the story started in 2002 when victoria bruce had met ingrid betancourt who is running for president of colombia at that time, and they had met each other in the united states. they were both on book tour with their books and their -- they had the same publicist in the publicist and choose them so she decided in doing a documentary on a presidential candidate who is running for president in colombia, a woman running for president in latin america would be an interesting story and especially the story of ingrid betancourt. that quickly changed with the kidnapping of ingrid betancourt and we ended up turning and doing a documentary about her family and her campaign running the campaign and her absence and about hostages in colombia and that situation. and from that documentary we met a person, he was a colombian journalist. we were introduced to him by our

cameraperson and at that time, we interviewed him and we also did some filming with him with angry's husband at the time and jorge for tarot had been covering the conflict in colombia for about 20 years i would say and he was, had been one of the only journalistic husted camps and his reporting on that for colombian television and newspaper reporting was something that was very instrumental in the '90s, when president pastrana ended up doing a hostage exchange between the guerrillas and the government and he was exchanging villa terry and political prisoners and colombia for guerrillas who were in colombia's prisons. so we met him and interviewed him and a year later in 20033 american contractors actually for making contractors were in a plane that went down and when

their plane crashed, we immediately started getting in touch with the mother of 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 in 2003, jorge enrico bortero called us out of the blue one day and said can you get an interview with the mother of one of these americans? i need to have it and i might not see you for a long time but i will be in touch. so we did and we ended up making of a film called held hostage in colombia about the american contractors who were held and he was actually able to get into the hostage camp and do an interview with the hostages in captivity. and from that point, victoria indyk began a book on the subject that would be a great way to tell the story because time had gone by and we weren't able to film everything that we wanted to include. we began writing a proposal and

then as the years were going by, we never quite got the proposal finish to a point where agents that it was okay, so it was finally in 2008 when we had something ready and by that time, we had gotten back in contact with jorge enrico bortero and started working with him to work on this book and get it to the place it is now. two months after we had submitted their proposal, the american hostages were rescued, so that put the book in somewhat of a different turn and i will let victoria tell you more about the process of that. >> hi. i would also like to take a peter bergen in the new america foundation for having us and i would like to say hi to mom and dad who were in the audience. they surprise me. i do know you were in town. they were in california. did you know about this? they always do this. [laughter] as karin was saying, the story

began about the hostages. it began first ingrid betancourt and in the three americans. and the reason that we believe that the situation with the americans would be imperative to tell the u.s. audience was because we 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. over the course of time you have seen a lot of cases where there have been americans held hostage where jimmy carter is on a plane and people are doing something. in this case nothing was being done. we follow this story from the beginning and we were convinced that the story had to be told. so we followed it, but at the same time and many of you here work in latin american issues, it is very hard to get a u.s. media audience excited about colombia. how do you tell a story like that? so the story became -- we became

aware in about 2006 when simone trinidad a guerilla, was captured and he was accused of being part of the hostagetaking of the three americans. he was sort of the mid-love for -- mid-level commander. he was captured and brought to the u.s. and charged with conspiracy to commit hostagetaking. and two came to be part of that trial but our former colleague jorge enrico bortero in at this point we realized that karin and i had been working on this case can and behead an fbi agent is a character and a state department prosecutor and you know we were sort of weaving the story together, but what we were missing was the real and depth side of the farc and who better to bring that into our story than jorge enrique? so it was during that time we decided to write this book together. what happened from then on out is what we really realize was that it was a much bigger picture than a hostage story and

that telling the story of the farc and americans relationship with the farc and telling it through characters, one who is a banker, who tried to come to the political arena with the patriotic which was part of a group of guerrillas and organizations that try to be part of the colombian political process and failed miserably when many of the members were fascinated. simone trinidad was part of that and he became a guerilla. is a fascinating story. why leave your cushy life is a banker? your wife has a jewelry store. and he becomes part of that. on the other side here in the u.s. there was a former fbi agent, another kerry -- character and 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 and he had actually become the chief head of crisis -- what is his title?

