Pubdate: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2001 San Jose Mercury News Contact: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390 Author: Karen DeYoung, Washington Post ANTI-DRUG PROGRAM CALLED `SLOPPY' Report: U.S., Peru Share Blame In Shooting Of Plane WASHINGTON -- Peru and the United States were undisciplined and "sloppy" in the way they conducted a joint program to interdict airborne drug smugglers in recent years, and share responsibility for mistakenly shooting down a civilian aircraft carrying American missionaries in April, according to sources familiar with the findings of a State Department investigation. The downing of the plane over northern Peru occurred after a CIA surveillance plane flown by American contract employees targeted the aircraft as a suspected drug flight, tracked it and helped guide a Peruvian air force fighter jet to it. A Baptist missionary, Veronica "Roni" Bowers, and her 7-month-old daughter were killed, and pilot Kevin Donaldson was seriously wounded. A preliminary report by the United States concluded that Peru did not comply with procedures established in a 1994 agreement between the two countries. However, the new State Department report does not assign direct blame, according to several sources, all of whom refused to be identified. Instead, the report compiles facts about the aerial interdiction program as well as the immediate events leading to the April 20 deaths. Although the sources declined to provide specific details of the report, they said it characterizes the program as having limited U.S. oversight and having evolved over the years into one with lax adherence to procedures by both the United States and Peru. The sources said the report is likely to prompt calls from Congress and elsewhere to circumscribe or shut down U.S. ground and air radar and tracking assistance to interdiction programs in Peru and Colombia -- neither of which has the radar capability to operate on its own. The Bush administration suspended intelligence agreements with both countries after the missionary plane was shot down, pending the results of the investigation to be jointly conducted by the United States and Peru. But Bush officials, and Clinton administration officials before, have cited the program as the key factor in a sharp decrease in the cultivation of coca and export of cocaine from Peru over the past five years. They have repeatedly warned that the shipments could easily resume now that traffickers know the skies are not patrolled. Officials said U.S.-based over-the-horizon radar fixed on the Andean region had detected no increase in suspected drug flights during the past three months. But Colombia's ambassador to Washington, Lus Alberto Moreno, said last week that his government, using its own resources, is now detecting only about three or four flights a month, compared with about 20 each month with the Colombia-based U.S. radar and tracking assistance that has been cut off. Concern about the program's future has been reflected in the Bush administration's reluctance to release the State Department's Peru report, which was completed weeks ago. Last month, the administration hired an outside expert, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia Morris Busby, to study the report and conduct a broad review of the entire policy before it decides what to do. Based on videotapes and audiotapes from the CIA two-engine Cessna Citation V, it initially appeared to U.S. officials that the Peruvian colonel aboard, his fellow officers in radio contact on the ground and the pilot of the Peruvian Air Force A37B had rushed through, or even skipped, steps set out in the 1994 agreement. But the situation became more complicated after investigators interviewed U.S. and Peruvian program participants and discovered correspondence, training information, memos and other documents from the past six years that made it more difficult to dismiss Peru's insistence that it had not done anything the United States had not agreed to. The State Department report indicates that procedures for tracking and shooting down aircraft had evolved, with mutual awareness, into something "much less detailed and defined" than when they started in 1994, a source said. "In bureaucratic language" the report comes out and "says we were sloppy." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom