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The builds are all done in-house, but the illustration work on this piece came to us from a lovely freelance illustrator, Allegra Lockstadt. Thanks for the kind words!
I was able to find the morse code part without reading the hints but it’s obvious because of the article. Very very well done: hidden but obvious to trained people.
The kind of story that would make an awesome movie. It’s almost unbelievable. Also, I enjoyed this article a lot and loved the illustrations. I’m sharing this.
They titled it "Better Days," performed by session artists Natalia Gutierrez Y Angelo, fairly anonymous backgorund musicians who’d worked on other jingles at the studio. Ortiz thought it was a masterpiece.
Great comeback for the longform articles! Hope 2015 sees more of these!
The ingenuity of the Colombian military to trick the FARC Guerrillas is well known in Colombia, the message that they rescued 19 hostages is a story that is fascinating on its own. Their use of deception was outstanding in getting those hostages freed. Hope we get an article about that also. As I recall they tricked FARC into believing they where speaking with their fellow Guerrillas in moving hostages to a certain location in order to transport them to a different location. The Colombian Military managed to get FARC to round up as many hostages as possible(usually they where kept in very small groups far apart in the jungle). Once they arrived at the location for transport there where Military members dressed as reporters and also dressed "red cross members" supposedly to film how hostages where treated and such, hostages where allowed in the helicopter with two supervising FARC rebels on board. Once in the air the military members attacked and subdued the FARC guards and let know the hostages they had in fact been freed without firing one shot. FARC rebels on the ground never knew what had actually happen until it was all out in the news. Truly amazing.
Thats what i can recall, let me know if this is correct.
Hope the useless war ends soon and stories like these of hostages and military ingenuity to rescue them is in the past.
P.S Its almost impossible to find better prepared and skilled combat soldiers than those in Colombia.
That’s how it was. they also painted white two Military Helicopters (something the red cross was very cross about) to do the "Jaque" operation,
Another famous story is how they got alias "tirofijo" (sure shot) the leader of the guerrilla, He was diabetic, so they managed to sell him special boots for his diabetic feet wich had GPS on them. It may sound simple, but it was a months long operation cause the uncovered shoemaker had to be very trusted and respected and get into the whole organization.
This was a great article. (Eschewing the glibness of my other comment.) I am of Colombian descent, but I have incredibly Anglo features and skin tone and my Spanish accent is poor. As such, when I go to visit, kidnapping is something that I’m always a bit fearful of regardless of how much my family attempted to assuage that. (Which, during the worst of it, they often used to follow up directly with "But, no English.") Reading this provided a nice bit of national pride to my day that I am often lacking, having to heard oft-repeated jokes about Cocaine whenever I elaborate on my heritage.
That is a great story about an awesome operation! Ingenuity and planning that resulted in not only freedom for those that were rescued, but intelligence garnered from the successful rescues, and the freed hostages. I am very impressed! This is worthy of a Tom Clancy, style novel.
Comments
FINALLY, 2014 was a lost year for TheVerge after INCREDIBLE 2013! Hope in 2015 real TheVerge will be back!
By ChocolateChipCookieMonstA on 01.07.15 11:12am
THIS!!!
By vahbmas on 01.07.15 1:18pm
Happy to finally see some more long-form content from The Verge.
Is the web-dev/styling for these done in-house or contracted out?
By NiHaody on 01.07.15 11:40am
The builds are all done in-house, but the illustration work on this piece came to us from a lovely freelance illustrator, Allegra Lockstadt. Thanks for the kind words!
By Dylan Lathrop on 01.07.15 11:51am
The artwork by Allegra Lockstadt is the best I can recall seeing on this website. Kudos to the artist!
By FresnoBob on 01.07.15 11:52am
Agreed, Allegra did an incredible job!
By mvzelenko on 01.07.15 12:12pm
I was able to find the morse code part without reading the hints but it’s obvious because of the article. Very very well done: hidden but obvious to trained people.
By pboardman on 01.07.15 11:42am
I imagine that it would be even less obvious to untrained ears on a radio where the audio quality is lower.
By snapperfishes on 01.09.15 4:48am
Also, very nice piece.