hostage negotiator. it has another title, but he had perfected this so the fbi after waco, gary was responsible for getting 35 people out of life. they took him out of there and the tactical people went in and sort of over overran the negotiators and the rest is you know, sad history for the fbi. gary nestler had left the fbi and he was on a case for these three americans. what he found was that at the time, post-9/11 there was actually no desire by anyone in the government to negotiate. and this infuriated him. so our book tells the story going forward in trying to push to get the guys out, at this time time there is a prosecutor kim kohl who has bound and determined to convict this colombian guerrilla for kidnapping the american hostages. so we also realized that none of this would be in play without something our country has been doing for 40 years which is fighting a war against an herb,

the cocaine plant and spending billions and billions of dollars militarily to fight drugs. that has been our relationship with colombia. and so to explore that, we wanted to tell a fascinating story so we have all of these characters but at the same time show how the u.s. has really failed miserably, cause so much violence that has 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, thank you nick jory and karin very much. kerry played a critical role in the book has a new book himself coming out which is a history of his life as a hostage negotiator. but it is not -- i wanted to comment on the fact that because of the way antiterrorism rules are written in this country, the three americans who had taken

over northrop-grumman to. for northrop-grumman to do a deal that in some ways money for exchange for hostages which is the only way to get people out the fact that it would have been illegal. if you could comment about that because the money would be going to a terrorist organization, in this case the farc. >> right. i would say what happened in the past i would say this started post-waco -- know it was before waco, where the fbi had been placed on any case of an american being held hostage anywhere in the world. there would be to full-time negotiators, and what they would do is if someone got kidnapped from a corporation or a company or the family in the family wanted to pay, the fbi would work hand-in-hand with them and the stance of the federal government has always been we won't pay ransom so the money won't come from the federal government but they did condone behind-the-scenes negotiating by fbi agents, always. and many many ransoms have been paid for many companies.

but that did change in this case, although there are other cases with journalist 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 the negotiating and didn't want to give them really any chance to pay that money and when northrop actually went to send medicine and a care package and letters from the family, the government actually stop them from doing that and said if you do this you are supporting terrorism and you are offering military support to terrorism. northrop kept going back and forth aided by a nestler over the years saying let us do something. up until the very end, they were not letting them do anything. >> another question it which

this case raises is the question about what did the family do because obviously you mentioned the journalists and the impact of working for the "christian science monitor." family was vocal about the fact that she'd been taken. when david wrote was kidnapped, there was essentially a news blackout on that which all news organizations basically agree that they wouldn't. so you have the choice of being public or saying nothing but if you don't want to amp up the demands of hostage takers, can you explain what the families in this case did and how their feelings over overtime 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 come the state department told the families that we don't want you to talk about this. don't talk to the media. one of the mothers refuse to

follow those guidelines. she is the mother of mark. she immediately went to a believe it was msnbc and there was an article that they had published about the crash. there was bailout -- very little media about the crash when it happened and she when i began talking public the about it. now the rest of the families were afraid because they didn't want to put their loved ones in danger. they did not to do. these are average everyday people and a family member gets kidnapped. the ideas dressing your government is something they were going along with and they felt they should do. so it had been probably five and a half months and when we went to make a film called hostage in colombia, we started going around to the family members and trying to locate them and show them pieces of the video that we had of their husbands, giving them a message. 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 about 8:00 at night because we had tried calling other family members and that didn't really work. so we went there and she sort of peaked at her door and looked out. finally opened the door and we told her who we were. we have these messages for her and she said you know, after we talked to her for about three or she said i've not talked to any media she said that i'm so curious about what is going on because there is really been no message about what is happening to my husband, what is going on, what is moving forward. and, so she finally decided to talk to the 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 talking to the media because they felt like this is going on for so long at this point, what is going to hurt? from the u.s. government's perspective when i talk to someone directly in the state department they had told me yes, our plan is to tell the family members not to talk about it. don't talk the media because we are worried that their value

could increase, and that could become more challenging situation. so in essence, there were two very opposite approaches and there is really no final solution about which one is the right one to go. i think it is very situation dependent. >> part of the calculation on the governments government's park since these guys were working for northrop-grumman were cia subcontractors, but that also would -- i mean clearly whoever they were working for they were working directly against the interest of the farc. they were involved in some way with drug eradication. >> yes, the gentleman who were kidnapped were contractors for northrop-grumman and they did work dod contracts, the state department really runs the show down there as far as fumigation. they're the ones who hired darfur. northrop. they hired lockheed-martin. it is in the state department's

