Hostage Nation Read online

  To all the journalists who have died and to those who continue to risk

  their lives covering the violence in Colombia and the war on drugs.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  1 “These Gringos Fell to Us from the Sky!”

  2 Rules of Engagement

  3 The Elegant Guerrilla

  4 Friends and Neighbors

  5 Contractor

  6 Making Deals

  7 The River Queen

  8 El Caguán

  9 The Exchangeables

  10 Fallout

  11 The Second Crash

  12 Botero

  13 Proof of Life

  14 Capture and Extradition

  15 The Jungle

  16 Trial

  17 Emmanuel

  18 Tucker on the Mountain

  19 Operación Jaque

  20 Reintegration

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SOURCES AND REFERENCES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  In February 2003, a short news clip of a plane crash in the Colombian jungle grabbed our attention. We had spent the previous year making our first documentary film, The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt. It was assumed that three of the American crew members survived the crash and had been captured by Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, the same group that had held Ingrid for over a year. A book on Ingrid and the American captives seemed like a logical journalistic extension after the documentary. At the time, we had only two sources: the mother of hostage Marc Gonsalves, who was the only family member who would speak to the press, and Gary Noesner, an FBI hostage-negotiation expert who had recently gone corporate. We’d had the good fortune to interview Gary several times in the past, so the coincidence that Gary’s first case with his new employer turned out to be that of the three kidnapped Americans seemed like great serendipity.

  Six months after the Americans had been kidnapped, a surprising symbiotic relationship began when we delivered proof to Gary’s office in Washington, D.C. that the three Americans were still alive. On the video we carried back from Bogotá were interviews of the hostages; these had been shot by our Colombian colleague, Jorge Enrique Botero, who was the only journalist ever to be allowed into FARC hostage camps. At the time, no one in the U.S. government had any knowledge of the hostages’ whereabouts or even whether they were still alive. Knowing that we were bringing the video, Gary had invited one of the lead FBI investigators in the case, a State Department counterterrorism official, and the vice president of Northrop Grumman, the men’s employer. And in what was surely one of the most surreal moments in both of our careers, we opened a laptop and showed them videos of Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell pleading for their families not to forget them and begging the U.S. government not to attempt a rescue.

  Shortly after, even with the publicity generated by Botero’s footage of the men and our documentary film Held Hostage in Colombia, which aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes II, the History Channel, and in news reports around the world, there was little interest in the Americans’ story. As our subjects remained in the jungle, the book, which we had worked on for six months, didn’t seem to have either a market or an ending in sight. We shelved the proposal. Over the next few years, we would occasionally pull it out and dust it off—changing titles, reorganizing, and rewriting—only to discover that we still didn’t have a book. With no news on the hostage situation and not even the slightest hint of a release, more than half a dozen half-finished proposals gathered dust on our office shelves, got lost in moves, or ended up in the recycled paper pile.

  But the story was never far away. The hostages had become an unshakable part of our lives. We were on a first-name basis with Tom, Marc, Keith, and Ingrid. And for Botero, there were dozens more. They worked their way into our thoughts and our daily conversations. In Karin’s dreams, Ingrid often appeared on the brink of liberation, only to disappear back into the jungle. We empathized with the frustration of the family members, several of whom we spoke to often. We met with senators, congresspeople, members of NGOs, and anyone else we felt could help bring attention to the story or do something to help the three Americans and hundreds of other Colombian hostages. We studied every bit of news about the FARC. We were, by turns, hopeful and fearful for the hostages when Colombian president Álvaro Uribe made conciliatory and then aggressive moves toward the guerrillas. For Botero, covering the hostage stories was even more overwhelming than it was for us. He made so many trips into the jungle to try to gain access to the hostages that at times we feared he would collapse from exhaustion. What we all realized as the years went by was that there was little as journalists or filmmakers that we could do. All three of us attempted to escape the emotional grip of the difficult and consuming subject by taking on new projects, far away from the jungle prison camps.

