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.
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MAP posted-by: Andrew