Hostage Nation

by Victoria Bruce

  “Immediately, the people who were with Marulanda communicated the news to the members of the Secretariat,” says Jorge Enrique Botero. The death of Marulanda was reported by Defense Minister Santos two months later. The Colombian military had intercepted several communications about Marulanda’s death, and on May 25, Santos presented the evidence in a press conference. He apparently doubted the FARC’s account that their commander had died of a heart attack. “Whether Marulanda died in an air raid or of natural causes,” Santos said, “this would be the hardest blow that this terrorist group has taken, because Tirofijo was the one who kept the criminal organization united.” The day following Marulanda’s death, the FARC Secretariat had a virtual meeting via radio to elect the commander in chief’s successor. “There was no division over the death of Marulanda,” says Botero. “They were unified. It was like, ‘Our father died, so we should unite to overcome this moment.’ The whole group agreed that Marulanda’s successor should be Secretariat member and FARC ideologue Alfonso Cano.” The new leader of the FARC would be Botero’s former friend from his days with the Juventud Comunista.

  That same month in Washington, D.C., U.S. federal prosecutor Ron McNeil began what was likely hoped to be a big publicity boon for the war on drugs in Colombia: Simón Trinidad’s drug-trafficking trial. Many court observers felt that the trial was an unnecessary waste of time and money, since Trinidad had already been convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison. Even Judge Lamberth, who had sentenced Trinidad, was indignant. At the status conference that preceded the March drug trial, Lamberth asked the prosecutor, “Will the government explain why we are doing this? In light of what happened in the previous case?” Trinidad had also already been tried for drug trafficking once before, in fall 2007. The jury deadlocked seven to five, favoring an acquittal, and the judge declared a mistrial.

  For the drug-trafficking retrial, Robert Tucker once again defended Trinidad. The government’s case was based purely on informant testimony by former guerrillas who had taken the Colombian government’s reinsertion deal. Several experts gave background evidence on drug-trafficking routes, the structure of the FARC (in which Trinidad was erroneously described as an alternate member of the seven-member Secretariat), and how cocaine is made. Of material evidence, there was none; no drugs had been seized, no telephone calls recorded. The jury deadlocked once again, and Judge Lamberth declared a mistrial. The strategy to tie a high-level FARC commander to the narco-trafficking business to justify the U.S. policy in Colombia had fallen on its face. Jury members interviewed after the trial said that they believed that the FARC were in the illegal drug business but that there was no evidence that Trinidad had anything to do with it. After spending millions of dollars on four trials and receiving only one conspiracy conviction, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly closed the case of Simón Trinidad.

  In Bogotá, Patricia Medina had accepted Stansell’s marriage proposal via a radio message. The extraordinary and romantic story was widely reported in the Colombian news and immediately reached the camp where the American hostages were being held. Stansell realized immediately that his message to Patricia must have been embellished by Luis Eladio Pérez. “When I first heard about the captive American who had proposed to his Colombian girlfriend, I was stunned,” Stansell wrote. And although Patricia’s increasingly loving messages were a great comfort, Stansell “wasn’t sure that a wedding was in our immediate future, but I was eager to see her again, and she wasn’t going to be simply a monthly notation in my checkbook—she was going to be someone I would spend significant time with.” While Medina dreamed about their future wedding, she was also deeply troubled by the chaos within the FARC ranks. “After Raúl Reyes was killed, Piedad Córdoba, the senator, came out and said that things were very difficult. She had always been very positive that the hostages would be released. But at that time, Piedad said we would have to wait to see how things would be solved, and that they were very bad.” Patricia felt conflicted between the happiness of knowing she would marry the man she loved and sadness, “because the moment that Keith would return to freedom was getting further away.”

