Source: US Military Special-Ops Team, and Not the Colombian Army, Carried Out Hostage Rescue in Colombia
Months in the Planning, the Operation Included US Special Forces Posing as Members of a “French Humanitarian Group”
By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
July 3, 2008
A U.S. military special-operations unit carried out the recent rescue of three Defense Department contractors being held by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), according to a source who has first-hand knowledge of the operation.
The U.S. military contractors – Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell – had been held captive by the FARC ever since their surveillance plane was shot down in February 2003 over the Colombian jungles. Also rescued in the mission were 11 Colombian military and police officers as well as former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt – who also is a French citizen.
The source of information for this report asked not to be identified, though Narco News has not been led astray by this source in the past.
The source claims the rescue mission was a U.S.-led operation with Colombian support – as opposed to the reverse, as has been widely reported in the U.S. media. The operation had been underway for some months prior to the July 2 rescue day.
In priming this pump, the U.S. team managed to plant some satellite phones with the FARC. The source declined to provide details on how that was accomplished for fear of compromising future operations of this nature. From there, the U.S. military used its technology to set up surveillance by intercepting the FARC’s communications.
The whole operation was carried out, the source claims, under the guise of being a humanitarian mission. The FARC, the source claims, believed they were dealing with a “French humanitarian group.” The communications intercepts helped to facilitate that deceit, the source adds.
A BBC report provides a similar account of the rescue operation, only that report claims Colombian soldiers were in the pilot seats.
“Colombian soldiers – apparently posing as members of a non-government organisation – flew them [the hostages] to freedom in a helicopter,” the BBC report states.
With the NGO pretense in place, a meeting was arranged between the supposed humanitarian group’s leaders and the FARC, which resulted in the three U.S. hostages and Betancourt being brought together in one place with the 11 Colombian soldiers and police captives, the source says. Prior to that, the source adds, the three groups of hostages were being held in separate locations. The U.S. special-ops forces then showed up in helicopters at the designated meeting place. They were dressed to look like humanitarian aid workers, the source contends.
Adding to the odds of success for the operation was the fact, the source claims, that the 15 hostages were being guarded by only two armed FARC members.
To assure the FARC guerillas that the hostages would not gain the upper hand, the captives were all handcuffed and placed on the two helicopters – which, unbeknownst to the FARC guards, were being flown by U.S. pilots.
The plan, as far as the FARC guards knew, was to fly to another meeting place where the whole group would meet up with Alfonso Cano, now the top FARC commander.
Once both helicopters were in the air, however, the ruse was up. The U.S. special-ops team (two on each helicopter in addition to the pilots, again in disguise to avoid prior suspicion) “beat the shit” out of the two FARC guys, and they all flew back to Colombian government-controlled territory, according to the source.
The rescue mission, carried out this past Wednesday, coincided with the visit of U.S. presidential candidate John McCain. The source claims that was coincidental—though it can’t be ruled out that McCain, a U.S. Senator with more than a little access to the White House, might have had some advance warning of the planned rescue attempt and arranged his visit to Colombia accordingly.
Now that the three U.S. hostages are back in the states – doing press conferences in San Antonio from the military hospital where they are recovering – it is worth noting how this whole affair began.
In February 2007, Narco News published a story as part of its Bogotá Connection series that revealed that the coordinates of U.S. spy and drug-interdiction flights in Colombia were being leaked out of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá via allegedly corrupt DEA agents who were operating in partnership with Colombian narco-traffickers.
DEA sources told Narco News at the time the story was published that they highly suspected the three U.S. private contractors who were shot down over FARC territory in Colombia in February 2003 might well have been the victims of those leaks.
Given the recent dramatic rescue of those three hostages, this previous Narco News story takes on new relevance.
From the February 2007 story:
Time will tell if someone in the U.S. government will finally start to pay attention to the Bogotá Connection and the very real possibility that it is still operating and putting more lives at risk.In the mean time, the so-called war on drugs in Colombia will continue, with the assistance of U.S. personnel and taxpayer money. And the three hostages being held by the FARC will continue to await their fate in the midst of that pretense – with the thought now in their minds that it might well have been their own government that betrayed them.
To read the entire report, go to this link: Did “Bogotá Connection” embassy leaks doom U.S. spy plane in Colombia? **article is below**
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/node/1890
Did “Bogotá Connection” Embassy Leaks Doom U.S. Spy Plane in Colombia?
Posted by Bill Conroy - February 16, 2007 at 12:25 am
Four years ago this month, a planeload of American military contractors crashed in the jungles of Colombia.
The contractors were on a spying mission (their single-engine Cessna was loaded with sophisticated radar) to spot coca fields and to also report back on the troop locations of leftist rebels known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
The contractors, in fact, found the FARC, who were at the scene of the plane crash. Two of the plane’s passengers, the American pilot and a Colombian intelligence officer, were allegedly shot dead on the spot. The other three passengers, American civilians who worked for a subsidiary of military contractor Northrop Grumman, were taken captive by the FARC.
The fate of the hostages has been the subject of numerous mainstream media reports in recent years. The circumstances that led to the plane crash, though, have received scant attention.
However, DEA sources who helped to expose the Bogotá Connection (an alliance of corrupt U.S. and Colombian law enforcers in league with Colombian narco-traffickers) have advanced a startling theory about the crash that they claim needs to be investigated by Congress.
These DEA sources contend that corrupt law enforcers in the U.S. embassy in Bogotá might well have facilitated the downing of the contractors’ airplane. They also contend that DEA is fully aware that, at the time of the plane crash, on Feb. 13, 2003, the coordinates of U.S.-backed flights over the Colombian jungles were being leaked out of the U.S. embassy to narco-traffickers. That classified information, the DEA sources claim, could well have made its way to the FARC through the back channels of Colombia’s black market to be used to target and shoot down the Northrop Grumman spy plane.
