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Home » About Norwich » SGS Today »
Wade Chapple (right) with rescued hostages Marc Gonsalves (center), Keith Stansell (front) and Thomas Howes (left of Chapple) on the C-17 MEDEVAC flight from Bogotá to San Antonio, Tex. [photo courtesy of Wade Chapple].
Diplomacy alumnus leads reintegration of U.S. hostages rescued from FARC rebels
by Daphne Larkin, staff
© Oct. 3, 2008 Norwich University Office of Communications
On July 2, 2008, Wade Chapple sat aboard the Colombian military command and control aircraft and listened as Colombian military operatives, posing as members of the rebel militia group called FARC, rescued 15 hostages from the jungle.
Among the 15 hostages were three U.S. contractors whose plane had gone down in FARC territory in February 2003. The operation, in which rescuers wore Che Guevara T-shirts, took advantage of recent blows to the FARC organization by having operatives infiltrate the group and arrange to relocate hostages. It made headlines worldwide.
Chapple, a 2007 alumnus of Norwich University's Master of Arts in Diplomacy (MDY), sat next to the military commander and monitored all communication going in and out of the plane.
"We all heard the code phrases for 'all hostages rescued,'" said Chapple. "And although the mood aboard our aircraft was euphoric, I didn't know what 'all' really meant. Did it mean our Americans? What numbers were rescued? Did we get all of the hostages we could?"
Chapple, who is the director of the U.S. Military Group's Personnel Recovery Coordination Center (PRCC), located in Bogotá, Colombia, said he maintained "guarded optimism." He put off informing the U.S. Embassy of the mission's success until he could see the Americans for himself.
Chapple had been planning for this moment ever since the PRCC, the only one of its kind, began operations in 2004.
It is estimated the FARC has hundreds of hostages in the jungle. The longest-held U.S. hostages in history, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes lived for five years and five months in the jungle enduring tropical diseases, forced marches sometimes lasting weeks and stifling boredom.
Within 15 minutes of the "success" signal, the white helicopter carrying the 15 former hostages arrived at San Jose de Guaviare. There, they all boarded the command and control plane, and Chapple was one of three Americans to welcome Gonsalves, Stansell and Howes to freedom.
"They were very euphoric upon entering the aircraft and seeing us aboard," Chapple said. "When they boarded that [helicopter] they had no idea they were being freed, and they had spent five very long, grueling, difficult years without any updates of their family, employers or connection to the modern world."
The group flew two hours to a Colombian Army base where they met the U.S. ambassador to Colombia and flew to Bogotá. In Bogotá, Chapple and the group boarded a USAF C-17 transport/MEDEVAC aircraft for the five-hour flight to San Antonio, Texas.
Chapple's reintegration plan for the three ex-hostages was a careful balance of business and nurturing.
Before they took off for the U.S., Gonsalves, Stansell and Howes underwent full medical evaluations to make sure they were fit to fly, and that they weren't carrying any diseases. Chapple said the men "looked remarkably fit, but they also suffered during that captivity and were exposed to all the tropical diseases one would expect to acquire in that environment."
Keeping them apprised of each step of the journey home, Chapple said he "continued to reassure them they were safe along the way."
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“[The MDY program] really gets at how insurgencies tick. When you understand how they thrive then you can start to put together a program for shutting them down.” |
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Chapple and his team had flight suits labeled with each of the men's names, POW and American flag patches for the three to change into after they cleaned up, details Chapple called "deliberate symbols of appreciation and also to reinforce to them they were not forgotten.
"That [cleaning up] was a very important part of our process," Chapple said, adding that he reminded the three to be careful of the hot water "because they were not used to that."
As director of the PRCC, Chapple said he is responsible "for providing personnel recovery training venues to all U.S. personnel who belong to the US diplomatic mission to Colombia; whether they are from Department of Defense, Department of State, USAID conducting outreach programs, or other interagency departments.
"We prepare personnel to face possible isolation from their parent organizations, … to properly report and avoid capture by terrorists, … [how] to survive in the remote and austere regions of Colombia … to resist if captured [and] survive captivity," according to Chapple.
The mission of the program is prevention, "and when prevention fails it's to provide the embassy with immediate response capabilities to recover the group before they become captive," Chapple said. In the case of Gonsalves, Stansell and Howes, who were captured in 2003, Chapple's work was focused on reintegration once they were rescued.
The program was established in 2004, and Chapple, who retired from the Army Special Forces after 26 years, was hired to be director.
Chapple took the Terrorism studies concentration in MDY to learn more about how these groups are organized, what motivates them and how they operate to enhance his prevention education.
Chapple said MDY also gave him "an enhanced ability to negotiate our interests at the appropriate level to ensure we were fully involved.
"The U.S. embassy had to balance our strategic interests with those of the Colombian government. At the highest level our ambassador was engaged, [but] at the tactical level … we had to negotiate our involvement with the [Colombian] military commanders."
Discussions in the online classroom directly informed Chapple's work.
"[We were] studying the FARC from within the framework of an insurgency and how do they work; how do they draw support from their external environment and how do leaders maintain unity," said Stephen Twing, one of Chapple's MDY instructors. "It really gets at how insurgencies tick. When you understand how they thrive then you can start to put together a program for shutting them down."
In the mean time, Chapple will continue his program of prevention and reintegration.
"We, the U.S. government, do not forget about our citizens who fall victim to terror worldwide," Chapple said. "[Gonsalves, Stansell and Howes] are, in fact, heroes who resisted for five years. They were returning to the U.S. with honor."
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