Hostage Nation

by Victoria Bruce

  One of the guerrillas was videotaping as the helicopter flew overhead, carrying their commanders, César and Enrique, to what they believed would be a meeting with FARC high commander Alfonso Cano. On the video, one guerrilla, seemingly unconcerned that anything is awry, remarks, “The comrades have left, man.” The video (which was later obtained and broadcast by an independent Colombian television station) shows the conversation quickly turning to the cases of beer left by the fake aid workers. A female voice off camera happily says, “You know what he said to me, the guy from the Red Cross? He said, ‘Take this as a little gift. Good-bye, comrades!’”

  Almost immediately after the helicopter lifted off, one of the team members grabbed César in a choke hold and repeatedly slammed his head into the fuselage. César, fighting him off, tried to get up. “César was hoping to rush the cockpit, tackle the pilot, and make the plane crash,” says Rodolfo Ríos. “And at that moment they started hitting him. He was knocked out by a slew of fists from the crew.” Gonsalves was sitting directly across from César with his hands and feet bound. “I did notice that Keith had broken his binds off,” Gonsalves told CNN, “and all I saw was a scuffle right next to Keith.… I got up, tried to get up to get to Keith because the scuffle was right next to him, and I wanted to try to keep him out of it … in the chaos and excitement, I couldn’t move, I was tied.” Several of the hostages, including Stansell, joined the melee and attacked César, while Enrique was subdued in the front of the aircraft. The man playing the part of the doctor grabbed a hypodermic needle and jabbed it into César, who was unconscious seconds later. “One of the aid workers grabbed me, kind of put his arms around me and put me down, and he said, ‘We are army. We are army.’ And that’s when I found out I was free,” said Gonsalves.

  All of the hostages reacted with euphoria and disbelief. “It was like somebody just released from a tar pit,” said Thomas Howes. “You’re just suddenly free. I was dazed by it. The second thing I thought was, Man, I’m in a Russian helicopter. I hope this damned thing doesn’t crash, because I want to make it through to enjoy this freedom.” For a moment, Gonsalves thought he was dreaming because he’d dreamed of freedom so many times. “And to think that, to actually think that it was going to happen, it was difficult to take it in.” There were exclamations of joy, euphoric shouts, hugs, laughter, and sobs. Betancourt was afraid the helicopter would crash from all the jubilant jumping up and down, and she tried in vain to calm the others, “Be still! Calm down! Sit down!” she yelled at them, praying to God that they wouldn’t fall from the sky.

  An hour later, the helicopter landed at the military base in San José del Guaviare. The mission team members jumped off the helicopter as a jubilant General Montoya, the commander of the army, hugged each of them as they ran from the helicopter to an awaiting plane. “Mama, I’m alive! I’m free! Mama, the army rescued me,” said Betancourt, speaking to her mother by phone for the first time in nearly six and half years. Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes were immediately flown to Bogotá and welcomed by Ambassador Brownfield and a group of U.S. military personnel, contractors, and intelligence people before being transferred to a U.S. Air Force C-17. Several hours later, they headed to Lackland Air Force Base, in Texas, and then were transferred in a Black Hawk helicopter to the Brooke Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, where they were to be “reintegrated” with their families. The newly freed Colombians headed to Bogotá and stepped off the plane to be enveloped by their family members amid the collective euphoria of millions of Colombians who followed every detail of their homecoming by radio and television. “Thank you, Colombia! Welcome to freedom!” shouted one of the newly freed hostages to an ecstatic crowd of well-wishers and members of the media.

  One of the few Colombian journalists who missed the celebration was Jorge Enrique Botero. The previous day, on July 1, Botero was in the United States, where he’d had the second of what he believed would be several meetings with New Mexico’s governor, Bill Richardson. Richardson had already met with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and expressed interest in helping find ways to achieve a diplomatic solution to the hostage crisis. Botero was thrilled because Richardson was by far the highest-profile politician to show a real interest in the case, and obviously a heavy hitter in international diplomacy. In fact, Richardson’s Web site for his presidential campaign offered a publicity page touting his prowess in the field of hostage crises: “Bill has gone toe-to-toe with some of the world’s toughest characters—Saddam Hussein, North Korean generals, Burmese military leaders, Sudanese President al-Bashir and Fidel Castro—to name a few. Presidents, Secretaries of State, and Prime Ministers soon came to know Bill as the go-to guy for tough hostage negotiations.” Botero figured if Richardson had dealt with Saddam Hussein, he would have no problem with the FARC Secretariat. “I asked if he would be open to having a meeting with the guerrillas, and he said he would,” says Botero. “He said that Tom, Marc, and Keith were his countrymen, that he had done this in other countries, and that he was ready to go to Colombia.”

