OGOTÁ, Colombia, Feb. 12 — After their tiny plane crashed deep in the jungles of southern Colombia, three American civilians on a mission to search for cocaine labs, drug planes and, occasionally, guerrilla units were taken hostage by Marxist rebels.
A year later, the men's families say the captives have been all but forgotten. Some say that is the way American officials and the men's employers want it to be.
The three Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes — worked cloaked in secrecy for two subsidiaries of Northrop Grumman, the huge military contractor, in an arrangement used increasingly by the United States government in conflict zones from Colombia to Afghanistan.
The men's families and critics of American policy here say the case sheds light on a shadowy world of secret operations that employ private contractors in deals that make it easy to skirt public scrutiny and for all to wash their hands if something goes wrong.
"My complaint about use of private contractors is their ability to fly under the radar and avoid any accountability," Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said. "Now we're finding out that because of their low profile, and so little scrutiny, they are able to avoid liability or responsibility for these individuals."
American officials and executives at Northrop Grumman bristle at the suggestion that they have not done all they can to secure freedom for the men. Diplomats say there is probably little that they can do.
The American ambassador here, William B. Wood, said that "nothing at this mission has a higher priority than the well-being and safe release" of the crew members, according to a letter sent to the families of the missing men before Christmas.
Jack Martin, a Northrop Grumman spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the company was closely cooperating with the government to ensure the release of the three Americans and "remained in regular and frequent contact with the hostages' families."
But in interviews, family members were aggrieved at what has become a painful and protracted episode that could have implications beyond Colombia. "They're not acknowledging these men, and nobody cares," Jo Rosano, the mother of Mr. Gonsalves, said last month in an interview in her home in Bristol, Conn. "They say, `We're doing all we can.' But what are you doing?"
The number of Americans working in Colombia for private contractors has nearly doubled in two years to 400, the congressional limit. Hundreds more are citizens of Colombia and other countries. American law also allows up to 400 military officials in Colombia.
There are now two dozen American companies here, with the contracts for antidrug programs worth $178 million last year. They spray coca fields, operate eavesdropping devices, organize alternative development programs, repair airplanes, assess intelligence and advise the Colombian Defense Ministry.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 70 American companies and private individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts in the last two years, according to the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. Much of their work is shielded from the public, critics say, noting that their deaths are not even added to the American body count.
American officials, here and elsewhere, say using contractors saves money, provides essential services and specialists and frees military forces that are already stretched thin. They also say the three men taken captive were working within the legal limits set by the Congress.
But critics say that for American policy makers, the political risks surrounding Washington's deepening involvement in Colombia's conflict made using contractors preferable to placing American forces or intelligence officers in similar jeopardy.
The mission of the three men whose plane went down last Feb. 13 was to fly their single-engine Cessna, its underbelly loaded with sophisticated photographic equipment, over vast jungle tracts to search for illegal drug activities and, sometimes, guerrilla movements.
The intelligence was then shared with the Colombian armed forces in Washington's two-pronged fight against drug trafficking and a 40-year Marxist insurgency.
