CITIZENS, NOT SOLDIERS

The Fate Of The U.S. Captives In Colombia Is Complicated By Their Status As
Contractors, Not Soldiers. The Government Contends It Is Doing All It Can.

Three Americans held hostage by narco-guerrillas in the thick jungles of
southeastern Colombia for the past nine months live an endless cycle of
tedium and anxiety, interrupted only by meals, prayers, sleep and,
reportedly, occasional travel from one thatch-roofed prison to the next.
"I've never gone through anything worse," hostage Keith Stansell said on a
videotape made in July by a Colombian journalist. "You sit, day in and day
out, and I look at my two friends here, and at the end of the day we think
to ourselves, we're alive another day. Will we be alive tomorrow? Do we
have a future? Can we see our families?"

The hostages -- Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes -- were captured
by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its
Spanish acronym FARC, when their surveillance plane crashed Feb. 13.
American pilot Tom Janis and Colombian Army Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz were
shot and killed by FARC forces.

Stansell, Gonsalves and Howes are the first American contractors captured
in the Colombian conflict, in which $2.5 billion in U.S. aid has gone to
fight drug trafficking and buttress Colombian security forces against armed
groups, including FARC, over the past four years. They are contract
employees of California Microwave Systems, a subsidiary of the defense
giant Northrop Grumman, the private company that ran the Southcom
Reconnaissance System under a Defense Department contract for intelligence
gathering in rebel-held areas.

The hostage-taking reflects the changing face of the U.S. presence in
Colombia and other trouble spots around the world. Private contractors,
rather than government or military personnel, are increasingly on the front
lines of drug and terrorism fighting, as well as reconstruction and
peacekeeping efforts.

Pawns Of War

Because they are not soldiers, critics say, they receive less media and
official attention when they are killed or captured.

"These guys are classified by the U.S. government as kidnapped," said
Deborah Avant, a political scientist at George Washington University who
studies private military companies. "If they were active-duty personnel it
would be different. They would be prisoners of war. There's a different
level of concern. Think of the difference between Jessica Lynch and these
guys."

A State Department official bluntly disputed that idea. "I can't imagine
there would be more concern for a career person than for these three guys,"
he said. "That's the kind of allegation that I resent because it sort of
questions our honor, that we would try to use a contractor who's
expendable. In a sense we're all expendable when we take jobs like this
that are risky. But there's no difference on how we react to the loss of a
contractor versus a civil servant versus a foreign service officer versus
an active-duty military."

Stansell, Gonsalves and Howes are now pawns in the drug war, a source of
continuing anxiety for the U.S. government and agonizing waits for family
members.

Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to free the hostages have been limited by policy
proscriptions against negotiating with groups designated terrorists. A
rescue attempt would be very dangerous. Some family members are angry with
the government and California Microwave Systems for what they see as a lack
of action to resolve the situation and a failure to explain the
circumstances that led to the crash.

"I have e-mailed President Bush 50, 60 times," said Jo Rosano, Gonsalves'
mother, who lives in Bristol, Conn. "I think they don't value their lives.
It's like lives were dispensable -- and my son's life is not dispensable."

Large swaths of southeastern Colombia are ruled by FARC, a 40-year-old
insurgent group with a force estimated at about 12,000 fighters scattered
around the country. "It's Farclandia down there. It's their ballgame," said
Tom Marks, a military analyst and expert on Colombian counterinsurgency
efforts.

In recent years FARC has all but abandoned its original goal of socialist
revolution and morphed into a militarized criminal enterprise. FARC forces
oversee an empire founded on drugs and kidnapping that pulls in more than
$1 billion a year. They oversee and tax the cultivation of coca and opium
poppy used to make heroin, and run a network of drug labs that refine the
raw product. Lately a Colombian Army push into rebel-held areas has been
putting pressure on FARC.

Engine Died

The Southcom surveillance program was created to gather intelligence on
this region, and the airplane crews always ran a risk of an encounter with
the people they were spying on.

Firsthand information on the events of the crash has come from the
kidnapped crew members themselves. Interviews videotaped in late July by
Colombian journalist Jorge Enrique Botero was made into a documentary by
American producers Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, who aired excerpts on
CBS and a documentary on the History Channel last month.

The airplanes in the program were based in Bogota but flew their missions
out of Colombian military bases, including one named Larandia in the
province of Caqueta. On Feb. 13, their plane was on its way to refuel at
Larandia and was flying at less than 5,000 feet when trouble began.

Stansell was sitting at a computer console in the rear of the plane along
with Gonsalves and Cruz when, he told Botero, "I heard the . . . the engine
make a distinct sound as far as quitting. It just . . . it quit. It got
real quiet. I looked at Marc. Marc was looking at me for an answer, so I
asked the pilot, 'What's going on?' The pilot, Tom Janis . . . said, 'Sir,
that's an engine failure.' "

Members of the Teofilo Forero mobile column -- a specialized, well-trained
unit of FARC -- were meeting with another unit in the jungle nearby. They
spotted the plane as it descended and shot at it, according to a defense
analyst familiar with U.S. activities in Colombia who asked not to be
identified.

"There's an intercepted FARC communication," the analyst said. "The
commander says, there's a plane flying around, presumably conducting an
intelligence mission. Do I have permission to shoot at it? Then he gets
permission, and firing is heard on the intercept."

It's not clear if any FARC shots hit the plane before it crashed. Bullet
holes were found in the plane, but that could also mean the FARC forces
shot-up the hull after the crash.

that the company is cooperating with government agencies on the hostage
situation. "We remain concerned about the health and well-being of Keith,
Marc and Tom and will continue to use every means available to us in
seeking the release by the FARC of these three civilian noncombatants so
that they might be safely reunited as soon as possible with their
families," he said.

The Colombian government and the Catholic Church have also made attempts to
reach out to FARC commanders, but without notable success.

Some of those who have been held hostage and eventually released describe
as the norm moving often through the jungle, a poor diet, bouts with
tropical diseases, and constant insect bites. The Southcom hostages
described generally good living conditions in their interview, but it was
conducted in the presence of FARC guerrillas, and U.S. officials regard
their statements as coerced.

Gonsalves is married and has a young daughter. Howes and his wife have a
6-year-old son. Stansell, who is divorced, has two children.

"I live in a vacuum, dead time," Howes told Botero. Amid the boredom, they
described small rituals that kept them going. Gonsalves said he begins each
day by opening a notebook in which he has drawn a picture of his house. "I
open to that page and I say good morning to my family," he said. "Then I
pray and eat breakfast."