  Three months later, in June 2008, thousands of files discovered on Raúl Reyes’s computer became another cause of FARC-inspired grief for Hugo Chávez. The Colombian National Police chief, Óscar Naranjo, reported that one document mentioned financial support to the tune of $300 million from Chávez to the FARC for the purpose of purchasing arms, and another file mentioned approximately $150,000 in the other direction, when the FARC gave money to Chávez as he vied for power in 1998. There were reportedly dozens more e-mails detailing an extensive relationship between the FARC and the Venezuelan leader. Chávez and the FARC Secretariat claimed the documents were fakes. But to make matters worse for Chávez, on Saturday, June 7, a Venezuelan National Guard officer was caught inside Colombia with forty thousand rifle cartridges that he was trying to deliver to the rebels. For Chávez (who had little popular support in his own country for his continuing dalliances in the Colombian hostage crisis), it was time to publicly and viscerally rid himself of his problematic guerrilla neighbors. On June 8, the FARC’s most valuable ally made a crushing about-face in his weekly television program, Aló Presidente: “The guerrilla war is history. At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place,” said a livid Chávez. “The time has come to free all the prisoners you have, in exchange—for nothing.”

  19

  Operación Jaque

  By June 2008, the responsibility for fifteen of the FARC’s most valuable hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell, belonged to the commander of the First Front, a guerrilla by the name of César. Because of César’s great success in military operations and his dedication to the insurgent army, the forty-nine-year-old guerrilla had risen to the prominent position of controlling a vast area of jungle within the department of Guaviare, in the northern part of the Colombian Amazon region. Not only was the massive land area a perfect hiding place for hostages because of its pure inaccessibility but, under César, it had become a pot of gold for the FARC. Adam Isacson called the area “Colombia’s coca-growing heartland.” In addition to overseeing financial matters dealing with coca production and trafficking, César, like other front commanders, was responsible for all FARC activities in his geographical area. And because of all of his responsibilities, he had little direct contact with the hostages under his command. Instead, he put them under the control of subordinate commanders. One of the most cruel of those commanders was a guerrilla named Enrique, who was in charge of Betancourt and the Americans toward the end of their captivity. Those held under Enrique were threatened with death and chained to trees and to one another. And, in a sick and degrading practice, women hostages were filmed going to the bathroom and then the videos were shown to the rank-and-file guerrillas.

  Stansell (front to back), Gonsalves, Howes, and Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the Colombian army, immediately after the men were rescued in Operación Jaque on July 2, 2008. Photo: U.S. Embassy.

  In his book Operación Jaque: La Verdadera Historia, Juan Carlos Torres describes communication between César and other guerrilla commanders. To communicate with Enrique and other subordinate commanders, César would send orders via his radio operator, a female guerrilla called India. César’s superior commander, Mono Jojoy, who was in charge of more than twenty fronts in the Eastern Bloc, would communicate with César and his other front commanders via radio operators as well. Each day, the radio operators would go on predetermined channels to hear news or orders given in FARC radio code, a complicated set of numbers and letters that, according to César, consisted of over five thousand words. Text messages on satellite phones and e-mail were also used to send messages. But FARC commanders found that communicating among themselves had become very difficult. Since the death of Raúl Reyes, which the guerrillas believed to have been the result of intelligence breaches, radio contact had been kept to a bare mini
mum. Things had been especially difficult for César and the First Front. After hostage John Pinchao escaped from captivity in May 2007, César said that the Colombian army’s manpower on the ground, in the air, and on the rivers had greatly increased. He suspected that he was surrounded by tens of thousands of Colombian troops, leaving him virtually paralyzed. He was not imagining things. By April, Álvaro Uribe had ordered the military to conduct what he termed a “cerco humanitario”—a “humanitarian cordon.” The idea was to move thousands of troops in, encircling the general area of the hostage camps, to pressure the guerrillas to turn over the hostages. On May 31, 2008, César received a decoded message from Secretariat member and military chief commander Mono Jojoy asking about the hostages: “How is la carga? [The hostages were literally referred to as “cargo.”] How are they distributed? How are the conditions to receive an international commission?” It would be an entire day before César could have his radio operator, India, reply at the designated time, “Comrade Jorge [referring to Mono Jojoy, who was also known as Jorge Briceño], saludos. La carga is good.” Then, as per her orders from César, India described the geographic locations of the three groups of hostages under César’s command. One group was near the Inírida River, by Puerto Nápoles; another was in Carurú, near the Vaupés River; and another was situated between the Jirisa and the Itilla rivers. The three groups were dispersed throughout a nearly one-hundred-mile radius because of the recent intense military pressure. If one group was attacked and the hostages were rescued or killed, César would still have the other valuable carga. A little more than a week later, on June 11, 2008, César received another message from Mono Jojoy: “Reunite all of la carga. Create all the conditions to receive an international commission in a safe place. When you are ready, send a message. Saludos, Jorge.”

