USE OF FOREIGN PILOTS AVOIDS DRUG WAR POLICY

Congress Limits The Number Of Civilians Involved In Colombia; The State
Department Uses A Different Method

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The U.S. State Department has directed its largest
private contractor in Colombia to hire foreign pilots to fight the drug
war, an order that helps get around Congress' attempt to keep the United
States from slipping further into this country's messy civil war.

Last year, Congress limited to 300 the number of civilian contract workers
participating in U.S.-financed drug-eradication efforts in Colombia. But in
a little-noticed decision, the State Department has counted only U.S.
citizens toward that limit.

As a result, DynCorp has 335 civilians working on the anti-drug campaign
here but less than one-third are U.S. citizens, the contractor's chief of
operations here said Friday.

Those figures come on top of the estimated 60 to 80 U.S. citizens working
for other companies involved in the drug-eradication effort, such as Bell
Helicopter Textron Inc., Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., Northrop Grumman and
Lockheed Martin.

So at least 400 contract workers in Colombia are paid as part of last
year's $1.3-billion aid package, although fewer than 200 are U.S. citizens.

A senior aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who has been at
the forefront of the battle over U.S. assistance to Colombia, acknowledged
that the language passed by Congress specified that the cap applied to
"United States individual civilians" and the State Department was not
obliged to include foreigners in their reports to Congress.

"Legally they may be within the law," said the aide, Tim Reiser. "But in
terms of congressional interest in being informed on what U.S. money is
being used for, that is of interest to Congress and it's something that the
Congress should be informed about."

State Department officials say they are not required to inform Congress
that they have ordered DynCorp to hire as many as 50 pilots from Guatemala,
Peru, Colombia and other countries to transport Colombian army forces into
cocaine-growing zones.

The pilots, most of them former Central and South American air force
members who fly the most dangerous anti-drug missions here, also are hired
to reduce the risk of bad publicity resulting from the downing of a U.S.
citizen, according to U.S. Embassy officials.

"I'm under no illusion what it would mean to have an American shot down
here, and no one in the U.S. is," Ambassador Anne Patterson said in a
recent interview.

U.S. lawmakers and aides contacted Friday accused the State Department of
circumventing congressional intent to limit U.S. involvement in Colombia's
37-year civil war, in which leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary
forces depend on the cocaine trade for financing.

The issue goes to the heart of congressional critics' fears about Plan
Colombia, the U.S.-financed anti-drug campaign: that it will lead to a slow
increase of U.S. presence in a messy conflict without sufficient oversight,
as happened in Vietnam and El Salvador.

It also has historical resonance, touching on controversies over
congressional limits on the number of U.S. military advisers in El Salvador
during the 1980s and Reagan administration efforts to evade them.

"This seems to be a loophole around the cap, a way to get around them,"
said Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., who has sought to eliminate the use of
private contractors in the region since a U.S. company was involved in an
accidental downing of a private airplane by the Peruvian military in April
that killed a missionary and her daughter.

"Every time we find out more about what goes on in Colombia, a dozen more
questions are raised," Schakowsky said.

"Most members of Congress interpreted the cap to mean we will limit to a
total of 300 personnel, no matter what their nationality is."

Whether to count the foreign employees apparently was a subject of
discussion within the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
Bureau of the State Department, which oversees most of the U.S. effort to
eradicate drugs in the region.

At one point, according to an embassy official at the discussion, the State
Department acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue and decided to be
"totally virtuous" and count the foreign employees in their reporting to
Congress.

The official and several others interviewed for this story requested that
their names not be used in keeping with State Department policies.

The timing of the debate and of the subsequent decision to ignore foreign
employees is unknown. But the embassy had realized by the middle of this
year that there were going to be nearly 300 U.S. citizens working on the
program in Colombia by December.

The issue came up again recently when the Bush administration, responding
to State Department fears about reaching the cap by December, tried to
remove all limits to U.S. personnel as part of the Andean region aid
package for the coming fiscal year.

House lawmakers compromised, allowing a total of 800 U.S. military and
civilian personnel in Colombia. The Senate so far has insisted on
maintaining the civilian cap at 300, with a separate cap of 500 U.S.
military personnel.

State Department officials defended not counting foreign employees,
especially because many are Colombians working as secretaries, drivers and
other low-level jobs traditionally given to host country citizens.

They noted that if the Colombians are not tallied, the U.S. program would
not reach the 300-worker cap even including the Peruvians, Guatemalans and
other Latin Americans recruited to transport troops into conflict zones
where leftist guerrillas and narcotraffickers are defending cocaine fields.