Pubdate: Sun, 22 Apr 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Authors: Anthony Faiola, Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post 
Staff Writers
Note: Faiola reported from Buenos Aires, DeYoung and Nakashima from 
Washington. Edward Walsh and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed 
to this report.

U.S. NOTIFIED PERU OF SUSPECT PLANE

Amazon Surveillance Operation Identified Missionary Craft as Possible Drug 
Flight

A U.S. government surveillance plane flying over northern Peru identified a 
small aircraft carrying American missionaries as a possible drug flight and 
passed the information to the Peruvian Air Force shortly before a Peruvian 
fighter jet shot it from the sky Friday morning, U.S. sources said.

A woman and her 7-month-old daughter were killed by rounds fired from the 
Peruvian plane. The missionary plane, a Cessna 185 that was flying from the 
Colombian border toward the city of Iquitos, 620 miles northeast of Lima, 
swerved to an emergency landing on the Amazon River. The pilot, who was 
shot in the leg, survived, as did the woman's husband and another of their 
children.

The U.S. government plane, a twin-engine Cessna Citation jet, was piloted 
by a civilian working under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Lima. The 
U.S. Customs Service operates such flights routinely over Peruvian airspace 
in search of low-flying drug-runners. Under a longstanding 
intelligence-sharing agreement with Peru, the United States passes 
information on suspect planes to the Peruvian military, which has a policy 
of intercepting the aircraft and shooting down those planes that refuse to 
land. Peruvian military officials insisted yesterday that the crew of their 
A-37B fighter followed "international procedures of identification and 
interception" spelled out in the intelligence agreement. They said the 
missionaries' flight failed to respond to radio messages and signals to land.

U.S. officials in Washington said that an investigation had been launched 
into the incident, and that the Peruvian government had pledged full 
cooperation. Both the United States and Peru have suspended their joint 
interdiction flights pending the outcome of the investigation, according to 
a U.S. Embassy source in Lima.

In Quebec City, where he was attending the Summit of the Americas, 
President Bush expressed sorrow over what the White House called a "tragic 
accident."

"The United States is certainly upset by the fact that two American 
citizens lost their lives," Bush told reporters.

There were sharp differences between Peru's insistence that correct 
procedures had been followed and the version provided by the U.S.-based 
Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, whose members were aboard the 
flight. Rev. E.C. Haskell, a spokesman for the missionary group, said that 
the pilot, Kevin Donaldson, had filed a flight plan at Iquitos. Donaldson 
was described as an experienced pilot in the Peruvian Amazon, a region 
where Protestant missionaries have been heavily active for decades.

Haskell said that Donaldson maintained radio contact with air traffic 
controllers at the Iquitos airport throughout the flight. He said the 
Peruvian military did not communicate with Donaldson, by radio or 
otherwise, before shots were fired directly into the aircraft.

Mario Justo, civil aviation chief at the Iquitos airport, insisted in a 
telephone interview today the missionaries had not filed an official flight 
plan. He said Peruvian civil aviation authorities had no knowledge of the 
flight until one radio transmission moments before the plane was shot down.

It was unclear whether the confrontation between the Peruvian jet and the 
missionaries' plane was visible to the U.S. surveillance plane. An official 
in Washington said that the U.S. military had monitored a communication 
between unknown parties calling for a halt in the interception.

"We monitored a communication that said you should not intercept with 
violence, to wait, hold off," said the official, who asked not to be 
identified.

International law and the intelligence-sharing agreement require that once 
U.S. officials identify a suspect plane, Peru's military must first 
determine if it filed a flight plan with nearby airports, and then attempt 
radio contact. If there is no response, intercepting fighters are to 
attempt hand signals to the pilot, then rock their wings -- an 
internationally recognized signal for "follow me." If all else fails, the 
intercepting jet is required to fire a warning shot across the nose of the 
plane before shooting at it directly.

A former U.S. official with close knowledge of the agreement and how it has 
operated in recent years said the Peruvians have observed those procedures 
meticulously in the more than two-dozen shootdowns since 1995, most of 
which were recorded on a sophisticated version of video tape by the U.S. 
surveillance planes. The Peruvian A-37s, he said, have no air-to-air radar 
and thus are "flying blind" until the U.S. surveillance aircraft directs 
them to the exact location of a suspect plane.

In many cases, both the suspect plane and the Peruvian attackers, as well 
as any confrontation between them, are fully visible by eye to the 
surveillance plane's crew. The reconnaissance plane is also in radio 
communication with the Peruvians.

According to ABWE aviation director Hank Scheltema, who spoke by telephone 
with James Bowers, a passenger on the flight, the missionaries were flying 
toward Iquitos when they noticed two other planes flying above and behind them.