budget. it is not really a military -- which got the guys in hot water when they first crash. what they were doing was recognizance. the farc, the guerrillas that have been in colombia for 45 years sort of fell into the drug trade. they were surrounding all of the rural areas where there is really not much state prisons. there is no government and that is kind of where they held camp and they made money off of extortion, kidnappings. they weren't really into the drug trade at that point, but later on, when the u.s. attacked pablo escobar, the cartel heads and really thought they would put a nail in the coffin of the drug war by doing that, it diversified the trade of the guerrillas just swooped in and now have a big chunk of it. the other main players in colombia are the paramilitary. pan colombia are the u.s. effort in colombia which half a billion dollars a year on average over 10 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 colombian spike the farc, even though they are only one of the players in the drug war and not even probably a significant percentage. a significant percentage but not more than 50% and then the other method is what will we do to defoliate. we spray toxic herbicide on the countryside. this is something that is, something like roundup that you buy at home depot. they put it in airplanes and these are american products and american airplanes, american companies doing this work in the government of colombia has agreed to let us do that. and this is basically what the contractors were doing at the time. >> william word who is the american ambassador in colombia then moved to afghanistan and of course he was very much in favor

of aerial spraying in afghanistan and the afghan government said no. are there any lessons to be learned for afghanistan from colombia and particularly in the light of fact that the taliban is just like a far, and ideological movement that has become a criminal enterprise to a large degree or are there situations that are different because there is no way of saying that the lessons learned in colombia could be implemented in afghanistan? >> in terms of the correlation between afghanistan and colombia, i actually see a lot of similarities in the countries in the sense of the geography of both countries excel extreme that there are parts of the country that are actually, have no, no central government are going afghanistan that is a different situation. with the tribal organizations. but parts of the country are so difficult to access. in colombia a lot of the area where the farc guerrillas are is

jungle. there are no roads and the area. there are boats but in colombia it is devoid of state presence in those areas, and so the farc guerrillas can become the rule of law and i think in afghanistan there is a correlation with that and the drugs are grown evenly and afghanistan and colombia. there are a lot of similarities and whether similar things can be applied i think we should take a look at what is actually happening over the four decades of this drug war and what real success is really, but. even though the government organizations can present numbers and say oh we are having so much success, this year the coca growing in colombia is down, well if you look at the whole context of the picture, it is actually the coca growing is up in peru. so it is just passing the buck to another country and looking at it in a very small, small view to say this is a success.

but if we look at it, why is this been going on for so many decades and so many millions of dollars in summoning lives lost in the process, think this is something to keep in mind when we are looking at afghanistan. >> i have to say i agree with karin. the will -- there is absolutely no sign of success that what we have done in colombia has help stop the flow of drugs to the u.s. on any level. >> just as one final question before i throw it up in. it seems, the farc, if you could give us an assessment of sort of basically some of the self-inflicted defeat to some degree. client colombia was not just about the drugs. is about rolling back the insurgencies and multiple insurgencies, so clearly the bombs have decided. in terms of making colombia sensually safer, even if the drug problem is not really, that

was less of his success. what other kind of subquestion here is, the real mark of success of an antidrug program in a place that colombia would be falling street price. my impression is that prices of either run stable worth actually gone down. your point karin we seem to have just moved up problem somewhere else. the problem hasn't gone away. if you could perhaps talk about that. >> in terms of the plan colombia whether it has been a success in colombia in any way, what really happened is you had mentioned that colombia, seemed like a safer place than it was during the days of pablo escobar and with president uribe he came in with a very strong military approach to the guerrillas and primarily i would say focused on the guerrillas although there was a large demobilization plan for the paramilitaries which turns out to be not quite as successful as it was touted. but, what happened was a

district that income via there are certain areas that have become safer roads that people could not travel on prior are able to be traveled on by car. things like that. the military has made an effort to retake some areas that were run by the farc, but still recently even as recently as this past month, the farc has started up again with brazen attacks on police convoys, on electrical towers, and things like that. so for a while, there were sort of the common people were saying oh the farc are nearly defeated. but i believe that they were sort of in a holding pattern and they are coming back with a strong vengeance. i don't know if their numbers have decreased over the years certainly, but i don't see it as any we have won the war against the farc or whatever president uribe was planning to do at that time. i don't see that as a success is he at whole. >> i would also like to add that a lot more gang violence has

come about in the past few years with other players getting into the drug business so if you take the farc anyway for not of the cities, the military can stay around the city. there are government programs so that power vacuum is given up to brutal gangs as well. so in the city, i have been working in colombia for 10 years and i can definitely say i love that country and it feels much safer to be in bogotá or the bigger cities, even smaller cities but out of the country i fear that the compazine is in the people that live there are subject to just as much violence from the paramilitary and the guerrillas in the military as they have been through the years. >> we will throw it open to questions. there is a mic over here. just in front of you, please. identify yourself. >> norman bailey, world politics.

