From left to right: Keith, Tom, and Marc.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Reading Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle left me with a stiff neck and a stomachache. My sympathy for Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes was regularly assaulted by the deadly patriotism that informed their interpretation of events in the Colombian countryside. What the surge in self-righteousness when confronted with people whose lives never included two television sets and a car?
Briefly, the book tells the story of three men who worked for Northrup Grumman picking up "intelligence reports" on possible drug operations in the mountains of Colombia. Just US police officers are tasked to monitor gangs for selling illegal drugs, US contractors are paid by our government to monitor and destroy drug operations in other countries. If you are unfamiliar with Plan Colombia and its relationship to the terrorist group known as F.A.R.C., then I'm not sure any material on this blog will pique your interest.
MARC GONZALES
After realizing that their FARC captors had no compunction about shooting noncompliant hostages, Marc decided not to ask them why they decided against shooting. He knows they would have said that they "were only following orders". Marc writes:
I tried to put myself in their shoes. I didn't know how I would have felt if I was told that my assignment was to take care of and to protect something (in this case someone) who was supposedly of great value to our cause. Would I have been able to pull the trigger when ordered? Would I have objected because I saw the illogic of the command or because of the humanitarian issues involved? I didn’t like thinking about the fact that neither of these questions occurred to our guards.
And how does Marc "know" that neither of these questions occurred to their guards given that he admits he never discussed the incident with them? How does Marc "know" things he has no credible way of knowing? And how does an editor let an embarrassing statement like that one slip past?
Ultimately, the boys and 12 other hostages were freed by the very Colombian military in which they had expressed so little confidence. Operation Jacque, named after a chess move, increased Uribe's credibility with both his own voters and with respect to the international community.
Ingrid Betancourt is greeted by her children after being freed.
KEITH AND INGRID
During the course of their interactions with other FARC hostages, one of the hostages found Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian liberal politician, to be particularly irritating- irritating enough to warrant large segments of media time. It seems Betancourt was highly educated, and that she had questioned the machismo of American drug interdiction efforts across sovereign borders of other states. Being a liberal, of course, made her prime kidnapping material for FARC terrorists, since the last thing they hope to see is a more liberal Colombia.
The penchant for making extraordinary generalizations and expansive insults is one that Keith Stansell honed down to an art prior to being a FARC hostage. An ex-Marine and "intelligence analyst", Keith described Betancourt as "the most disgusting human being I've ever encountered." Included in this statement, I presume, were Keith's experiences with FARC terrorists.
In this Jan. 11, 2002 file photo, released by the U.S. Department of Defense, detainees wearing orange jump suits sit in a holding area as military police patrol during in-processing at the temporary detention facility Camp X-Ray at Gitmo. And this is the pretty part.
Keith says things that really make you wonder whether he knows what happened at Gitmo- how some US soldiers represented the American way through torture and terrorism of their charges. Or whether he knows about Michael Barbera, or some US troops defaced the dead by urinating on them, or how confessions of war crimes to army psychiatrists were ignored, or what happened with the Alpha Company, or devastatingly high statistics for post-Iraq veteran suicides, or any other part of reality, for that matter.
"You have these kids who are just brainwashed and brought into this thing," Stansell said. "They will, in one second, turn on you and kill you if they have to. In another second, they're just playing yo-yos."
Understandably, Keith needs to discriminate between the violence conducted by his team and the "immoral" violence conducted by other teams. This is part and parcel of standard brainwashing practice which prepares me (and Marines) to take the life of another human being. Keith diagnoses the brainwashed FARC without applying the same logic to his own inflexible mindset.
Of course, it's hard not to understand Keith's black-or-white moral reasoning once you learn of the challenges in his personal life. Before the crash, Keith had been having an affair with a Colombian flight attendant named Patricia Medina.
"I was doing a bad thing," Stansell said. "I was living a double life. I'm not proud of it but it's the truth."
Just before he was taken hostage, Stansell had learned Medina was pregnant with twins. In attempt to keep his fiancee (who helped care for his kids in the US), Keith told Patricia that he would support the babies financially, but that he intended to marry his fiancée in the U.S. At some point during the long period of separation, someone must have slapped some sense into Keith's fiancee. Perhaps the prospect of two newborn babies from Keith's affair seemed like an odd wedding present. Or maybe she just realized that Keith was a dishonest jerk who managed to assert his moral superiority over others while demonstrating his own personal penchant for betrayal. Fortunately, Keith's fiancee disappeared from the scene, leaving him to find true, undying, endless love with his flight attendant.
Perhaps the only noble aspect of Keith's character is one I stumbled upon by accident- it is not mentioned anywhere in the book. It seems that Keith joined others in suing Chiquita for its financial, closet support of FARC. I respect his ability to acknowledge the way in which corporate support of murdering bandits undermines our national security. And I deeply admire his willingness to take a US company to court for doing just that.
IN THE INTERIM
The FARC commander Cesar, the one captured by Colombian soldiers during Operation Jaque, was sent to the United States in July 2009, where U.S. federal courts put him on trial for trafficking in cocaine and other narcotics during his time in the FARC. He was convicted on several trafficking charges and is now serving a 27-year sentence in federal prison. Recent documents made public through Wikileaks suggest that FARC commander Cesar, captured during Operation Jaque and extradited to the United States, had offered—prior to the rescue operation—to release Betancourt in exchange for money and protection.
In 2010, family and friends acknowledged that Ingrid and Marc were "dating".
In 2012, FARC hostage-keeper Alexander Herrera was extradited to the US to face terrorism-related charges. The indictment names 18 members of the FARC as defendants. Herrera is specifically charged with one count of conspiracy to commit hostage taking; three counts of hostage taking; one count of using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence; one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists; and one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
In November 2013, Ingrid Betancourt announced her intention to seek the Green Alliance Party’s presidential nomination in her native Colombia. I can only imagine the horror with which Keith will greet the prospect of "the most disgusting human being" he's ever met running a country. Or perhaps Keith has changed his perception since he made that last statement- maybe he has come to see that the most evil human beings are not the little guys with guns or the females who try to get more tuna but those company executives that act as leeches on US taxpayers while they subsidize terrorists through the back door.
In the 21st century, brainwashing is a part of everyone's life- not just the lives of FARC revolutionaries. We could all use a little deprogramming.