  “César said that the situation didn’t seem right. It wasn’t clear at all,” says attorney Rodolfo Ríos, who briefly represented César after his capture. “They sent César a message that said, ‘Gather them in one place.’” Ríos said César didn’t like the idea. “He said, ‘But they repeated the order, and I had to carry out the order. It was an order of the Secretariat, and you just follow orders.’” César felt a little uneasy, but “he said that the radio code they used was perfect, that there was no way that it could be an imposter,” says Ríos. “Besides, the news radio had been full of reports that some sort of hostage exchange was going to take place.” In mid-June, radio broadcasts carried rumors that Betancourt and some of the other hostages might be released. In an interview with El Espectador, Luis Eladio Pérez, who had been freed in February 2008, sounded very convincing when he, too, said that a release was imminent: “Without a doubt, I think that several of the hostages are already walking toward their freedom. The country will hear news very soon.” César also understood from radio broadcasts that a meeting was in the works with delegates from France and Switzerland and the newly appointed commander in chief, Alfonso Cano. “Those media reports got César’s attention,” says Ríos. “He was very conscientious. He figured that moving the hostages was connected to this ‘international commission’ from France and Switzerland and that perhaps there would be some kind of negotiations.”

  On June 11, César received another message from Mono Jojoy: “Keep the plan secret. Do not include people who are not under your command. How is everything going? Your mission is to guarantee the life of the prisoners. We cannot commit mistakes like those of the Valle. [On June 28, 2007, eleven hostages held since 2002 had been gunned down by their captors when the guerrillas mistakenly thought they were under attack by the Colombian army.] Prepare a special meal for them the day of the visit. Have them all dressed in white T-shirts with messages about the exchange. Motivate them. Prepare a press release for this visit. Saludos, Jorge.” The following day, César sent a response through his radio operator: “Comrade Jorge, everything’s going well. We are moving slowly to guarantee the secret. In five days we will all be together and we will communicate. Saludos, César.” On June 23, 2008, César sent a message assuring Mono Jojoy that although he could feel the Colombian military’s presence in the area, all was still on track.

