WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers questioned Tuesday whether American forces should continue to be involved with the type of antidrug-smuggling efforts that claimed the lives of a Muskegon woman and her infant daughter. Veronica (Roni) Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed April 20 when a Peruvian air force jet opened fire on their missionary plane, mistaking it for a drug runner. "We must carefully consider whether we should continue to embrace a policy that can and has resulted in unnecessary, unwarranted and totally unacceptable loss of life," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. [continues 175 words]
RALEIGH -- Missionary "Roni" Bowers and her daughter Charity, killed in Peru in the shooting-down of a light plane during a U.S.-supported anti-narcotics campaign, are but the latest victims of the war on drugs. The two died as a result of our anxiety about the impact of drugs on our society and because of the means we have chosen to address these concerns. It is our unwillingness to accept moral culpability for our drug problems that is primarily responsible for the death of Roni Bowers and her daughter. The Peruvian Air Force was merely the agent that carried out this U.S. policy. [continues 530 words]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday questioned the wisdom of the policy of assisting Peru's drug interdiction efforts after a missionary plane mistaken for drug smugglers was shot down and an American woman and baby killed. Some lawmakers said such a policy supporting operations in which an aircraft could be shot down without going through the judicial process to determine if drug traffickers were on board would never be allowed to operate inside the United States. ``The Peruvian shoot down policy would never be permitted as a domestic United States policy precisely because it goes against one of our most sacred due process principles, mainly that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty,'' Rep. Elijah Cummings (news - bio - voting record), a Maryland Democrat, said. [continues 559 words]
PENSACOLA - A missionary says the United States should quickly resume drug surveillance flights suspended after his wife and adopted baby were killed in Peru when they were mistaken for drug smugglers and shot down. Jim Bowers, who survived unharmed when their small plane crash landed after being fired upon by a Peruvian warplane April 20, said Monday he has expressed that view in a call to Secretary of State Colin Powell's office. "To say there needs to be an entire review of the whole program and suspend it and to let the drug people continue their business as usual is wrong," Bowers said at a news conference. [continues 510 words]
It came as a shock: the news 10 days ago that two American citizens, a 35-year-old missionary woman and her infant daughter, were killed when a Peruvian air force jet shot down their unarmed Cessna seaplane over the Amazon jungle. The woman's husband and 7-year-old son survived, as did the pilot, who was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the leg. They were casualties of the war on drugs. In this instance a U.S. government tracking aircraft, piloted by contract employees of the CIA, notified the Peruvian military that an allegedly suspicious plane was in the area. After hasty consultation, a Peruvian A-37 fighter went up to investigate. Less than an hour later, the jet pilot opened fire on what turned out to be an innocent civilian aircraft. [continues 806 words]
The United States has sent a delegation to Peru to investigate the April 20 shooting down of a missionary plane which killed Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity. One would hope the delegation accurately and honestly assesses how vigorously a CIA plane in the area intervened to try to prevent a Peruvian air force jet from shooting at the plane, before having identified it. But equally important was the insight of Veronica's husband and Charity's father, Jim Bowers. At the burial on Sunday, Mr. Bowers said he believed God had intended for the shooting to occur. Indeed, there are many lessons that can be learned from the tragic deaths of the Bowers. The war on drugs pits good versus evil. But the counter-narcotics struggle has also created a nebulous area that is very difficult to define or negotiate. Nothing better exemplifies that dangerous gray area than the fatal shooting of a missionary plane in Peru. [continues 336 words]
At a time when the Bush administration should be rethinking the entire drug war, the White House is lauding the Peru program. The deaths of two members of an American missionary family in Peru should serve as a wake-up call ["Plane Carrying U.S. Missionaries Downed," April 21 ]. How many innocent Peruvians have been sacrificed at the altar of America's drug war? As Peruvian coca production has gone down, Colombian coca production and domestic methamphetamine production have both gone up, along with the U.S. incarceration rate, now the highest in the world. [continues 121 words]
THE BUSH administration is expected to nominate an old-fashioned policy hawk as the country's new "drugs tsar" despite debate on the effectiveness of America's war on drugs. John Walters, a political conservative who believes drugs are a moral issue and have nothing to do with health or social policy, is likely to have his nomination as head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy confirmed in days. With it could come a raft of initiatives favouring punishment over treatment at home and military intervention against the drug cartels of Latin America. [continues 391 words]
The man President Bush reportedly has chosen to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy takes such a hard-line, law-and-order approach to controlling illicit drugs that even former drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey is expressing concern. When it comes to punishing drug addicts, John Walters is no compassionate conservative. Walters is a hawkish, supply-side drug warrior. As a former chief administrator to William Bennett, the nation's drug czar under the elder President Bush, Walters was known as a hard-nosed conservative who favored severe penalties for drug-related offenses over treatment for addicts. He was a vocal critic of what he called the Clinton administration's "commitment to a "therapeutic state.' " And his record of emphasizing source interdiction and eradication over reducing demand has even McCaffrey openly fretting. McCaffrey told the New York Times that Walters once complained "that there is too much treatment capacity in the United States, which I found shocking." [continues 356 words]
