.

“That answer is inaccurate in totality,” Stern said.

“There’s a difference between a State Department-contracted aircraft that is filled with Americans to come out and getting them to safety. That’s an evacuation. That’s different from: ‘Hey, go book a commercial ticket. Good luck to you,'” Stern explained.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who joined Grey Bull Rescue’s operations in Israel last month, praised government efforts but believes significant reforms are necessary. Her firsthand experience on the ground proved eye-opening.

“It really opened my eyes to some of the challenges that we have, the bureaucracy that we have,” Mace said.

“I’m going to come back to Washington with some ideas on how to streamline what we currently have and how to ensure that we’re allocating resources to the State Department, to [the Department of Homeland Security].”

Like Stern, Mace identified the lack of a single designated position within the State Department focused on rescue efforts as a fundamental problem. Stern’s organization has completed over 800 missions evacuating Americans from Afghanistan, Israel and Venezuela, giving him extensive operational experience.

He believes current government operations suffer from too many disconnected components. His team’s streamlined approach allows direct communication with Americans requesting assistance.

“We know them, we talk to them 10 times a day. The current manifest we’re working right now has 338 people on it. We do a Zoom call once a day with all the families. Because of that kind of thing, the chain between the person and the airplane is zero, because it’s us,” Stern said.

“With [the Department of State] you’re calling a center in West Virginia, talking to somebody reading a script who doesn’t know anything; they refer you to a website that goes to a data processing thing somewhere which gets [put] onto an Excel spreadsheet.”

According to the Department of State, over 43,000 Americans have safely returned to the United States since late February. Of those, government operations directly assisted 30,000 Americans.

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