Our Man Is Inside

By Diego Asencio and Nancy Asencio

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316052949
• ISBN13: 9780316052948
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Best Book Ever!!!!

Reading this book in high school, and again in college really opened up my eyes to the things these people went through. This book is an absolute page turner! It will keep you going til the very end. I wanted to know what happened to Diego after his release!!!!

review from washington post

Terrorist and Diplomates: The Seige in Bogata;THE MAN IS INSIDE: Outmaneuvering the Terrorists. By Diego and Nancy Asencio with Ron Tobias. Atlantic-Little, Brown. 244 pp. The Washington Post February 13, 1983, Sunday, Final Edition Book World; Pg. 5 By KAREN DEYOUNG; KAREN DeYOUNG is foreign editor of The Washington Post ON FEBRUARY 27, 1980, terrorists belonging to a Colombian guerrilla group called the M-19 broke into a diplomatic reception in Bogot,a, took scores of people hostage at gunpoint and demanded the liberation of 311 imprisoned colleagues and $50 million. Fifteen of the hostages were ambassadors, among them U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Diego Asencio. As a news story, the Colombian siege was somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous captivity of American hostages in Tehran, not to mention by Abscam, Afghanistan and the wildly fluctuating price of gold. "The world at large was edgy," Asencio recalls, and events in Bogota seemed just a sign of the times. After 61 days, the hostages were released unharmed by their captors, who got no prisoners in exchange and a modest $1.2 million ransom. If American tolerance for and interest in hostage-taking was pretty much pushed to its limit during those turbulent days, it is to be hoped that there still is room in our quota of ex-hostage books for Asencio's account of his two months with the M-19. Not only is the Colombia story far different in most respects from what happened in Iran, Our Man Is Inside differs from most ambassadorial versions of diplomacy in crisis--particularly those whose authors still are in government--by being interesting, provocative and often even funny. But then Spanish-born Asencio is a different kind of diplomat. Two days into his captivity, an American reporter covering the siege wrote: "According to Asencio's associates here, he is highly intelligent, tough and self- confident, with a commanding presence, wide girth and quick sense of humor. He has an earthiness reflected in his love of dirty jokes--'the dirtier the better,' said a woman who talked with him recently--and an open mindedness not always apparent among U.S. diplomats serving in Latin America." All of those qualities, according to news reports at the time and by Asencio's own account in this book, were displayed in spades during the Bogot,a crisis. Occasionally, his description of his central role in leading the hostages and resolving the crisis borders on self-aggrandizement, raising the suspicion that it contains the teeniest bit of exaggeration. But he tells the story with such good-humored, non-diplomatic verve, and with enough self-doubt and admissions to a preference for staying alive over dying for his country, that he is easy to forgive. The key to the resolution of the siege was the direct participation of the hostages themselves--15 diplomats of varying experience and talent--in negotiations between the terrorists by the end of the book Asencio calls them "guerrillas") and the Colombi

A thriller

Ambassador Diego Asencio bravely reconstructs his 61 days of captivity in Bogota. The siege takes place at the Dominican Republic Embassy and is carried out by Colombia's revolutionary M19 guerrilla organization. This book is a rare look at how the captive diplomats played a large role in securing freedom. It is also testimony that the honest practice of conflict resolution can bring positive results. It is a small miracle that only one person died during this epic takeover. Much credit must be given to the diplomats in capitivity. Ambassador Asencio is a polished writer and does an outstanding job of objectively describing the highs and lows of his days in captivity.