Three American contractors were held hostage in the Colombian jungle served for nearly 2,000 days in captivity. First captured when their Cessna crashed while on a reconnaissance mission over central Colombia, the men were held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) along with a dozen other high-value hostages from 2002 until their rescue in 2008.
The rescue itself was an incredible operation, nearly unparalleled in the history of warfare. Codenamed Operation Jaque, the Colombian military under the leadership of General Mario Montoya Uribe launched an unprecedented and audacious mission: they would free the prisoners without a shot being fired by posing as members of a fake humanitarian aid organization. With unparalleled operational secrecy and months of training and planning, a group of Special Forces soldiers led by one of Colombia’s most effective covert operatives pulled the operation off without a hitch.
After a Colombian Signals Intelligence team infiltrated the guerilla communications network, they posed as a commander from another region, ordering a hostage transfer at a set date and time. The FARC guerillas holding the hostages believed they were talking to one of their own, and set up the transfer. Special Forces soldiers arrived on a red- and white-painted helicopter posing as aid workers and a camera crew to transfer the prisoners, mirroring a previous transfer operation.
The hostages believed that they were being transferred to yet another jungle hideaway when suddenly the two FARC men accompanying them inside the helicopter were taken down and disarmed in seconds by the supposed aid workers. Both of the men can briefly be seen in footage from the event, with SF soldiers on top of them. The hostages cried and cheered as the helicopter took them to a nearby air base to be reunited with families they hadn’t seen in years, and the cheers of a joyful nation.
For episode 24 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I tell the story of Operation Jaque in my own words, after several months of research.