  More than a year into our hiatus from the hostage story, the three of us reunited on the topic when the trial of FARC commander Simón Trinidad took place in U.S. district court. It was during the fall of 2006 that we realized the scope of this book was so much greater than the story of the American hostages. Our book was the story of a four-decades-old guerrilla movement that grew to include the most wealthy and lethal insurgent army in the world. The FARC’s extraordinary rise was linked to one of the most ill-fated policies of the United States in the last half century. The disastrous multibillion-dollar plan to wage war on an herbaceous shrub, Erythroxylum coca, lured Tom, Marc, and Keith into the war on drugs and led directly to their five-and-a-half-year internment in FARC prison camps.

  Over the years, Botero had been an essential source, granting us hours and hours of his time, deliberately unfolding the history and culture of his complicated country. During those long conversations, he guided us into the mysterious world of the FARC with stories of his travels into the mountains and the jungle. We heard how he’d raised the ire of the Colombian government, how he’d infuriated the top FARC commanders, and how the mother of his children had been a victim of his country’s violence. We realized that his contributions to the book were invaluable, and we invited him to coauthor it. The three of us worked together across continents for the next two years, until summer 2008, when Ingrid and the Americans were rescued by the Colombian military. To us, this seemed like a logical place to end a story we’d been covering for six and a half years. Botero, however, was packing for another trip to the jungle. We asked him what motivated him, what made him continue following the story of the remaining hostages, and what made him continue covering his country’s endless civil war. It was then that we realized Botero was not only our most integral source and coauthor; he was a true protagonist, the person who fastened the book together.

  It is admittedly difficult to craft a book with three colleagues in two languages over the course of six years and hundreds of hours. We spent a great deal of time flushing out the political complexities of Colombia and its relationship to the United States, and we worked diligently to maintain journalistic balance when our coauthor became part of the story. During the weaving of this tale, there were many events and challenges that would have derailed most other projects. Logistical, emotional, and political differences among us ping-ponged across continents via e-mail, video chats, and occasional meetings in D.C., Bogotá, New York, and Miami. Together, we hammered out the ideas behind this story. Our work was punctuated by fights about style, translations, and edits. In the end, we always remained dedicated to what we believe is an incredibly important story, and a book that could not have come about in any other way.

  Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes

&nb
sp; October 2009

  1

  “These Gringos Fell to Us from the Sky!”

  On the morning of February 13, 2003, a group of sixteen guerrillas—part of an elite mobile unit of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC)—were making their way across the foothills of Colombia’s Eastern Cordillera. In the brilliant morning light, they could not see an airplane, but they were sure that one had circled above because of the familiar sound of a turboprop engine. Reynel, the commander of the group, told his unit that the plane was either a crop duster or a spy plane, because only fumigation and reconnaissance planes flew into the remote territories between the foot of the Andean mountain range and the low-lying Amazonian jungle. Fumigation planes were more common, and over the years, the guerrillas had shot down several. The crop dusters were manned by one pilot (usually an American or a foreigner from Central America under contract to a U.S. corporation) and equipped with tanks full of highly concentrated glyphosate—a toxic herbicide produced by the U.S. chemical company Monsanto. The targets were coca plants, which would wither and die if the chemical was applied correctly, but if pilots overshot the coca fields or the glyphosate drifted in the wind, it could wipe out rain forest or crops of yuca, soy, and corn. Occasionally, larger planes would fly over at altitudes out of reach of the guerrillas’ automatic rifles. These crews were American, and the payloads were U.S.-supplied reconnaissance equipment designed to gather intelligence on FARC movements and identify drug labs and coca fields for the spray missions. The guerrillas knew that if the gringo “spies,” with their high-tech instruments, were able to see or hear them under the jungle canopy, the Colombian army would not be far behind—and would be coming in to kill them. So it was with great satisfaction that an eighteen-year-old guerrilla named Jaison overheard his superior, a female guerrilla called “La Pilosa,” receiving permission from her commander to shoot down the enemy plane:

  FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) “Special Forces” guerrillas trained to protect commanders at a camp in Caquetá, Colombia. Photo: Carlos Villalón.

