President George Bush is preparing to order the resumption of the controversial policy of shooting down aircraft suspected of flying drugs to and from Latin America. The CIA-run drugs interdiction scheme was suspended last year amid outcry after Peruvian air force fighter planes shot down a small aircraft over Peru, killing an American missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her seven-month-old daughter. An American surveillance aircraft had helped to track the plane after its crew wrongly identified the Baptist missionaries as probable drug smugglers. [continues 367 words]
WASHINGTON, July 3 - President Bush is expected to approve the resumption of a program to force down or shoot down airplanes suspected of ferrying drugs in Latin America, a year after the program was halted by the mistaken downing of a plane carrying American missionaries in Peru, American officials say. Once the president gives final approval, the State Department would take over the program from the Central Intelligence Agency. American officials said air interdiction operations could begin in Colombia as early as this fall and would likely be expanded to Peru later. The Pentagon would support the program as well, providing intelligence about suspected drug flights gathered from ground-based radars and from other sources, officials said. [continues 1124 words]
Peru: His Wife and Daughter Were Killed When They Were Mistaken for Drug Smugglers. CARY, N.C. -- When Jim Bowers was working as a missionary in Peru, he shared his faith with the people living along the Amazon River. Now Bowers, whose wife and daughter were killed last year when bullets pierced the small plane in which they were flying, is sharing his faith with a far larger audience. Later this month, Bowers, 39, will travel to Portugal and England, and then crisscross the United States, stopping in California, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina. On each stop, he will recount to fellow Christians how on April 20, 2001, the single-engine Cessna floatplane carrying his family was mistaken for a drug-smuggling operation and was shot down by the Peruvian air force in conjunction with CIA surveillance aircraft. [continues 801 words]
GARNER - When he got off the airplane that brought him to North Carolina last year, Jim Bowers wondered aloud to his mother whether he could ever get the images out of his mind. The smoke from the guns of a Peruvian Air Force A-37 that shot through the small aircraft carrying his family. The screams in Spanish of the Cessna's pilot: "They're killing us! They're killing us!" The blood on his infant daughter. His wife slumped over in her seat. [continues 813 words]
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will revive a policy to help Peru and Colombia shoot down suspected narcotics planes in the Andean region within six months but is edging the CIA out of any involvement. The shoot-down program was suspended a year ago after a CIA spotter aircraft helped Peruvian warplanes mistakenly pursue and fire on a U.S. missionary plane over the Amazon River, killing an American mother and her infant. Renewal still needs final White House approval, and Congress must be formally notified. [continues 553 words]
CIA Role Limited; Rules Tightened The Bush administration expects to resume drug interdiction flights in Peru and Colombia this year, roughly 18 months after the mistaken downing of a civilian aircraft and its American missionary passengers, U.S. officials announced yesterday. Strict procedures are being drafted to prevent a repeat of the fatal April 2001 incident, a senior administration official said, and a State Department employee will be aboard each flight to monitor the safety checklist and participate in high-risk decisions. [continues 565 words]
Peru expects the United States soon to announce it will resume a program to catch drug flights in the Latin American country that was halted after the shooting of an American missionary plane, officials said on Thursday, but Washington said no decision had been made. "The information we have received from a good source is that a high- ranking US official is apparently set to make the announcement (to relaunch drug flights) on Monday," said Ricardo Vega Llona, who handed his job as Peru's first anti-drug "czar" to successor Nils Ericsson on Thursday. [continues 304 words]
SAN SALVADOR - The Bush administration said on Sunday it hoped to quickly resume a U.S.-backed drug surveillance program over Peru that was suspended a year ago after a Peruvian jet shot down a civilian airplane, killing an American missionary and her baby. "We want to restart these air interdiction flights. Let there be no doubt about that," Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) told reporters aboard Air Force One on President Bush (news - web sites)'s flight from Lima, Peru to San Salvador (news - web sites). [continues 575 words]
Peru's drug lords are gaining ground, and so are rebels. Toledo's Battle Against A Return To The Bad Old Days Mario Ayala Otarola is running scared. The mayor of San Miguel de Ene fled his isolated village in the jungles of eastern Peru last December. He had heard that a column of Shining Path guerrillas operating in the area planned to assassinate him. Three local mayors have gone into hiding after receiving death threats, and the rebels have warned employees of a U.S.-funded development project that they are under surveillance and should not interfere with local coca farming. "Either you're with Shining Path or you must leave the area," says the 50-year-old sesame farmer who escaped with his wife and five children. "The narcos and Shining Path are helping each other, and that puts us in great danger." [continues 1673 words]
WASHINGTON -- After nearly a year, the White House has issued a formal apology to the Bowers family for the shootdown in Peru that killed Muskegon-based missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity. "The United States government and the government of Peru deeply regret this tragic event and the resulting deaths of Veronica and Charity Bowers and injuries to Jim and Cory Bowers, and their pilot, Kevin Donaldson," the White House said in written statement late Wednesday night. "We offer our sincere condolences to the victims and their families." [continues 577 words]
