Pubdate: Fri, 27 Apr 2001
Source: In These Times Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2001 In These Times
Contact:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/207
Author: Jason Vest
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?172 (Peruvian Aircraft Shooting)

ALABAMA CIA AIR CONTRACTOR: WE DON'T KNOW NUTHIN' 'BOUT NO PERU

Washington -- In January 1998, five twin-engine Cessna Citation V 
jets owned by the Defense Department arrived at Alabama's Maxwell Air 
Force Base. Their landing was heralded by the local Montgomery 
Advertiser, which noted in a short but enthusiastic piece that the 
aircraft were part of a $10 million program the military had 
outsourced to a recently incorporated local contractor.

According to the paper, the new company, Aviation Development 
Corporation, had been retained to test state-of-the-art airborne 
radar, forward-looking infrared, and signals intercept sensors -- 
sensors that, according to a base spokesman, had broad applications 
for aerial law enforcement operations and military search-and-rescue 
missions.

It wasn't a stretch to conclude that the sensors-equipped aircraft 
were destined for Latin America, where a number of private military 
companies have spent the past decade flying a variety of anti-drug 
missions for the U.S. government.

On April 20, 2001, a Peruvian air force jet shot down a small 
single-prop plane full of Baptist missionaries, killing Veronica 
Bowers and her infant daughter.

The Baptist plane was not fingered by the Peruvians, but by what the 
Washington Post initially reported was a CIA surveillance aircraft -- 
a Cessna Citation V, to be precise.

Subsequent reports noted that the aircraft was in fact owned by the 
Defense Department, but operated by a crew of outside contractors who 
have gone unidentified -- a perfect example if the lack of 
accountability due to the privatization of the drug war.

An In These Times investigation has revealed that the contract 
aircrew is employed by Aviation Development Corporation, the same 
company that handled the Cessna surveillance tests in Alabama. "All 
I'm going to say about who was flying that plane in Peru," a Pentagon 
official told In These Times, "is that you should look around Maxwell 
Air Force Base," where ADC is based.

No one answers ADC's phone, and its president, Edward A. "Lex" 
Thistlethwaite Jr., did not return messages left at his home. Despite 
having a listing in the Maxwell Air Force Base phone directory, 
spokesman Capt. Ken Hoffman was also unable to reach anyone from ADC. 
Nor was he able to find anyone at the base who knew anything about 
the company or the current location of the Cessna Citations.

When Glenn Owen -- whom Alabama records list as the company's 
secretary -- was reached at his home, he refused to answer any 
questions about ADC's connections with the U.S. government or its 
Latin American operations. "I'm not free to comment," he said, 
refusing to elaborate. "And I don't see anyone getting back to you."

In the name of counter-narcotics, the U.S. government has been waging 
a private war in the Andes for years.

While active-duty U.S. soldiers are allowed to train South American 
military units, under congressional mandate and Pentagon regulations, 
they're not allowed to take part in combat, and limitations are 
placed on the number of personnel who can be in-country. (For 
example, Plan Colombia caps the number of active-duty soldiers 
in-country at 500.)

However, the same restrictions do not apply to private military 
companies under contract with the U.S. government. While a State 
Department rule technically prohibits contractors from taking part in 
combat operations, the rule has been clearly violated, and a handful 
of contractors have been killed in combat operations. Three 
helicopter pilots employed by Virginia-based DynCorp were shot down 
and killed in Peru in 1992, and this past February, four DynCorp 
"contractors" -- all ex-Special Forces -- ended up in a near-fatal 
firefight rescuing the crew of a helicopter downed by Colombian FARC 
rebels.

Because these U.S. agents in Latin America are contractors, as 
opposed to actual servicemen, both their activities and their deaths 
attract little attention.

This is hardly surprising given the notoriously opaque qualities 
intrinsic to private military companies, and very attractive to U.S. 
policy-makers who tremble at the thought of actual servicemen either 
being linked to local human rights violators or shipped home in 
coffins.

Drug war critics have long argued that it's time to reconsider this 
approach to overseas counter-narcotics operations. On April 25, Rep. 
Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) introduced the Andean Region Contractor 
Accountability Act, a measure that calls for the U.S. government to 
cease using outsourced contractors as surrogates for American 
military and law enforcement elements in the Andes. The bill's 
introduction came a day after Schakowsky and Rep. Cynthia McKinney 
(D-Georgia) sent a letter to President Bush asking him not only to 
cease aerial intelligence sharing with all the Andean countries, but 
to "immediately suspend all contracts with private military firms and 
individuals for narcotics control and law enforcement services in the 
Andean region."

Holding that the Bowers incident was a direct result of U.S. drug 
policy, the duo added: "The U.S. uses private military companies in 
its drug operations throughout Latin America, and they operate 
largely out of the public eye. Now that their operations have 
resulted in the deaths of two Americans, we believe it is time to 
take a closer look at the policy that permits this practice."

"The most important thing the congresswoman is trying to say here is 
that our current drug interdiction policy has failed, and we need to 
re-examine our strategy in dealing with narcotics," says Schakowsky 
spokesman Nadeam Elshami. "We have to be clear -- if we're going to 
participate in these kinds of activities, taxpayers need to know. It 
should be our military that is participating, and not private 
companies given taxpayer money to do the military's dirty work."

