Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-303).

In November 1985, Colombia's M-19 Revolutionary Movement invaded the nation's Supreme Court, holding hostage its 300 civilians, including most of the Supreme Court justices and members of the Council of State, in a golpe revolucionario publicitario - a spectacle that would seize international headlines. Their plan was to persuade the justices to put on trial the country's civilian government. Their hope was that in such a trial the government would be discredited, and that the balance of power would then shift in the M-19's favor. What resulted instead was the Colombian army's all-out counterattack, in which the dirty civil war, which until then had been fought in the far reaches of the countryside, was brought home to the nation's capital.

Award-winning journalist and film-maker Ana Carrigan was sent to Bogota to cover the story for The New York Times Sunday Magazine. But what she uncovered went beyond a magazine story. Nor was it simply a question of an official cover-up. Her two-week assignment evolved into eight years of research and writing to find out what had caused the national tragedy of Colombia and who was to blame. As Conor Cruise O'Brien writes in his foreword, "Colombia is not a military dictatorship. Things there might be marginally better if it were ..."

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