Pubdate: Mon, 21 May 2001 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2001 The Miami Herald Contact: http://www.herald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262 Author: Carol Rosenberg FROM KANSAS TO PERU: ODYSSEY OF A U.S. ANDEAN SPY JET In September 1992, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole persuaded Congress to provide funding for a $35 million counternarcotics surveillance plane that benefited Cessna Corp., a company in his home state, Kansas. Last month, CIA contractors operating a state-of-the-art Cessna jet plane bought with that money helped guide a Peruvian Air Force fighter that mistakenly shot down a small private airplane carrying American missionaries over the Amazon River. A Herald inquiry into the origins of the U.S. aircraft involved in the tragedy has disclosed that the Cessna Citation V stuffed with sophisticated tracking equipment was part of a $10-million-a-year, five-plane secret tracker program that began with Dole's funding effort. The Cessna project apparently evolved from an aboveboard bid to help a constituent, into a covert operation that has attracted government investigators and provoked an international incident. The Cessnas are owned by the Department of Defense, according to Pentagon officials, but are on loan to the Central Intelligence Agency, a complication that makes it more difficult to determine responsibility and accountability. More problematic for investigators who are supposed to deliver a report to President Bush is the apparent failure to coordinate the CIA flights with the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force, a Pentagon-led agency created to share intelligence and avert a tragedy like the one that occurred in the skies over the Amazon on April 20. The shoot-down killed Veronica Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, 7 months old. Spokesmen for the Miami-based Southern Command say the CIA contractors were not coordinating with their Inter-Agency Task Force war room in Key West the day of the shoot-down. The task force consists of representatives of various government agencies involved in the drug war and is led by the Southern Command. According to numerous sources interviewed for this report, U.S. liability in potential cases of accidental shoot-downs, and possible violations of international law, have been concerns of U.S. officials since the program's inception -- but they were brushed aside as illicit drugs from South America flooded U.S. cities. A joint U.S. and Peruvian investigating team led by Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers, which is responsible for narcotics control policy, is tackling at least some of the questions raised by the Peruvian shoot-down of the plane ferrying missionaries of the Pennsylvania-based Association of Baptists for Worldwide Evangelism. Peruvian Attack The Baptists' single-engine, Peruvian-registered four-seater was strafed by a Peruvian Air Force A37B -- allegedly over the objections of CIA contractors aboard the nearby Cessna that had initially identified the missionary plane as a suspected drug-smuggling target. Pilot Kevin Donaldson, 41, was shot in both legs before ditching his aircraft into a jungle river. Besides him, other survivors included Veronica Bowers' husband, Jim, and their son. Since then, U.S. intelligence officials have accused the Peruvians of breaching elaborate protocols for intercepting suspected drug runners, in which opening fire is a course of last resort; the Peruvians have said they followed procedures in the ``lamentable accident.'' Today, the U.S. airborne interdiction programs in Peru and Colombia are stalled while some in Congress question the wisdom and safety of providing Lima and Bogota with tracking data to help shoot down planes - -- a rerun of a 1994-95 policy debate that ended in a decision to resume assistance. Program Evolved The covert surveillance program -- designed to use aircraft over the Andes to acquire intelligence data for use by U.S. government agencies - -- was conceived before officials settled on a policy of shooting down drug planes. It stalled in the mid 1990s and was finally contracted out to the CIA by no later than 1998. Dole has yet to respond to a series of questions submitted to his Washington law office. But, based on intelligence, military and congressional sources, here is what is known: Dole set the program into motion on Sept. 22, 1992, by proposing to spend $35 million on modifying the planes with improved radars and sensors known as FLIRS, and then leasing up to 15 of the T-47s for use in drug interdiction and counternarcotics operations. FLIRS are ``forward looking infrared sensors'' -- a night-vision device to help planes spot smugglers trying to elude other radar scans in the dark of night. Congress eventually approved the $35 million outlay for the Defense Department. Cessna, which had earlier sold less sophisticated Citations to the U.S. Customs Service, is based in Wichita, Kan. Reached at Cessna headquarters, salesman Pat Sullivan refused to discuss the deal ``at the customer's request,'' calling it ``very sensitive.'' After the deal was approved, an accidental fire at the Topeka hangar where the old Cessnas were housed on July 20, 1993, destroyed them all, so on Sept. 26, 1994, Congress amended the budget to allow the Defense Department to buy five new Cessna Citations rather than retrofit old ones. It did not specify which part of the Defense Department would receive the aircraft. A former intelligence officer who was aware of the program said Defense Department assumptions at first were that the planes would go to Customs, but they wound up with the CIA. ``The agency was better suited and more flexible in how they used the airplanes,'' the former intelligence official said. ``They could do the mission better and quieter than anyone else.'' No Explanation Pentagon and CIA spokesmen have declined to explain the origins of the program, or who made the decision to turn the aircraft over to the CIA. Army Lt. Col. George Rhynedance referred all calls on the contract to the CIA, which refused to comment. Former CIA Director John Deutch, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did not return phone calls seeking information about the program's origins. Retired Army Maj. Gen. George Close Jr., who supervised the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South in Panama, before it was closed and incorporated into the Key West operation, said the decision was made in Washington -- not Panama -- to exclude the Southern Command from running the program. ``It was a senior-level decision that the aircraft would be under agency control,'' Close said. ``We went, `OK, well, I'm not going to fall on my sword on this one.' '' U.S. Alarm Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former commander of the Southern Command, recalls that a 1994-95 controversy erupted after first Peru and then Colombia announced their intention to shoot down civilian aircraft suspected of drug trafficking. U.S. officials were alarmed -- at both the possibility of a mistake and possible U.S. liability if information provided by U.S. sources were used to pick a target. ``So we stood down the air interdiction program in Peru by something like six to eight months,'' McCaffrey said -- much to the consternation of Morris Busby, the ambassador to Colombia at the time - -- while lawyers at the State Department debated whether participation was in defiance of international law. In the end, President Clinton declared a state of emergency in the counterdrug war and ambassadors from both Colombia and Peru agreed to a system that made a shoot-down the solution of last resort. In 1997, after the program received the green light again, the Defense Department was seeking $10 million ``for operation of five specially configured tracker aircraft,'' according to a House Armed Services Committee report dated June 16, 1997. Last Evidence It was the last public legislative evidence of the secret program. After that, the committee reassigned the funding request to the ``Defense Intelligence Counterdrug Program of the Joint Military Intelligence Program'' -- a covert operation. A Capitol Hill staffer put it this way: The $10 million annual expenditure simply disappeared into ``a giant slush fund,'' the not-for-public-viewing portions of the Pentagon's operation and maintenance budget, which requires no line items. In 1998, it amounted to $95.8 billion. - --- MAP posted-by: Andrew