The Colombian military's daring operation aimed to rescue three American contractors who were being held by the fearsome guerrillas of FARC
On Feb. 13, 2003, a plane carrying three U.S. military contractors crash-landed in rebel territory in southern Colombia. The survivors — Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes — were taken hostage by fierce Marxist guerrillas the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, better known by the Spanish acronym FARC. The initial rescue operation fell apart. Instead of finding the contractors, two companies of Colombian soldiers stumbled upon a buried rebel cache of $20 million, then deserted and splurged their newfound fortune on booze, sex and flat-screen televisions. The forgotten hostages spent the next five years in captivity. But with the help of billions of dollars in U.S. aid, the Colombian Army improved to the point that, on July 2, 2008, commandos were able to launch a daring, Mission: Impossible-style sting operation in a bid to save the hostages. That operation is detailed in a new book by veteran Latin America journalist John Otis, Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages and Buried Treasure. An excerpt follows:
The FARC had taken the bait. Through an ingenious electronic hoax, Colombian Army agents, mimicking rebel radio operators, had convinced the guerrillas to allow "international aid workers" to check the health of the 15 hostages then transfer them to another FARC camp on helicopters. But to pull it off, the army would have to put together a convincing mise-en-scène.
In a Defense Ministry war room, intelligence officers drew up the cast of characters. For foreign flavor, the fake mission chief was given an Italian accent and the exotic name of Russi. His phony deputy would be an Arabic speaker from the Middle East while a third team member, who had lived in Australia, would pretend to hail from Brisbane. Other impersonators included a doctor, three nurses and a reporting team from Venezuela's left-wing Telesur station.
The agent playing Russi wanted professionals to help the agents overcome stage fright and fully embody their roles. He convinced his bosses to pay for acting classes. The players would have to keep cool, improvise and play their parts with Shakespearian heft if there happened to be a radical turn of events on the ground.
They showed up at one of Bogotá's top theater academies and presented themselves as teachers who would be putting on a play at their high school. For $2,000, the instructor gave them a crash course in Method acting. The amateur players passed their first test. Though he wondered about his students' high-tech radios, the theater professor never caught on that he was teaching a pack of army agents.
General Mario Montoya, the Colombian Army commander, wasn't satisfied. Many of the agents looked like they were fresh out of spy school. Montoya wanted more potbellies and wrinkles. Several members of the team let their beards grow and had gray streaks added to their hair. They replaced their underwear, which was stamped with the logo of the army, sent their costumes through washing machines for a lived-in look, and filled their wallets with fake driver's licenses and foreign currency.
Phony business cards said they worked for the International Humanitarian Mission. The army mounted a Web site and set up a front office in Bogota with operators standing by just in case any FARC collaborators called to verify the authenticity of the group.
The day before the mission, Montoya pulled the team together for a pep talk. "Go forward in peace," the general said, "because God is on the side of the good guys."
Killing time at a rustic farm house the night before the operation, the army agents were suddenly attacked by mosquitoes. The guerrillas believed the helicopters were flying directly from Bogota to the pickup point. If the agents showed up with their faces pocked with insect bites, their entire story might unravel. So they spent a sleepless night chain-smoking cigarettes and shooing away the bugs.