thank you very much for your presentation. a very quick question and also a quick correction. the quick question is where is jorge invited you refer to them as your former colleague? the correction is that the disastrous, bungled waco operation was run by the atf, not by the fbi. >> forgive me, that was my faux pas. it was run by the atf. do i need to repeat the questio? >> maybe just respond about where jorge is. >> when i report to -- referred to jorge as our former colleague he continues to be our colleague and will be here tomorrow. we have an event at orders so if you could bounce that along to border sere. >> washington d.c.. >> unfortunately he tried to get here today and he couldn't get here, but when i said that, we have worked with him earlier with a ingrid betancourt film and he is sort has sort have been a guide to the insides of the workings of hostage cams.

he was the only one ever to get inside hostage camps in colombia. he had made a film that sort of brought that attention to the colombian population of about 500 soldiers who had been kidnapped for several years. so when he called us again, i don't think karin or i ever thought we would hear from him again and so he was our former colleague at that time and now he continues to bear college. >> that raises a good question. it is hard enough to write a book i yourself but how do you write a book with three people? >> writing a book with three people is an interesting process, especially when one of them speak spanish almost exclusively and the other one doesn't speak too much spanish. but what we did is, in the prologue of our book buck we talk about how we were, we were debating over different ideas for the book, different political viewpoints, different opinions about them throughout the process, but i have to say the book is primarily -- victoria bruce was really the lead on the book and it is her voice and carries who carries to the whole book.

jorge enrique bortero was an important aspect because he gave us a depth of knowledge from all of this years working in the jungles and traveling numerous trips to the hostage camps in the jungle that we could not have forgotten ourselves, 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. >> in front of you, here. >> my question is about hostage taking and is it a coldly rational cost-benefit enterprise or is the farc a bureaucracy like her on government? you know, what is the difference of the handling of lower-level hostages and navy the northrop-grumman guys at a level

and ingrid betancourt? >> in terms of the hostagetaking in colombia, it has been something that has been done for many years and for many years and was a ransom-based kidnapping situation, where that was a way that not only the farc at also the paramilitaries and the cartels would use to capture people are capture people they didn't like, get ransom for them but then what happened what is there was a transformation and there was a lot of military and national police who were part of the -- in colombia. they were captured in the late '90s. approximately 400 or 500 individuals in firefights with the guerrillas and they were taken hostage. and 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 colombia jails. and so they did end up having a

successful exchange of prisoners. not all of the military police got out but a large few hundred got out and there were still some left their which they kept in and they held on and they said we are going to keep hanging onto these top-level people. a lot of them were officers in the military and they hung onto those as their political prisoners. and then ingrid betancourt was kidnapped and there was a process in colombia that they calledcall, they termed bracket was fishing and people were coming down the road. there would be a roadblock. they would stop the people and they would look up their worth, maybe on computers or by communication and then they would take them. if they were worth a lot they would keep them and that was either for ransom or political. when ingrid betancourt was going on she was traveling to an area that has formally been the demilitarized zone of colombia where the farc had a large presence and the day before that have broken in the government was going in to retake the area and she was going down because a mayor from her political party, and mayor of that town was

there, and she wanted to go and be with people because people were calling her and saying the paramilitary are coming in, the military are coming in. people are disappearing so she decided to take a road and she was kidnapped that way. she found out she was ingrid betancourt, oh presidential candidate a great opportunity for us. with the americans, to them, they even refer to it as you know, these people are falling from the sky from this big pot of gold just landed in their laps and they put them in the categories of lyrical prisoners as well or political hostages, so they weren't going to actually necessarily do anything, do any changes for ransom. they wanted to use them for political leverage. >> you mentioned ingrid betancourt. she was the subject of a great deal of hostility in the book was written by the three american hostages and obviously is if -- you are going to have strong views about them. but, was that merited or did

