While Patricia Medina appeared in an interview for USA Today as Stansell’s grieving, pregnant girlfriend, Malia Phillips and the rest of the hostages’ family members were warned by the State Department that they should not, under any circumstances, speak to the media. A State Department counterterrorism official defended the decision: “When someone is taken hostage, it’s not our intent to make them a celebrity. The more political celebrity status they have, the more it’s likely they won’t be released.” Phillips continued to take care of Stansell’s children and was the point person for communication from the U.S. government and Northrop Grumman. Several weeks after the kidnapping, the U.S. Embassy in Colombia called Phillips and asked her for a photo of Stansell and permission to use it on a flyer that would be distributed throughout the area where the guerrillas might be holding the hostages. When Phillips asked to see one of the flyers, the embassy sent her what they had printed—a three-by-six-inch piece of flimsy paper offering up to one million pesos ($345,000). “I was expecting a flyer with their pictures,” says Phillips. Instead, the flyer was a sort of a “live the good life” offer for a campesino who could give information leading to a rescue. Rather than showing photos of Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes, the flyers had grainy pictures of a horse, a jeep, and some cows. “I was none too pleased,” says Phillips. “I was like, You’ve got to be kidding.”
While Phillips continued to adhere to the State Department gag order, Jo Rosano, the mother of Marc Gonsalves, spoke to any media outlet that would cover the story. Rosano begged the FARC to release the hostages, and she blasted George W. Bush and Álvaro Uribe for refusing to do anything to facilitate her son’s release. Although she took heat from Gonsalves’s wife and his father (her ex-husband), as well as those at Northrop Grumman, the FBI, and the State Department, all of whom told her that she was doing more harm than good, Rosano would remain vocal throughout the entire ordeal of her son’s kidnapping. Even though Gary Noesner, Northrop Grumman’s security consultant, worried that her off-script rants might complicate the situation, the former FBI boss couldn’t help but admire her, and he believed that her actions might have a positive impact on the case. “To some extent, she was keeping the situation in the spotlight,” he says. But because Rosano was not considered “next of kin,” Northrop Grumman and the U.S. agencies did not keep her as informed as they did Gonsalves’s wife. “Jo’s frustrations led her to be more vocally critical of the government,” says Noesner, who believed that because there was no pressure at all from the other family members or the media, the government was basically allowed to ignore the hostage crisis. “So to some extent Jo’s actions did do something; when she spoke out, the government had to pay attention.”
Each week, Howes’s and Gonsalves’s wives and Stansell’s fiancée got calls from the State Department. But each call was the same, and there was never anything new to report. Some family members began to wonder if the U.S. government was actually doing anything to get the hostages out. “Every time it’s the same,” says Shane Gonsalves, who was in regular contact with Mariana Howes and Malia Phillips. “You don’t have nothing to tell me because you haven’t done nothing. So I’ve already caught on to that. And that’s bull. Hey, sorry your husband’s there. My condolences there. Have a nice life.” Lead FBI negotiator Chris Voss was not surprised by the families’ bitter frustration. There were too many agencies involved. Most were not communicating or sharing information, and Voss likened the situation to “herding cats.” Calls to the families came from State Department representatives, from the FBI, Control Risks, and Northrop Grumman, and often from multiple parties within each organization. “So that creates problems in the process,” says Voss, “especially in a kidnapping whose scope was as huge as this one. Your family contact is going to call you up, angry because they heard something different than what you said from the other FBI person, and that just goes with the territory. You are going to become a punching bag at some point in the game.”
What was worse than the seeming inaction and disorganization of the government agencies was the strong public statement by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, which came shortly after the kidnapping and made the families believe that the situation was hopeless: “There will not be any negotiation in exchange for the hostages’ freedom.” It was an incredibly perturbing statement to Voss. “And how absurd is that, saying we don’t negotiate with terrorists? The policy is not that we won’t negotiate with terrorists; it’s that we won’t make concessions to terrorists,” says Voss. “So first of all, you have to equate negotiation to communication. We got to the point where we were tired of saying, ‘That’s not the policy; this is the policy.’ I can give it to you in black and white, and it’s actually signed by the president [George W. Bush], who keeps saying publicly, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ He’s the guy who personally signed the document [NSPD-12] that clearly says, ‘We will communicate with anyone who’s kidnapped an American.’”
The Bush administration’s hard-line policy infuriated Gary Noesner, as well. The lifelong Republican despised the government’s handling of the case. In addition to refusing to negotiate, the U.S. government seemed to be doing all it could to prevent Northrop Grumman from helping in any way. The company was originally told that any ransom paid would be considered support to a known terrorist organization. When it was apparent that there would not be a monetary demand, Northrop decided to put together some “humanitarian” packages for each hostage, containing some clothes, eyeglasses, reading material, and medications. The hope was to send these items in through an intermediary. “In the spirit of cooperation, Northrop Grumman advised the U.S. government of this and asked if there were any objections,” says Noesner. (With between three and five billion dollars in annual contracts, Northrop Grumman could do little without the blessing of the government.) “Someone at DOJ came back and indicated that any such comfort items sent in to the FARC could actually be used by the FARC guys themselves, and therefore this could be a violation of the provision against providing material support to terrorism. As crazy and stupid as this argument sounds, it actually created quite a problem.” Eventually, Noesner was able to leverage his FBI and State Department contacts to overrule the DOJ’s objection, and Northrop Grumman was given permission to send in the items. “We later learned the items never made it in to the guys,” Noesner says. “The items weren’t diverted by the FARC; rather, the intermediary was told that the guerrillas wouldn’t accept them.”
The U.S. position not to negotiate with the FARC was echoed by Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, and the only option either government would consider was a military rescue. “We’re using intelligence, we’re using troops, we’re using all the equipment and all the men that we can provide to look for them, and to see if we can be able to rescue them,” said Colombian vice president Francisco Santos six months after their capture. “Although it’s a difficult operation, and we’d have to take all the precautions so that they will be able to be rescued alive.” (Santos had been kidnapped by members of the Medellín cartel in 1990 and released through negotiations between the government and the cartel.) In May 2003, Uribe got word from Colombian military intelligence agents that they had located a camp where another group of political prisoners was being held. He approved a rescue operation. Hearing approaching helicopters, the guerrillas shot all of the hostages multiple times, including a well-loved governor and former cabinet minister held captive for over a year. Army troops arriving on the scene discovered three hostages in a bloody heap of corpses and found they were still breathing. The camp had been swiftly abandoned, and no guerrillas were found or captured. Even after the debacle, the U.S. government refused to contemplate negotiating with the FARC for the release of Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes and demanded that Colombian forces move forward with plans for a military rescue.
The case turned politically cold, and there seemed to be no hurry or reason for Northrop Grumman to investigate the actual cause of the Cessna crash
. In fact, there was no mandate for military contractors to report or investigate mishaps, even in the case of plane crashes or fatalities. However, because the intelligence equipment aboard the plane belonged to the Department of Defense, the U.S. military would eventually require a crash investigation. Almost a month after the engine was taken from the crash site to Bogotá, CMS site manager Steve McCune requested that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) come and collect the destroyed engine. But NTSB officers refused to go to Colombia to collect the wreckage because, they told those at the airport, Colombia was “too dangerous.” Finally, the engine was shipped out on March 11, 2003, and taken to Patrick Air Force Base, in Florida, where it was determined that there were internal mechanical problems with the engine. The formal crash report, issued later by the U.S. Navy, would offer more insight into the cause of the crash and the overall failure of the SRS mission:
Evidence suggests that some or all of the aircrews who operated the mishap aircraft prior to the accident routinely did so while operating the aircraft engine beyond pilot operating handbook limitations suggested by the aircraft manufacturer. While extremely difficult to quantify the extent of such engine operation out of limits, the evidence and available data demonstrate a pattern of metallurgical distress caused by over temp condition in other engines of aircraft operated by the SRS contractor pilots.
According to the report, Northrop Grumman refused to give navy crash investigators information on how the SRS missions were handled, but the report concluded:
The [SRS] contract failed to establish an adequate means to ensure quality control of the contractor’s method of performance. Lessons learned from this mishap point toward a general failure of the contractor organization, apparently at all echelons, to establish internal standards and controls adequate to effectively manage all aspects of the SRS program within its contract mandate.
Toward the end of March 2003, the Colombian military still had not found any trace of the Americans. From Monkey Camp, Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes were moved about half a mile away to a more permanent hostage compound that had been hastily constructed. The men were being held within the borders of the FARC’s Eastern Bloc (in southern Colombia), the strongest military faction of the guerrillas commanded by Secretariat member Mono Jojoy. While most of the FARC high commanders dedicated a large part of their time to writing and reading, El Mono (a Colombian epithet used to refer to a person with light hair and skin color)—as everyone in the FARC called him—moved constantly throughout the jungle. He almost never slept in the same place and was always exploring ways to escape from the enemy. His troops admired him—many even revered him—but they also feared him. (The Colombian government and the media described him as the “military leader” of the FARC, but the FARC denied that there was any differentiation between military and political leaders.)
Mono Jojoy had been responsible for the FARC’s most resounding military victories, including the massive attacks in the late 1990s, which left 250 soldiers dead and 500 as prisoners. On August 7, 2002, he planned and directed the mortar attack against the Casa de Nariño (the Presidential Palace) the day of Álvaro Uribe’s presidential inauguration, and the prosecutor general accused him of carrying out the attack on the exclusive and elegant Bogotá club, El Nogal, which left thirty-five dead and hundreds injured. Mono Jojoy was also accustomed to dealing with the FARC’s highest-profile hostages, and he was referred to as the “jailer” of the FARC. Already under his command were more than forty-five military and National Police officers and Colombian politicians, some of whom had been held for up to five years. He also held Ingrid Betancourt, whose yearlong captivity had turned her into an international celebrity and a tragic symbol of the dysfunctional nature of Colombia.
The Eastern Bloc’s success had come with a price: Mono Jojoy and his men were bearing the brunt of Plan Colombia and a tremendously improved Colombian military. By 2002, thousands of Colombian troops surrounded many of Mono Jojoy’s strategic positions. His troops were in constant battles with army forces. The high commander himself was a wanted man with a bounty on his head, and it was not only Colombian forces who were tracking him down; there were Americans looking for him, as well. After the crash of the Cessna, the guerrillas had intercepted the SRS mission orders that Marc Gonsalves had tried desperately to destroy. Their target that day had included intelligence on top FARC commanders.
In what they referred to as “New Camp,” Gonsalves and Stansell were locked in six-foot-square wooden boxes, which the men thought must have been built originally as storage containers. Howes was given a larger bungalow, similar to the one the three of them had been in at Monkey Camp. The first night, when Howes heard the clank of chains as the guerrillas locked him inside, he was racked by terrible guilt that the other two men were in far worse conditions, and he suffered a debilitating breakdown. Stansell could not lie down in his cell, and Gonsalves got to a point where he couldn’t even lift his head. But worse than the physical pain was the psychological isolation that the men felt because they had been forbidden to speak to one another. The captors were sure that if they could talk among themselves, the Americans could figure out where they were and formulate an escape plan. Three or four days into their stay at New Camp, Howes was emotionally falling apart and doubting his ability to live through their ordeal. It was then that Stansell dropped a note on the ground near him. Howes wrote, “I unfolded it and read ‘We are not forgotten. People are looking for us. One day at a time. We will go home.’”
11
The Second Crash
Routine surveillance missions were briefly halted to wait for the results of an investigation into the February 13 crash, but many agencies depended on CMS’s surveillance for their counternarcotics operations. Within four weeks, SOUTHCOM gave the go-ahead for the CMS pilots and crew to restart operations. They were to fly in the same model Cessna Caravan—the only remaining plane leased by CMS for the SRS contract—which had recently been in the United States for repairs. Not only were the contractors ordered to work the drug and guerrilla recon missions; they would also fly night missions to search for their missing friends.
Pilot Tommy Schmidt and assistant site manager Ralph Ponticelli—two of the remaining CMS employees—were close friends of Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes and were devastated by their capture. Both were ex-military men—Schmidt had flown night missions in Vietnam and was shot down and rescued five times. Ponticelli had been captured during the invasion of Panama and subsequently rescued by U.S. Special Forces. Although Schmidt had given notice just before the February 13 crash that he would be leaving the job, both he and Ponticelli lived by the motto Leave No Man Behind, and they felt compelled to remain in Colombia until their friends were released or rescued.
Employees of California Microwave Systems in 2002: pilot Thomas Howes (standing second from left) and systems analyst Keith Stansell (standing fifth from left), held hostage from February 13, 2003, to July 2, 2008; pilot Tommy Janis (standing seventh from left), killed by FARC guerrillas after the February 13, 2003, crash; assistant site manager Ralph Ponticelli (standing third from left) and pilot Tommy Schmidt (kneeling third from left), killed in the March 25, 2003, crash; site manager Lawrence “Steve” McCune (standing at far left). Photo: Government exhibit, U.S. v. Simón Trinidad, 04-232.
The SRS missions resumed on March 11, but there was ambiguity about what company the men were actually flying the missions for. This uncertainty was due to the fact that eleven days after the crash and kidnapping of Stansell, Howes, and Gonsalves, Northrop Grumman had shed the SRS contract, dissolved CMS, and handed all assets and personnel to a successor company called CIAO, Inc. The hastily formed company would essentially take over the contract, and the remaining CMS crew members in Bogotá were told that they would be transferred to the new corporation. “The name CIAO was thought up by [site manager] Steve McCune, who thought the acronym would be funny and [that he’d] finally be able to call himself a ‘CIA operative.’ To every
one else, he would say that the name was Italian for ‘good-bye,’” said Sharon Schmidt in 2004, who was living with her husband, Tommy, in Bogotá. Sharon was incensed by McCune’s foolhardy choice, especially since being thought of as a CIA operative in Colombia was a very dangerous thing. Tom Cash, a former regional DEA chief in Miami, agreed with Schmidt in an interview with the Times-Picayune. “Can you imagine any more absurd acronym in Colombia than to call something CIAO? Wouldn’t that be a Kmart blue-light special, a luggage tag that says, ‘Kidnap me’? If it were known they were working for the CIA or connected with it, it would be very dangerous for everyone involved.” The California Microwave Systems owners and managers were shuffled around and some new names were added to formal documents, but the new company was essentially made up of all the same players.
At Ponticelli’s apartment, the remaining crew held a small get-together that was sort of a memorial service for Tom Janis. Sharon Schmidt remembers that her husband and the other contractors discussed the possible change to the new company. “They had agreed that if this CIAO got approved, the single-engine plane was going to be based in Cartagena and only fly over the northern parts of Colombia, where they could make forced landings—that it wouldn’t fly in the south anymore.” According to Schmidt, CMS owners had been planning to replace the Cessnas with twin-engine King Caravans for the SRS program. “And they would just have to cancel the missions in the south until they got the twin-engine plane ready.”
Hostage Nation Page 13