Pubdate: Sat, 26 May 2001
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2001 Detroit Free Press
Contact:  http://www.freep.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author:  Frank Davies
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?172 (Peruvian Aircraft Shooting)

CONGRESSMAN: FIRING AT MISSIONARY PLANE WAS UNPROFESSIONAL

Hoekstra Reviews Tapes Of Peru's Deadly Attack

WASHINGTON -- A congressman who reviewed video and audiotapes of the 
Peruvian downing of a missionary's plane with one of the survivors 
said Friday he was "very disturbed" by the chaos and lack of 
professionalism that marked the incident.

"This wasn't even a close call. There was no reason to shoot down 
that plane," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who listened to the 
tapes this week with Jim Bowers, a Baptist missionary whose wife, 
Veronica (Roni) Bowers and infant daughter, Charity, were killed in 
the April 20 attack over Peru. Bowers is from Hoekstra's Michigan 
district.

Hoekstra, like other conservatives in Congress, said he could not 
support the resumption of the U.S.-Peru program that was suspended 
after the shoot-down unless the final option -- firing on a plane 
suspected of being a drug flight -- is eliminated.

"You're talking about machine-gun bullets going through a clearly 
marked civilian plane that was doing nothing out of the ordinary," 
Hoekstra said. "You'd expect they would go through a careful 
procedure, but that did not happen."

U.S. and Peruvian officials have been investigating the accident, and 
their report will probably go to President George W. Bush and 
intelligence committees on Capitol Hill after next week's 
congressional recess.

Whatever the findings, support for the so-called air bridge 
interdiction program, designed to deter, force down or even shoot 
down drug planes, has all but disappeared on Capitol Hill.

Hoekstra and Bowers recently watched a 45-minute videotape taken from 
the U.S. plane, with a crew of CIA contract employees, that tipped 
off the Peruvians about a slow-moving Cessna pontoon plane might be a 
drug flight. He listened to the often overlapping conversations as a 
Peruvian jet gave chase and caught up with the Cessna, which carried 
Bowers and his family.

The planes were not on the same frequency; Bowers said he never felt 
threatened; pilot Kevin Donaldson said he never saw or heard the 
Peruvian jet ordering him to land.

Bowers, Hoekstra said, remembered "holding up his son to the window 
to show him the jet when it came alongside -- they felt no threat at 
all."
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