people have very different reactions differ depending on who they are? >> yeah, ingrid betancourt is a very strong character, and so many people do have a lot of differing opinions of her. 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. january. i have thought this would be a great way to sort of tell the story of the beauty of colombia that i had felt when i was there researching my first book, which was about of volcanic disaster, historical. and i said you know i really want to tell a modern-day story and let's follow angered on the campaign trail. so karin and i've are making plans to go down there and cover her. i had no experience meek in a film. karin had some so i called her and i knew she spoke spanish well. so we were on her way down there and she was kidnapped.

but we ended up doing in the film in the kidnapping of ingrid betancourt is telling her story for her own narration which is cut together from various interviews on npr, on c-span, things that she had done while she was on her book tour. she has a beautiful voice and she narrates her story in the beginning so it was a way for us to put her in the film. however we have really never had gone to no ingrid ourselves in the film became about her husband at the time, juan-carlos who was the sort of motorcycle riding, rock 'n roll listener who had met ingrid seven years before. he had never voted before he met ingrid and so our family became about him and sort of this love story of trying to get his life out of captivity. so as the years went by we kept in touch with juan-carlos over the years and then when ingrid was released, and juan-carlos split within 24 hours of that,

after that. so we were sort of heartbroken for him and at the same time, we never really got to no ingrid, so when we hear these reports, you know i guess we have this love affair with this person that we made this film about who is fighting for good and you always want to make a film that does something and shows some wonderful part of humanity and people surviving. so i think was kind of like shocking for us to hear all the snake at things being said about her by the other hostages. at this time time what peter says is true. i think everyone is in a survival mode and you can't really judge anyone if you haven't been in that situation. we still don't know her very well and that though she has a book coming out soon. probably will get to know her through that book. >> thank you. >> hello, i am -- weintraub. i would like to ask a question about the operation they're free

to ingrid betancourt. there was a lot of that recall controversy by the icrc about its neutral symbols being used in the military or quasi-military operation. therefore, distorting its use or destroying its use as a valid kind of symbol. could you explain that a bit more fully for those of us in the audience? >> what happened was, on july 2, 2008 there was a military operation run by the colombian military called operation -- enough operation was a mission to rescue 15 hostages, including ingrid betancourt, the three americans and other military, colombian military and national police members. this operation, you are right about your question in terms of the use of logos like for example the international reg crust logo. what the colombian military did was they devised a plan and intelligence operations to go when and basically trick the

guerrillas into bringing these two groups of hostages together and then come and meet at a certain space and then this mission that look like a humanitarian organization, a fictitious organization to the point that they created a web site. they created a logo for it. the intelligence officers took acting classes. they dye 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 prior in 2008 and late 2007. so, what the colombian 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. they did come in and they were able to rescue these 15 hostages. we tell about it at the end of the book, but in a way that no shots were fired and they were actually able to bring on the two farc guerrilla captors of the hostages and get them onto the helicopter as well. in that sense, there was some backlash about the use of the logo and would this with this jeopardize future humanitarian missions. i don't know what the final resolution of that was. i think that there was some sort of play of one of the guys who wear were the logo said i did it last minute or some sort of not airy clerestory about what actually happens. but, in the larger picture of the mission as a whole, as a rescue mission, it was a very --

are in this logo usage it was a very well-planned out 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 and is in a rescue situation. we have seen that repeatedly particularly with countries that don't have particularly robust rescue delta force type. was their concern amongst the hostages that they might get rescued by the colombian army and it would he a bloodbath in which they would die? >> yes. that was a definite worry by all of the hostages because they were constantly surrounded by guerrillas and all the hostages that we know of, the political hostages, were very aware that the farc mandate from the leader of the farc at that point was that if there is a rescue attempt or even thought of a rescue attempt to murder all of the hostages immediately.

