U.S. spent $250 million in hostages search

Entangled in politics
Several officials charged last year that there was a White House reluctance to forcefully pursue a rescue — or to press the Colombian government to step up its own efforts. That infuriated some career government negotiators, frustrated the men's employer, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary, and baffled the contractors' relatives, who could not understand why the men languished so long.

At one point, the Justice Department warned Northrop Grumman against sending backpacks of sneakers, medication and other items to the hostages, according to several people familiar with the conversations. The government cautioned that if the items ended up in the hands of rebels, it would violate the USA Patriot Act's ban on providing material support to terrorists, the people said.

Several current and former U.S. officials said the Bush administration failed to engage in routine negotiations or take other diplomatic steps of the kind used in similar hostage situations. That included deploying Foreign Emergency Support Teams, which are Washington-based special squads made up of counterterror experts and crisis workers from the departments of State, Justice, Defense, and the 16-agency intelligence community.

The State Department said the teams were not deployed because there wasn't enough information about the hostages' location or whether they were alive.

Some officials also charged that intelligence gathering on the hostages was limited by the administration's focus on disrupting terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

In a Jan. 23, 2007, letter to Northrop Grumman Vice President James F. Pitts, President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the administration had "increased resources devoted to this issue in Bogota," including "fully leveraging all intelligence and available national resources." A copy of the letter was obtained by the Associated Press.

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