"They just flew around, over and above, and never slowed up," Scheltema 
said Bowers told him. "One went from behind and began to fire." He said 
Bowers' wife, Veronica, 35, and daughter, Charity, were shot on the first 
pass and died instantly. Donaldson, the pilot, was struck in both legs on 
the second pass. The plane erupted in flames.

Donaldson managed to bring down the pontoon-equipped plane onto the Amazon 
River, where it bounced and then flipped over. Donaldson pulled himself 
out, and Bowers managed to unstrap his wife and daughter and pull them to a 
pontoon. He told his 7-year-old son, Cory, to jump into the water. Bowers' 
father-in-law said Bowers told him that the Peruvian plane continued to 
fire at them while they were in the water.

About 45 minutes later, local Peruvians rescued them in a dugout canoe and 
took them to the small, nearby city of Pebas. Jim and Veronica "Roni" 
Bowers were well known in Pebas, according to David Southwell, the 
missionary group's director for South America, because they had preached 
there and taught local schoolchildren.

Four hours after the group reached Pebas, Southwell said, a Peruvian Air 
Force Twin Otter, carrying American personnel, arrived and carried the 
Bowerses to Iquitos. Donaldson, whose leg was shattered, was taken to an 
Iquitos hospital today.

Southwell said Bowers was questioned last night by a Peruvian military 
official from Lima, in the presence of U.S. consular officials.

Bowers told him, Southwell said, that "there was no indication whatsoever 
that there was any warning given" by the Peruvians before the shootdown. 
"If there had been any warning given, I can guarantee you that our pilot 
would have landed. We have been operating for 14 years in aviation in that 
area of Peru and nothing like that has ever happened before."

The Baptist missionary association is one of a number of U.S. Christian 
evangelical groups operating in South America. Founded in 1927, it began 
operations in Peru in 1939. The missionaries specialize in work along the 
Amazon River and its tributaries, as well as along the Pacific coast.

The Bowers family, from Muskegon, Mich., had flown with Donaldson on 
Thursday from Iquitos to the far eastern corner of Peru, where the country 
borders Colombia and Brazil. Their purpose was to cross the border for 
documents for their newly adopted infant daughter at the Peruvian consulate 
in the Colombian border town of Leticia. They spent the night there and 
returned to their aircraft on Friday morning for the trip back to Iquitos.

The intelligence-sharing agreement between Peru, Colombia and the United 
States, was originally signed by former President Bush in the early 1990s 
during a time of rapid growth in Peru of cultivation of coca, the raw 
material of cocaine. The processed coca paste was being exported, often in 
small aircraft, to Colombia, where cartels turned it into cocaine powder 
for export to the United States.

Although efforts were made to stem coca cultivation on the ground in Peru, 
the government of then-President Alberto Fujimori agreed with U.S. 
government officials that air interdiction -- including Peruvian Air Force 
shootdowns -- was an effective way to combat the traffic.

Under the agreement, U.S. facilities on the ground and in the air were used 
to track possible illegal flights. U.S. officials viewed the program as a 
particularly valuable weapon against drug trafficking after the Colombian 
government in 1991 banned the extradition of drug kingpins to the United 
States.

But in May 1994, the Clinton administration suspended the program. Both the 
Pentagon and the Justice Department argued that any attack on civilian 
aircraft was illegal under international and U.S. laws and questioned 
whether U.S. cooperation with the shootdowns might jeopardize treaties on 
aviation safety.

Several Pentagon officials raised specific questions about the possibility 
that an innocent civilian aircraft -- even one in which U.S. citizens were 
traveling -- would be shot down by Peru or Colombia. The State Department, 
while acknowledging certain legal concerns, argued that some form of the 
intelligence arrangement could continue under the equivalent of a "don't 
ask, don't tell" policy in which the United States could share tracking 
data but express its official disapproval of attacks in flight.

By mid-1994, however, as drug imports increased, Democratic leaders in both 
the House and Senate turned aside administration concern that the United 
States could be held liable if it aided attacks on civilian planes and 
insisted that the agreement be reinstated. The administration agreed, but 
insisted that new safeguards and procedures for aircraft identification be 
written into the accord to guard against mistaken shootdowns. The 
administration also sponsored legislation that exempts U.S. military 
personnel from prosecution in connection with shootdowns resulting from the 
intelligence agreements.

In recent years, U.S. counternarcotics officials have repeatedly hailed 
Peru for sharply decreasing coca cultivation in that country. The Bush 
administration's new budget request includes increased funds for 
anti-narcotics aid for Peru.

The Pentagon moved quickly yesterday to disassociate itself with the 
incident, and to note that the U.S. government aircraft involved was not 
operated by any of the five U.S. military services. Although the 
Miami-based U.S. Southern Command is authorized to use AWACS reconnaissance 
flights over the region, such flights are rare.

"It was not an operation we had control of," a Defense Department official 
said.

Faiola reported from Buenos Aires, DeYoung and Nakashima from Washington. 
Edward Walsh and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
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