having us here. i like to set up by telling you a little bit about how we began to do this book. the story started in 2002 when the tory percent ingrid betancourt, who is running for president of colombia at that>>m time. the and they had met each other int the united states, were both on book tour with their books andn their publicists.h the publicist introduced them. and so, she decided doing a documentary on a presidential candidate who is running foromar president in colombia, a woman running for president at latin america would be an interesting story and especially the story af ingrid betancourt. h well, that quickly changed with the kidnapping of ingrid betancourt and we ended up turning into a documentary about her family and her campaign,enty running the campaign in herhe absence and about hostages in colombia that situation. and from that documentary, we. met a person -- of the colombia

journalist named henrique botero and were introduced by a camera person. .. 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 >> we met him and interviewed him, and then a year later in 2003, the american -- three american contractors, well, actually, four contractors who were in a plane that went down, and when their plane

crashed, we immediately started getting in touch with the mother of the one of the american hostages because she was the only person who was on tv, and at that point, about three months after, three or four months after the hostages had been taken hostage, we were called out of the blue asking if we could get an interview with money of the americans. i need to have it, and i might not see you for a long time after that, but we'll be in touch. we made a film called held hostage about the american contractors held, and he was able to get into the hostage camp and do an interview with the hostages in captivity, and from that point, victoria and i thought a book on the subject would be a great way to tell the whole story because time had gone by, and we were not able to film everything we wanted to include, so we began writing a proposal, and then as the years

were going by, we never quite could get the proposal finished to a point where our agent said it was okay. finally in 2008 when we had something ready, and by that time, we had gotten back in contract and started working with botero to work on his book and get it to the place where it is now, and two months after we submitted our proposal, the american hostages were rescued, so that took the book in somewhat of a tircht turn, and victoria can tell you more about the process of that. >> hi, i'd also like the foundation for having us, and hi, mom and dad, you surprised me. they're from california, and i didn't know they were here. they surprised me. they always do this. [laughter] the story began about the

hostages, began first ingrid and then the three americans, and the reason that we believed that the situation with the americans would be imperative to tell to u.s. audience is because we didn't see anything happening on that case. i mean, this is about the time when jessica lynch was captured in iraq, and that was a huge story and people rallying around here, and you know, over the course of time, you've seen 5 lot of cases where there have been americans held hostage and jimmy carter is on a plane, and you know, people are doing something, but in this case, nothing was being done. we followed the story from the beginning, and we were convinced that the story had to be told. we followed it, but at the same time, and many of you here working in american issues, it's very hard to get a u.s. media audience excited about columbia. how do you tell a story like that? so the story --

we became aware in about 2006 when simone trinidad was captured accused of being part of the hostage taken of the three americans, and he was brought to the u.s.. he was captured and brought to the u.s. charged with conspiracy to commit hostage taken and who came to be a part of that trial was botero, and it at this point we realized we had been working on this case, and we had an fbi agent as a character, a state department prosecutor, and you no e, we were -- you know, we were weaving the story together, but we were missing the in depth side. who better to bring that into the story than enrei cay. we decided to bring this story together, and what happened then is we realized it was a bigger picture than a hostage story,

and telling the story and america's relationship with the farq and telling it through characters, one who is a banker who tries to come to the political arein a that -- arena with the union patriotic, croup -- groups of guerrillas who tried to be part of the american process and failed miserably. he became a guerrilla, and it's a fascinating story, you know, why leave your life as a banker, your wife with a store, and he becomes a part of that. on the other side here in the u.s., there was a former fbi agent, gary nestner trying to work the story from the u.s.. he had honed his skills in negotiation, and was the chief head of crisis -- what is his title? hostage negotiator, there's

another title, but he had perfected this so the fbi after waco, gary was responsible for getting 35 people out alive. they took him out, and the tactical people overran the goacialters, and the rase is, you know, sad history for the fbi. but gary left the fbi, and he was on the case for the three americans, and what he found was at the time, post-9/11, there was absolutely no desire by anyone in the government to negotiate, and this infear rated him. the book tells his story trying to push to get the guys out. at the same time, there's a prosecutor, ken cole who is bound and determined to convict this columbian guerrilla for kidnapping the american hostages, so we also realized that none of this would not have been in play which is fighting a war against the cocaine plant

