In the world of drugs and thugs, brutality works. That's why Peru's policy of blasting drug flights out of the sky has been hailed as that nation's single most effective counterdrug tactic. Since 1995, Peruvian Air Force jets have strafed or forced down more than 30 narcotics-laden airplanes. Narco flights, not surprisingly, have fallen off dramatically. So has Peruvian coca production. But all that meant little to the Bowers family of Muskegon, Mich. On April 20, they were flying in an area known to U.S. intelligence as the Dog's Head. That's where the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia come together. The Bowerses were en route to a missionary project in Iquitos, Peru. After their Cessna 185 re-entered Peru, a Peruvian Air Force fighter jet suddenly began spraying them with bullets. Aboard a surveillance aircraft operated by the CIA--which had first detected the Bowerses' Cessna and passed the info on to the Peruvians--the American pilots were alarmed by the attack. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" shouted one pilot into his radio. By then it was too late. Veronica Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were already dead. [continues 202 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]
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]
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]
Control, Standards Conceded LIMA, Peru, - Crisscrossing Peru's eastern jungle, U.S.-Peruvian air patrols for the last six years have attacked low-flying planes trying to smuggle coca paste to the cocaine production and distribution networks of Colombia's drug lords to the north. The cooperative missions have been hailed as the most successful tactic so far in America's war on drugs. But the mistaken downing of a small plane carrying American missionaries on April 20, which killed a woman and her infant daughter, has suddenly thrust into the limelight the flaws, pitfalls and risks that go along with such missions. In the life-or-death decisions being made here using information from U.S. radar and intelligence planes -- often transmitted across a language gap -- the United States has given up a significant amount of control over tactics and accountability. At the same time, it has forged an alliance with a military and government leadership long rife with corruption, sacrificing safeguards and legal standards it would be held to at home. [continues 2158 words]
Critics Say Private Military Contractors On Anti-Drug And Other Missions Are Not Held Accountable. More than a week after a small plane was shot down over Peru, killing an American missionary and her baby, the tragedy remains rife with questions. Among them: Exactly who was on board the surveillance plane that targeted the civilian flight? Were they employees of DynCorp, a major CIA contractor? Or were they employees of yet another company, with even less accountability to Congress and the American public? [continues 971 words]
In Latin America, Foes Aren't the Only Danger WHEN the fighter pilot's fire ripped through a plane carrying an American missionary family over Peru last week, the bullet holes opened up ironic points of light into American foreign policy in Latin America. "Know your enemy and know yourself; in 100 battles you will never be in peril," Sun Tzu wrote in "The Art of War." In Latin America, though, it is its friends and allies that the United States does not seem to want to know too well. Today, particularly where the drug war rages, it finds itself, as it has so often in the past, in the awkward position of an arm's-length embrace. [continues 1456 words]
IQUITOS, Peru, April 27 Missionaries say there are many souls to be saved along the Amazon, where the people often drink away their money and live by superstitious beliefs that include a myth that unwanted pregnancies are the work of the feared river dolphins. But as the Adams and Mortimer families glided up the brown waters on their way to this jungle city for a memorial service for one of their best friends, there was little time for these American missionaries from Michigan and Oklahoma to evangelize. [continues 1028 words]
Your story "U.S. plane aided Peru jets' attack on missionaries" caught my attention (Times, April 22). I am left with a big question, the possible answers to which are unsavory. If the practice of shooting down unarmed civilian planes was deemed a violation of international and U.S. law by the Justice Department and the Pentagon, why are we still killing people? Is it because we don't mind if innocent Peruvians are killed? President Bush is "upset by the fact that two American citizens lost their lives." Obviously, previous executions by fighter jets in Peru and who knows what other countries have been acceptable, as long as the untried suspects were not American. [continues 130 words]
Drug Wars, Rebels Hard On Missions NEW YORK--The recent missionary deaths in Peru underscore the escalating risks that confront Protestant missionaries in remote areas of Latin America beset by guerrilla warfare and drug trafficking. Veronica "Roni" Bowers and her infant daughter Charity were killed April 20, not by criminals but by military forces targeting criminals that mistakenly shot down a missionary airplane. Most experts agree that security is an increasing concern for the 10,700 U.S. Protestant missionaries working in Latin America. Particularly since World War II, Protestants have moved into remote terrain where the main danger used to be medical problems. [continues 575 words]
