>> they had met each other in the united states. they were both on book tour with their books and publicists. they had the same publicist. she introduced them. she decided that doing a documentary on the presidential candidate for a woman running in latin america would be a special story in columbia. that quickly changed with the kidnapping of ingrid bettencourt. we did a documentary about running the campaign in hers a -- her absence.

and we met jorge enrique botero. at that time, we interviewed him and with her husband. jorge enrique botero had been covering the conflict in columbia for about 20 years i'd say. and he was one the only journalist to get into hostage camps. and his reporting on that for columbian television and newspaper reporting was something that was very instrumental in the 90s when president ended up doing a hostage exchange between the guerrillas and the government. he was exchanging military and political prisoners for guerrillas in the columbian prisons. a year later, in 2003, three american contractors, actually

four american contractors were in a plane that went down. when they plane crashed, we immediately started getting in touch with the mother of one of the american hostages. she was the only person who was on tv. at that point, about three months after -- three or our months after the hostages were taken, jorge botero said can you get an interview with the mother of the american. i need to have it. i might not see you for a long time after that. but i'll be in touch. we ended up making a film about held hostage, about the american contractors who were held. he was able to get into the hostage camp and do an interview with the hostages in captivity. from that point, victoria and i began to think the book on the subject would be a great way to tell the whole story. time had gone by.

we weren't able to film everything that we wanted to include. as the years were going by, we never quite could get the proposal finished to the point that our agent said it was okay. it was finally in 2008 when we had something ready and by that time we had gotten back in contact with jorge enrique botero to work on the book and get it to the place that it is now. two months after we had submitted our proposal, the american hostages were rescued. so that took the book in somewhat of a different turn. i'll let victoria tell you about the process of that. >> hi, i'd also like to thank peter bergon, and hi mom and dad who was in the audience. i didn't know you were in town. they are from california. did you know about this? they always do this. as karin was saying, the story

began about the hostages. first ingrid bettencourt, then the three americans. the season that we believed the situation with the americans could imperative to tell to the u.s. audience was because he didn't see anything happening on that case. this is about the time when jessica lynch was captured in iraq and that was a huge story and there were people rallying around her and, you know, over the course of time, you've seen a lot of cases where there have been americans held hostage and jimmy carter is on a plane, and, you know, people are doing something. and in this case, nothing was being done. we'll tell the story from the beginning. we were convinced that, you know, the story had to be told. so we had followed it. at the same time, and many of you here work in latin american issues, it's very hard to get the u.s. media audience excited about columbia.

how do you tell a story like that? so the story became -- we became aware in about 2006 when simone trinidad, a guerrilla was captured, he was accused of being part of the hostage taking. he was a mid-level commander, higher than the mid level. he was charged with the conspiracy to commit hostage taking. who came to be part of that trial but our former colleague jorge enrique botero. at this point, karin and i realized we had been working on the case, we had an fbi agent, state prosecutor, we were weaving the story. we were missing the real in depth side. who better to bring that into our story than jorge enrique. it was during that time that we decided to write this book together. and what happened from then on out was what we really realize.

it was a much bigger picture than a hostage story. and that telling the story of the fark and american's relationship, and telling it through characters, one who is a banker to come to the political arena which was part of a groups of guerrillas and left wing organizations that tried to be part of the political process and failed miserably. simone trinidad was part of that. why leave your life as a banker and your wife as a jewelry store, he becomes part of that. on the other side, mere in the -- here in the u.s., there was a former fbi agent. he was trying to work the case from the side of the u.s. he had spent his life in the fbi honing his skills of negotiation. we had become the chief head of crisis hostage -- what is his

title? hostage negotiator, he has another title. but he had perfected this so that fbi after waco, he was responsible for getting 35 people out a live. they took him out, the tactical people went in and over ran the negotiators. the rest is sad history for the fbi. but gary nesner had left the fbi. he was on the case for the three americans. what he found was at the time, post 9/11, there was absolutely no desire by anyone in the government to negotiate. and this inferuated him. it tells the push to get the guys out. there's a prosecutor, ken cole, who was determined to convict the columbia guerrilla for kidnapping the american hostages. we also realize that none of this would be in play without something that our country have