By Intricacy on 01.07.15 11:50am
FYI, the "dots" and "dashes" in Morse code are vocalised as ‘di’, ‘dits’ (if a character sequence ends in a dot) and ‘dahs’.
By Joe Peacock on 01.07.15 11:55am
Great article!
By Fa11ou7 on 01.07.15 12:02pm
WOW! I didn’t know any thing of this. I’m from Colombia. Many people here hope that this stupid war ends soon.
By darkhole on 01.07.15 12:14pm
The kind of story that would make an awesome movie. It’s almost unbelievable.
Also, I enjoyed this article a lot and loved the illustrations. I’m sharing this.
By Engi Raine on 01.07.15 12:17pm
Nice read. Looking forward to more detailed articles like this.
By Tommy DiPietro on 01.07.15 12:18pm
Lovely piece and illustrations, by the way :)
By Kathranis on 01.07.15 12:21pm
Great article. Thanks.
By NiejaN on 01.07.15 12:23pm
Argo 2: The Colombian Rescue
By brunoscs on 01.07.15 12:30pm
Where Affleck takes more credit for stuff Americans didn’t do? :P
By strawe on 01.08.15 11:17am
Great to see the comeback of the superb longforms you guys make.
By Mathiasjk on 01.07.15 12:49pm
Great comeback for the longform articles! Hope 2015 sees more of these!
The ingenuity of the Colombian military to trick the FARC Guerrillas is well known in Colombia, the message that they rescued 19 hostages is a story that is fascinating on its own. Their use of deception was outstanding in getting those hostages freed. Hope we get an article about that also. As I recall they tricked FARC into believing they where speaking with their fellow Guerrillas in moving hostages to a certain location in order to transport them to a different location. The Colombian Military managed to get FARC to round up as many hostages as possible(usually they where kept in very small groups far apart in the jungle). Once they arrived at the location for transport there where Military members dressed as reporters and also dressed "red cross members" supposedly to film how hostages where treated and such, hostages where allowed in the helicopter with two supervising FARC rebels on board. Once in the air the military members attacked and subdued the FARC guards and let know the hostages they had in fact been freed without firing one shot. FARC rebels on the ground never knew what had actually happen until it was all out in the news. Truly amazing.
Thats what i can recall, let me know if this is correct.
Hope the useless war ends soon and stories like these of hostages and military ingenuity to rescue them is in the past.
P.S Its almost impossible to find better prepared and skilled combat soldiers than those in Colombia.
By Betobena on 01.07.15 1:11pm
That’s how it was. they also painted white two Military Helicopters (something the red cross was very cross about) to do the "Jaque" operation,
Another famous story is how they got alias "tirofijo" (sure shot) the leader of the guerrilla, He was diabetic, so they managed to sell him special boots for his diabetic feet wich had GPS on them. It may sound simple, but it was a months long operation cause the uncovered shoemaker had to be very trusted and respected and get into the whole organization.
By soyJuan on 01.07.15 1:42pm
And here I was expecting something more overt like this later attempt from 2009 in Mexico: http://youtu.be/x47NYUbtYb0
HSHSHSHSHSHSHS is a weird ass message though.
By OMGLX on 01.07.15 2:01pm
This was a great article. (Eschewing the glibness of my other comment.) I am of Colombian descent, but I have incredibly Anglo features and skin tone and my Spanish accent is poor. As such, when I go to visit, kidnapping is something that I’m always a bit fearful of regardless of how much my family attempted to assuage that. (Which, during the worst of it, they often used to follow up directly with "But, no English.") Reading this provided a nice bit of national pride to my day that I am often lacking, having to heard oft-repeated jokes about Cocaine whenever I elaborate on my heritage.
Thanks, Verge!
By OMGLX on 01.07.15 2:15pm
That is a great story about an awesome operation! Ingenuity and planning that resulted in not only freedom for those that were rescued, but intelligence garnered from the successful rescues, and the freed hostages. I am very impressed! This is worthy of a Tom Clancy, style novel.
By Clawdan on 01.07.15 2:23pm
Brilliant… what a great story, and well written.
By voxnox on 01.07.15 3:39pm