Hostage Nation

by Victoria Bruce

  “What has worked against the FARC the best has been encouraging the demobilization of rank and file guerrillas and actually using people in intelligence to find and pressure the leaders,” said Adam Isacson. “Instead of these massive, scorched earth, 18,000 troops-in-the-jungle offensives, are these smaller, cheaper efforts. In the last year or two, as far as counterinsurgency goes, the Colombians have done way better than anything the United States has tried in Iraq or Afghanistan. Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos has been pushing for this. And this is the stuff that’s yielding the most results.” In fact, on February 16, 2008, a superclandestine Colombian commando team specially trained to remain unsupported for a month in the jungle would actually see Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes and several other hostages bathing in a river in the department of Guaviare. Juan Carlos Torres wrote in Operación Jaque that after four days, the guerrillas moved the hostages out of the area and the troops lost their trail. (It was rumored that U.S. Special Forces troops were also involved in the mission. However, a source inside SOUTHCOM says that there were never any American troops on the ground.)

  When it came to figuring out creative ways to beat the enemy, Santos gave those under his command a wide berth. He was very fond of a line that he recited to his intelligence troops over and over: “Think the unthinkable.” The midlevel intelligence officers took Santos at his word, and their out-of-the-box thinking resulted in an idea that would morph into Operación Jaque (Operation Check, as in chess). The idea was to corner the FARC hostage captors through a series of subversive moves. It was fervently hoped that the guerrillas would release the hostages, believing this was a legitimate handover sanctioned by the Secretariat. And to do so, the mission would be made to look nearly identical to the operation that freed Clara Rojas and Consuelo González de Perdomo. By June 29, 2008, the highly secretive military operation, under the guise of an international humanitarian organization, neared its D-day. In an office building in Bogotá, Misión Humanitaria Internacional prepared for the ultimate ruse. A group of intelligence officers pored over images from the previous two Venezuelan-led humanitarian missions. The Colombian team consisted of majors, lieutenants, a military medic, a nurse who had no former military intelligence experience, and a former guerrilla who had deserted from the FARC many years earlier. They prepared for their roles as sloppily dressed and whiskered humanitarian workers, members of a pushy Venezuelan television crew, an Italian delegation leader, an Arab Red Cross worker, an Australian with bleached-blond hair who spoke no Spanish, a doctor, three nurses, and two guerrillas. In the weeks leading up to the operation, each of the participants developed his or her character by creating false life histories. They changed physical characteristics such as hair color and facial hair, found the best costumes and props, developed foreign accents, and erased all traces of military training from their speech and physical demeanor. The team members also took a crash course in acting and improvisation at a Bogotá drama school. On the Tolemaida military base, four helicopter pilots and four crew members were instructed that they were to prepare to play the roles of civilians in a special humanitarian mission, but they were told nothing more. Within three days, the exteriors of two Russian Mi-17 military helicopters morphed into replicas of those used in the earlier Hugo Chávez-sponsored missions: a shiny white exterior with bright orange trim and the logo of the imaginary humanitarian organization.

  On June 29, the fake Mono Jojoy radio operator sent César another message: “Wednesday at eight o’clock in the morning, await communication as the situation develops in the same coordinates that you had established on the twenty-fourth. A cameraman will come.… Coordinate with the helicopters on VHF in the frequency 174300. Extreme security measures and only what is necessary. Saludos, Jorge.”

  Since the kidnapping of Howes, Stansell, and Gonsalves, President Uribe had promised the U.S. government that he would seek its approval prior to any military rescue. At first, some of the mission organizers considered it unnecessary to inform the United States of the top secret mission, since it deviated from a typical combat rescue operation and the team did not plan to use weapons of any kind. But in mid-June, members of the U.S. military in Colombia (who, under Plan Colombia, worked to collect intelligence on the FARC) intercepted messages between César and his subordinates. On June 17, the Americans asked Colombian army officials if they knew anything about César’s movements of the hostages. They received no response. “But the questions didn’t stop,” wrote Torres. “The gringos knew that something was cooking in the jungle and they wouldn’t drop the subject.” Defense Minister Santos became concerned that the Americans might unintentionally sabotage the operation during their own intelligence gathering. On June 18, when Santos finally told President Uribe of the pending mission, Uribe insisted the details should be shared with the Americans.