and that had been done right before, was it right before the americans were kidnapped? it was after ingrid have been kidnapped. she had been kidnapped for a year before the three were kidnapped. there was an attempt to rescue some hostages and they were all shot and with a couple who survived afterwards. i mean it wasn't just the guerrillas that were out when they heard helicopters coming from the military. it was the hostages to maxilla the time this humanitarian, this bogus humanitarian mission comes in, you have got these 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 and they were giving commands to this guerrilla who was in charge and they are saying that the inherent of them here as karin said. they said make them wear white t-shirts and they can say yes to the humanitarian exchange. at this point, the hostages said

they thought they were going to be set up. they didn't want to do anything like that. they said thoma says we are. you are treating us like barbaric -- we have chains around their necks. they wouldn't wear the shirts. the colombian military was hoping that when they came in from the air on these planes they could easily identify who were the hostages because they would be wearing the shirt. they wouldn't wear them so at the same time the military's coming in and looking and the radio transmissions are messing up and there is no one in the shirts because the hostages are rebelling. so it was a, like karin said, and peccable he executed because all of the things that were just about to go wrong didn't. i think the question was whether they were worried about being rescued, absolutely that was one of their biggest fears. >> my name is dennis grubb

grubman i'm a member of the friends of colombia and victoria i can assure you that foc is a group of returned peace corps volunteers and as you might know there were 5000 peace corps volunteers who served in colombia over the years. and they had to leave in 1984 because of the kidnapping of volunteers by the farc. they recently returned in this small group. however, my question relates to to -- i have not read your book. 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 of this hostage nation? where do we go from here? we have been at this for 50 years and certainly 45 and the drug war but where do you address the issue, where do we go from here?

continuous colombia at 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 colombia and how we got to this place. one of the things that we begin to talk about is taking it from what is going on with plan colombia and looking at, now what is going on into mexico since so many things are going on in mexico with the drug issus starting to step their feet into mexico as they have in colombia. i think it is really a way to look at things in a larger context, to try to get a whole full 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 or by this point have we started to do and how do we need to rethink what some of the options are? a lot of countries in south america and latin america are

beginning the process of decriminalization. small doses of personal use drugs like in mexico they have done marijuana, cocaine and all sorts of drugs, the decriminalization of it in other countries are looking at that as a way to bring down some of the violence that is going on and take out some of the mafia aspect. what is happening with these drug wars and even in the u.s. the talk of legalization or decriminalization in many states is beginning to be brought out as well as the medical marijuana in many states. i think that is a very interesting path to travel down because we are 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 as strong as it is i think it is going to continuously -- there is not going to be an easy way to solve this and i think going and an

fumigating crops in destroying and fumigating these coca plants would end up popping back up because they're weeds anyway that's destroying crops in the process, contaminating water, hurting people, that type of thing needs to be looked at from a totally different aspect. >> my name is damien and i am with a political consulting firm. a quick question, how helpful was the finding of the laptop in your research and how much of a venezuelan influence has now been proven by president chavez have you seen as you conducted the research and writing your book? >> that is an interesting question. over the six or seven years we worked on this book, so there were so many ah-ha moment where we thought okay we can finally end this book. that was before the hostages were rescued. backdated obvious that there

wasn't one. we had been commissioned by knopf to write this book before the hostages were rescued and we never really knew where was going to end. so the gentleman talked about raul reyes who was one of the members of the six member secretariat. >> the farc are crispy of the farc. he was the guerrilla commander in sort of a commander in jorge bortero had been in contact. his camp was known to be in the southern part of colombia near the border of ecuador. it ended up actually being in ecuador, which was news to the ecuadorians when a the colombians went in there and are and bond the camp, killing him and a lot of his men and women. many women in the farc. i know i shouldn't discount that. what happened was the farc was technologically savvy. is karin said they had computers and phones and they could look

up inc. accounts, hopefully not your bank 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 to hugo chavez, fetters where there was perhaps money going one direction. there were many journalists who were talking to him in ways that they looked very supportive to the farc. there was a lot of trouble with humanitarian workers. they were sort of named in reyes computer so there were many things going on there. interpol had checked out these computers. these were according to reports and i haven't been there, and said that they hadn't been tampered with and then recently there were police, police investigator who admitted that he have those computers before they went to interpol and that 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 certainly doesn't happen with the colombian government as we all know. so, that to me personally sounds hard to believe and you know the border from venezuela to colombia is obviously very porous. a lot of people say there is a lot of arms trafficking so there are those connections. >> in the front here. >> i'm with it naval posts graduate school. one is what were the conditions under which the hostages were capped? what were their lives like bravo sears and the second is, are there no other economic options in colombia, ways in which people can sort of support themselves at the event doing human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms trafficking?

