Hostage Nation (37 page)

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 their 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.

“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.”