  Upon hearing the plan, William Brownfield, the U.S. ambassador, who had been posted in Colombia since September 2007, was concerned. He had been much more interested in finding a less risky solution than a rescue. At the February 2008 meeting with Northrop Grumman, Brownfield had assured the hostages’ families that he would do anything he could to ensure the men’s safe return—including going beyond the bounds of what the U.S. government would publicly sanction. But after learning the details of Operación Jaque and securing permission from Washington to go ahead, Brownfield agreed to the mission. “We took a deep breath,” he told The Washington Post, “and said, ‘Proceed.’”

  The Americans offered technical support for the operation, and a team of embassy personnel (who’d been working on plans for recovery and reintegration of the hostages since March 2004) prepared for the possibility of a rescue. A video recorded by the Colombian military documenting the mission shows three men who appear to be American civilian contractors installing communications equipment in the helicopter crews’ helmets. Another microphone placed in the video camera of the “Venezuelan cameraman” would permit the pilots to listen to everything that was happening on the ground. If something went awry, plan B would come into play. The helicopter crew would call to nearby army, navy, air force, and National Police troops, who would surround the area and pressure César to negotiate. It was hardly an ideal plan, and one with very little possibility of success. No one wanted plan B to be implemented.

  The Operación Jaque helicopter was scheduled to depart from the Tolemaida military base on July 2, but a forecast of stormy weather caused the team to move the helicopters from Bogotá over the Eastern Cordillera a day earlier to a remote, carefully chosen campesino ranch in the department of Meta, in central Colombia. A final send-off from Gen. Mario Montoya, the Colombian army commander who’d overseen the entire operation, encouraged the team. Torres wrote that although all of the team members were committed wholeheartedly to the mission, they couldn’t help but worry that they, too, might end up as hostages of the FARC, or be killed if the operation was compromised. The helicopters carrying the eleven-member “commission” and eight-person flight crew lifted off and flew into the thin air above the mountain range. After landing in a clearing near the farmhouse, the team quickly covered the helicopters with camouflage green tarps. They ate a dinner of roast chicken and beef, chatted with the campesino family that lived in the house, reviewed their roles over and over in their heads, and fought off an army of mosquitoes the likes of which they’d never seen. Less than one hundred miles away, Betancourt, Howes, Gonsalves, Stansell, and the other hostages spent the night together in a large room of what one of the guerrillas had told Stansell was an old whorehouse. Lying on mattresses for the first time in a long while and listening to the radio, the hostages pondered what was to come. “Until well past dark,” Stansell wrote, “we chattered excitedly like kids at a sleepover.”

  A little before midnight, the Operación Jaque team members were falling asleep when a Black Hawk helicopter noisily arrived. Its crew had special instructions for the group. Less than twenty-four hours before the mission was to commence, César had sent a
message requesting that a total of six guerrillas accompany the hostages to what he thought would be Alfonso Cano’s camp. The Operación Jaque mission commanders were worried that without weapons in the helicopters, the situation could turn ugly and the six guerrillas might overtake them. The team decided that to prevent César from being able to take the others on board, only one of the helicopters would land. With a maximum capacity of thirty, there would be room only for César, one of his subordinate commanders, the nine team members, the four crew members, and the fifteen hostages.