and spending billions and billions of dollars militarily to fight drugs. that's been our relationship with columbia, and so to explore that, you know, we wanted to tell a fascinating story, so we have all these characters that at the same time show how the u.s. is really failed miserably, caused -- there's so much violence that's come out of this, and we continue down the same path, so that became a really important part of the book and why we wrote it. thanks. >> thank you, victoria and karin very much. there's a critical role in the book and a new book is coming out which is a history of his life as a negotiator. because of the way the antiterrorism rules are written in the country, the three americans were taken and in order to do a deal that in some

way gave money for exchange for hostages which is often the only way to get people out, would have been illegal; is that right? the money would have been going to a terrorist organization. >> right. i would say what happened in the past i would say this started post-waco -- no, was it before? 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, and what they would do is if someone was kidnapped from a corporation or a company or the family, and the family wanted to pay, the fbi would work hand in hand with them, and the stance of the government is we won't pay ransom, so the money doesn't come from the federal government, but di did condone negotiating by fbi agents always, and many, many ransoms have been paid by many,

many companies, but that did change in this case, although, there are other cases with the journalists from the christian science monitor where she got out and we sort of believe 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 the money, and when they went to send medicine and a care package and letters from the family, the government actually stopped them from doing this, and if you do this, you're sporting terrorism and offering military support to terrorism. he kept going back and forth over the years saying let us do something, and really, up until the very end, they were not letting them do anything. >> another question which this case raises is a question about

what you -- what does the family do once kidnapped? the approach of the journalist in baghdad from the christian science monitor, and her family was very vocal. and when david rode was kidnapped, there was a news blackout on that which all news organizations basically agreed that they wouldn't. you either have the choice of being public or saying nothing because you don't want to amp up the demands of the hostage takers and they think they got something important. can you explain what the families in this case did and how their feelings about whether or not changed? >> in this case, as soon as the hostages -- as soon as their plane crashed and they became hostages, the u.s. government told the families, the state department told the families that we don't want you to talk about this. don't talk to the media, and one of the mothers refused to follow the guidelines.

that's a mother of mark. she immediately went to, i believe, it was msnbc, and there was an article published about the crash. there was little media about the crash when it happened, and she began talking publicly about it. now, the rest of the families were afraid because they didn't want to put their loved ones fates in danger. they didn't know what to do. these are average every day people, and a family member is kidnapped, and the idea of trusting your government is something that they were going along with and felt they should do. it had been, probably, five and a half months, and when we went to make the film in colombia, we started going around to the family members and trying to locate them and show them pieces of the video footage we had of their husbands giving them a message, and so we went to the wife of mark at that time and we basically went up to her doorstep and knocked on her door

at eight o'clock at night because we tried calling other family members, and that didn't work. she peaked out the door and looked out and opened the door, and we told her we have messages for her, and she said, you know, after we talked to her for three hours, she said i've not talked to any media, but i'm furious because there's no message about what's happening to my husband, what's going on, what's the 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, and some family members talked to the media because they thought this was going on for so long. at this point, what's it going to hurt, but from the u.s. government's perspective when i taked to someone directly in the state department, they said, yes, our plan is to tell the family members not to talk about it, don't talk to the media because we're worried that their

value could increase and it would be a more challenging situation because -- so, in essence, there's two very opposite approaches, and there's no really final solution about which one is the right one to go. i think it's very situation-dependent. >> as part of the calculation on the government's part, they were, i guess, cia, self-contractor or involved in columbia in some shape or fashion that that also clearly would -- what they -- whoever they worked for they were working against the direct interest the fark involved with drug communication? >> yeah, the gentlemen kidnapped did work dod contract, state department contracts. the state department runs the show dun there as far as fumigation and the ones who hired martin, and they get the money in state department's budget. it's not a military operation

which is what got the guys in hot water with when they crashed. what they were doing was reconnaissance. the guerrillas in columbia for 45 years fell into the drug trade. they were surrounding all of the rural areas where there's not much state presence, there's no government, and that's kind of where they held camp and made money off of extortions and kidnapping. they were not into the drug trade at that point, but later on when the u.s. made an attack on the cartel heads and really thought they put a nail in the coffin of the drug war by doing that diversified the trade and the guerrillas swooped in and now have a big chunk of it, but plan columbia are the u.s. effort which is half a billion a year on average over 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 columbians fight the farq even though they are just one of the players in the drug war, and probably not a significant per percentage, well, significant, but not more than 50%, and the other method is what we do to defoliate. we spray toxic herbicide on the countryside. this is something like round-up that you by at home depot. they are american products, american airplanes, and american companies doing the work, and the government of columbia agreed to let us do that, and that's basically what the contractors were doing at the time. >> other, you know, william wood who was the american ambassador in columbia, then moved to afghanistan, and of course, he was very much in favor of ariel

