Pubdate: Mon, 28 May 2001
Source: In These Times Magazine (US)
Section: Features, Page 18
Copyright: 2001 In These Times
Contact:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/207
Author: Jason Vest

DRUG WAR INC

An Alabama Contractor's Ties To The Downing Of A Plane Of Missionaries In Peru

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 
likely 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.
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