detail of plan video news report:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/03/eveningnews/main4233357.shtml

(CBS) Seeds of the rescue, code-named Operation Checkmate, were planted a few months ago when Colombian intelligence moles infiltrated the inner circle of the FARC rebels, CBS News justice and homeland security correspondent Bob Orr reports.

Sources say surveillance flights had narrowed down the possible locations of the hostages. And government spies, masquerading in messages as top FARC commanders, worked to gain the trust of a guerrilla leader named “Cesar” who was guarding FARC’s most important political prisoners.

It was an elaborate ruse, which began paying off when two unmarked helicopters touched down yesterday at a remote jungle clearing deep inside Colombia.

There, in a hot, grassy field, “Cesar” and a henchman, “Enrique,“ herded the 15 handcuffed hostages on to one of the choppers. The guerrilla leaders had been tricked into believing their captives had been summoned by FARC’s supreme commander.

The flight crew - actually Colombian soldiers - wore T-shirts bearing the image of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, further convincing hostage Ingrid Betancourt this was no humanitarian flight.

“I thought to myself, this is from FARC,“ she said, thorough a translator.

But, freedom for the three Americans and 12 other political prisoners would come just moments later. Once the helicopter was airborne.

The crew persuaded the two rebels to hand over their weapons, and then overpowered them.

With Cesar and Enrique blindfolded, stripped and held on the floor, the rescue leader gave the hostages stunning news.

As Betancourt explained, they said, “We are the National Army. You are free.”

A celebration erupted with the now-freed hostages jumping up and down, prompting Betancourt to remark later “the helicopter nearly fell from the sky.“

U.S. officials play down any American role in the rescue, saying while the U.S. shared intelligence, and had Special Forces commandoes on stand-by, deception was the key.

Colombia simply outwitted a dangerous enemy that’s ruled with terror for four decades.

Video footage of the dramatic rescue of 15 hostages from the Colombian jungle, including politician Ingrid Betancourt, has been released by Colombian military.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/colombia/2249599/Ingrid-Betancourt-hostage-rescue-Video-shows-audacious-Colombian-raid.html  the video is on the site given here. 

The film shows the hostages filing soberly and handcuffed towards the helicopter that takes them to safety, then embracing one another and crying with joy after learning of their release after six years of captivity.

Ms Betancourt described the moment when she learned of her freedom from the Chief of the Operation with the words: “We’re from the National Army and you’re free!“

She said: “The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we all jumped, shouted, cried and embraced. We couldn’t believe it…“.
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Colombia’s Defence Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, said that the video was released to dispel doubts about the military’s dramatic and bloodless raid.

On Friday, a Swiss radio station, RSR, citing reliable sources, claimed that Farc, a rebel army which uses hostages as its most powerful bargaining chip, had accepted a $20 million ransom paid by the US and that the allegedly audacious rescue, codenamed Check, was in fact a set-up.

The station reported that the wife of one of the hostages’ guards was the go-between, having been arrested by the Colombian army.

Both US and Colombian officials have vehemently denied the accusations.

General Freddy Padilla, head of the Colombian military, categorically denied any payment.

“As the General Commander of the Armed Forces and on my military honour, I deny that the Colombian Government has paid a single peso, a single cent,“ he said.

Ms Betancourt also cast doubt on the claims: “Based on what I was able to see in this rescue operation, because of the intensity, I don’t think they could have fooled me,“ she said. “I don’t think that anyone was acting. The situation was too intense.“

Santos did say, however, that there was a policy of paying for information from Farc.

“We have a very aggressive and successful policy of offering awards,“ he said at a news conference in Bogota to display the rescue video.

“We pay for information and we have paid millions of dollars to many people for information of all different kinds. If we had paid on this occasion we would have been the first to admit it because it is part of our politics.“

He also denied reports that Israeli and US agents had been involved in the operation, saying it had been “100% Colombian”.

He also denied reports that Israeli and US agents had been involved in the operation, saying it had been “100% Colombian”.