WASHINGTON, April 27 - 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 C.I.A. contract employees who worked for the Aviation Development Corporation of Montgomery, Ala. There is no indication of wrongdoing by Aviation Development, and government officials said the three C.I.A. 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. [continues 860 words]
They are deeply religious people from small-town America, called by their faith to jungle villages along the Amazon river tributaries that thread through northeastern Peru. American missionaries have been working here since the 1930s - but with last week's deadly shooting attack by the Peruvian military on a missionary plane, their isolated lifestyle has been shaken. The remote region where they have chosen to spread the gospel is a transit route for small planes ferrying unrefined cocaine to neighboring Colombia from coca-growing regions hundreds of miles to the southwest. [continues 922 words]
'Are You Sure It's A Bandito?' USA Today listens to the cockpit tape of CIA drug-spotters trying to stop Peruvian officials from shooting down a civilian plane. They learned later it was carrying missionaries. By Jack Kelley, USA Today WASHINGTON - The three CIA crewmembers aboard a U.S. surveillance aircraft that first spotted an American missionary floatplane over the Amazon River repeatedly questioned whether the civilian aircraft was carrying drug runners. The CIA crew then tried in vain to stop a Peruvian jet from shooting down the missionary plane, according to a tape of the cockpit conversation. [continues 414 words]
Nation Focused On Presidential Race And Recent Scandals LIMA, Peru -- Peruvians and Peru's media are immersed in nearly daily reports on scandals involving top government and military officials and a heated presidential campaign. They have had little time for the story of an American woman and her child who died last week when a Peruvian air force fighter shot down their light plane. "What plane?" is the most common response from Lima residents when asked what they think about last Friday's downing of a plane carrying American missionaries. [continues 674 words]
To the Editor: Re "Baptists' Plane Was Identified as Drug Carrier" (front page, April 22): You report that the State Department said the American missionary plane shot down in Peru had been mistakenly identified as a drug-running plane. But in the United States, people are presumed innocent until proved guilty. The police don't have the right to kill suspects at will because they believe that they may have broken the law. In this country, we leave punishment to the judicial system. The punishment for smuggling drugs is not the death penalty. The only way to determine whether a plane is carrying drugs is to board it. Determining whether or not the right people were killed while sorting through the wreckage is wrong. MARC LIBRESCU Fair Lawn, N.J., April 22, 2001 [end]
Civilian pilots around the world have reacted with anger to the downing of a plane carrying a missionary family in Peru, saying the U.S.-Peruvian policy of attacking suspected drug smuggling aircraft is a blatant violation of international law. "Nothing justifies a no-questions-asked destruction of civilian aircraft," said Phil Boyer, president of the International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations, which represents 400,000 pilots in 56 countries. "We would have thought the nations of the world would have learned an important lesson from the downing of Korean Air Lines 007 in 1984." [continues 572 words]
Here is a brief timeline of how the United States became involved in interdicting drug-laden planes in Peru. 1986: President Reagan issues a directive declaring that combating drug trafficking is a national priority. With host country consent, U.S. military forces and assets can be used, in supporting but not lead roles, to detect and interdict drug traffickers. 1989: President Bush approves a $2.2 billion, five-year Andean Initiative to help Bolivia, Colombia and Peru dismantle drug-trafficking operations, eradicate coca crops and encourage farmers to grow substitute crops. More law-enforcement, military and economic aid is offered. [continues 141 words]
Attack: The U.S. Defends Program In Peru, But It Was Aware That Smugglers, Evangelists Fly Same Routes. BUENOS AIRES--U.S. and Peruvian anti-drug officials knew all along that missionaries and drug smugglers fly the same routes over the Peruvian jungle, and they had worried about just such an incident as Friday's inadvertent downing of a plane carrying an American missionary family, former officials of the U.S. Embassy in Lima said Monday. "Our worst fear was: 'What if we shoot down [some] missionaries.' " said one former embassy official involved in anti-drug efforts. "You don't know how much we talked about that at the embassy. We went through all kinds of pains to put the right sequence of protocols in place so that couldn't happen." [continues 847 words]
April 24, 2001 -- An American Baptist group raised sharp questions yesterday about official U.S. and Peruvian explanations of the shooting down of a plane carrying missionaries. Peruvian authorities claim they thought the plane was being used by drug smugglers because no flight plan had been filed. But the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, whose missionaries were aboard the Cessna 185 shot down by the Peruvian air force Friday, posted the flight plan on its Web site yesterday. The disclosure came as U.S. and Peruvian authorities engaged in a series of charges and countercharges over who was responsible for the tragic blunder that resulted in the deaths of American missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity. [continues 218 words]
WASHINGTON - The Peruvian air force's attack on a small plane carrying U.S. missionaries focused attention yesterday on how U.S. intelligence and Peru's military coordinate their fight against narcotics trafficking. CIA personnel on the U.S. surveillance plane did not attempt to read the registration number on the side of the civilian aircraft before it was shot down by the Peruvian air force Friday because they were afraid it would flee if they got too close, U.S. officials said yesterday. [continues 1574 words]
The CIA has grounded its joint anti-drug missions over Colombia as well as Peru, imposing a total freeze on the airborne search for drug smugglers over the cocaine-rich Andean region of South America, U.S. officials disclosed Wednesday. The suspension, a major setback in the U.S. war against narcotraffickers in Latin America, was triggered by a Peruvian Air Force attack on a plane full of missionaries that killed two U.S. citizens Friday. Colombian officials decried the suspension. ``This is serious for everybody because it will permit drug traffickers to operate with a certain freedom,'' said Air Force Gen. Hector Velasco. [continues 631 words]
WASHINGTON, April 25 -- The American crew of a surveillance aircraft overheard the pilot of a small plane carrying a missionary family communicate with the tower at a Peruvian airport, and tried to warn a Peruvian Air Force fighter before it attacked, tape recordings of the incident reveal, according to United States officials who have reviewed them. But the Peruvian jet almost immediately opened fire, and the pilot of the small Cessna can then be heard on the tape saying "they are killing us!" one official said. [continues 1435 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An American missionary plane shot down over Peru did not appear to be on a drug trafficking mission because it flew deep into that country's airspace instead of sticking close to the border area and took no other actions normally associated with drug flights, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The CIA-sponsored plane that monitored the missionary aircraft decided to notify the Peruvian Air Force about the single-engine Cessna despite the crew's belief that it probably was unrelated to drug smuggling. [continues 671 words]
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators in Peru are sorting out details in the crash of a U.S. missionary plane. The plane was mistaken for a drug trafficker's and was shot down Friday by the Peruvian air force, killing an American missionary and her daughter. The military was working with information from a CIA surveillance plane. Veronica Bowers and her seven-month-old daughter died in that incident. She and her husband were working for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. [continues 718 words]
For many U.S. officials, an agreement with Peru that has led to more than 30 midair attacks against drug-smuggling aircraft has been a resounding victory in the war on drugs. Along with U.S.-funded development programs and aggressive law enforcement on the ground, the air interdiction program is credited with a more than two-thirds drop in recent years in Peruvian exports of coca base, the processed raw material of cocaine. "Has this been an effective program?" said a former official who until recently was closely involved with it. "The answer is undeniably yes." [continues 859 words]
US-Peru inquiry begins this week into downing of missionary plane as drug interdiction flights halted. Behind Peru's tragic shootdown of an American missionary plane is an aggressive drug-interdiction program that has earned Peru nothing but praise from the United States - until now. The Peruvian Air Force's attack Friday on a Cessna aircraft is revealing to Americans the extreme measures foreign governments sometimes take in the US-promoted drug war - measures that in some cases would not be tolerated at home. The shootdown killed an American missionary and her infant daughter. [continues 919 words]
For many U.S. officials, an agreement with Peru that has led to more than 30 midair attacks against drug-smuggling aircraft has been a resounding victory in the war on drugs. Along with U.S.-funded development programs and aggressive law enforcement on the ground, the air interdiction program is credited with a more than two-thirds drop in recent years in Peruvian exports of coca base, the processed raw material of cocaine. "Has this been an effective program?" said a former official who until recently was closely involved with the program. "The answer is undeniably yes." [continues 862 words]
U.S. Crew Objected Moments Before Attack An audiotape made aboard a U.S. surveillance plane shows that its CIA crew expressed doubts about whether a civilian aircraft they were tracking was smuggling drugs 20 minutes before it was shot down last week by the Peruvian air force. But they did not vigorously object until just before it came under fire. U.S. officials previously said the three crew members strenuously resisted the shootdown. But the tape, described to The Washington Post by U.S. officials, shows that the crew displayed little urgency as the Peruvian jet approached the plane because they expected it to take a closer look and read the plane's registration number. They sounded surprised when the jet attacked. [continues 1196 words]
WASHINGTON, April 24 -- A Peruvian Air Force plane flew close enough to a small plane carrying a missionary family to obtain the aircraft's tail number, but American officials concluded that it failed to check records of the number with Peruvian officials on the ground, an American official said today. The official said that C.I.A. contract personnel on a nearby American surveillance aircraft tracking the small plane urged the Peruvians to obtain the tail number. Since the downing of the small plane last Friday, which left an American woman and her baby daughter dead, American officials have said the Peruvian jet opened fire on the missionaries' plane without carefully following established procedures. American officials say tapes of the episode, which have not yet been released by the United States government, show that C.I.A. contract personnel raised questions with the Peruvians about their procedures before the Peruvian pilot opened fire. [continues 646 words]
The downing of an American missionary plane and President Bush's subsequent decision to suspend U.S.-backed anti-drug flights has led Peruvians to fear drug traffickers will return to their skies soon. The program, in which Peruvian pilots using information supplied by U.S. radars and surveillance planes force down suspected drug flights, helped Peru reduce cultivation of coca by almost three-quarters since 1992, knocking it from the spot as the world's top producer. Coca is used to make cocaine. [continues 537 words]
Peru: Tough Policy That Turned Tragic Was Making A Difference In The Andes, Former U.S. Officials Say. Anti-drug warriors involved in a U.S.-Peruvian airborne interdiction effort that has slashed the South American nation's cocaine production had a warning for smugglers: "You fly, you die." That warlike motto governed the zone of low-intensity conflict into which a Cessna seaplane carrying U.S. Baptist missionaries flew last week with disastrous results: A Peruvian air force jet assisted by a CIA surveillance plane mistakenly shot down the Cessna, killing a woman and her infant daughter. [continues 1040 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman cast doubt Tuesday on the future of what he called a "very valuable" anti-drug-trafficking program in Peru that led to the downing of a plane carrying American missionaries in which a woman and her daughter were killed. "When you lose a young woman and her child because of a lack of communication, I believe, among other things, it's just too much," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said after a secret briefing by CIA Director George Tenet. [continues 611 words]
Some call them contractors who do important but dangerous jobs that would otherwise fall to overburdened U.S. troops in America's war against drugs. Others say they are mercenaries who shelter the U.S. government from responsibility when things go bad, and insulate it against political repercussions from sending GIs into harm's way. Like the crew of a CIA-contracted plane involved in the downing of an American missionary plane in Peru, they are private U.S. citizens or foreigners who work for private firms hired by the U.S. government to, among other things, man much of the front lines of America's battle against the South American drug trade. [continues 562 words]
WASHINGTON - The Peruvian air force's attack on a small plane carrying American missionaries focused attention Monday on how U.S. intelligence and Peru's military coordinate their fight against narcotics trafficking. U.S. authorities said Monday that the Peruvians failed to follow routine procedures, while they exonerated the CIA surveillance crew that misidentified the missionary plane as carrying suspected drug smugglers. A Baptist missionary and her 7-month-old daughter were killed Friday when a Peruvian fighter jet strafed the small aircraft. [continues 655 words]
LIMA, Peru - The downing by Peru of a missionary aircraft from the United States has dealt a severe blow to the two countries' efforts to halt drug shipments between Peru's coca fields and the trafficking cartels in Colombia. Peru's policy since the early 1990s of forcing down suspected trafficking planes has been praised by Washington as a principal reason why the cultivation of coca plants - the raw material from which cocaine is made - has been reduced by two-thirds in Peru since 1995. [continues 653 words]
LIMA, Peru -- The downing by Peru of a missionary aircraft from the United States has dealt a severe blow to the two countries' efforts to halt drug shipments between Peru's coca fields and the trafficking cartels in Colombia. Peru's policy since the early 1990s of forcing down suspected trafficking planes has been praised by Washington as a principal reason the cultivation of coca plants -- the raw material from which cocaine is made -- has been reduced by two-thirds in Peru since 1995. [continues 1020 words]
Tragedy: Friends, Kin Mourn Loss, Say Divine Hand Guided Incident. They Are Baffled By Official Accounts. While two governments struggled over blame in the gunning down of a plane flying American evangelists over the jungles of Peru, the friends and relatives of a slain missionary already had their answer. It was God's will, they said--with the same devout assuredness that led Veronica "Roni" Bowers on her final flight. Even the wounded pilot, whose foot was nearly severed by a machine gun blast but who managed to land the crippled hydroplane in a river, insisted Monday that the incident was guided by divine hand. [continues 1002 words]
A former CIA narcotics officer explains how the CIA operated in Peru to try to stem the flow of drugs. He believes the drug problem ultimately needs to be controlled from the demand side. STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to spend a little more time now discussing that news from Peru, which is raising questions about the war on drugs and just how far authorities should go in their effort to stem the drug trade. Joining us now from Los Angeles to discuss these issues is Kenneth Bucchi, a former CIA narcotics officer. [continues 912 words]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials on Monday walked a fine line between absolving a CIA surveillance crew of blame and pointing the finger at Peru in the fatal downing of a plane carrying U.S. missionaries. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters the U.S. tracking crew of CIA contract employees had followed proper procedures in identifying the plane flying over Peru as a possible drug carrier. But he said it was obvious that not all proper procedures had been followed in the incident. Missionary Roni Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed on Friday when a Peruvian Air Force jet mistook the small aircraft for a drug plane and opened fire. [continues 484 words]
CIA personnel on a U.S. surveillance plane did not attempt to read the registration number on the side of a civilian aircraft before it was shot down by the Peruvian Air Force on Friday because they were afraid it would flee out of Peru if they got too close, U.S. officials said yesterday. An American missionary, Veronica "Roni" Bowers, and her 7-month-old daughter were killed when, according to American accounts, the Peruvian Air Force rushed the procedures established by both countries to distinguish drug trafficking flights from innocent aircraft. [continues 1247 words]
The Air Force Has Shot Down Traffickers, But Apparently Some Bribed Their Way To Freedom RIO DE JANEIRO - The Peruvian air force's downing of a single-engine Cessna plane, in which an American missionary and her infant daughter were killed, is only the latest chapter in the troubled story of Peru's armed forces and their fight against drug traffickers. The Clinton administration regarded Peru's 120,000-member armed forces as a vital partner in U.S. antidrug efforts, thanks in large measure to an aggressive shoot-down policy that has wiped out at least 30 small aircraft operated by suspected drug traffickers. Peruvian production of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, dropped sharply. [continues 491 words]
LIMA, Peru -- The downing by Peru of a missionary aircraft from the United States has dealt a severe blow to the two countries' efforts to halt drug shipments between Peru's coca fields and the trafficking cartels in Colombia. Peru's policy of forcing down suspected trafficking planes since the early 1990's has been praised by Washington as a principal reason why the cultivation of coca plants -- the raw material from which cocaine is made - -- has been reduced by two-thirds in Peru since 1995. [continues 996 words]
Rep. Bob Barr sided with the Bush administration Monday by suggesting Peru's military failed to follow established rules of engagement in shooting down an American missionary plane. Missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, died as the plane crashed in the Amazon River. Peru's air force said it could not identify the plane. A U.S. CIA plane had alerted the Peruvians about the unidentified craft before it was shot down. Barr appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews Monday afternoon. He said the joint U.S.- Peru anti-drug program had been very effective. But of the incident Saturday, he said, "The area the plane operated in was known for dangerous drug trafficking." "The Peruvians made very serious errors," he said. [end]
Peru Jet's Action Turns Attention To Procedures WASHINGTON -- The Peruvian air force's deadly attack on a small plane carrying U.S. missionaries focused attention Monday on how U.S. intelligence and Peru's military coordinate their fight against narcotics trafficking. U.S. authorities said Monday that the Peruvians failed to follow routine procedures, while they exonerated the CIA surveillance crew that misidentified the missionary plane as carrying drug smugglers. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has led previous inquiries into U.S. antidrug policy overseas, was planning to call for a congressional investigation of the incident, aides said. Meanwhile, the United States suspended the CIA surveillance program, and Peru suspended its interdiction flights. [continues 613 words]
Attack: The U.S. defends program in Peru, but it was aware that smugglers, evangelists fly same routes. U.S. and Peruvian anti-drug officials knew all along that missionaries and drug smugglers fly the same routes over the Peruvian jungle, and they had worried about just such an incident as Friday's inadvertent downing of a plane carrying an American missionary family, former officials of the U.S. Embassy in Lima said Monday. "Our worst fear was: 'What if we shoot down [some] missionaries?' " said one former embassy official involved in anti-drug efforts. "You don't know how much we talked about that at the embassy. We went through all kinds of pains to put the right sequence of protocols in place so that couldn't happen." [continues 870 words]
Missionaries Received Permission To Land Before They Were Shot Out Of The Sky, Relatives Claim In Dispute With Peruvian Officials' Reports WASHINGTON - A Peruvian jet shot down a plane carrying American missionaries just one hour after being notified by a CIA-operated surveillance plane that it might be a flight ferrying illegal drugs, a U.S. intelligence official said Sunday. Meanwhile, relatives of the missionaries said the plane had received clearance to land moments before it was fired on without warning, a contention at odds with Peru's military, which said the plane failed to identify itself and was flying without a flight plan. [continues 474 words]
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's decision to suspend U.S. help to Peru in locating drug flights after two Americans were killed could have the unintended consequence of opening a door for drug traffickers, experts said Monday. Bush ordered U.S. surveillance flights to identify potential drug-laden aircraft temporarily halted after a single-engine Cessna 185 carrying American missionaries was shot down. While expressing sympathy for the two Americans killed, key congressional officials worried Monday that opportunistic drug traffickers would take advantage of the news that Peru would no longer be tracking aircraft with U.S. help. [continues 1100 words]
WASHINGTON - The crew of an American surveillance plane tracking suspected drug runners in Peru objected as the Peruvian air force rushed to attack a small plane carrying American missionaries, U.S. officials said Sunday. The attack, on Friday, killed one missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity. The surveillance plane's crew, who were American contract employees of the CIA, raised repeated objections that the missionaries' plane had not yet been identified, the American officials said. Despite their objections, a Peruvian officer aboard the American tracking plane called in a Peruvian intercepter jet, which moved quickly to attack the small plane. [continues 200 words]
IQUITOS, Peru - Drug interdiction flights over Peru have been suspended, U.S. officials announced Saturday, after the Peruvian air force shot down a seaplane carrying American missionaries. The missionaries' plane, mistaken for a drug smuggling flight, was tracked by a U.S. surveillance plane before it was downed, a Bush administration official said Saturday night. The crew aboard the surveillance plane urged Peruvian authorities to check out the flight, said the official. A second official said the plane was considered suspect because it was operating without a flight plan in airspace frequented by drug runners. Peru, which had the responsibility to identify the plane's intentions under a long-standing agreement, mistakenly decided that it was carrying drugs, the official said. [continues 678 words]
Accident: U.S. Says Crew On Surveillance Aircraft Tried To Rein In Military Action That Killed 2 Americans WASHINGTON--A CIA crew flying a narcotics surveillance mission over the Amazon misidentified a small aircraft carrying a family of U.S. missionaries as a possible drug smuggling operation, prompting the Peruvian air force to shoot down the plane, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Sunday. But the official insisted that the CIA-hired pilot, co-pilot and systems analyst repeatedly tried to convince a Peruvian air force officer aboard their jet that he was acting too quickly in ordering an attack on the single-engine floatplane. [continues 1356 words]
Inside Peru