>> in terms of your first question about how the hostages were kept in colombia, when we made our film held hostage in colombia and jorge enrique bortero had gone to interview the americans, what the american said on tape at that time was that they were being treated well, they had coffee to drink, they were wearing clean uniforms, their hair had been cut etc. and jorge enrique bortero québec and said 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 half months they were in captivity. they have been separated. they were not allowed to communicate because the guerrillas were paranoid that the americans you know even from the moment of their capture they made him strip-down naked. they were sure that they were little lugs in their clothing or something that the government was following them. so 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.

so we found out that they were not allowed to talk to each other at all for that time and they also had no radio communication which was frequently something that the hostages were allowed because there were radio programs in colombia for loved ones could go and leave messages for the hostages. and when jorge enrique bortero when then, the farc it sort of prepare the area where they would be and later we learned in the american hostages book that they wrote when they came out that the conditions were really horrible in the sense of a certain point in their captivity they were each put in, sort of locked in these boxes like 6 feet by 6 feet or some sort of boxes to sleep in. they were totally separated. at a certain point later in the captivity ingrid betancourt had tried to escape about three times approximately, and after her escape, they started chaining the hostages. they would chain her to a tree by her neck.

once the americans and ingrid betancourt another hostages were in the camp, they would chain to hostages together by their neck and they had to clear these chains with them and carry them on these long 40 day marches. so what they presented in their video when they were on camera, the hostages said you know we are doing fine. we are healthy and we are well taken care. they wanted to reassure their families that we are okay so that their families didn't worry. at that point, they didn't have to wear chains. it was early in their captivity so it wasn't the brutal treatment that happened later. but that was something that they made a point to income is trying to calm con their families down through the message. >> the second part of that question was, sort of what are the opportunities in colombia and why are people joining the farc coming gangs or militaries. the bottom line is there are few if many in these rural villages.

there are no roads. this area was populated and we tell the story in the book. for something i didn't know. i guess until late in the investigation, and the early part of the 20th century there was a period called for linge which is when there was a war between the two willing parties and colombia the liberals and the conservatives and hundreds hundreds -- estimates go from 100,000 to 300,000 people were killed, brutal murders constantly. 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 -- in the river ace in. it is very jungle terrain. they came up in these little villages pop up. they self-governed for the most

part, and things were sort of rolling along nicely. they had a culture that was a combination of all these different cultures from different parts of colombia. and they had very small farms, and after a while, what happened was the guerrillas came there too. not so much as a menacing presence but they were almost like, they started becoming the government and sort of taking care of these areas a little bit what happened next was that the cartel realize that wow, we have all this expanse of land where there is no government that will do anything to stop us. this is where we should be growing all of this coca. so they came with seeds and they came to these with their paths that were making nothing from selling very small things, they were selling at all. they said look we will give you the seeds.

you grow this plant may make it into base which is the first process in making cocaine. we will come back and get it from you. so what happened was, it was a gold rush. it was a white gold rush and all kinds of derelicts from the city came and descended into alcoa one. these villages were overrun by people that had criminal records and escaping from the law themselves and working for -- they take their hands and they scrape the coca leaves all day and they get paid, i don't know, what the pay scale was at the time but a few dollars a day for this work that it was a windfall compared to what they were making otherwise. because of this there was so much crime in the city's. these men would work all weekend at the end they would have gun fights on the weekend. everyone was drunk and the farc

started to take over. that is when the farc really started grilling this territory in this area. and so, the whole area now and your question was to people have opportunity? they have opportunity to be at the lowest level of the drug trade or they can be a member of the guerrilla. there isn't really much else going on at all or joining the paramilitary which is the other side and equally as violent. spivak here. >> i am with the colombian newspaper current. back in colombia jorge enrique bortero sometimes comes into question because he had sympathies which are very similar to the farc's, the ideology and he is friendship with colombian politicians, opposition politicians. how did the internal colombian

politics play into your book and the investigation? >> that is an interesting question about how internal colombian politics leading to our book. that was something that i feel like in many instances, we were working with jorge enrique bortero on very specific things about what is going on inside the farc guerrillas, this long history of knowledge of this. as he becomes a character in the book, we actually found out something some things about his back round and how did he actually have access into these farc guerrilla camps? many journalists either don't want to or cannot get the access and it is true in colombia there has been controversy over him as a journalist because i think it is a difficult situation. and he is not the only journalist but when journalists are covering whether it be the farc or the paramilitary and if they are covering that area a