spraying, but the afghan government said no. any lessons learned in the light of the fact that the taliban is just like the farq and it's a criminal enterprise to a large degree, or are the situations so different, there's no kind of way of saying that lessons were learned and columbia could be implement the in afghanistan. william wood thought there would be ways 20 implement -- to implement lessons. >> in terms of relationships, i see a lot of similarities in the country in sense of the geography of the countries is so extreme that there's parts of the country that actually have no central government. 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 farq are,

is jungle. there's no roads into the area, but there are boats. in columbia, it's the void of state presence in those areas, and the farq guerrillas become the rule of law. in afghanistan there's a correlation with that, and the drugs are grown easily in afghanistan like columbia, and 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 the government organization can present numbers and say, oh, we're having so much success, this year the coke is growing in columbia is down, but if you look at the whole context of the picture, it's actually the coke growing is up in peru. it's passing the buck to another country, and you know, looking at a in a very small view to say this is a success, but if we look at it why is this thing

going on for so many decades and so many billions of dollars and so many lives lost in the process, and i think that's something to really keep in mind when looking at afghanistan. >> i have to say i agree with karin and the fact to apply this ten years of failure to fail somewhere else is ridiculous. there's no sign of success there that helped stop the flowing drugs into the u.s.. >> it seems the farq if you could give us an assessment of a self-inflighted defeat to some degree. plan columbia was not just o about the drugs, but pulling back multiple insurgencies, and clearly the violence has subsided, but is columbia safer even if the drug problem is not really -- that was less of a success. is there one other kind of

subquestion here is the real mark of success in an antidrug program would be a rising prices in the united states. my impression is that prices have run stable or even gone down. your point is that we have moved the problem somewhere else. the problem has not gone away. if you could just 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 was a safer place, and with the new president he came in with a strong military approach to the guerrillas, and primarily focused on the guerrillas and there was a large demilitary plan for them, but it was not as successful as touted. what happened is it's true in

columbia there's areas that are safer, roads that people could not travel on prior, are able to be traveled on by car. the military has taken an effort to take areas run by the farq, but still recently, even as recently as this past month, the farq started up again with attacks on police convoys, on electrical towers, and things like that, so for awhile, there was a calm, and people were saying, o'-- oh, they are nearly defeated, but i believe they were in a holding pattern, and they are coming back with strong vens janes. i don't know, but it's not like we won the war, i don't see that as a full success as he had hoped. >> yeah, and i would also 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 farq, wipe them out of the city, the military can't stay and run the city. there's not government programs or money for it, so that is given over to brutal gangs as well, so in the city, i've been working in columbia for ten years, and i can say i love that country and it feels much safer to be in bogota or the bigger cities, but the people who live there are subject to just as much violence from the military and the guerrillas as they have been through the years. >> great. throw it over to questions. there's a mic over here. just in front of you. identify yourself. >> normal bailey, world politics. thank you for your presentations. a quick question and a quick

correction. the quick question is where is horay? the correction is it was run by the atf, not by the fbi. >> forgive me. that was my faux pas. it was run by the abf. do i need to repeat the question, peter? >> no, just respond. >> i meant -- when i referred to him as a former colleague, he continues to be our colleague and will be here tomorrow nite at borders at 6:30. it's borders here -- washington, d.c. northwest. >> right. >> he tried to get here today and couldn't, but when i said that we had worked with him earlier with the ingrid film, and he had been a guide to the inside of the workings of hostage camps, the only one ever

to get inside hostage camps in columbia, and made a film that sort of brought that attention to the columbia population of about 500 soldiers who had been kidnapped for several years, and when he called us again, i don't think karin thought we'd hear from him again, so he was our former colleague at that time, but now he is still our colleague. >> how do you write a book with three people? >> writing a book with three people is an interesting process especially when one speaking spanish exclusively and the others don't speak too much spanish, but what we did -- in the prologue of the book, we talk about how we were debating over different ideas for the book, different political viewpoints and opinions throughout the process, but i have to say the book is primarily, victoria bruce was the lead on the book, and it's her voice carrying through the whole book, and then he was an

important as peck because he gave us a depth of knowledge from all of his years working in the jungles and traveling numerous trips to the hostage camps in the jungle that we could not have ever gotten ourself, so he became an important point, and he became a character in the book about his whole history and how he came to this point in his life. >> great. in front of you here. >> my question is about hostage taking, and is it a sort of coldly rational cost-benefit enterprise, or is the farq a stupid bureaucracy like our own government? what's the handling in lower level hostages, and the mid level, and then, you know, a big fish like ingrid betenkort?