been going, which is righting the war against the herb, cocaine plant and spending millions of dollars military to fight the drugs. that's been our relationship with columbia. to explore that, we wanted to tell a fascinating story. so we have all of the these characters. but at the same time show how the u.s. has really failed miserably, caused -- there's so much violence that has come out of this. we continue down the same path. that became a really important part of the book and why we wrote it. >> thank you, victoria and karin very much. gary nesner has a new book "stalling for time" the history of his life as a hostage negotiator. it's that the -- i wanted you to perhaps comment on the fact because of the way the antiterrorism rules are written in the country, the three

americans who were taken were working for northrop grummand. the money would be illegal. it would be going to the terrorists organization, in this case, the farc. >> right. what happened in the past, post waco, no, was it before waco? where the fbi had been placed on any case of an american being held hostage anywhere in the world. there would be two full time negotiators. what they would do is if someone got kidnapped from a corporation or company and the family wanted to pay, the fbi will work with them. the stance is we won't pay ran somes. they did condone by fbi, and

many ransoms have been paid by many companies. that did change in this case. although, there are other cases with the journals from the christian science monitor. she got out and pretty -- we sort of believed that money was exchanged. we don't know if that was the newspaper paying for it or family. but in this case, the state department was adamant that the fbi completely stay out of it. they didn't want them with the families, they didn't want them negotiating, they didn't want to give them any chance to pay that money. and when northrop went to send med -- medicine and a care package, the government stopped them. they said if you do this, you are supporting terrorism. you are offering military support to terrorism. so northrop kept going back and forth saying let us do something. really up until the very end, they were not letting them do

anything. >> another question which this case raises is the question is what should the family do when somebody is kidnapped? obviously if you approach this, you mention the journalist in baghdad that was working for christian science monitor. her family was vocal about the fact. when david rhodes, "the new york times" reporter, all news organizations agreed they wouldn't. you have the choice of being public or say nothing if you don't want to amp up the demands of the hostage takers. they think they have somebody very important now. can you explain what the families in this case did and how their fieldings about whether or not to stay silence over time changed? >> in this case, as soon as the hostages went -- as soon as their plane crashed and they became hostages, the u.s. government told the families, the safety department told the families that we don't want you to talk about this.

don't talk to the media. one the mothers refused to follow those guidelines. that's jo rosano. she's the mother of mark. she went to msnbc. there was an article that they had published about the crash. there was very little media about the crash when it happened. she went and began talking publicly about it. now the rest of the families were afraid. they didn't want to put their loved one's fates in danger. they didn't know what to do. these are average everyday people. the family member gets kidnapped. the idea of trusted your government was something they were going along with. they felt they should do. it has been five and a half months. when we went to make the film "held hostage in columbia" we started going around to the family members and trying to locate them and show them pieces of the video footage that we had of their husbands giving them a message. so we went to the wife of mark

at that time. we went up to her door step and knocked on the door about 8:00 at night. we had tried calling other family members. that didn't work. we went there. she sort of peeked out the door. we told her who we were. she said after we talked to her for about three hours, she said i have not talked to any media. i'm so furious about what's going on. there's really been no message about what's happening to my husband, what's going on, what's moving forward? and so she finally decided to talk to media. and slowly, throughout the years, they were kidnapped for five and a half years, some of the other family members did start coming out and talk to the media. because they felt like this is going on for so long, at this point, what's it going to hurt? from the u.s. government's perspective, when i talked to someone in the state department, they told me, yes, our plan is to tell the family members not to talk about it.

