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We Will Never Abandon You, We Will Never Forget You (1 of 2)
If you are ever overseas and “rolled up,” as we say, taken prisoner or taken hostage or held against your will for any reason, know that your fellow Americans will never abandon you, will never forget you, will never write you off.
It will seem like it. Your abductor will use the extreme dislocation and isolation of your captivity environment to break you. Know, you will never be abandoned. Know, you will never be forgotten.
A point of order upfront: If you are an official US person — i.e., if you are a diplomat, an employee of USG, a military person, or even a contractor working on a US mission, the military has primacy on effecting your recovery (with appropriate input from other interagency brethren, as appropriate). If you are a private citizen with no affiliation to USG, the FBI has primacy on effecting your recovery. Whichever category you fall into, know that a cast of dozens, hundreds, even thousands is working every day to secure you and bring you home.
On 13 February 2003, a small, single-engine Cessna was flying an intelligence collection mission over the wilds of Colombia. The mission of the small craft was to gather intelligence on drug producers, drug traffickers, and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC. The FARC started as an insurgency bent on that ephemeral goal “social justice,” but by 2003 had become a drug-running organization that used a thin veneer of socialism as a cover.
The Cessna had five souls aboard. Four Americans: Tom Janis, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes. There was also a Colombian military intelligence NCO, Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz. In many of our bilateral intelligence collecting/sharing agreements, there is a stipulation that a host nation intelligence guy be on board, to ensure that we (the US) are not doing anything sneaky or undermining the interests of the Host Nation while we’re out collecting intelligence vital to their domestic tranquility.
The plane suffered an engine failure and went down in the jungle. Pilot Tom Janis kept his head about him and found a suitable area for a crash landing. This, in itself, is a remarkable feat of pilotry. Fly over the wilds of Colombia and look down (at about any altitude) and one is looking at broccoli. Janis found, whilst gliding with no power, a suitable area for a crash landing, and crash landed. In Indian country. In what we called, at the time, FARClandia.
In any personnel recovery mission or combat search and rescue mission, just like with combat medicine, that first hour is called the Golden Hour. That’s when if you act correctly and promptly, you have the best chance of success [let me pause here and plug @vinceguerra‘s Beyond The Golden Hour; much anticipated and looks like it’ll be awesome]. We didn’t make it there in the Golden Hour.
One would think, sending single-engine air-breathers (that’s what you and I would call an airplane) out to gather intel in an environmentally savage, enemy-infested area we would have protocols, forces, and authorities in place to immediately launch recovery missions for official US personnel isolated or in danger. One would be wrong.
While various elements of the USG and the government of Colombia contorted themselves figuring out how to, who to, whence from launch recovery forces to pick up our people, the FARC showed up. They executed SGT Cruz and Tom Janis at the crash site. No one knows why. Best guess is that the FARC decided to execute the Colombian Cruz as a traitor to the revolution, and Janis–knowing that, as a gringo, he’d be regarded as a high-value hostage–tried to shield him with his own body. If you ever see Janis’ record jacket, you’ll know that this is not an unsupportable hypothesis.
Marc, Keith, and Tom were bound and led into the jungle. They spent ~five years there. Constantly under guard. Not allowed to speak. Suffering the insults and abuse that a prisoner gets when he is “the other.”
On the home front, US forces realized they had some obstacles. Triple canopy jungle ain’t the desert. All of the various tactics, techniques, and procedures that worked so well over in the desert didn’t work when faced with a T3 jungle. Gathering human intelligence was difficult when the FARC were so isolated out in the jungles of FARClandia. Previously, there were villages and small urban areas where the FARC had a presence, and that presence could be collected on. President Alvaro Uribe’s aggressive push to eliminate the FARC and reform the Colombian military had meant that the FARC was isolated out in the jungle. Colombian success at fighting the insurgency made US jobs tougher when it came to rescuing our people.
US planners had significant obstacles to first finding our hostages and then being able to implement any kind of action to recover them. The FARC had a sound and reliable system of moving hostage holding camps so that they could not be targeted, of trading hostages between FARC commanders so that, were any single FARC column ID’d in the jungles, and its patterns of movement and lengths of stay at any given location logged, were a recovery mission launched, there was no assurance which, if any, hostages would be on site.
