mentorâs seat within the Hostage Working Group. A month later, Noesner, now a senior vice president for Control Risks (which was under contract to Northrop Grumman to handle the kidnapping of Howes, Stansell, and Gonsalves), was put on his first case as a civilian negotiator. By then, the seasoned negotiator had worked on over 120 hostage cases with the FBI. He didnât expect this case to bring anything he hadnât dealt with in the past. Working in Colombia would be nothing new for him, either. In Noesnerâs tenure with the FBI, heâd worked more Colombian kidnapping cases than any other type of case (mostly managing them from the States while sending a full-time agent to the country).
For more than a decade before Howes, Stansell, and Gonsalves were kidnapped, Colombia held the dubious distinction of having the highest kidnapping rate in the world, and the problem plagued not only Colombian citizens but also foreigners. Because Colombia has a wealth of as-yet-untapped oil and mineral reserves and there are hundreds of millions of U.S. government dollars earmarked to fight drug cultivation and production, numerous U.S. and foreign companies have employees in Colombia who have commonly been the target of kidnappers. The corporations have become accustomed to dealing with abductions, and dozens of hostage situations have been settled by dropping caseloads of American currency into jungle and mountain terrain. By early 2003, the process of dealing with kidnappings of foreigners in Colombia hadbeen repeated so many times that there was an expected protocolâa commonly played-out exchange between kidnapper and negotiator that usually began as soon as the kidnapping took place.
Immediately after an employee was kidnapped, a negotiator from a security company was deployed to Colombia to try to establish contact with the kidnappers. In the United States, security companies such as the Florida-based Ackerman Group and the Washington, D.C., office of Control Risks provided operational guidance to clients as part of what was commonly referred to as âkidnapping and ransom insurance,â underwritten by large insurers such as Lloydâs of London. The kidnappers might have been from one of the guerrilla groupsâmost notably, the FARC or the ELNâthey might have been linked to paramilitary groups, or they could have been common criminals. The guerrillas had become so much of a problem that some North American companies were accused of paying illegal paramilitary groups for âprotectionâ of their investments. In 2007, Chiquita Banana Company admitted to paying âprotectionâ money to Colombian paramilitary groupsâidentified by the U.S. government as known terrorist organizations. (The company agreed to pay a $25 million fine to end a federal investigation.) Although the U.S. State Department forbids government concessions to terrorists or kidnappers, in all cases that Noesner had handled since 1990, a full-time FBI negotiator worked alongside and assisted the private security consultants to secure the safe release of hostages.
âHistorically, FARC would grab an oil-exploration worker, a mining guy, an agriculture worker or someone like that and hold them for money,â says Noesner. âThen they communicate with the family or the company. The company would sometimes have a relationship with a [company like] Control Risks, sometimes not. If itâs an American citizen being held, even if itâs a Colombian with dual citizenship, the FBI would deploy. Not to take over the negotiations but to say, âHereâs what we recommend; hereâs the issues as we see them.ââ The security companyâs negotiator and the FBI agent would then appoint a family member or someone close to the case, who, after coaching, would act as a communicator to speak directly with the kidnappers. âThe U.S. ambassador to Colombia would be informed of what was going
For more than a decade before Howes, Stansell, and Gonsalves were kidnapped, Colombia held the dubious distinction of having the highest kidnapping rate in the world, and the problem plagued not only Colombian citizens but also foreigners. Because Colombia has a wealth of as-yet-untapped oil and mineral reserves and there are hundreds of millions of U.S. government dollars earmarked to fight drug cultivation and production, numerous U.S. and foreign companies have employees in Colombia who have commonly been the target of kidnappers. The corporations have become accustomed to dealing with abductions, and dozens of hostage situations have been settled by dropping caseloads of American currency into jungle and mountain terrain. By early 2003, the process of dealing with kidnappings of foreigners in Colombia hadbeen repeated so many times that there was an expected protocolâa commonly played-out exchange between kidnapper and negotiator that usually began as soon as the kidnapping took place.
Immediately after an employee was kidnapped, a negotiator from a security company was deployed to Colombia to try to establish contact with the kidnappers. In the United States, security companies such as the Florida-based Ackerman Group and the Washington, D.C., office of Control Risks provided operational guidance to clients as part of what was commonly referred to as âkidnapping and ransom insurance,â underwritten by large insurers such as Lloydâs of London. The kidnappers might have been from one of the guerrilla groupsâmost notably, the FARC or the ELNâthey might have been linked to paramilitary groups, or they could have been common criminals. The guerrillas had become so much of a problem that some North American companies were accused of paying illegal paramilitary groups for âprotectionâ of their investments. In 2007, Chiquita Banana Company admitted to paying âprotectionâ money to Colombian paramilitary groupsâidentified by the U.S. government as known terrorist organizations. (The company agreed to pay a $25 million fine to end a federal investigation.) Although the U.S. State Department forbids government concessions to terrorists or kidnappers, in all cases that Noesner had handled since 1990, a full-time FBI negotiator worked alongside and assisted the private security consultants to secure the safe release of hostages.
âHistorically, FARC would grab an oil-exploration worker, a mining guy, an agriculture worker or someone like that and hold them for money,â says Noesner. âThen they communicate with the family or the company. The company would sometimes have a relationship with a [company like] Control Risks, sometimes not. If itâs an American citizen being held, even if itâs a Colombian with dual citizenship, the FBI would deploy. Not to take over the negotiations but to say, âHereâs what we recommend; hereâs the issues as we see them.ââ The security companyâs negotiator and the FBI agent would then appoint a family member or someone close to the case, who, after coaching, would act as a communicator to speak directly with the kidnappers. âThe U.S. ambassador to Colombia would be informed of what was going
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