don't talk to the media. because we are worried that their value could increase and that it could become a more challenging situation. so in essence there's two opposite approaches. there's really no final solution about which one is the right one to go. i think it's very situation dependent. >> well, as part of the calculation on the government part. these guys are working with northrop, and i guess subcontractors or some shape or fashion in columbia, that also would, you know, clearly this is what they were -- whoever they were working for, they were working directly against the interest of the farc. they were involved in somehow against drug eradication. >> yes, the gentleman who were kidnapped, they were contractors and they worked d.o.d., state department, the state department runs the show as far as fumigation. they hired northrop, lockheed

martin. it's really not a military operation. which is kind of what got the guys in hot water when i -- with they first crashed. what they were doing is recognizance. the farc, the guerrillas that have been there, sort of fell into the drug trade. they were, you know, surrounding all of the rural areas where there's not much state presence. there's no government. that's kind of where they held camp. they made money off of extortions, kidnappings. they weren't really into the drug trade at that point. but later on when the u.s. made an attack on pablo escobar, the cartel heads, and thought they would put the nail on the coffin by doing that, it diverse if -- diversified the trade. columbia is the u.s. effort in

columbia, which is half a million in ten years is a way for us to sort of play a part in the drug war from here. militarily by doing two things, one is trying to help the columbian's fight the farc, even though they are only one the players in the drug war, and not even probably significant percentageage -- maybe maybe --a significant percentage. not more than 50%. the other method is what we do to defoliate. we spray toxic herbicide on the country side. this is something like round up. we put it in airplanes. these are american products, american airplanes, american companies doing this work. the government has let us in -- the government of columbia has agreed to let us do that. this is basically what the contractors were doing at the time. >> other, you know, -- william wood who is the american

ambassador in columbia moved to afghanistan. he was a favor in afghanistan and the afghan government said no in the aerial spring. any other lessons tour -- lessons to be learned from afghanistan in particularly the taliban is like the farc, an ideological move that has become terrorists, or no comparison? certainly more thoughts there could be ways to implement lessons. >> in terms of the correlation between afghanistan and columbia, i actually see a lot of similarities in the countries in the sense of the geography of both countries is so extreme that there's parts of the country that are actually have no central government. well, in afghanistan, that's a different situation with the tribal organization. but parts of the country are so difficult to access, and columbia, a lot of the area

where the farc guerrillas are is jungle. there's no roads into the area. there's boats. but it's in the columbia's it's the void of state presence in those areas. and so the farc guerrillas can become the rule of law. i think that in afghanistan, there's a correlation with that. and the drugs are grown easily in afghanistan of as they are columbia. there's a lot of similarities in whether similar things can be applied. i think we should take a look at what's actually happened over the four decades of the drug war and what real success has really come of it. because even though you can -- the government organizations can present numbers and say we are having so much success, you know, this year, the coca growing in columbia is down. if you look at the whole context of the picture, the coca growing is up in peru. it's just sort of passing the buck to another country. looking at it in a very small,

small view to say this is a success. if we look at it, why is this thing going on for so many decades, so many billions of dollars, so many lives lost in the process. i think that's something to really keep in mind when we are looking at afghanistan. >> i have to say, i agree with karin. the fact that william wood should say we should apply the tenure of failure, it is ridiculous. there's no sign of success that what we have done in columbia has helped stop the flow of drugs to the u.s. on any level. >> just one more question before i open it up. in the farc, they suffered the self-inflicted defeat. columbia was not just about the drugs, rolling back the insurgencies, multiple insurgencies, clearly the violence is subsided. was columbia playing the success in terms of making columbia safer even if the drug problem

is not really -- that was less of a success. i mean one other kind of subquestion here. the real mark of success of an anti-drug program in place like columbia would be a falling -- rising street prizes in the united states. my impression is that prices will remain stable or go down. your point is to move the problem somewhere else. the problem hasn't gone away. if you could perhaps talk about that. >> in terms of the plan columbia, whether it's been a success in columbia in any way. what really happened is you had mentioned that columbia seems like it's a safer place than it was, let's say, during the days of pablo escobar. with president uribe, he came in with a strong approach to the guerrillas. they primarily focused on the guerrillas, but there was the paramilitary which turned out to be not quite as successful as it

was touted. but what happened was it's true in columbia there are certain areas that have become safer roads that people would not travel on prior are able to be traveled on by car. things like that. the military has made an effort to go retake some areas that were run by the farc. but still recently, even as recently as this past month, the farc have started up again with braise and attacks on police convoys on electrical powers, things like that. for a while, there was a calm. the farc, they are nearly defeated. i believe they were sort of in a holding pattern. they are coming back with strong vengeance. i don't know if their numbers -- their numbers have decreased over the years, certainly. but i don't see it as any we've won the war against the farc or whatever president uribe was attempting to do at the time. i don't see that as a full success as he had hoped. >> yeah, i would also like to