There are two ways to influence a hostile environment. You can build efficiencies and effectiveness within your own organization until you are as agile, adept, and adoptive as you need to be in order to react to small changes in the operational environment, hopefully to generate positive effects. Or, you can disrupt the environment to the maximum extent possible, and bet that you can capitalize on the changes in variables faster than the opponent. The US did both.
The effort to recover our people became a named operation, Operation WILLING SPIRIT (OWS). Getting an operation named is important. It means you can levy requirements for troops, air, and intelligence against it. It means you have a codified set of authorities to do what you need to do, in black and white, so that when an opportunity presents itself you can act without having to ask, “Mother, may I?”
OWS had some of the most unique and creative authorities built into it that I’ve ever seen. There were authorities to conduct operations, actions, and activities (OAA) unilaterally. There were authorities to conduct OAA combined (US+Colombian). There were certain OAA that specific people (by military position/slating) had to be in-country in order to execute. There was a process developed that the right amount of people could surge, quickly and without asking for permission, if there was a relevant intel hit.
This sounds like esoterica. Realize, once the SECDEF declared OWS a named operation, we were already into Combat Theaters of Operations in the Central Command area of responsibility. No one wanted to kick over a military or diplomatic ant’s nest in our own backyard. Nobody wanted to turn backs to Americans held hostage. So planners and operators walked a tightrope. Do what you have to do to find our guys and get them back; do it without looking like the imperial Yankees are trying to take over Latin America.
Over the years (yes, years) we tried to get our guys recovered, there were acts of heroism and devotion to duty that will probably never see the light of day. There were acts of unilateral and combined Special Operations that will echo in the commando halls of education for years, demonstrating this is how it’s done. For years, there was a cadre of US planners and operators that knew the phone could ring and you’d be gone for a couple days to six months, one never knew how long it would take to run down a lead. Spouses loved that. Having a current, valid visa in one’s official passport to visit Colombia was a constant requirement. If an intel hit spiked and your visa was out of date, doom on you.
In January 2008, there was a solid intel hit. The gears, now well machined and greased, started rolling. There was a possible identification for the possible location of a FARC camp of the size and posture that means that the likelihood of hostages being held within was high. The intel hit was spot on. For the first time in the at/about five years, we knew where our guys were. Not only were Marc, Keith, and Tom in that camp, but former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was believed to be there, too. Ingrid had, years ago, gone out in the hinterlands as a presidential candidate that she was with them! on social/land justice, and that the FARC were just misunderstood freedom fighters trying to cast off the chains of oppressive capitalism and imperialism. The FARC rolled her up and held on to her for years for PR value. Ingrid was also had dual French-Colombian citizenship. Dealing with the French on all matters Betancourt was fun. Many US planners and operators wondered if the French wanted to get their half citizen back, or just put a thumb into the eye of the US.
US and Colombian forces had a location, had ID on hostages, and was locked, cocked and ready to rock. However, discretion and going lightly was called for. The FARC SOP, were one of its camps holding prisoners attacked, was to slaughter all hostages, melt into the jungle and link up later. The deputados proved that. The FARC claimed “crossfire,” but bottom line is they executed their hostages when they mistook their own relief column for Colombian armed forces.
Somehow, someway, Cesar, the FARC camp commander holding Marc, Keith, Tom, Ingrid, and about 11 other Colombian hostages got the heebie-jeebies. He knew he was on the radar, he moved out, taking his troops and hostages through the jungle looking to evade what he that were pursuers.
For the first month, would-be rescuers frantically stalked (kind of an oxymoron, there; planners and politicians got frantic, operators stalked) the FARC band. After about a month, planners decided to exploit Cesar’s paranoia. They threw everything they had into building a fundamentally reliable psychological profile of Cesar. They fed him information, let him think he saw pursuit, let him “intercept” his own intelligence that warned him that he was being tracked.
Finally, Cesar got the radio call that he wanted to hear, the radio call he had been praying (bad communist!) would come over the transom, the radio call that would be his salvation. Cesar got a call from a verified link in his chain of command to be at a certain clearing at a certain time, and a helicopter from the International Committee of the Red Cross would take him and his hostages out of danger, and ensconce them in the bosom of Venezuela, where the FARC-hunters dare not trespass.
