Hostage Nation (17 page)

Initial reactions of shock and disbelief turned to anger for the families of Howes, Stansell, and Gonsalves as the days wore on and very little information came from the U.S. government or from Northrop Grumman. Two weeks after the crash, the State Department wrote
identical letters to the wives of Gonsalves and Howes and to Stansell's fiancée, Malia Phillips. The letter to Shane Gonsalves read:

The letter stated that the U.S. State Department would be the primary contact for the families until the men's release, but at the end of the first page, the letter gave little room for hope:

With each passing day, Shane Gonsalves became more and more aggravated and felt more and more alone. She found photos on her husband's laptop that made her suspicious of his fidelity. It seemed wrong to be angry with him while he was in such a terrible situation, but somehow, the anger almost helped her deal with the nightmare of everything that was going on. Northrop Grumman promised to send Gonsalves's paycheck to Shane, which was a great relief. With his six-figure salary, at least money would not be an issue. Gonsalves had been on the job in Colombia for only four months, and although he'd been told that the work was dangerous, the money had been too good to pass up. He'd enlisted in the air force right after high school and had struggled for years on military pay while supporting his wife, their eight-year-old
daughter, Destiney, and Shane's two sons. His new salary had afforded him a small boat, a new motorcycle, and a large-screen television, but Gonsalves hated being away from his home in the Florida Keys. And according to Shane, the long separations had put a strain on their marriage.

In the stunning new Florida home where Thomas Howes had spent only twelve days before returning to Colombia to work, Peruvian-born Mariana Howes couldn't bear to tell her two boys that their father had been kidnapped; instead, she told them that he was on an extended work trip. The painful charade would continue for two torturous years. And in a small single-story house in southern Georgia, Keith Stansell's fiancée, Malia Phillips, first heard the news of the crash and was sure that Stansell was dead. Piecing together what little she'd been told, she tried to explain to Stansell's fourteen-year-old daughter and his ten-year-old son from his first marriage (whom she had been taking care of while Stansell was working out of the country) what was happening.

Just days after the crash, Phillips would be confounded by an article in
USA Today
about a woman named Patricia Medina, who claimed to be Stansell's girlfriend and to be pregnant with his twins. It was something that the Stansell family and Phillips did not want to believe was true. But it
was
true. Medina had been Stansell's constant companion in Colombia for the past ten months. The thirty-year-old flight attendant had fallen in love with him on an Avianca flight. She was working that day, and Stansell was a business-class passenger. On their second date, Medina went back to Stansell's apartment and, she says, “I never left until he was kidnapped.” Although she wasn't sure of her future with the American, because Stansell had repeatedly told her that he did not want a commitment, Medina lived happily with Stansell in one of the most elegant condominiums in northern Bogotá. She knew that Stansell had been married previously and that after the divorce he had custody of his two children, which, he told her, was a huge responsibility. And even though Stansell revealed some details of his life to Medina—such as how he loved to hunt in Wyoming—she always felt that he did not like to talk about himself, and even less about his work. “He told me that he worked for Plan Colombia, but he never mentioned the name of the company where he worked. He only told me
that he worked on the war against drugs,” she says. When Stansell had meetings with his colleagues in the living room of the apartment, he made Medina stay in another room. Occasionally, she overheard the men talk about the inadequacy of the airplanes they used for work.

In November 2002, soon after Medina found out that she was pregnant with twins, she tried to muster the courage to tell Stansell. At the time, Medina remembers, Stansell was under a lot of stress because the CMS bosses were visiting Bogotá from the States. One night, as the two went to bed, she broke the news to him. “He turned out the light, and I said, ‘I have to tell you something. I'm pregnant, and they're twins.' He was quiet for what seemed like an eternity. Then he turned on the light and began to pace across the room without saying anything. He said, What were we going to do? How was he going to tell his children? That he could not change their whole lives. That he had always taught them to be responsible. Later, he told me that it didn't matter, that my children would be taken care of but that he was not going to marry me. It was horrible. But in a certain way it also gave me peace, because he told me that the children would never lack for anything, not to worry about them, that he was a responsible person and that that was not going to change now.”

But when Stansell returned from the United States in January 2003, Medina noted a marked change in his attitude toward her. He lavished her with loving attention, frequently asking how the twins were doing. Given his seeming change of heart, Medina was looking forward to the birth and having Stansell by her side. But Stansell may not have planned on being with Medina for the twins' birth. In early February, he flew back to Bogotá from Miami. Sitting next to him on the plane was a Colombian medical doctor who had treated the American contractors in Colombia. “Keith told me that he was about to quit working and leave Colombia,” the doctor recalls. “That he wanted to be with his family in the States. That this would be his last trip.” A week after the crash, Medina, four months pregnant, packed her things and left the apartment that she had shared with Stansell. Ralph Ponticelli, Stansell's best friend, who also worked for CMS, organized a barbecue and took up a collection from the other CMS employees to try to help Medina with the costs of her delivery. Ponticelli had been so wonderful
to Medina during her pregnancy that she had hoped he would be like an uncle to the twins.

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.