Gene and Lynne Stansell have written letters to everyone they can think of, from President Bush on down.

They have assembled and distributed information about their son, Keith, one of three Americans being held hostage by rebels in Colombia.

The couple, from Bradenton, Fla., even submitted a YouTube video question to presidential candidates, asking what the would-be presidents would do to help the Americans kept captive in the jungle since 2003.

None of it worked, so they met last year with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. And with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The meetings left them with some hope.

In January, after first being contacted by someone in Gov. Bill Richardson's office, they wrote him a letter asking for help and were filled with a little more cheer.

The New Mexico governor and sometimes diplomatic troubleshooter has said he would like to help but has no immediate plans to travel to the region.

But when the Colombian army two weeks ago killed the No. 2 leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as the FARC — the group that is holding their son and co-workers Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes — the Stansells' dreams were deflated. Hope for the release of hostages crumbled.

"That really set things back, because (Raúl) Reyes was the chief negotiator for the FARC," Gene Stansell said of the group's second in command.

"It was actually happening, they were scheduled to release several more (hostages). We were quite discouraged."

Still, the pair, both retired educators, haven't, can't and won't give up on their son, held thousands of miles away, incommunicado.

"We wake up most nights at 4 in the morning and start to worry about Keith. But that doesn't do anyone any good," Lynne Stansell said.

Crash landing

Keith Stansell, 43, grew up in Miami loving hunting and fishing, the wilderness.

By all accounts, he was the All-American boy, enlisting in the Marine Corps and taking specialized training courses in aviation electronics.

Later, in the Air National Guard in Georgia, he worked as an aviation technician and flight engineer on Chinook helicopters.

Those days in the outdoors, that training, might be helping Stansell more than he could have anticipated. His family says he's being held in remote jungle conditions with automatic weapons pointed at him.

"We figured he's a survivor if anybody ever was," Gene Stansell said.

Keith Stansell went to Colombia on a contract with California Microwave, a division of Northrop Grumman, where he'd worked for a about a year and a half.

In February of 2003, the single engine of the Cessna in which he and four others were flying went dead.

The pilot did the best he could to land the plane. All the men aboard suffered injuries.

"We still don't know whether the plane was hit by a bullet or whether the engine froze up," Gene Stansell said. "There was one mountain range between them and the field they were going to, but there was no chance of them getting over that mountain."

Soon after the crash, the men were taken hostage by members of the FARC. Two were killed, and both the dead had gunshot wounds, according to reports.

The American men were on an anti-drug mission, sent to scope out the coordinates of coca leaf fields so other planes could be flown in to spray leaf-killing chemicals on the fields.

The families knew their sons' work would be hard. And for the Stansell family, waiting for Keith to return is even more so.

"We got the call from the State Department, and they said 'this could go on for six months,' " Lynne Stansell said. "And we thought that was a long time."

Five years have dragged by. Five birthdays, too.

Keith's 19-year-old daughter, Lauren, has a fall birthday like her father, so the family has tried to focus on celebrating Lauren's day. He also has a 15-year-old son, Kyle.

But the thoughts of Keith are there, especially before meal time, when the family prays for him.
"It just makes me so angry he's had to have all those birthdays in the jungle," Lynne Stansell said.

Those years have also passed without any direct contact with Keith, although the family has sent him letters, not knowing if they arrived. They've also sent messages through a Colombian radio station.

Journalists and an escaped hostage have had some contact with the three Americans, and the Stansells have seen footage of their son, most recently in January.

While the family was glad to know Keith is alive, the video was hard to watch.

"His cheeks were beginning to sink in, and his eyes were sunk back," Gene Stansell said. At the same time, Keith looks muscular and apparently is working out with makeshift weights.

In the 2003 documentary Held Hostage in Colombia, Keith talks about passing the time playing with a deck of cards he made with notebook paper.

A fellow hostage, Gonsalves, talks about wanting to just lie in bed to pass the time.

Back in Florida, the Stansells are lying there, too, wondering.

Diplomat Richardson

The Stansells over the years have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of help from the U.S. government, which considers the Marxist FARC rebels a terrorist group.

"I can understand that we don't negotiate with terrorists," Gene Stansell said. "But I cannot understand why you cannot communicate to see if our family members are alive. Why in the world couldn't you just ask their representatives to simply try to find out if our guys are alive?"

In the Held Hostage documentary, the three men said they didn't want a rescue attempt, fearing they would end up dead.

Instead, the men urged diplomatic negotiations — something that appears tricky at best and nearly impossible at worst.

The U.S. government has said it won't negotiate with terrorists, and it has chilly relations with Venezuela's Chávez, who is said to be financing the FARC. Chávez has denounced Uribe, with whom the U.S. government is working to quash the FARC and their drug activities. Along with that standoff, neighboring Ecuador was dragged into the situation when the Colombian army killed Reyes in an airstrike launched from Colombian airspace into Ecuador. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa sent troops to the border with Colombia, as did Chávez.

All of that would make matters tricky for Richardson, who, after dropping his presidential bid in January, appears at least interested in a post in a Democratic administration working on international relations. He's a former U.S. secretary of Energy, a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and an international troubleshooter for President Bill Clinton.

The FARC members reportedly want to exchange hostages for rebel members jailed by the Colombian government — something Richardson is unlikely to be able to deliver, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University who focuses on politics of South America.

"The problem Richardson is going to run into is the FARC is going to view him as the United States," he said.

In part, the mission could prove difficult for the governor because he's a moderate Democrat, a politician who doesn't lean too far to the left.

"The only way you could influence Chávez and the FARC is with an anti-Bush track record," he said.

But it's not just Richardson who would face a tough task, Jones said. "Its very unlikely for anybody to have much success, let alone Bill Richardson," he said.

Richardson knows many world leaders; Uribe and Correa are not among them, but Chávez is.
In his book Between Worlds, in a chapter about his time as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richardson writes about Chávez.

"Recently, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been dumping on the United States in general and shamefully on Condoleezza Rice in particular. In a recent speech, Chávez said there was an American he could really deal with — Bill Richardson," the governor wrote. "So there's another one that likes me. His foreign-policy team has been trying to contact me consistently since I became governor. As I have said, a personal connection can transcend even the deepest ideological differences."

Richardson is known for his hostage-retrieval experiences in North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and most recently in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

He also has made a hostage-release-seeking foray in South America.

In the late 1990s, Richardson tried to negotiate for an American woman who he said "had fallen in with members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement." The woman, New Yorker Lori Berenson, was arrested along with other members of the Peruvian group.

Prosecutors said her crime was participating in a planned assault on and hostage-taking of members of the Peruvian Congress, according to Richardson's book.

In 1995, Berenson was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Richardson in 1996 went to Lima to negotiate with then-president Alberto Fujimori. At one point, there were plans for Berenson's release in exchange for a Peruvian who was being held in a Texas jail. But Peruvian officials wanted Berenson to admit guilt, something she and her family were not willing to do.

She remains jailed. Her supporters say there is no evidence she is guilty. Richardson in his book said he believes he could have secured her release, if he had a little more time.

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com