  LA PILOSA: There is a bug flying by here, very low.… Hey, if it’s a fumigator, could we burn it?

  EL PAISA: [Yes, if] it’s low, burn that tail.

  The Cessna crew had been in the air for an hour on their flight from Bogotá. Their next stop was the Larandia military base in southern Colombia, where they would refuel. With only thirty miles to go, “out of the blue the engine just spooled down … pshhhheeew,” says copilot Thomas Howes.

  “What’s happening?” yelled Keith Stansell, a technician in the back of the plane.

  “That’s an engine failure, sir,” pilot Tommy Janis shot back.

  Stansell grabbed the radio to call the base:

  “Magic Worker, Magic Worker, Mutt 01 is declaring Mayday. We have lost engine.”

  In the cockpit, Janis quickly calculated that the plane could not make it over the crest of the mountain range to land at the Larandia base. The terrain below was covered by densely forested hills. Howes knew the plane could glide on descent, but he didn’t see any suitable place for a landing and didn’t think they would survive the crash. Janis tried to restart the engine, but there was no response. “I cursed myself for trusting a single-engine plane for this type of work,” Howes says. He’d logged thousands of hours of flight time in this aircraft and had had some very close calls. But never had he been so sure he would die. He pulled hard on his shoulder straps and reached over to secure Janis as the pilot scoured the ground, searching desperately for a place to land the plane. A second technician, Marc Gonsalves, hurried to secure the gear, making sure that all of it was tightly fastened so that they wouldn’t be hit by flying equipment in the crash. Then he prayed to Jesus to forgive him for his sins and protect his wife and his three children.

  STANSELL: Magic Worker, Magic Worker, Phoenix Ops, Phoenix Ops. Mutt 01, we are north 015617, west 0752958. Does not look like we are going to be able to find a suitable terrain. How copy?

  GROUND CONTROL: That’s right. I copy, sir. Activate your beacon?

  STANSELL: Roger that.… Continue to update, sir. We are looking for a place on the ridge to set down.

  Suddenly, looking out of the left side of the plane, Janis saw a clearing about the size of a soccer field in the middle of the forest and aimed for the spot. “We’re going to hit very hard,” Howes yelled to the crew in the back.

  GROUND CONTROL: Mutt 01, this is Magic Worker, say, uh, say souls on board.

  STANSELL: There are five souls on board, sir. Tom Howes, Tom Janis, pilots; Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, operators. Four of us and one host-nation rider.

  GROUND CONTROL: Copy.

  STANSELL: We love you, buddy. Man, we’re just lookin’ for a spot here.

  GROUND CONTROL: Mutt 01, Magic Worker, what you say again lat and long?

  GONSALVES: 0151 north, 07530 west.

  It was eerily quiet in the plane as Janis maneuvered the gliding aircraft in a wide arc. For a moment, Howes thought they had too much speed—that they would overshoot the site—and he pushed away thoughts of how his death would affect his five-year-old son. On the ground, the guerrillas, unaware of the engine failure and that the plane was about to crash-land, raised their weapons. The plane’s metallic body reflected the sun, converting it into a sparkling target. In a matter of seconds, bullets crashed against the belly of the aircraft. The Colombian army picked up the guerrillas’ radio transmissions as the insurgents shot at the plane:

  EL PAISA: It sounds good over there. Can you hear?

  GUERRILLA NUMBER TWO: Yes.

  EL PAISA: I hope the SOB gets knocked down.

  GUERRILLA NUMBER TWO: I hope they waste them.

  Stansell was glad that he’d called home to Georgia that morning. He’d wanted to make sure that his two kids and his schoolteacher fiancée were awake and getting ready for school. Before he hung up, he told them that he loved them. Then he picked up the radio:

  STANSELL: Down. We are going down now.

  GONSALVES: 0152 north, 07530 west.

  STANSELL: We are going in.

  GROUND CONTROL: Mutt 01, Magic Worker … Mutt 01, Magic Worker. Say status.… Mutt 01, Magic Worker. Say status.

  As the Cessna drew a mile-wide curve on its crash-landing approach, Derek Harvey, the mission’s administrative coordinator at the American embassy in Bogotá, received Stansell’s Mayday call and communicated by radio with him as the plane descended. On board, the Cessna’s transponder relayed the same coordinates to Key West, Florida, where a Department of Defense (DOD) counternarcotics task force traced the path of the plane on a computer screen as it arced across the forest backdrop and came to an abrupt stop. After that, says Harvey, “we tried to call them on cell phones; we continued on their emergency radios. And we never heard from them.”

  From two hundred yards away, the guerrillas saw the plane crash-land, its fuselage splitting in two and its wings exploding. Inside the plane, the crew heard metal tearing away and felt an immense impact as the landing gear ripped off and the belly of the plane scraped the ground. “We were sliding and everything in my vision was bouncing,” Gonsalves wrote in the book Out of Captivity. “I saw a slit of light pour through the front of the aircraft as the cabin was torn open like a can of tuna.” The guerrillas watched as the plane continued rolling downhill, covered in a cloud of dirt and smoke, until everything suddenly stopped and all was silent. La Pilosa radioed her commander, El Paisa:

  LA PILOSA: We knocked it down!

  EL PAISA: Huh, uh-huh, son of a bitch, man, that fucking son of a bitch.

  Believing they’d shot down the plane, the guerrillas were exuberant. “When we saw the plane fall to the ground and explode, we couldn’t believe it. Many of us were unable to speak, as if we were frozen by the surprise,” says Jaison. “Then we began to celebrate like crazy, raising our weapons and shouting victory cries.” The celebration was interrupted by the commander, who shot his rifle into the air, scolding his
subordinates. “He said that we were acting like kids with a piñata, and he ordered us to start running down to the remains of the airplane to see if there were any survivors. None of us thought that anyone would be alive after such a large impact, so we hurled ourselves, stumbling down the hill, thinking that we would have to pull some bodies from the remains of the plane.” When the guerrillas came upon the wreckage, they saw one crew member emerge, then another, and then one more. To Jaison, it was like watching ghosts materialize from a cloud of dust.

  At the Larandia military base—just seventeen minutes by air from where the plane crashed—Sfc. Juan Pérez and Sfc. Bo Wynn of the U.S. Special Forces team received orders from their commander at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá to get to the helicopter fields. They hurriedly packed their SAR (search and rescue) gear—canteens, first-aid supplies, arms and ammunition, compasses, flares, radios, and GPS units—and rushed to the airfield. Special Forces commander Lt. Col. Duke Christie was aware that the Special Forces training team was not permitted to take on a rescue mission in enemy territory. “But since we had an SF capability so close by,” Christie told journalist Robert Kaplan, “I wanted to give my superiors the option of changing the ROEs [rules of engagement] for this extraordinary circumstance.” Pérez and Wynn had been training Colombian troops in antinarcotics missions and had actually been instructing the Colombians in precisely the type of SAR operation that now needed to commence.

  Minutes went by, with no movement of the Special Forces team or call to action by the U.S. military commander, Col. P. K. Keen. The delay incensed a Colombian-American veteran of the U.S. Army who worked closely with the four aboard the Cessna. “I called the MILGROUP [military advisory group] commander and said, ‘Get ’em!’ Keen could have said, ‘Here goes my career, but get them!’ There were planes and people standing beside the aircraft from the State Department; U.S. Special Forces guys were standing by, ready to give their lives.”