According to The Washington Post, "Civilian pilots around the world have reacted with anger to the downing of a plane carrying a missionary family in Peru, saying the ... policy ... is a blatant violation of international law." In this tragic incident, a Peruvian jet, guided by a U.S. plane, fired on the single-engine Cessna. The Peruvians say they followed all the right procedures; the Americans say that the Peruvians were trigger-happy. The pilots point out that when the Soviet Union shot down KAL 007 in 1984, the United States argued that there was never any justification for firing on a civilian plane. "Nothing justifies a no-questions-asked destruction of civilian aircraft," said Phil Boyer, president of the International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations. [continues 139 words]
An editorial last week discussed the downing of an American missionary plane by Peruvian air force pilots assigned to stop drug smuggling. Reader response: Phin MacDonald, Medford, Mass. Even if drug smugglers were the only ones to be shot down in South America, drug use would not be reduced in the United States. The same is true even if we could stop every plane, boat, or truck that was carrying drugs, or destroy every bush and shrub in the Andes region. [continues 111 words]
WASHINGTON -- With inquiries beginning into Peru's downing last week of a flight carrying American missionaries, congressional officials say they are examining the role played by CIA contract employees who worked for the Aviation Development Corp. of Montgomery, Ala. There is no indication of wrongdoing by Aviation Development, and government officials said the three CIA contract employees on board a surveillance plane tried to prevent the Peruvian military from shooting down the missionaries' plane, which was suspected of carrying drugs. But some congressional officials privately voiced discomfort that civilians could be sent on such a delicate mission. [continues 266 words]
Missionary worker Jim Bowers peered uneasily out the front passenger window of a Cessna 185 floatplane. To his right: a Peruvian air force fighter jet. It had been tailing the Cessna for about 15 minutes. Suddenly, there was a puff of smoke from the fighter. Bullets pierced the missionary plane in machine-gun fashion. The jet flew under the Cessna, reappeared on its left and fired again. A bullet hit the Cessna's left wing, where fuel was stored. A fire erupted and rushed through the fuel line into the plane. Flames shot up from the floor of the cockpit, engulfing pilot Kevin Donaldson's feet. A bullet struck his right leg, shattering two bones. [continues 2087 words]
WHEN THE UNITED STATES and Peru established a joint program to force or shoot down planes suspected of drug smuggling, it was hardly anyone's intention to kill a missionary and her daughter. But that's what happened on April 20, when a Peruvian jet attacked a Cessna seaplane, killing American missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter. Her husband, Jim, and their 6-year-old son, Cory, survived the crash. Pilot Kevin Donaldson, who was able to land the plane, also survived, and has undergone surgery on both legs. [continues 449 words]
Will The Tragic Downing Of A Missionary Plane Over Peru Cause The Bush Administration To Rethink Its Anti-Drug Strategy In The Region? Probably not, says Ethan A. Nadelmann, executive director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation. Nadelmann, whose group has long fought for reform of the nation's drug policies, believes Washington's policy of military interdiction in countries like Peru and Colombia is doing more harm than good. He spoke with NEWSWEEK'S Arlene Getz about the possible fallout from the April 20 killing of Roni Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter Charity by Peruvian soldiers who thought they were drug traffickers. Excerpts: [continues 1281 words]
A Gruesome Shoot-down On The Amazon Hints At A Large And Growing U.S. Narcowar In Latin America. A Report From The Front Lines Iquitos is the kind of town you might expect to read about in the pages of Joseph Conrad, tucked hard along the Amazon and alive with equal parts danger and promise. It draws missionaries of all kind, zealots intent on changing the world by starting here. It was two such crusades--one to stop the narcotraffic that runs on this river and one that is trying to bring Jesus to its darkest corners--that collided 140 miles east of town April 20 when a Peruvian jet shot down an unarmed Cessna carrying missionaries back from an upriver stint. [continues 2376 words]
Fingerpointing is in full swing as Peru and the United States deal with the shooting down of a civilian missionary aircraft carrying American citizens in Peru last weekend. U.S.-built Peruvian Air Force A-37 jets shot down the Cessna floatplane carrying three Baptist missionaries and two children. Apparently Peru's military, which has shot down more than 30 civilian planes suspected of drug running, hastily and wrongly identified the Cessna as a drug-smuggling aircraft. As if such an amateurish mistake weren't outrageous enough, the Peruvian jets were guided to their target by a U.S. Defense Department spyplane that was being operated by Central Intelligence Agency agents helping to intercept drug smugglers. [continues 232 words]
To the editor: In the April 22 edition of The Daily News, I found three stories from different parts of the hemisphere with a common thread: * Peru: The CIA spots a plane flying in a known drug trafficking corridor without a flight plan (as far as they knew), and it notifies the Peruvian Air Force. Peru shoots down the plane and then, reportedly, shoots at the downed plane and survivors of the emergency landing as the occupants swim for safety. A woman and her baby were killed. No drugs were found onboard the aircraft. The dead woman was a missionary. [continues 163 words]
Ever since Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs more than two decades ago, and appointed his vice president, George Bush, to wage that war, this nation has failed to achieve much in the way of success. What should be a domestic war has been pursued also as an international conflict. While it has failed to stem the deluge of drugs entering this country, it has succeeded in involving us in messy relationships involving Latin American nations, accentuated earlier this month by our involvement -- however debatable our exact role in it -- in the shooting down of an American missionary plane by Peruvian jets, and the deaths of an innocent mother and her child. [continues 611 words]
Filed at 12:33 p.m. ET, WASHINGTON (AP) -- It was brutal, but effective. Peru's president ordered drug planes blown out of the sky to stop the flights of semiprocessed cocaine from his country to Colombia in the early 1990s. As a result, Peru's production of coca, the raw material for cocaine, has dropped steadily. But following the fatal attack April 20 on an American missionary plane in Peru, the policy is on hold. Some worry the drug flights will resume; drug policy analysts are not so sure. [continues 701 words]