add that a lot more sort of gang violence has come about in the past few years. with other players getting into the drug business. so if you take the farc and you wipe them out of the city, the military can't stay and run the city. there's not money, no government programs. that power vacuum is given up to brutal gangs as well. in the city, i've been working in columbia for ten years. i can say that i love that country. and it's much -- it feels much safer to be in bogata or bigger cities. out in the country, i fear the people that live there are subject to just as much violence from the paramilitary and the guerrillas and the military has they have been through the years. >> great. throw it open to questions. we have a mike over here. just up in front here. thanks. identify yourself. >> norm mall bailey, world

politics, thank you very much for your presentations. very quick question and also a quick correction. the quick question is where is jorge. why did you refer to him as your former colleague? the correction is it was run by the atf, not the fbi. >> forgive me, it was my slip up. it was run by the atf, not the fbi. jorge, when i referred to him as our former colleague, he continues to be our colleague and will be here tomorrow night in an event at borders at 6:30. if you could pass that along to borders here; right? >> washington, d.c. >> right. unfortunately, he tried to get here today. he couldn't get here. but when i said that, we had worked with him earlier with the ingrid bettencourt film.

he had been a guide to the inside of the workers in the hostage camps. he was the only one to get inside hostage camps in columbia. he had made a film that brought it to the attention of about 500 soldiers who had been kidnapped for several years. so when he called us again, i don't think karin and i thought we'd hear from him again. he was the former colleague. now he continues to be our colleague. >> that raises a question. it's hard enough to write a book by yourself. how do you do it with three people? >> writing with three people, it's hard. especially when one of them speaks mostly spanish, and the other one doesn't speak spanish. in the prologue, we talk about how we were debating over different ideas for the book, different political viewpoints, different opinions about things throughout the process. but i have to say the book is primarily -- victoria bruce was the lead on the book.

it's her voice through the book. jorge enrique botero was an important aspect. he gave us a depth of knowledge for all of the years working in the jungles and traveling to the hostage camps and jungle that we wouldn't have gotten. he became an important point and a character about his history and how he came to this point in his life. >> great. in front over here? >> mac, northwest library. my question is about hostage taking. is it a sort of coldly rational cost-benefit enterprise? is the farc sort of a stupid bureaucracy like our government? what's the difference in handling the lower level

hostages and maybe the northrop was mid level, and you get a big fish like ingrid bettencourt. >> in terms of hostage taking in columbia, it's been done for years. many years it was a ransom-based kidnapping. that was the way that not only the farc, but also the paramilitaries and cartels would use to capture people, capture people they didn't like. get ransom. then there was the transformation. there was a lot of military and national police who are part of the military in columbia. they were captured in the late '90s, about approximately 4 to 500 individuals in fire fights with the guerrillas. they were taken hostage. that was a time when the guerrillas decided we are going to use this opportunity as a political opportunity. and we want to exchange them in return for guerrillas who are in columbia's jails. and so they did end up having a

successful exchange of prisoners. now not all of the military and police got out. but a large few hundred got out. and there were still some left there. which they kept and hold on and said we are going to keep hanging on to the top level people. a lot of them were officers in the military. they hung on to those as the political prisoner. then ingrid bettencourt was kidnapped. there was a process in columbia that they termed miraculous fishing. what they would do, people coming down the road. there would be a roadblock. they would stop the people and look up their worth on computers and communications, and they would take them. if they were worth a lot, they would keep them. ransom or political. when ingrid bettencourt was going on, she was traveled into a demilitarized area. days before it was broken. the government was going in to take the area. she was going down because a

mayor from her political party and mayor of the town was there. she wanted to go and be with the people. they said the paramilitary is coming in. she decided to take a road, she was kidnapped. they found out she was ingrid bettencourt. presidential candidate. this is a great opportunity for us. with the americans, that to them, they even referred to it as, you know, these people are falling from the sky. it's like this big pot of gold just landed in their laps. they put them in the category, the political prisoners as well, or political hostages. they weren't going to actually necessarily do anything, or do any exchanges for randsome. -- ransom. they wanted political leverage. >> you mention ingrid bettencourt. she was the subject of the book that was written by the three american hostages. obviously if any of us gets locked up with somebody else for six years, you are going to have

some strong views about them. was that -- or is she -- people have different reactions to her depending on who they are? >> yeah. ingrid bettencourt is a very strong character. and so many people do have a lot of differing opinions of her. and karin and i, i had met ingrid before we started the film for one hour while she was on book tour for her first book in 2002; right? january. i had thought this would be a great way to sort of tell the story of the beauty of columbia that i had felt -- that i had felt when i was there researching my first book. which was about a volcanic disaster, historical. i want to tell a modern day story. let's follow ingrid. karin and i were making plans to go down there and cover her. i had no experience. karin had. i knew she spoke spanish well.

we are on our way down there. she was kidnapped. telling her story through her own narration which is cut together from various interviews on npr, c-span, things she had done. she had a beautiful voice. she narrates her story in the beginning. however, we never really got to know ingrid ourselves. the film became about her husband at the time, juan carlos lacompte, he was the motorcycle riding, he had never voted before he met ingrid. our film was about him and his love story of trying to get his wife out of captivity. as the years went by, we wept in touch with juan carlos. when ingrid was release, she and juan carlos split within 24

hours of that. after that. we were sort of heartbroken for him. at the same time, we never really got to know ingrid. when we hear these reports, you know, we -- i guess we had the love affair with this person that we had made this film about, fighting for good. you always want to make a film that does something and shows some, you know, wonderful part of humanities and people surviving. i think it was shocking for us to hear all of these negative things being said about her by the other hostages. at the same time, what peter says is true. i think everyone is in a survival mode. you can't really judge anyone if you haven't been in that situation. since ingrid has been out, we still don't know her well. i know she has a book coming out soon. i know we'll get to know her through the book. >> thank you. >> hello, i'm william from the university of wisconsin, international affairs. i'd like to ask the question

about the operation that freed ingrid bettencourt. there was a lot, i recall, controversy by the icrc about the neutral symbols being used in a military or quasi military operation distorts it's use as a valid kind of neutral symbol. would you explain that more fully for those of us in the audience? >> what happened on july 2, 2008, there was a military operation run by the military called operation hocke. that was a mission to rescue 125 hostages, including ingrid, the three americans, and other columbia military and national police members. and this operation, you are right about your question in terms of the use of logos like, for example, the international red cross logo. what the columbian military did, theydevised the plan to go in

and basically trick the guerrillas into bringing these two groups of hostages together and then come and meet at the certain space and then this mission that looked like an humanitarian organization. they created a web site, created a logo for it. the intelligence officers took acting classes. they died their hair, they did all sorts of things to take on these characters which would represent different members of the humanitarian organization. and the helicopters were actually painted the same exact colors that they had been when president hugo chavez had done a mission to pick up hostages that the farc were releasing to him in 2008 and late 2007. so what the columbian military did is there was a big issue over this use of this one logo

and their mission was called, i believe it was -- i don't remember the exact title. but it was mission international or something like that. they did come in. they were able to rescue the 15 hostages. we tell about it in a book. in a whey that no shots were -- in a way that no shots were fired, and they were able to get the captures on the helicopter as well. in that sense, there was the backlash about the use of the logo. would this jeopardize future humanitarian missions? i don't know what the final resolution of that was. i think there was one the play of one the guys that wore the logo, i did it last minute. you know, some sort of not very clear story about what actually happened. but in the larger picture of the -- of the mission as a whole, as a rescue mission, it was a very