  The unexpected change turned out to be fortuitous. The second helicopter would hover above the site, and in the case of clouds or bad weather, it would provide a clear communication link from the helicopter on the ground to a U.S. platform airplane monitoring from forty miles away. A Colombian military source who was part of the mission says that the helicopter pilots were to speak in code because the FARC would almost certainly be listening to their communications. “The second helicopter was also important to ensure the deception,” says the source. “Because in the other liberations, there were always two helicopters, and the terrorists were expecting two helicopters.”

  Skies were clear on the morning of July 2, but the Operación Jaque team knew that at any moment, a procession of black clouds could obscure the landscape. They ate breakfast and received orders to prepare. The mission would begin in a few hours, and although they had rehearsed every step again and again, a frantic atmosphere pervaded their preparations. All dressed in the clothing of their respective role: Pilots donned matching beige jumpsuits; “delegates” wore vests with the Misión Humanitaria Internacional logo on the back; the “journalist” and “cameraman” wore red T-shirts and black vests adorned with the logo of Hugo Chávez’s television network, Telesur; the “guerrillas” dressed in black T-shirts emblazoned with the popular revolutionary image of Che Guevara; and the “Arab delegate” wore a Red Cross bib over his shirt. (After the mission, the use of the Red Cross symbol in a military operation elicited criticism from some humanitarian organizations.)

  The morning began stressfully for the Colombian intelligence agents, who were stationed on a mountain post, impersonating the guerrilla radio operators. Because of interference caused by bad weather, a final message to César was significantly delayed. Finally, the message reached him. “The head of the commission is a Señor José Luis Russi.… La carga should go tied up. We are waiting here for you to tell us when they arrive. Saludos, Jorge.” At 12:30 p.m., the team received word; they peeled tarps off the helicopters, loaded in, and the operation took off.

  Nearly forty-five minutes later, among acres of waist-high coca bushes, the hostages waited with great speculation. Earlier that day, Betancourt had heard that the hostages were going to be taken to another front. One of the hostages mentioned to Betancourt that they should hijack the helicopter to avoid being taken to another hostage camp, after which Betancourt secretly handed him her scissors and nail clippers. Once again, the guerrillas gave the hostages new clothes—T-shirts that said, ¡SÍ AL ACUERDO HUMANITARIO!—YES TO THE HUMANITARIAN EXCHANGE! Again, they refused to wear them.

  As the helicopters approached, the hostages became even more unnerved because the guerrillas forced them to hurry toward the helicopters, while for so many years they’d been made to run and hide when they’d heard any aircraft overhead. “Keith and I stood frozen, weighing our options. Nearly everything in me said to run, but something held me back,” wrote Gonsalves. “Maybe it was just the idea that as far as we knew, the FARC had no helicopters. Whoever was coming in would likely be better than the guerrillas.”

  As the Operación Jaque team hovered above the scene, there was a moment of panic with the mission crew, as well. All of the hostages were supposed to be in white T-shirts so that they could be easily identified, which is why they had ordered César to have the shirts made and to have the hostages wear them. Now, from above, the mission commanders couldn’t even tell if there were hostages on the ground. Torres wrote that the helicopters made three circles and called by radio to the guerrillas, who were supposed to give them an okay to land, but they couldn’t raise the guerrillas on the radio. With great trepidation, the Misión Humanitaria Internacional team decided to land.