very intensely, think the rest of the population and even the government can begin to question, why is this person covering this so intently? do they have ties, etc.. will all we found out in our research and talking with him was that back in the 1970s, he was at the time in student movements across like american it was in the early mid 70s. he was really involved in the student youth movement as well, sort of this revolutionary spirit going on throughout latin america. a lot of people who he was associating with in college and it up going to the root of the guerrillas. he told us, five years into making the book we were talking to them and it was one night and we said something about well, you know, you got an interview with alfonso cano who was a high level guerrilla member and is now the leader of the guerrillas.

in 1987 the guerrillas have not given any public interviews or anything for many years and in 1987 jorge enrique bortero was able to get an interview with him. we said well, how in the world but you get that interview coax then he revealed to us that in college he had actually played poker with him. he said there was a group of about five people who were sort of in the student movements and they have been hanging out together. he said yeah, what happened was i went the route of journalism. two of these people went the route of guerrillas and the other two people became lawyers. he said you know, that at that time in our youth, we were sort of all in this spirit of student movements and fighting for a revolution in things like that. and so, his history of having known these people 20 years prior with 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? >> i would like to add on to that because as peter asked is, it is difficult to write with three people with different ideals and different knowledge bases. but one of the things that our review in publishers weekly was very kind and said that this was one of the most balanced accounts of the situation between colombia and the u.s. in the last decade. and you know it is true that jorge enrique, his journalism oftentimes has been thought to be very much sort of left leaning and sympathetic to the farc. when he told that, part of that i think from working with him over these years is that the farc is just one of the players with the same brutality and yet if you look at a lot of the media coming out of colombia, it is only the farc. the paramilitaries are actually

equally as bad and most recently in the past year it has been very much connected to the government of colombia. and so he really wanted us to avoid just being that sort of cliché, the one bad player in colombia, the farc. the other thing that we really appreciated was that he really made us avoid the term or the prefix narco-when we were talking about terrorists, when we were talking about guerrillas resort of love labels in this country and is an issue label someone a narco-terrorist of makes it even worse. it makes us be able to prosecute colombian nationals here because we are saying they are drug dealers and they are just guerrillas. simone trinidad was never convicted for being part of a narco-business. they had nothing on him. but in colombia so many levels of society are permeated by drug money. you said you know if you are

going to call these guys narco-guerrillas you were going to have to say the narco-banker, the narco-president, the narco-this in a the narco-that. i think that has been the case in mexico right now. you can see that these police are being fired and military are being fired because when you have that much money, because we have this illegal substance that is really worth nothing that we have escalated to the point where it is worth more than gold, everyone is going to get a piece of the action and then the players that stay out of it are either killed or the people trying to prosecute or kill. we stayed away from pinning the blame on one group. spivak here. this will be our last question. >> ari from the international institute for studies and my pressure -- my question pertains to the american government's involvement in this whole situation and obviously american government is really concerned about drug wars and spending a

lot of money on military assistance. my question kind of pertains to what is that money was spent on development aid to increase opportunities for people in broommack areas so that they could actually do a legitimate job and wouldn't have to make their living this way? >> i think that is the nature sing question about whether the drug money, the money we are spending to fight drugs in colombia would be spent on development aid, and that is something -- there has been a number of groups who have put money in who i try to work with development projects in alternative crop projects etc., but i think it grant to look at in colombia is -- the process of the drug is not only colombia's problem. is also the united states's problem and here is problem because of its demand. that is one issue to look at. the other thing is just the iniquity and the society they are 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 some underlying social problems and economic issues that really need to be looked at by the colombian government and addressed by them and that way. i don't think personally, do believe there could be sort of an overarching band-aid fix that can go over the population and sort of make everything all right. i think that has to be approached from a number of different areas and not only colombia but it's -- itself but the united states looking at itself inward and why are we having all of these -- such a demand for this drug and what is going on here and how is that influencing it? b-1 crew question. you mentioned inequities. it seems colombia is one of those clustered in societies in the world and the political process is essentially a hereditary class. hear you call the far, this blog is running marxist insurgency. to what extent was