  On his way back to Washington, D.C., the following day, Botero got a glimpse of a news report on one of the airport television monitors. “I thought, What is this? What is this? Ingrid Betancourt with [Minister of Defense] Juan Manuel Santos? How strange.” Botero thought he was watching archival footage, since there was no sound on the television monitor, so he boarded his flight without knowing what had happened. When he landed, he was greeted by a colleague who informed him of the rescue. To Botero, the feeling was surreal. “Imagine it; I had been following this topic for so many years. I felt happiness, of course—that was my first sensation—that more people recovered their freedom, but I was also beside myself for not being in Colombia.” That night, Botero kept a planned dinner meeting with Gary Noesner. The two men had initially planned to meet and discuss new strategies for the case. Instead, they celebrated. “I remember that we were all very happy. We cheered, celebrated,” says Botero. The two men spent the evening speculating about how the rescue had been pulled off. Noesner was absolutely positive that someone—a guerrilla on the inside—must have been paid off. Botero was not so sure. For Noesner, the longest hostage case he had ever worked on had finally come to a flawless ending. “Gary was euphoric,” says Botero, “as if a nightmare he had lived with for so many years had finally vanished.”

  Earlier that same afternoon, the two guerrilla commanders who had inadvertently lost their freedom by stepping onto a Colombian army helicopter sat on the grass, back-to-back in their underwear, coming out of a drug-induced haze. César told attorney Rodolfo Ríos that when he awoke, “he tried to understand what was happening, but he was very groggy, and he was a beaten mess.” The military commander at the campesino ranch from which the team had departed that morning ordered the zip ties to be removed from César’s and Enrique’s feet. “I asked them how they felt, and they said that they were tricked,” says the commander. “César told me that he really swallowed the story. He and Enrique looked like two people who were totally deceived.”

  The stunningly flawless rescue operation caused much speculation in the days, weeks, and months that followed. No one could quite understand how it had been pulled off—including the two guerrillas who sat in a Colombian jail, having already been indicted by the United States. In the jungle, the FARC Secretariat, enraged by their stunning loss at the hands of the military, immediately released an official statement condemning César and Enrique for treason: “The escape of the 15 prisoners of war last Wednesday, July 2, was the direct result of the despicable conduct of (Gerardo Aguilar) ‘César’ and (Alexander Farfán) ‘Enrique,’ who betrayed their revolutionary principles and the confidence placed in them.”

  When defense attorney Rodolfo Ríos came to meet César with the idea of possibly handling his case, he brought a copy of the FARC communiqué. “I noticed that he was so sad. He felt a lot of pain when the FARC made those comments,” Ríos says. “He stood up and told me, ‘I want you to tell the comrade
s of the FARC, I want you to tell the Colombian Communists and the world, through the media, that I’m a complete revolutionary. I am a convinced Communist. I am a man who’s not easily fooled. And I have not betrayed the FARC.’ He was trembling and tears almost appeared in his eyes. He said, ‘Look, I am a guerrilla fighter, I am an ideologue, I am a politician of the FARC. Not yesterday, nor today, nor ever will I give up the FARC, nor will I give up the political fight.’”

  20

  Reintegration

  On July 7, 2008, after five days as part of a reintegration program run by the U.S. military, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes emerged in front of a packed crowd of journalists and soldiers at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Bright yellow bows decorated each isle and the podium at the center of the auditorium stage. At the press conference, which had been dubbed a “yellow ribbon ceremony” by the military brass, Gonsalves stood flanked by Stansell and Howes and proudly held up a small American flag. In the first three rows, several dozen soldiers dressed in desert fatigues cheered and applauded. The tall, graying Stansell, although much thinner than before his capture, was still a remarkable presence. Turning around and pointing to an enormous flag behind him and choking back emotion, Stansell addressed the audience of soldiers, journalists, and the men’s family members and began by thanking the United States of America, “who never forgot me, never.” Reporters in the audience scribbled notes and took photos. A dozen television cameras lined the back of the room. Several journalists who had learned about the story only five days earlier whispered questions to colleagues about the case but got mostly shrugged shoulders. The three former hostages took turns speaking to the crowd. While Howes and Stansell made brief statements, Gonsalves—in a lengthy and politically charged speech, which he read in both Spanish and English—described the horrific five and a half years that the three men had spent under the control of the guerrillas. “I want to send a message to the FARC: FARC, you guys are terrorists. You deny that you are. You say with words that you’re not terrorists, but your words don’t have any value. Don’t tell us that you’re not terrorists. Show us that you’re not terrorists.” Gonsalves continued in a soft but resolute voice: “They say that they want equality, they say that they just want to make Colombia a better place, but that’s all a lie.”

  For Maj. Gen. Keith Huber, who was the acting head of the U.S. Army South (the army component of SOUTHCOM), the positive press surrounding the release of the Americans was a windfall rarely seen by the U.S. military, and Huber squeezed out every ounce of publicity he could, while completely confining the men from actual media contact. The day before the yellow ribbon ceremony, Huber held his own press conference, beaming as he told reporters, “I will tell you that they greeted me with a strong handshake and clear eyes and an incredible smile.… On the tail end of their first private reunion in five years and five months, I can tell you that it made us all very proud—that there were children there who were thrilled to see their parents, and there were parents there who were overwhelmed with seeing their son back safe,” Huber said. “At the human dimension level, that’s what we’re all here for.”

  Keith Stansell reunited with his family at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, days after his rescue from five and a half years of captivity. Photo: U.S. military.