They went for the good stuff did they??

And possibly more about the deception used.

Hostage ruse’s fake Web site irks group with similar name

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN)—Colombian military intelligence apparently set up a Web site for a fake humanitarian group as part of a ruse to dupe leftist rebels into giving up 15 hostages this month.

Colombia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment about the counterfeit organization and its Web site.

However, a Bogota college student who said he registered the domain name and hosted the site through his company said he was surprised to learn of the site’s purpose.

Mision Humanitaria Internacional’s Web site popped up a few days before the July 2 mission to rescue the hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the jungles of Colombia.

The organization was based in Barcelona, Spain, and had been founded in 1999 “to improve the processes of development to guarantee equality of opportunity for individuals and peoples,“ according to informational pages posted on the site.

Spanish-language news articles and press releases from the last nine years filled some of the site’s pages. The organization’s logo—a stylized red bird on a white background in the centermost of three concentric circles, with blue leaves on white in the middle circle and the organization’s name on a blue background in the outermost circle—is featured prominently throughout the site.

That same logo was pasted on the side of a helicopter used on the rescue mission that brought former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 Colombian police and soldiers back from the jungle, according to unpublished video shown to CNN by a military source who had been looking to sell the material.

The emblems can’t be seen in the heavily edited video released by the Colombian Defense Ministry. CNN declined to purchase the unpublished material.

But Mision Humanitaria Internacional doesn’t exist. Although the site said the group was registered with the Spanish Interior Ministry and the regional Department of Justice, Spanish Interior Ministry spokesman Alvaro Pena said the organization was not registered with the ministry and was not in its records.

The site was littered with misspellings and listed a contact telephone number as 000000000.

Furthermore, the wording on the site’s “About Us” section appeared markedly similar to that of the Global Humanitaria nongovernmental organization.

The likeness prompted that Barcelona-based organization to issue a statement Thursday saying it “denounces ... the use of its ideological definition to give content to this supposed organization and declares not to have any type of relation with Mision Humanitaria.“

Global Humanitaria’s director for Colombia, Lina Marma Correa, said Wednesday, “We do not have anything to do with this fictitious NGO,“ according to the statement.

Mision Humanitaria Internacional’s Web site disappeared from the Internet Tuesday, the day CNN reported on the unpublished video and photos of the rescue.

On Monday, government and military spokesmen said that all logos and emblems used in the mission had been invented. When asked about the Web site, a Colombian defense ministry spokeswoman said Thursday she would be in touch later. She never called back, and further attempts for comment from the Colombian Defense Ministry were unsuccessful.

But a search of Internet records found that Mision Humanitaria Internacional’s domain name was registered to David Olarte of Bogota and his company, Darts Studio, which provides domain name registration, Web site hosting and multimedia services with its staff of five.

“What I want most is to clear all this up, that the public sees that I only offer a service so that neither my family nor I have political problems or problems with our safety,“ he said.

Communicating with CNN via e-mail because he said he was outside Colombia with no access to a telephone, Olarte said someone contacted him through Darts Studio’s Web site on June 26 “requesting two services: hosting and registration.“ Web hosting refers to providing space on Internet servers for the storage of Web sites.

“He simply told me that he wanted the domain name [misionhi.org],“ said Olarte, who’s 22. “I verified that it was available and I gave him a price. I suppose that he went to the bank, the Bank of Bogota, where my account is, and the deposit went in directly through a bank branch.“

Once the funds were in his account, Olarte said, he registered the domain name, set up the hosting space for his client and sent him the information he needed to access it.

Olarte said the deal was conducted entirely via e-mail and that he was not involved with the site’s content.

CNN sent an e-mail to a yahoo.com address Olarte said was his contact, but it bounced back with an “unknown account” message. It is a simple process to delete a yahoo.com account, however.

Olarte said he learned about the fake organization on Wednesday and was “very surprised about what happened with misionhi.org.“