On the Colombia “ Hostage Rescue”

By Arturo P. Garcia, AJLPP

On the American press media, the Colombian “hostage rescue” last July 3 that rescued three American servicemen was given prominence.

The stress of the media especially the CNN was not only to hail the so called rescue mission as a success. It was also hailed for the rescue being bloodless and “not a single shot being fired.”

Another stress of the media was the guerilla forces of FARC “ is finished” while at the same time maligning the revolutionary forces as “ narcotrafficers and terrorist” while at the same time pointing out that the 40-year struggle of the armed revolutionaries as “ the longest insurgency is southern hemisphere.

It brought back the memory of the Peru hostage crisis in 1997 when the Tupac Amaru raided the Japanese embassy in Lima in December 1996 and held hostage 490 people. The US CIA also played a vital part in the rescue in 1997. The CIA helped planned the elaborate rescue plan including the digging of a tunnel below the embassy where the assaults teams emerged.

The credit went to that publicly hailed Fujimori as the hero of their victorious campaign against the terrorist.. This time, President Uribe of Colombia and the Colombian military is being hailed as a heroes in this daring rescue.

But these so called “rescue and ruse” operations have precedence in the US war history.

Philippine Example

During the counter-insurgency war against the Filipino revolutionaries called the Filipino-American War of 1899-1902, the Americans with the help of Filipino scouts captured President Emilio Aguinaldo on his birthday on his birthday, March 22, 1902 in Palanan, Isabela by using the same tactica.

General Fredrick Funston, a veteran of the US civil war pretended to be captured American officer to be presented to Aguinaldo. He and his soldiers and mercenaries when they were inside the camp, arrested Aguinaldo.

By capturing Aguinaldo,( who later pledged his allegiance to the Americans ) the Americans ended the formal resistance of the republican army. But the the fighting Filipino people fought on until 1907.

The Americans again played ruse by pretending to hold peace talks with General Macario Sakay, the President of the Tagalog Republic in 1906. Like what they did to Nicaraguan General Sandino, ( that US authorities assassinated in 1932) they lured him to come out and when he appeared, they arrested him and hanged him as a bandit in 1907.

Infliltration and Strike Operations

During the so called " Huk Rebellion” from 1948-1954, the CIA helped crush the People’s Liberation Army ( called the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan or HMB ) in the Philippines even during the late 1960’s, the CIA took active part in intelligence operations against the HMB.

Some of the operations in the1950’s, the AFP was able to infiltrate the camp of HMB Regional Commander Guillermo Capadocia in Panay (an island in the Visayas) posing as a group coming from mainland Luzon. In the ruse, they killed Capadocia and some of his men and destroyed the HMB main force in Panay.

In another operation, the AFP unit under one Lt. Tomas Karingal (who later became a top police general), infiltrated the group of Mariano Balgos, th e secretary g eneral of the CPP in Bicol and killed him. Later General Karingal was killed by the NPA’s in 1984 for his crimes against the people.

Again, in an elaborate assassination plan, an AFP team killed a famous HMB Commander Eddie Villapando of the HMB in Laguna. The military action was even immortalized in a movie in the Philippines.

But maybe the most daring ruse was the Politburo raid in the 1950’s where the whole CPP leadership was arrested in Manila. The intelligence agent was recruited and was able to worm his way to the central committee. His only credential was that he was a nephew of the national hero, Jose Rizal.

The role of the CIA in intelligence operations

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is very famous for its direct hand in the different intelligence operations also in different countries. These operations, covert or overt were very open during the cold war.

In the 1960’s infiltrating HMB units and destroying the remnants of the HMB became the forte of the AFP under the direction of the CIA the platoon of the HMB in Bataan under Commander Delio was wiped out by the PC rangers in 1969. Another platoon was infiltrated and wiped out in Pampanga by Major Cunanan in 1970.

One of the most famous operations are the killing of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 was also an achievement of the CIA. Col. Napoleon Valeriano of the Philippines, a veteran of the anti-HMB campaign hunted Che Guevara in Bolivia.