  The yellow ribbon ceremony was held without allowing any questions from reporters, and the men’s families were shielded from the press by FBI and army escorts. Satellite trucks from every major station sat in the parking lot while producers from CNN’s Larry King Live, CBS News, and ABC vied to get the first interview with the men, but they were repeatedly turned away. The U.S. Army South public information officer (PIO) released a handful of photos of family members hugging and dining together during their limited meetings, which were structured parts of the reintegration program. On July 10, the PIO sent out a press release stating that an exclusive interview with the former hostages would be given to a CNN Headline News morning anchor named Robin Meade, a former Miss America finalist, whose show was normally broadcast from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. “At their request, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell will conduct a taped interview with Robin Meade of Headline News at 10:30 a.m. today in the U.S. Army South Headquarters at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.” Rumors abounded among the network producers that Meade was a personal friend of Major General Huber, hence the amazing scoop for the lightweight news show, Morning Express with Robin Meade. The day before, Meade recorded herself in a “Behind the Scenes” video blog as she got ready for the interview, clearly nervous and gushing to a bouncing camera she held. “I’m putting pressure on myself because I want to make them feel so comfortable so they can give us the details and tell us about what they’ve been through and do justice to their story.” In the highly promoted one-hour interview with the three Americans, Meade asked the men about their life in captivity and what type of things had surprised them on their return to a world they’d been absent from for nearly six years.

  Journalists clamored for information on what the role, if any, of the United States had been in Operación Jaque. The U.S. Southern Command released a list of numbers they claimed represented efforts and monies expended by the U.S. military over the five and a half years of the men’s captivity.

  U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND LEVEL OF EFFORT ON US HOSTAGES

  (kidnapped 13 February 2003—rescued 2 July 2008)

  US Hostages: Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes

  1,967 Days held Hostage by FARC

  3,600 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) sorties

  17,000 Flight Hours during 54 operational deployments in Colombia

  175 intelligence leads

  6 major Crisis Action Planning events involving 300 DOD and IA* personnel

  35 full-time personnel with full-time primary SRS** duties

  $50 M spent annually in direct & indirect hostage recovery operations

  $250 M executed since February 2003

  “This hundreds of millions of dollars—that is pure bullshit,” says Gary Noesner, who had suggested to Northrop Grumman that the men would receive much better care in a private program rather than one sponsored by the military, which he felt was completely exploiting the men and the situation. “They left Tom, Marc, and Keith with an impression that hundreds and hundreds of people were working on their behalf every day. In my mind, the question is, How much of this money was directly related to the recovery of the hostages versus other operational objectives relating to our support of Colombian military operations? If they spent two hundred and fifty million dollars on hostage recovery, then a bunch of people should be indicted for fraud or fired for incompetence.” Noesner says that when he first saw the report, “I said, ‘Hey, if they’d just spent one million dollars on negotiations, we’d probably have had them out three years earlier.’ People in the government would be absolutely shocked to hear me talk like this, because they legitimately believe their own propaganda.” SOUTHCOM spokesperson Jose Ruiz defended the figures, saying they could seem misleading because of the many costs associated with hostage-recovery missions.

  Contractors working in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá had a similar take on the level of U.S. military effort to secure a release of the hostages during their five and a half years of captivity. “We are not trustworthy as a government,” says a colleague who worked closely with Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes. “Contractors are an easy way for the government to hire someone who can be thrown away without any responsibility to anybody. That’s the definition of contractor these days.” But in contrast to the anger and abandonment that they expressed to fellow hostages while in captivity, in Texas the three men and their families heaped praise on Huber and the U.S. military. In a prepared statement given to journalists and posted on the U.S. Army Southern Command’s Web site, the three men expressed their joy at being free, thanked the Colombian government and Colombian military, and offered gener
ous praise to the U.S. government and to those involved in their reintegration program.

  “I think the way the military and this General Huber guy controlled the men and their families in San Antonio is scandalous,” says Noesner. “But the guys aren’t going to protest. Their families think everybody down there [Brooke Army Medical Center] walks on water, so everybody’s happy. But the way they set up an interview for these guys I think was very unprofessional, at a minimum. And it was so blatantly self-serving on the part of the military to manipulate Tom, Marc, and Keith so that they would come away feeling a certain way and saying a certain thing about the U.S. government. But it was successful. The government pulled it off. They won. The families and the guys have bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

  The Pentagon backed off from taking credit for Operación Jaque, with a DOD spokesperson saying only that “the two countries’ militaries have a strong relationship that includes ‘a certain amount of cooperation and information sharing.’” However, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, painted a somewhat different picture in an exclusive interview he gave to The Washington Post. “This mission was a Colombian concept, a Colombian plan, a Colombian training operation, then a Colombian operation. We, however, had been working with them more than five years on every single element that came to pass that pulled off this operation, as well as the small bits that we did on this operation,” Brownfield said. The Post article also reported that “a special 100-person unit made up of Special Forces planners, hostage negotiators and intelligence analysts worked to keep track of the hostages. They also awaited the moment when they would spring into action to help Colombian forces carry out a rescue.”