Originally, the U.S. and Colombian governments said the contractors’ plane crashed due to engine failure, according to media reports. However, the FARC claims they shot the plane out of the sky.
To this day, the three men who survived the ordeal (Marc Gonzalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes) military-backed rescue plan — which would almost certainly lead to the hostages’ deaths. remain hostages of the FARC. Efforts to negotiate their release have failed and talk is even now turning toward some type of
To the FARC, these aerial spying missions over their territory are a threat to their lives. That’s because if FARC troop locations were identified, the Colombian military (or its right-wing paramilitary allies) surely would seek to kill those troops. Protecting the jungle coca fields that help fund the guerilla war effort also is a priority for the FARC, since Colombian- and U.S.-government backed fumigation missions threaten that economic engine, as well as other legal crops and the health of the workers who tend to those fields.
The American contractors, by engaging in a spying mission for the Colombian government, simply inserted themselves into that war. As a result, the FARC has an incentive to shoot these spy planes out of the air — and a number of them have been brought down downed by the FARC over the years.
Politics aside, that’s just the nature of the decades-long war between the FARC guerilla movement and the U.S.-backed Colombian government.
The evidence
In early 2003, a DEA polygraph specialist hooked his machine up to a Colombian narco-trafficker — who also worked as an informant for DEA’s Bogotá office.
However, the narco-trafficker’s “informant” status was a two-way street, it seems, since his DEA handlers in Bogotá also apparently worked for him.
An internal Department of Justice document (known as the Kent memo) that was made public last year details the allegedly corrupt roles played by U.S. law enforcers in the Bogotá Connection. Among the allegations in the Kent memo is that the narco-trafficker who took the lie-detector test “had several agents on his payroll who provided him with classified information.”
“The agents were believed to work in Colombia and Washington, D.C.,” the Kent memo states.
The Colombian narco-trafficker was brought to Florida for the polygraph test after it was discovered that he had betrayed another DEA snitch — a North Valley Cartel-connected player named Jose Nelson Urrego, who was cooperating with the DEA by helping to set up a sting on the FARC — which had attempted to purchase communications equipment from him.
The polygraph was conducted on Feb. 28, 2003, only days after the Northrop Grumman spy plane crashed in the jungles of Colombia.
One of the revelations in the subsequent polygraph report, which was obtained by Narco News, is key to supporting the theory that the contractors’ spy plane was shot down because the FARC had advanced knowledge of its coordinates. In fact, the polygraph report indicates the narco-trafficker/informant confirmed that flight coordinates were being leaked to Colombian narco-traffickers.
“Narco-traffickers knew a day in advance, with coordinates, when DEA/CNP [Colombian National Police] were going to fumigate the marijuana/coca fields. Thus, they were always prepared to protect the fields,” the polygraph report states.
The DEA polygraph report continues:
… The CS [the narco-trafficker/informant] stated that over the last few years, he/she had been able to obtain between 50 to 60 documents from the BCO [the DEA Bogotá Country Office] at will.This is not a new revelation to us … as we met with [DEA Miami Group Supervisor] David Tinsley on January 2000; whereas GS Tinsley related to us that he had a CS [confidential source who also was a narco-trafficker] that was obtaining documents from inside the BCO and showed us an original document, not a photocopy.
FBI knows nothing
As part of the effort to investigate the theory advanced by DEA sources concerning the plane crash, Narco News attempted to contact one of the family members of the hostages last year to determine if the families were aware of the allegations in the Kent memo or of the information contained in the DEA polygraph report.
Shortly after Narco News made that phone call, FBI agent Joe Deters of the bureau’s Miami Division contacted Narco News and confirmed that there is an active FBI investigation into the FARC-held hostages and that he is one of the agents involved with the investigation. However, he claimed not to be aware of the leaks out of the U.S. embassy in Bogotá.
Deters might not be aware, since Narco News is the only publication that has reported on the polygraph report, and he apparently is not an avid reader. But not everyone with a law enforcement background is in the dark on that front.
Sandalio Gonzalez served as the chief of the South America Section in DEA’s Office of International Operations from 1995 to 1998. He later was promoted to the post of associate special agent in charge of DEA’s field division in Miami — where the Bogotá corruption charges outlined in the Kent memo first surfaced. Gonzalez retired in 2005, after finishing out his career as the head of DEA’s El Paso, Texas, field division.
Gonzalez is very upfront about his assessment of whether U.S. embassy leaks led to the downing of the contractors’ plane — as well as other spy flights that have been shot down in recent years.
“It is a possibility that the coordinates were leaked out of the U.S. embassy [in Bogotá],” Gonzalez says. “We’ll never really know unless there is a full-fledged investigation. Congress has to look at it.
“As representatives of the people, they have to know if this is, in fact, what happened,” Gonzalez adds. “We are hearing this stuff (that information is being leaked out of the U.S. embassy) from very credible sources.”
Why the allegations contained in the Kent memo and the DEA polygraph have not led to a major law enforcement public-corruption investigation — and there is no evidence they have at this point — is not known.
DEA claimed the Kent memo allegations are without merit, but that was before the DEA polygraph report (a separate document validating allegations in the Kent memo) became public. The agency has been silent on the matter since then.
Time will tell if someone in the U.S. government will finally start to pay attention to the Bogotá Connection and the very real possibility that it is still operating and putting more lives at risk.
In the mean time, the so-called war on drugs in Colombia will continue, with the assistance of U.S. personnel and taxpayer money. And the three hostages being held by the FARC will continue to await their fate in the midst of that pretense — with the thought now in their minds that it might well have been their own government that betrayed them.