>> it's been something that's been done for years, and for many years it was a ransom based kidnapping situation where there was a way that not only the farq, but the militaries and cartels used to capture people they didn't like and get ransom for them, and then there was a transformation, and there was a lot of military and national police who are part of the military in columbia. they were captured in the late 1990s, approximately 400-500 individuals in require fights with the guerrillas, and they were taken hostage. that was the time when the guerrillas decided to use this opportunity as a political opportunity, and we want to exchange them in return for guerrillas in columbia's jails, and so they did end up having a successful exchange of

prisoners. now, not all the military and police got out, but a large few hundred got out, and there was still some left there which nay kept and hold on and said we'll hang on to the top level people, officers in the military, and they hung on to them as the political prisoner, and then ingrid was kidnapped, and there was a process in columbia and what they would do is people coming down a road and there's a roadblock, stop the people k and they would look up their worth on computers or by communications, and then they would take them. if they were worth a lot, they kept them for ransom or political, and when ingrid was going on, she was in an area that had formally been the demilitarized zone, and days before that had broken and the government was going in to retake the area, and she was going down because a mayor from her political party, a mayor of that town was there, and she wanted to go and be the people

because people were calling her and saying the military is coming in, people are disappearing, so she decided to take a road, and she was kidnapped that way. they thought, oh, presidential candidate, 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 was like a big pot of gold landing in their laps, and they butt them in the category of the political hostages as well. they weren't weren't going to do anything for ransom, but political leverage. >> you mentioned ingrid, the subject of a great deal of hostility in the book written by the three american hostages. know, obviously, if we get locked up with someone else for six years, you have strong views about them, but was that merited

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

kidnapping, is tell her the story through her own narration which is cut together from various interviewed on npr, c-span, things she had done on book tour. she has a beautiful voice and narrates her story in the beginning. it was a way do get her in the film, however, we never got to know her herself, and her story became about her husband at that time who was a motorcycle riding, rock and roll listener who met ingrid seven years before, and had never voted before he met her, and so our fill film became about him and his love story of getting his wife out of the captivity. we kept in touch with him over the years, and when ingrid was released they split within 24 hours of that, after that, we were hearted broken for him, and

at the same time, we never really got to know ingrid, so when we hear these reports, you know, i guess we had this love affair of a person who we made a film about fighting for good, and you want to make a film that does something showing the wonderful part of humanity and people surviving. i think it was shocking for us to hear all these negative things being said about her by the other hostages at the same time when peter says it's true, you know, i think everyone is in a survival mode, and you can't really judge anyone if you haven't been in that situation, but since ingrid has been out, we still don't know her very well, and she has a book coming out soon, so probably we'll get to know her through that book. >> hello, i'm from university of wisconsin, semester international affairs. i want to ask a question about the operation that freed ingrid. there's a lot of controversy as

i recall by the acrc but the symbols used in a military operation, therefore, distorting its use or destroying its use as a valid symbol. could you explain that fully for those of us in the audience? >> what happened was in july -- on july 12, 2008, there was a military operation ran by the columbian military. that operation was a mission to rescue 15 hostages including ingrid, the three americans, and other military, columbian military, and national police members, and this operation, you're right about your question in terms of the use of logos like, for example, the international red cross low go. what the columbia military did was devise a plan in intelligence operation 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 a humanitarian organization, it was a fictitious organization to the point of they created a website for it, they created a low go for it, the intelligence officers took acting classes. they died their hair. they did all -- they dyed their hair and did all things to take on these characters to represent the humanitarian organization, and the helicopters were painted the same exact colors they had been when the president hugo had done a mission to pick up hostages that the farq released to him prior to 2008 and late 2007, so what the columbian military did was there was a big issue over the use of the one logo, and their mission was called, i believe -- i don't remember the title, but