  While César pushed his subordinate commanders to unite the hostage groups, the captives themselves were becoming very uneasy about the impromptu march, wrote Torres. At times, the hostages were forced into boats and moved down the rivers, their bodies hidden under tarps in the stifling heat. At other times, the guerrillas would set up a temporary prison camp and wait for several days. As usual, the hostages were not given any information about why they were being moved or where they were going, but this trip seemed somehow different from the others. They had also heard the news reports that a French and a Swiss delegation might be coming to speak with Cano about a possible humanitarian exchange. Although years of lies, false hopes, and disappointments had worn away any confidence in rumors of impending releases, the hostages still felt that something big was about to happen, according to Torres. At one of the temporary camps erected in mid-June, Enrique presented the hostages with new clothes, increased their rations, and gave them special food they had not eaten in years. The hostages were suspicious of the kindness coming from this captor, who had never shown any mercy before. For days they discussed the possibilities: Would someone be released? Would a journalist come? Were they going to be transferred to another front? Would more proofs of life be filmed? Some of the hostages thought that Betancourt would be released, because the FARC had been so reviled after the release of her last proof of life that the secretariat would seek some kind of international forgiveness. The situation became all the more curious when, some days later, they arrived at a rustic house utilized by the guerrillas. According to Torres, the hostages took advantage of finally being out of the jungle to enjoy the sun. Betancourt shared stories from her new encyclopedia, which the guerrillas had recently given her after years of her begging for one. The hostages were fed a meal of meat, milk, fruit, and sweets and then were presented with new jeans and long-sleeved dress shirts. To the three Americans, the clothing was absurd. “Our new clothes consisted of cheap blue jeans, the kind we’d seen poorer Colombians wearing when they came into the city in their good clothes,” wrote Howes. “With the pants, we were handed campesino-style western dress shirts. All we needed was a straw hat and we would have looked like we’d stepped off the set of one of the Mexican B movies we’d watched on the DVD players.” Thinking that they would be dressed up to film a proof-of-life video, they all revolted. After an intense argument, during which Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes threw their clothes into a pile, Enrique angrily relented. “If you don’t want to use them, fine,” he said. “Don’t say we never gave you anything.”

  On June 24, César transmitted a message: “We already have a command at the site, and we are twenty kilometers away. All is well. Coordinates 0218113, 07203193.” On June 28, a reply arrived for César. He was informed that the Secretariat had decided to move the hostages by helicopter to meet with Alfonso Cano in the mountains of western Colombia. They also told César that he would be traveling in the helicopter with the hostages because he had been personally invited to meet with the commander in chief. “All is clandestine,” the message said. “Do not use the [satellite telephones]. Saludos, Jorge.” Torres speculated that César jumped at the chance to be recognized by Cano: “The arrogant César, like a mouse in a trap with cheese, had bitten the most tantalizing piece of all. Finally, the high commander of the FARC would recognize his work.” César’s reply to the invitation came quickly: “Agreed. Saludos, César.”

  Unfortunately for César, the message that he was to hold court with Cano—and all of the other messages that he’d received since May 31—were not from his superior commander, Mono Jojoy, or from anyone else in the FARC. Unbeknownst to César, he had been taking orders directly from the Colombian military. What neither César nor Mono Jojoy knew was that a small team of Colombian intelligence officers had intercepted their communications and broken th
eir code. The guerrillas believed that they were communicating with each other, while all the time they had been communicating directly with impersonators from the Colombian military who had learned to mimic Mono Jojoy’s and César’s radio operators’ tones and voices. In the nearby mountains, on a day when there wasn’t communication between the two camps, the team had seized the opportunity to contact César’s camp and using an impostor radio operator tell him that they would be changing the radio channel and the designated time to transmit. César obeyed the order. From then on, César’s radio operator, India, was communicating with a fake radio operator pretending to transmit messages from Mono Jojoy. Another intelligence officer impersonating India continued the usual communications with Mono Jojoy’s camp.

  The groundwork for what would become an ingenious military deception had been conceived far in advance, with an exemplary shift in the way the Colombian military began to approach their war against the FARC. In July 2006, Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s newly appointed defense minister, began to transform Colombia’s military through a combination of information sharing among the forces, a focus on military intelligence, and incentives meant to increase FARC desertions. In 2008, a Semana magazine editorial gave kudos to Santos for the successful shift: “If Plan Colombia has helped in the technological and logistical modernization of the defense sector, Santos has contributed in a significant way to modernize the thinking of the military and its war doctrine.… One of his best moves was to seek Israeli advisors who would help identify the missing link in intelligence, that is, to connect the information with tactical operations and to modernize the methods and procedures in decision making. Santos put the advice in practice with an elite group of special operations forces with the capacity to infiltrate in the jungle for weeks.” Santos also sought out advice from the British Secret Intelligence Service.