Moore traveled to Somalia on a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to research a book on piracy.

Several days later, two aid workers, Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted, also being held by Somali pirates, were rescued by a Navy SEAL operation.

[3] American officials and the German Foreign Ministry collaborated on negotiations with the pirates, until Moore was freed September 22, 2014.

[citation needed] Moore worked as the theater columnist for SF Weekly,[10] until he moved to Berlin, Germany in 2005.

From 2009 to 2012, he also wrote a weekly column for Miller-McCune (now Pacific Standard) on trans-Atlantic issues, including the NATO effort against Somali pirates.