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

barring this logo usage, it was a well-planned operation which resulted in the freedom of 15 people who had been held for longer than six years. >> you know, one of the worst situations to be in is in a rescue situation. i mean, we've seen that repeatedly particularly with countries that don't have particularly robust rescue delta force types, and was there a concern among the hostages they would get rescued by the columbia army and there would be a blood bath in which they would die? >> yes, that was a worry by all the hostages because they were constantly surrounded by the guerrillas, and all the hostages were aware that the farq mandate from the leader of the farq at that point was that if there is a rescue attempt or even the thought of a rescue attempt to even murder the hostages immediately, and that had been done right before, was it right

before the americans were kidnapped? it was after ingrid was kidnapped, and she was kidnapped a year after the americans. there was an attempt to rescue hostages, and they were all shot, and with a couple surviving afterwards. you know, any time, it was not just the guerrillas freaking out, but the hostages too, so at the time this humanitarian, this bogus humanitarian mission comes in, you have hostages that are rebelling because the guerrilla commanders have been taking orders from the military. they don't know that, but they had infiltrated the radio systems giving commands to a gorilla here move them here and here as karin said and make them white t-shirts that say yes to the exchange, and at this point, the hostages said, oh, they thought they were going to be

set up for a proof of life. they didn't want to do anything like that. they said film as we are. you are treating us barbaric. we have chains around our necks. they wouldn't wear the shirts, and the columbian military was hoping they could easily identify the hostages because they would wear the sure. they wouldn't wear them. the military is looking and radio transmissions are messing up, and there's no one in the shirts because the hostages are rebelling, so it was a, you know, it was a like karin said, it was impeccably executed because all the things that were about to go wrong didn't, and i think the question was whether, you know, whether they were worried about being rescued, absolutely. that was one of their biggest fears. >> right here. >> i'm dennis, member of foc,

friends of columbia, and victoria, foc is a return of peace corp. volunteers, and as you might know there's 5,000 peace corp. volunteers serving in columbia over the years and had to leave in 1984 because of kidnapping of volunteers. they recently returned in a small group, however, my question reltds to -- relates to, i have not read your book, and i will later, but the title hostage nation and the question relates to is you're telling the story of the hostage situation, do you tell the story of the political outcome; right? of the hostage nation, where do we go from here? we're familiar with this because we've been at it for 50 years. do you address the issue, where do we go from here? continue to pay columbia half a billion dollars a year, or 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 of the things that we begin to talk about is taking it from what's going on with plan columbia and looking at now what's going on into mexico since so many things are going on in mexico with the drug issue, and how the u.s. starting to step their feet into mexico as they have in columbia, and i think it's -- it's really a way to look at things in a larger context trying to get a whole picture of the situation for the people who are the policymakers and the 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 or started 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 doses of personal use drugs. in mexico they have bone marijuana and cocaine and other countries are looking at that as ways to bring down the violence that's going on, take out some of the mafia aspect of what's happening with the drug wars, and even in the u.s. the talk of legalization of decriminalization in many states is beginning to be brought out as well as these medical miern in -- marijuana in states, and that's an interesting path to travel down because we're essentially in a state of prohibition, and i think that, you know, when something is illegal like this, and there is such a demand for it in the united states and in europe, as long as the demand is strong as it is, i think it's going to continuously -- there's not going to be an easy way to solve this and going in and fumigating crops and plants

end up popping back up because they are weeds anyway, but destroy crops in the process, contaminating water, hurting people, that type of thing needs to be looked at from a totally different aspect. >> i'm damian with a political consulting firm. how helpful was the finding of the laptop in your research, and how much of an influence is proven by the president conducting recent throughout your book? >> that's an interesting question. a lot of over the six or seven years we work the on this book, there was so many awe-ha moments where, okay, we can finally end this book, and that was before the hostages were rescued. there wasn't an obvious ending.

