Families of Kidnapped Americans Want Answers

B O G O T A, Colombia, Sept. 29, 2003 -- They knew it was dangerous work. There were four Americans and a Colombian military escort on the single-engine Cessna flying high in the Andes in the heart of Colombia's guerrilla territory.

With a bird's-eye view they were surveying the illicit coca fields in the jungle below. Determining which would be sprayed with a chemical defoliant before the coca could be turned to cocaine and shipped to the streets of the United States.

Suddenly there was engine trouble.

Remarkably the pilot was able to make an emergency landing in a clearing in the jungle. All five survived the crash.

It is military work, but the Americans are ex-military men, under contract with the U.S. State Department. The United States is eager to keep its direct military involvement in the Colombia guerrilla war to a minimum. The men were drawn to Colombia by the adventure and the $140,000-a-year salary.

But on that February day their adventure became an harrowing ordeal.

Guerrillas saw the plane crash and quickly captured the five men. Two, American Thomas Janis and Colombian army Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, were executed. The three other Americans were taken hostage. More than seven months later Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes are still being held.

In her home Bristol, Conn., Gonsalves's mother, Jo Rosano, has erected a small shrine around a photo of her 32-year-old son in his U.S. Air Force uniform. A candle is always burning.

"It's like a nightmare I never wake up from," says Rosano, tears constantly filling here eyes.

But as time passes there is also rage.

"I think what they were doing was the dirty work for the military," says Rosano. "They weren't going to let the military do it because I feel that they must think that the military people are more valuable."

Enough Being Done?

Rosano can't understand why more effort hasn't been made to rescue three Americans who were working for the American government. She can't help comparing her son's plight to the dramatic rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq last spring.

"When the soldiers go captured in Iraq they went out looking for them, they got rescued, they got a hero's welcome, they got medals."

Rosano is convinced that her son and the two other men being held hostage are would be treated very differently if they were military men, rather than ex-military men working as civilians for the U.S. Department of State.

"They always say they don't leave their own behind," she says bitterly. "Isn't that what they say? So this is not their own."

But the new U.S. ambassador to Colombia insists that is not the case. Visitors entering the massive embassy complex in Bogotá can't miss the photographs of the three men sitting on a table in the main foyer of the embassy, a constant reminder that three men remain missing.

"We are taking every step we can take," says Ambassador William Wood. "We are faced with a brutal hostage taker. It is standard procedure for the guerrillas to murder hostages immediately upon any sign that there is a rescue attempt under way."

In March three Americans died when their plane crashed while scouring the jungles for the kidnapped Americans.

Presidential Candidates Not Spared

It is a circumstance all too familiar to Colombia's 44 million people. This is a country that sees more kidnappings than any other. Last year rebel groups abducted more than 3,000 people including senators, governors and mayors — and a presidential candidate.

Ingrid Betancourt was campaigning in southern Colombia in February 2002 when she and her campaign manager were taken hostage by guerrillas.

And recently a video surfaced showing a group of Colombian soldiers and politicians, some of whom have been held hostage for five years.

Families of kidnapped Colombians regularly hold protests in front of the Colombian parliament pleading that something be done, but the Colombian government refuses to negotiate prisoner exchanges with terrorists.

American journalist Ruth Morris lives in Bogotá. She was briefly kidnapped by rebels earlier this year. She says she was lucky to be released. But she thinks the guerrillas are likely to hold on to the three American men hoping that some day they will be able to trade them for guerrilla leaders being held in prison by the Colombian government.

"Generally they see their captives as merchandise," says Morris. "They don't damage the merchandise. I think that they will see this as a long term proposition: If this government doesn't negotiate, perhaps the next one will.

A Mother Waits and Mourns

The prospect of a never-ending wait makes the days unbearable for Patricia Medina as she cares for her newborn twins in her Bogotá apartment. Their father, Keith Stansell, may not even know that the twins were born after his capture.

"The only thing I want," says Medina, "is that Keith can come here alive, safe and can see his little children."

Because Medina is not married to Stansell and unable to access DNA to prove his paternity the U.S. Embassy says it will not treat her or the boys as next of kin.

That is making the ordeal unbearable for Medina.

"Why do I have to know everything from the journalists and not from the embassy," asks Medina. "That is what I am angry about."

Few Americans are aware of the depth of U.S. involvement in Colombia. But a few families are all too aware.