Missionary's Family To Be Compensated WASHINGTON - On the eve of President Bush's trip to Latin America, his administration said Wednesday that the downing of a small plane over Peru last year "should never have happened," and that it is prepared compensate the families of the victims aboard. "We offer our sincere condolences to the victims and their families," said a statement by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. A Pennsylvania-based missionary group's Cessna float plane was shot down by a Peruvian jet in April after a CIA-operated surveillance plane misidentified it as a possible drug-smuggling flight. [continues 523 words]
BOGOTA - Colombia's presidential race kicked off in earnest yesterday after a live television debate among five candidates, most of whom pledged to get tough on rebels and even extradite the movement's leaders to the United States. More than ever, Colombia's race for the presidency reflects growing anger at the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, after President Andres Pastrana's peace process with the group collapsed on Feb. 20 and the guerrillas began attacking the country's infrastructure. Pastrana is barred from running for a second term in the May 26 election. [continues 323 words]
Coca Crops Flourishing In Peru Production Soars Despite Efforts To Stop Growth San Fernando, Peru - Fifteen years ago, government workers tore up Jorge Cotrina's coca plants in this fertile jungle hamlet in central Peru. But faced with plunging prices for his other crops, Cotrina a few years ago resumed cultivation of the plants that yield cocaine. "If we didn't plant coca, we'd die," Cotrina said, gesturing at his hillside of coca plants. "I have five sons. If I didn't grow coca, who would pay for their food and shoes and clothes, and for seeds for my other crops?" [continues 1171 words]
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is ``pretty close'' to resuming a suspended program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says. Walters told the Mercury News Washington Bureau that U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River on April 20 killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter. That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. [continues 413 words]
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is "pretty close" to resuming a suspended program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says. Walters told Knight Ridder that U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River on April 20 killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter. That incident forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. [continues 480 words]
It Stopped After Missionary Was Shot Down In Peru In April. WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is "pretty close" to resuming a suspended program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says. Walters said U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River on April 20 killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter. That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. [continues 220 words]
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is "pretty close" to resuming a program to shoot down suspected drug planes in the Amazon, White House drug czar John Walters says. Walters told Knight Ridder that U.S. officials may want to renew the program first in Colombia, then later in Peru, where a tragic accidental shoot-down over the Amazon River last April killed a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter. That fatal mishap forced the suspension of the program and led to at least two official U.S. investigations and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. [continues 278 words]
TINGO MARIA, Peru -- The jungle-draped mountains that loom over this town in the Huallaga valley conceal a truth that anti-narcotics officials have been loath to admit. After years of declining prices and production, coca crops are on the rise again in Peru. Even more worrisome to U.S. counternarcotics officials, Colombian drug traffickers are promoting poppy plants, the raw material of heroin. "We are very concerned about poppy growth in this country. There seem to be numerous indications that there is a vast increase in the amount of poppy out there," Jim Williard said, gazing up at the mountain peaks above Tingo Maria, 200 miles northeast of Lima. [continues 500 words]
MEXICO CITY -- High-level arrests and huge drug seizures in Mexico have had no effect on the quantity of Colombian cocaine entering the United States, the American drug-enforcement chief, Asa Hutchinson, said here today. But Mr. Hutchinson said the offensive opened today by the Colombian military against guerrillas, whom he called "narco-terrorists," could be a significant turn in the war on drugs. "I cannot make the case" that Mexico's recent arrests of suspected drug kingpins and seizures of multi-ton drug shipments have lessened the seemingly limitless supply of Colombian cocaine that Mexican cartels ship to the United States, said Mr. Hutchinson, chief of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. [continues 374 words]
CIA-Guided Peru Action Killed Woman and Infant, Hurt Pilot American missionaries whose small plane was mistaken by CIA contract employees for a drug-runner's and was shot down over Peru last year are seeking $35 million in compensation from the U.S. government. They say they are frustrated by the lack of a response, and, if there is no settlement soon, they will sue. The husband of Veronica Bowers, who was killed with their infant daughter, Charity, in the incident; injured mission pilot Kevin Donaldson; and the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism Inc., which owned the plane, are upset that the government has not responded to the claim they submitted in June, said their attorney, Karen Hastie Williams. [continues 921 words]