we were commissioned 20 write the book before -- to write the book before the hostages were rescued. we never knew where it would end. we talked to a six member of the sectarian and he -- >> of the farq. >> of the far, a guerrilla commander, the public relations commander, and jorge botero was in contact with him and his camp was known to be in the southern part of columbia near the border of ecuador. it ended up being in ecuador which was news to the ecuadorians when the columbians bombed that camp in their air space killing him and a lot of his men and women, many women in the farq, and i should not discount that, and what happened was -- the farq is savvy. they have satellite computers and phone and can look up your bank account, hopefully not your

account, but they had a lot of connections and when they went through the computers that they found in his camp, they found what appeared to be many ties and letters where there was perhaps money going one direction and the other. there were many journalists talking to him in ways that they looked supportive to the farq, and there was humanitarian workers that were sort of named in the computer, so there was many, many things that were going on there. now interpol checked out the computers, this is according to reports, i have not been there, and said they had not been tampered with, and recently there was a police investigator who admitted he had those computers before they went to interpol, and he had sort of falsified some of the e-mails,

so now the data is in question whether there's a relationship with the farq, he doesn't have one with the columbia government as we all know, and so, you know, that to me personally, that's not hard to believe, and, you know, the border from venezuela to the columbia is porous and there's arms traffic there to the farq, so there are those connections. >> in front here. >> i'm mittsy. what was the conditions under which the hostages were kept? what were their lives like for those years, and the second is are there no. other economic operations in columbia? ways in which people can support themselves other than human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms trafficking? >> in terms of the first

question on the hostages situations when we made our film in columbia and jorge enrique botero had gone to interview the americans, what the americans said on tape at that time was that they were being treated well. they had coffee to drink, wearing clean uniforms, hair was cut, ect., and jorge enrique botero said well, 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 of captivity. they couldn't communicate because the guerrillas were paranoid that the americans ring # you know, even from the moment of their capture, they had to strip naked, they were sure there was bugs in their clothing or something that the government was following them, and they were paranoid that if the men were 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 because there were radio programs in columbia where loved ones leave messages for the hostages, so that was, and when jorge enrique botero went in, you know, he -- the farq had prepared the area where they were going to be, and later we learned in the american hostages book that they wrote when they came out that the conditions were horrible that a a certain point they locked in boxes to sleep in and totally separated and later, ingrid tried to escape three times, and after the escape, they chained her to a tree by her neck, and

once they were in a camp, they chained hostages to the by their neck and wore chains with them and long 40-day marchs. what they presented in their video when they were on cam ma, the hostages said we're doing fine, we're, you know, healthy, well-taken care of, but they wanted to reassure their families that we're okay, and then their families department worry. at that point di didn't have to wear chains. they were not in some of the more brutal treatment that happened later, but that was something that they made a point of doing is trying to calm their families down. >> and the question why the people joining the mill -- mail tear is the answer is there's few options in the rural

villages. there are in roads. the area was populated, and we told the story in the book, and it was something i didn't know until late into the investigation. in the early part of the 20th century, there was a period called lavelescia, it was a war between the liberals and conservatives, and estimates go to 3,000-300,000 people were killed by brutal murders. during that time, many of the sort of poor people who didn't want to be involved in this went into the jungles and they called this area the river basen. this vch of event -- eventually feeds the amazon. it's a low lying area and they made villages pop up, and they self-governed for the most part,

and things were rolling along nicely. there was a culture that was a combination of different cultures from different parts of columbia, and they had small -- very small farms, slash and burn agriculture, and after awhile, what happened was the guerrillas came there too, not so much as a mane naysing presence -- menacing presence, but they were like the government taking care of the areas a little bit. what happened next was that the cartels realized that wow, you know, we have all this expansive land where there's no government that will do anything to stop us. this is where we should be growing coca. they came with seeds and came to the plots of land making nothing from selling papas and very small things if they sold at all. look, we'll geoff you these -- give you these seeds, you grow

the plant, make it into base, the first process of cocaine, biel come back and get it from you. what happened was it was a gold rush. it was a white gold rush, and people -- all kinds of people from the city descended here, and these villages were overrun by people that had criminal records and escaping from the law themselves working here and they call to scrape, and they scrape the coca leaves all day and get paid a few dollars a day for this work, but it was a win fall compared to what they made otherwise, and because of this, there was so much crime in the cities and now the rest the men work and at the end there was gunfights on the weekend. everyone was drunk, and the farq started to take over, and that's when they start the ruling this

territory in the area, and so the whole area now in your question is do people have -- do people have opportunity? they have opportunity now to 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, or you know joining the military which is the other side and equally as violent. >> in the back here. >> i'm part of the columbian newspaper. back in columbia and professionalism as a jowmplist come -- journalism comes into question because there's opposition politicians. how do like this internal columbia politics play into your