Though Virginia-based Military Professional Resources Inc. (whose 
dubious claim to fame is helping the Croatians plan the ethnic 
cleansing of the Serbian Krajina in 1994) has not renewed its 
contract in Colombia, airborne units from U.S.-based AirScan, East 
Inc. and DynCorp are all still active in the Andes. According to 
provisions of their contracts with the U.S. government, their 
operatives are forbidden from interacting with the press, though a 
few enterprising journalists have interviewed operatives who report 
that their aircraft routinely return home with bullet holes courtesy 
of narco-trafficking rebels.

The Andean insurgents are not, however, the only ones in the region 
known for being trigger-happy. Over the years, a perennial problem 
for the United States has been the "shoot first, ask questions later" 
mentality of Latin American military pilots, and, in the name of 
satiating zealous drug-war cheerleaders, the American agencies in the 
drug war have done everything they can to divest themselves of any 
responsibility for a mishap such as the Bowers incident.

As far back as seven years ago, Washington knew its counternarcotics 
allies were a little too quick on the draw and, in May 1994, abruptly 
suspended sharing real-time intercept intelligence with the 
Colombians and Peruvians. Lawyers from the Justice, Defense and State 
departments concluded that furnishing foreign powers with 
intelligence used to shoot down unarmed civilian aircraft was a 
violation of a 1984 amendment to the International Convention on 
Civil Aviation. (That the amendment had been backed by the United 
States as a response to the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines flight 
007 gave the issue a particularly poignant edge.)

Of greater concern was the lawyers' conclusion that if U.S.-provided 
intelligence was used in the accidental downing of an innocent 
aircraft -- something the Pentagon was seriously concerned about -- 
U.S. personnel, at both the executive and operational level, would be 
in definite violation of the 1984 amendment, and, under its 
provisions, subject to criminal charges and even the death penalty.

But upon appraisal of the freeze and the reasons for it, drug war 
boosters in both the administration and Congress went into fits of 
apoplexy and indignation, charging the Pentagon with undercutting an 
effective counter-drug program.

Among those infuriated by the Pentagon move was New Jersey's Robert 
Torricelli -- then a Democratic representative, now a senator.

At a June 22, 1994 House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing, 
Torricelli lambasted the Pentagon, calling it "incredible" that a 
trifle like the "legal vulnerabilities of U.S. government officials" 
would require a suspension of activity.

In light of recent events, it's worth revisiting one of Torricelli's 
riffs on this point:

The U.S. government tracks narco-traffickers bringing cocaine to the 
United States. That information is merely provided to the Peruvian or 
Colombian governments. They pass it to their own officials, who make 
their own judgments.

Peruvian aircraft tracks a narco-trafficker, operating with no flight 
plan, often at night, with no lights.

The plane is approached and [there's an] attempt to communicate. 
There's no response. They attempt on radio communications on multiple 
frequencies. There's no response.

There's an effort to lead them to an airport for a forced landing.

They refuse and attempt to evade.

And then warning shots are fired.

Do you seriously believe that there is a jury in America, of any 
combination of American citizens, anywhere, under those 
circumstances, that would find a liability for U.S. government 
officials?

Given recent circumstances, the question is perhaps best posed to a 
suddenly widowed husband and father from Michigan. At the time, 
however, a beleaguered Robert Gelbard, then an assistant secretary of 
state, responded that the issue of balance between 
intelligence-sharing and compliance with the law was "not an easy 
issue susceptible to a sound-bite solution."

Making the hearing even more surreal was the flip-flop of rationality 
between Torricelli and Gelbard. Gelbard maintained that the Peruvians 
and Colombians had not actually downed any planes using U.S. radar 
information. Torricelli, recently returned from an Andean junket, 
said that in private he had been told by Colombian and Peruvian 
officials that dozens of planes either had been forced or shot down 
by both governments. "If they admit that they're shooting down 
aircraft, you suspend cooperation and sharing information with them," 
Torricelli said. "Of course they're going to [officially] tell you 
they're not shooting down any aircraft."

Torricelli's remarks reflected the "wink and nod" view taken by drug 
warriors irked by legal restrictions on downing unarmed civilian 
aircraft. In the end, those drug warriors carried the day: The 1995 
Defense Authorization Act included language that not only allows 
American military aircraft to take part in downing civilian planes, 
but relieves pilots from any responsibility should they be complicit 
in a wrongful shooting.

Since then, the United States has made sure its surveillance 
personnel are not part of the chain-of-command that shoots down 
planes over the Andes, and has expanded the use of private military 
contractors in an effort to maintain an arms-length approach in the 
regions.

There are hopes that Schakowsky's bill will prompt a serious inquiry 
not only into drug war orthodoxy, but this type of contractor use; 
according to her staffers, even some Republicans are warming to her 
proposed legislation. But she can expect a fight from the 
contractors, many of whom have profitable, longstanding ties to the 
defense and intelligence establishments, as well as the usual lot of 
craven politicians from both parties who perpetuate the mythology of 
a righteous drug war.

In the wake of the Bowers incident, Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala) -- 
Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on the Intelligence and drug 
war hawk -- has called for a thorough review of the U.S.'s aerial 
intelligence sharing program.

While he's gone to pains to point out that blame for the shootdown 
seems to lie more with the Peruvians than anyone else, it bears 
noting that Shelby himself had an indirect role in the incident. In 
1994, the senator successfully shepherded through the House and 
Senate a $5.7 million appropriation to extend Maxwell Air Force 
Base's runway by 1000 feet, giving the base a "competitive edge." 
When the Montgomery Advertiser announced in 1998 that the area 
economy was the recipient of a positive $10 million financial impact 
courtesy the Aviation Development Corporation contract, the mayor 
said that a major factor in ADC's presence at Maxwell was Senator 
Shelby's fine work in getting that runway extension funded.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe