Pubdate: Tue, 31 Jul 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author:  Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer

U.S. SHARES FAULT IN PERU INCIDENT

Probe Blames Procedures in Shootdown

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 the mistaken shootdown 
of a civilian aircraft carrying American missionaries over northern 
Peru in April, according to sources familiar with the findings of a 
State Department investigation.

The shootdown 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.

Although the United States preliminarily concluded in the days after 
the incident that Peru did not comply with shootdown procedures 
established in a 1994 agreement between the two countries, the 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 lax adherence to 
procedures by both the United States and Peru. They said it 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 shootdown, 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 
last five years. They have repeatedly warned that the shipments could 
easily start up again now that traffickers know the skies are 
unpatrolled.

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, Luis 
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.

Although the CIA has near-exclusive control over the air surveillance 
program in Peru, the U.S. Customs Service has provided much of the 
service in Colombia. The Colombians have used the assistance 
primarily to follow planes reentering the country after suspected 
drug runs to the Caribbean and the United States, attacking them 
after they land rather than shooting them down. Much of Colombia's 
cocaine, which supplies 90 percent of the U.S. market, is transported 
by sea or land, or a combination of the two.

Administration concern about the program's future has been reflected 
in its 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 D. 
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. The agreement 
prescribes a sequence of identifying, contacting and then warning a 
drug flight before firing shots.

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 last 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 tracking and shootdown 
procedures 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."

Even before the report, questions were raised by former U.S. 
employees of the program about the initial decision by the CIA 
contract pilots, on a routine surveillance flight, to track and then 
target a civilian aircraft that was headed directly toward the 
region's main airport in Iquitos at midday.

It also appeared that the Peruvians had not checked the registration 
number, which was written clearly in large black letters on the wing 
and sides of Donaldson's single-engine Cessna 185.

The State Department and the Association of Baptists for World 
Evangelism, which employed Donaldson, Bowers and her husband, still 
disagree on whether Donaldson -- who flew regularly in the area -- 
had filed an acceptable flight plan for their round-trip mission to 
the Brazilian border. Bowers's husband and son survived the crash.

Beyond procedural problems, sources said, investigators found that 
overall training of CIA and Peruvian program participants -- many of 
whom did not share a common language -- was less than ideal. They 
also found that there was little U.S. oversight of how the policy was 
conducted beyond the CIA station and American Embassy in Lima.

"There wasn't somebody each and every year, every quarter, going in 
and saying, 'Hey, are we sure this policy is still being carried out 
correctly? Is there a checklist of procedures in the plane? Is 
training being done correctly?' " a source said. The checklist 
"didn't exist."

A draft report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which 
conducted its own investigation of the interdiction program and April 
20 incident, reaches similar conclusions, sources said. Although the 
CIA said it also would investigate, officials there declined to 
provide information on the inquiry.

The shootdown provoked widespread public and congressional outrage in 
April, echoing concerns raised inside the Clinton administration in 
early 1994, when Peru and Colombia said they intended to force 
airborne smugglers located and tracked with U.S. assistance to land 
or, if necessary, to shoot them down. As a result, the Clinton 
administration suspended an earlier version of the air 
intelligence-sharing program.

Lawyers in the Defense and Justice departments argued at the time 
that it was against U.S. and international law to fire at civilian 
aircraft except in self-defense. They said it would undermine U.S. 
arguments on air terrorism in international forums, and that the 
United States could be held liable if it provided assistance to shoot 
civilian planes out of the air, no matter what was aboard them.

But President Bill Clinton was under strong political pressure to 
adopt a tough line against drug smuggling and, after a prolonged 
administration debate, he proposed, and Congress passed, a law 
exempting U.S. government employees from liability for any "mistakes" 
that might occur while cooperating with another country's shootdown 
policy.

In December of that year, Clinton certified that such cooperation was 
a national security necessity and that the countries in question -- 
Peru and Colombia -- had "appropriate procedures in place to protect 
innocent aircraft."

Before Bowers and her daughter were killed, Peru had carried out 38 
shootdowns or forcedowns with U.S. assistance since the program 
restarted in late 1994, resulting in 20 deaths. All were confirmed as 
drug smugglers after Peruvian investigations conducted on the ground 
with no U.S. participation.

After the April incident, the Bush administration fended off 
congressional demands for immediate details about the overall program 
and specifics of the shootdown by ordering the investigation. Based 
on its findings, officials said, they would take whatever measures 
were necessary to prevent future mistakes before reactivating the 
program.

Officials estimated that the inquiry, headed by Rand Beers, assistant 
secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement 
affairs, would take no more than a few weeks, and promised the report 
would be handed over to Congress immediately. But a "collective" 
decision was made in June by "the most senior levels of this 
government" to withhold the Beers report pending a separate policy 
review, an administration official said.

An administration official said last week that Busby's findings and 
recommendations would "not necessarily result in immediate action. It 
will be used to stimulate discussion within the administration about 
what the policy should be with regard to that program."

In the meantime, the House voted last Tuesday to withhold $65 million 
in military and development aid for Peru next year, part of the 
administration's overall counterdrug plan for the Andean region, 
until it gets the report and the president, State Department and CIA 
certify that corrective steps have been taken. The Senate 
intelligence committee is still considering what recommendations will 
accompany its report.

In apparent response to concern over the aid cuts, and the imminent 
release of the Senate intelligence committee report, sources said the 
administration has decided to release the Beers report this week 
before Busby's policy review is completed.
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