book and investigation. thanks. >> that's an interesting question how internal columbia politics played into our book. that was something that i feel like in many instances we were working with jorge enrique botero on very specific things about what's going on in inside the farq guerrillas. as he becomes a character in the book, we actually found out some things about his background and how did he actually have access into these farq guerrilla camps because many journalists either 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, but when journalists are covering the farq and covering that area intensely, i think the rest of the population

and even the government begins to question well, why is this person covering this intently. do they have ties, ect.? what we found out in the research of talking with him is back in the 1970s, it was the time of student movements throughout latin america, and it was in the early-mid 70s, and he was involved in the student youth movement as well, a revolutionary spirit going on throughout lit tan america, and a lot of people he was associating with in college ended up going to the root of the guerrillas. he told us, you know, five years into making the book, we were talking to him one night saying something about, well, you know, you got an interview with a high-level guerrilla member, now the leaders of the guerrillas. in 1987, the guerrillas had not given public interviews for many

years, and in 1987, he got an interview with the top level leader. we asked how he gt that interview, and he revealed in college, he played pocker with this -- poker with this man. there was five people in the student movement, and they had been hanging out together, and he said, i went the root of the journalism, two people went the root of guerrillas, and the other two became lawyers, but in that time in our youth, we were all in this sort of spirit of student movements and fighting for, you know, revolution and things like that, and so his -- so that 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 of how internal

politics focused in the book -- i don't know, you want to say anything about that in >> yeah, i'd like to add on to that. it is difficult to write with three people with different ideals, knowledge bases, but one of the things that -- our review and publishers weekly was kind and said this was one 69 most -- one of the most balanced situations of the columbia and u.s. in the last decade, and, you know, it is true that jorge enrique botero, his journalism has been thought to be very much left leaning and sympathetic to the farq, and when told that, i think part of that of working with him over the years is the farq is just one of the players with the brutality, and when you look at a lot of the media coming out of clam ya, it's only -- columbia, it's only the farq where the militaries are equally

as bad, and most recently the years have been very much connected to the government of columbia, and so you know, he reallimented us to a-- really wanted us to avoid being that sort of cliche, the one bad player in columbia is the farq, and the other thing that, you know, we really appreciated is that he really made us avoid the term or the prefix narco talking about terrorists and we love labels in this country, and when you label someone as a terrorist or guerrilla, it makes us worse and us able to prosecute nationallals here because simone trinidad was never prosecuted. they had nothing on him, but in columbia, so many levels of society are permeated by drug money. he said, you know, if you're going to call these guys the

narco-guerrilla, you have to say the narco this and that. i think that's sort of the case in mexico right now. you can see police are fired and military are fired because when you have that much money with the illegal substance that's worth nothing escalated to the point where it's worth more than gold, everyone is going to get a piece of the action, and then the players that stay out of it are killed or the players who are trying to prosecute are killed. we pin the blame on one group. >> back here. this would be, i think, our last question. >> marie from the international institute of strategic study, and my question pertains to the american government's involvement in the whole situation, and obviously the american government is really concerned about drug warp and spending a lot of money in military assistance, my question

pertains to what if that money was spent on development aid to increase opportunities for people in rural areas so that they could actually do, you know, a legitimate job and wouldn't have to, you know, make their living this way. >> i think that's an interesting question about whether the drug money -- the money we spend to fight drugs in columbia would be spent on development aide, and that is something -- there have been 5 number of group -- a number of groups who have put money working with development products, new development crop projects, ect., but i think a grander thing to look at in columbia is the process of the drugs, it's not only columbia's problem, but it's also the united states' problem and europe's problem because of the demand. that's an issue to look at. the other thing is the inequity of the society there and the geography of the country and how the opportunities for a lot of people may be developing crops would help in some areas, but i

think there's some underlying social problems in economic issues that really need to be looked at by the columbian government and addressed by them, and that way i don't think -- personally, i don't feel there's an overarching mandated fix that can go over the population and sort of make everything all right. i think that it has to be approached from a number of different areas and not only columbia by itself, but the united states looking at itself inward and why are we having all these -- stuch a demand for the drug and what's going on here and how is that influencing it. >> one quick question you mentioned inequities. it seems columbia is one of the most class-ridden societies in the world and the political class is the military class and there's the farq one of the longest running marxist insurgency. to what extent was kidnapping ingrid --