well barring this logo usage. it was very well planned out operation which really resulted in the freedom of 15 people who had been held for longer than six years. >> one of the worst situations to be in is to be in a rescue situation. we've seen that repeatedly. particularly with countries that don't have rescue, delta force type. was there a concern amongst the hostages that they might get rescued and it would be a blood bath in which they would die? >> yes. there was a definite worry by all of the hostages. because they were constantly surrounded by guerrillas. and all of the hostage that is we know of, the political hostages were very aware that the farc mandate from the leader of the farc at that point, if there was a rescue attempt or the thought to murder all of the

hostages immediately. that had been done right before -- was it right before the americans were kidnapped. it was after ingrid. she had been kidnapped a year by the time the three americans were kidnapped. there was an attempt to rescue some hostages and they were all shot. and with a couple survived afterwards. so, you know, any time -- i mean it wasn't just the guerrillas that were freaking out when they heard helicopters coming from the military, it was the hostages too. at time the bogus humanitarian mission come in, you have the hostages rebelling. because the guerrilla commanders have been taking ordered from the military. they don't know that. they had infiltrated, they are saying move them here, move them here. make them wear white t-shirts that say yes to the humanitarian accord or exchange. at this point, the hostages said

-- they thought they were going to be set up for a proof of life. they didn't want to do anything. they said film us as we are. you are treating us like bar barbarics. they were hoping when they came in, they could easily identify the hostages because they would be wearing the shirts. they are coming down and looking. the rid owe -- radio transmissions are messing up. because the hostages are rebelling. it was -- like karin said, all of the things that were just about to go wrong didn't. i think the question was whether, you know, they were worried about being rescued. absolutely. that was one of their biggest fears. >> here.

>> my name is dennis grob, i'm a member of foc, friends of columbia. it's a group of return peace corps volunteer. there were 5,000 peace corps volunteers who have served in columbia over the years. they had to leave in 1984 because of a kidnapping of volunteers by the farc. they have recently returned in a small group. however, my question relates to i have not read your book. okay? i will later. and the title "hostage nation." my question relates to you are telling the story of the hostage situation. do you tell the story of the political outcome, right, of "hostage nation"? where do we go from here? we have been doing it for 50 years. do you address the issue? where do we go from here? continue playing columbia at half a billion dollars a year

or, you know, is there another alternative? >> in the book, we do talk a lot about like you said the history of plan columbia and how we got to this place. one the things that we begin to talk about is taking it from what's going on with plan columbia and looking at what's going on into mexico. since so many things are going on in mexico with the drug issue and how the u.s. is starting to step their feet into mexico. and i think it's really a way to look at things in a larger context and try to get a whole picture of the situation for the people who are the policymakers and decision makers to say let's take a larger view of this and see what have we been doing, what are we about to do? and how do we need to rethink what some of the options are? a lot of countries in south

america, latin america are beginning the process of decriminalization of small dozes of personal use drugs like in mexico, they've done marijuana, cocaine, all sorts of drugs for small of that the decriminalization of that. other countries are looking at this in ways to bring down some of the violence that's going on. take out some of the mafia aspect of what's happening with these -- with the talk of legalization or decriminalization in many states it's beginning to be brought out as well as the use of medical marijuana in many states. and i think that that's a very interesting path to travel down. because it's something that -- we are essentially in a state of prohibition. i think that, you know, when something is illegal like this, and there is such a demand for it in the united states and europe, as long as the demand is as strong as it is, i think it's going to continuously, there's not going to be an easy way to solve this.

i think going in and fumigating crops and destroying, fumigating the cocoa plants would end up popping back up. there are weeds. destroying crops, contaminating water, hurting people, that type of thing needs to be looked at from a totally different aspect. >> hi, i'm damion, i'm with a political consulting firm. quick question, how helpful was the finding of the road in your research and how much of venezuelan influence that's now being proven by president chavez conducted when you wrote your book? >> that's an interesting question. a lot of over the six or seven years that we worked on this book, there were so many sort of ah-ha moments where we thought okay, we can finally end this book. before the host annals were --

hostages were rescued, that made an obvious one. we were commissioned to write the book before the hostages were rescued. we never knew where it was going to end. we talked about raule reyes. he was sort of the public relations. jorge enrique botero had been in contact. any time they were trying to get access, they would go there. his camp was known to be in the southern part of columbia near ecuador. it ended up being in ecuador. this was news, when they bombed his camp and killing his men and women. many women in the farc, i should should discount that. the farc is technological savvy.

they have phones, computers, phones, they can look up your bank account. but they had -- reyes had a lot of connections. when they went through the computers that they found in his camp, they found what appeared to be many ties to hew -- hugo chavez, letters where there were money going one direction and the other. there where many journalists that look supportive to the farc. there were humanitarian workers that were named. there were many, many things that were going on there. interpoll that checked out the computers. these are according to reports. i haven't been there. but they said that they hadn't been tampered with. recently, there was police -- a police investigator who admitted he had those computers before they went to interpoll. he had sort of falsified some of

these e-mails. so now the data is really in question. whether hugo chavez has a relationship with the farc, he doesn't have one with the columbia government as we all know. that to me personally, it's not hard to believe. the border from venezuela to columbia, it's porice. >> in front here? >> i'm betty worth with the naval post graduate school. i have two ones. what were the conditions the hostages were kept? and the second is, are there no other economic options in columbia, ways in which people can support themselves other than doing human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms

trafficking? >> in terms of your first question about how the hostages were kept in columbia, when we made our film "held hostage in columbia" jorge enrique botero went in to interview, they said they were treated well. coffee to drink, clean uniforms, hair had been cut, et cetera. the one thing they didn't say on camera was that they had not been allowed to talk to each other for the whole five and a half months. they had been separated. they were not allowed to communicate. they were paranoid the americans, you know, even from the moment of their capture, they made them strip down naked. they were sure there was bugged in the clothing that the government was following them. and so they were paranoid if the men to talk to each other, they would surely, you know, find a way to alert the military or escape or something. and so we found out that they

were not allowed to talk to each other at all. and they also had no radio communication, which was frequently something that the hostages were allowed to have. there were radio programs in columbia where loved ones can go and leave messages for the host annals. that -- hostages. the farc had prepare the the area. later we learned in the american hostage book that they wrote when they came out, the conditions were really horrible in the sense of at a certain point in their captivity, they were each put in sort of locked in these boxes like six by six foot or, you know, some sort of boxes to sleep in. they were totally separated. a certain point later in the captivity, ingrid bettencourt had tried to escape about three times approximately. after her escapes, they started chaining the hostages.

they would chain her to the tree by the neck. once the americans and ingrid were all in one camp, they would chain two hostages together by the neck. they had to wear the chains and carry them on the long 40-day marchs. so what they presented in their video when they were on camera, the hostages said they are doing fine. they wanted to reassure their families that they were okay. so their families didn't worry. at that point, they didn't have to wear chains. it was early. they weren't in some of the more brutal treatment which happened later. but that was something that they made a point of doing is trying to calm their families down through the message. >> and the second part of that question was, you know, sort of what are the opportunities in columbia? why are people joining the farc

gangs? the bottom line, there's very few if any in the rural villages, there are no roads. this area was populated. we tell the story in the book, it was something that i didn't know after my first -- i guess until late in the investigation. in the early part of the 20th century, there was a periodicalled [speaking foreign language] which is when there was a war between the liberals and conservatives. brutal murders. during that time, the poor people that didn't want to be involved into this, went into the jungles. they called it the river basin. and it eventually feeds the amazon. it's very low lying and jungle terrain. they sort of came up and made the villages pop up.

and things were sort of rolling along nicely. they had a culture that was a combination of all of the different cultures from different parts of columbia. they had small -- very small farms in agriculture and after a while the -- what happened was the guerrilla came there too. not so much as a menacing presence. they started becoming the government and sort of taking care of the areas a little bit. what happened next was that the cartels realized that, wow, you know, we have all of the expansive land where there's no government that will do anything to stop us. this is where we should be growing the coca. they came with seeds to the pots of blend that were making nothing from selling yuca, and

pappas. you make it into the base. we'll come back and get it from you. so what happened was it was a gold rush. it was a white gold rush. and the people -- all kinds of sort of, you know, people from the city, and records and escaping from the law and working as [inaudible] is that the right pronunciation? they scape the cocoa leaves. they get paid a few dollars a day. it was a windfall compared to what they were making. the men would work all week. at the end, they would have gunfights on the weekend. everyone was drunk.

and the farc started to take over. that's when they started ruling the territory and this area. and so the whole area now when your question was do people have -- do people have opportunity? they have opportunity to know be [inaudible] and be at the lowest level of the drug trade or they can be a member of the guerrillas. and there really isn't much else going on at all. you know, joining the paramilitary which is the other side and equally as violent. >> back here. >> i am daniel, the columbia newspaper. back in columbia, jorge enrique botero's profession has a journalist, we have sympathies similar to farc, and he has friendship with columbian politicians. how did like this internal

columbian politics play into your book and your investigation? thanks. >> that's an interesting question about how internal columbian politics played into the book. that was something that i feel like in any instances, we were working with jorge on very specific things about what's going on inside the farc guerrilla of the long history of knowledge of this. as he becomes a character in the book, we actually found out some things about the background and how did he actually have access into these farc/guerrilla champs. many journalist don't want to or cannot get the access. and it's true in columbia, there's been controversy over him as a journalist because i think it's a difficult situation when somebody -- and he's not the only journalist. when journalist are covering whether it be the farc or the

paramilitary. if they are covering that area intensely, i think the rest of the population and even the government can begin to question why is the person covering this. do they have ties, et cetera. what we found out in our research and talking with him was that back in the 1970s, he was -- it was the time of student movements throughout latin america. and it was in the early mid '70s and he was really involved in the student youth movement as well. sort of the revolutionary -- revolutionary spirit was going on throughout latin america. and a lot of people who -- he was associating with in college ended up going to the route of the guerrillas. so he told us, you know, five years into making the book, we were talking to him and one night we said something about, well, you know, you had it -- you got an interview with alfonso cano, who was the high level with the guerrillas, and

in 1987, the guerrillas had not given public interviews. in 1987, jorge was able to get an interview with alfonso. we said how would you get the interview? then he revealed to us in college, he had played poker with cano. he said there was a group of about five people who were sort of in the student movements and they had been hanging out together and he said, yeah, you know, what happened was i went the route of journalism, two of the people went the route of guerrillas, and the other two became lawyers. but at that time in our youth, we were sort of all in this spirit of student movements and fighting for, you know, revolution and things like that. and so his -- so that, you know, -- his history of having known these people 20 years prior was something that later he could sort of draw on to do that. but in terms of your specific

question about how internal politics focused in our book, i don't know do you want to say anything about that? >> yeah, i would like to add on to that. because as peter asked us, it is difficult to write with three people with different ideals and different knowledge bases. but one the things that -- our review in publishers weekly was very kind. said that this was one the most balanced accounts of the situation between columbia and the u.s. in the last decade. and, you know, it is true that jorge enrique, his journalism often times has been thought to be very much sort of left leaning and sympathetic to the farc. when he's told that, he says, you know, part of that, i think, from working with him over the years is that it -- the farc is just one the players with the same brutality. yet, if you look at a lot of the media coming out of cleanup --

columbia, it's only the farc. the paramilitary is equally as bad. they have been very much connected to the government of columbia. so, you know, he really wanted us to avoid just being that, you know, sort of cliche, the one bad player in columbia as the farc. the other thing that, you know, we really appreciated was that he really made us avoid the term or prefix narco. we love labels in this country. when you label them a narco guerrilla. it makes it possible to prosecutor columbian guerrillas. simone trinidad was convicted of being part of the narco business, but they had nothing on him. so many levels of society are

permeated by drug money. if you are going to call them the narco grill -- guerrillas, you are going to have to say the narco banker, and president, and these police. the police and military are being fired, you have the illegal substance that worth nothing where we've escalated to the point that it's worth more than gold, everyone is going to get a piece of the action. the players that stay out are either killed or prosecutorred. we stayed away from pinning the blame on one group. >> and back here. this will be i think our last question. >> marie from the international institute for strategic studies. my question kind of pertain to the american government involvement in the whole situation. obviously the american government is really o