The chopper landed and picked them up. One of the ICRC “aid” workers, who was actually a Colombian military guy, came off the ramp to usher Cesar and his charges into the bird wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt. Outstanding.
Cesar and the hostages boarded the bird, which lifted off. A couple minutes into the flight, the crew–all Colombian military–took down and restrained Cesar and his single aide, and announced to the hostages, “You are free.”
It was a classic special operation. One for the ages.
You will never be abandoned. You will never be forgotten. Not by your countrymen. Ever.
But, what made Cesar run? What made him paranoid(er)?
Published in General
Good news, Boss. Where I am, it’s now tomorrow. So, where’s that part 2?
Working…
Great to see the good guys win a round.
I believe this phrase deserves fuller explanation. Just saying.
Outstanding!
With that, I am really looking forward to part two.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series playing off the theme of Will. In September, our theme will be Order. If you have anything to say about order, orders, or Orders, why not go sign up on our Schedule and Sign-Up Sheet right now?
Is that the second part?
Doesn’t matter. I’m looking forward to it.
Well done.
This story reinforces my faith in our country and the people who do the hard work every day. Away from politics.
WOW, what a story! Great writing, Boss!
Thanks, Percival.
Thanks, Gary.
Make a helluva movie, wouldn’t it? Classic Hollywood ending.
Now, after all that talk of triple canopy, I think I’ll watch Predator.
Do what chew gotta do, but I ain’t got time to bleed…
Get to da choppa!
Gripping.
@bossmongo, you are darn good at tellin’ a story and keepin’ it real without givin’ away state secrets. Came close to chewin’ on my fingernails a coupla times on this one :-) Well done.
My heart was pounding from about paragraph five.
You da Boss. Excellent writing, thank you.
Whoever came up with the Che t-shirt is an outstanding individual. How I rejoice just knowing that detail. So perfect.
I read the book. It was fantastic, as was your version. Those people suffered terribly. As I read the book I remember telling MrsCheese some of the atrocities they endured.
@mim526, Thank you, very much.
@cbtoderakamamatoad, thank you, ma’am.
What would we do without you guys. Amazing story. Thanks, Boss.
Quite the impressive story @bossmongo. As well told as it was acted out. God bless men like you who put it all on the line to save someone you have never met…and maybe will never meet.
Boss, you mentioned an overseas role for the FBI, in certain scenarios like this. Are we talking about something like the team portrayed in Gary Sinise’s Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders?
@cdor, thanks. @kentforrester made a similar comment on one of his own OPs. Please realize, I was doing exactly what I was put on this planet to do. I don’t know how to write this without sounding like an egomaniac, but I’ll try.
The danger, risk, and subjection to random acts of fate that could, uh, ruin my day are a feature, not a bug. I probably wouldn’t be good at jobs that don’t have those elements in them, though I’m working on it now that I’m old, broken and retired. I did assume some levels of risk, in my profession, but they were the risks that made my blood sing.
Sure, maybe I booze too much, but what’n the hell else you gonna do between fights?
Sure, I’m an absolute, total, nicotine whore, but eh, it has only ever helped pump up the volume during tough times (working on a solution to that, now that I’ve turned my sword into a plowshare).
Some people have a habit of calling people in my line of work “adrenaline junkies,” but that’s not true. It’s not the endocrine-sponsored drug drop that me and a lot of the boys crave, it’s the mastery of that. Of being able to–despite the body going into fight or flight, not because of–react fluidly, appropriately, and with (dast I say it? I dast) a certain amount of Grace when everything goes south.
So, thanks, but…
No buts about it…you are welcome. P.S. You might try cigars. No inhaling and no needy feelings. Plus they are great with bourbon neat.
Boss – great OP great story. Looking forward part deaux.
<span class="atwho-inserted" contenteditable="false" data-atwho-at-query="@dajoho“>@dajoho, thanks. When I’m done shacking up Part Deaux, I was going to PM you anyways to make sure I’m not wandering off the reservation. Working it now.
Afternoon Boss,
I may be mistaken, it was my understanding that while there was a USSR folks did not kidnap their people out of fear of retribution. Is this true? I would like us to be feared that way. Is that reasonable? Or does that lead us toward a type of warrior without honor?