  The helicopter carrying the crew touched down at 1:15 p.m., while the second helicopter hovered a few thousand feet above. Dozens of armed guerrilla troops stood threateningly in two rows and watched with interest as the people dressed as humanitarian workers and Telesur journalists began to disembark. César and Enrique, who were dressed in civilian clothes, carefully approached the strange-looking foreigners, but they relaxed when they saw two “guerrillas” in Che Guevara T-shirts who addressed them with a common guerrilla greeting: “What’s up, comrade?” César also felt confident, he said later, “because the helicopters looked just like those used when the Venezuelan commissions came to pick up the other hostages.” As soon as they were off the aircraft, the “Telesur” team approached César for an interview. He relaxed, thinking he recognized one of the journalists as the person who had covered hostage releases in the past. “I thought he was the journalist that wrote a book about the guerrillas, Jorge Enrique Botero. And when I saw him, he looked just like the journalist, so I felt confident.” In his best impersonation of a pushy television reporter, one of the creators of Operación Jaque went immediately to César and said, “Can we ask you just one question?” César protested. In the scene being shot by the imposter cameraman (the entire mission was actually being recorded and the video was later released by the authorities), César says coyly, “It’s not my place to make statements. No, we will talk in the helicopter.” The video shows César with a wide grin that exposes a row of perfect white teeth under a thick black mustache. The guerrilla commander didn’t seem at all nervous: he just appeared tickled to be the star of the show. The fake reporter kept insisting, “Just one question. Just one question.” César again said that he didn’t want to give an interview. Then he told the person he thought was the delegation leader to bring the humanitarian team inside one of the houses to have a drink. The leader was thinking of how to handle César’s invitation, knowing that it could put them in a dangerous position, when India, César’s radio operator, came running with an urgent message, which she said was from Mono Jojoy: They had to get the helicopters and hostages out immediately. The men pretending to be the reporter and the cameraman distracted the guerrilla troops with their filming while the remaining participants talked with the hostages and tried to get them ready to board the helicopter. But convincing the hostages to go with this strange crowd was not as easy as the team had anticipated. The hostages, having been hardened by all of the FARC’s games, did not want to go, especially when the supposed humanitarian workers said that they were going to have to handcuff them before they got on the helicopter, something that concerned the guerrillas as well. “That got César’s attention,” says attorney Rodolfo Ríos. “He said, ‘Why do the members of the Cruz Roja Internacional [International Red Cross] have to tie them?’ He asked one of the foreigners, ‘What’s going on here? Why do they tie their hands?’ Then the foreigner told him, ‘This is the routine procedure of the humanitarian action.’ So César said, ‘Oh, okay, then.’”

  The man pretending to be the Australian delegate tried to move the Americans away from the others so he could speak to Howes in English. “Are you U.S. Army?” Howes asked the blond man with the strange accent. The man knew that what he was about to say could jeopardize the entire mission, but he knew if he didn’t act quickly, the Americans would refuse to get on the plane, so he answered in a whisper, “We’re Colombian army.” Immediately and loudly, Howes said, “Okay, we’re going,” and agreed to be handcuffed with the plastic ties. Stansell wrote: “I could hear Tom’s voice above the engine noise: ‘Everyone just be calm and cooperate. This is just a precaution. Get in the helo quickly so that it doesn’t burn too much fuel.’” The video shows the team’s “nurse” and some guerrillas sec
uring the hostages’ wrists with plastic zip ties—a necessary precaution they’d decided on to prevent the hostages from making an attempt to take down the helicopter before the rescuers could reveal who they were.

  Inter Press Service reported that at first César protested leaving his guerrilla unit and wanted another guerrilla to go in his place. But the two “guerrillas” with the mission reassured him that Alfonso Cano needed him: “Okay, Commander, the idea is that you come with us; you are in charge. You are the person that the superiors need. The Secretariat needs to talk to you.” It was apparent that César had chosen his second in command, Enrique, to accompany him on the trip. As the two boarded the helicopter, the crew members knew that the guerrillas were always armed and that it would be imperative to take their guns away. “You can’t bring any weapons in the helicopter. This is a humanitarian action,” one of the crew said, pointing at a sign that had just been made days before showing a machine gun in a red circle with a line through it. “You have to leave your guns.… Give them to us. The pilot will keep them.” Enrique reluctantly handed over his 9mm pistol. César removed a weapon from his backpack and relinquished it to the crew. Just before departing, a member of the crew stepped out of the plane and set two cases of beer on the ground as a gift for César’s troops, who stood watching. Moments later, the helicopter lifted off. The entire mission on the ground had lasted only twenty-two minutes.