U.S. SHARES FAULT IN PERU INCIDENT

Probe Blames Procedures in Shootdown

Peru and the United States were undisciplined and "sloppy" in the way
they conducted a joint program to interdict airborne drug smugglers
in recent years, and share responsibility for the mistaken shootdown
of a civilian aircraft carrying American missionaries over northern
Peru in April, according to sources familiar with the findings of a
State Department investigation.

The shootdown occurred after a CIA surveillance plane flown by
American contract employees targeted the aircraft as a suspected drug
flight, tracked it and helped guide a Peruvian Air Force fighter jet
to it. A Baptist missionary, Veronica "Roni" Bowers, and her
7-month-old daughter were killed, and pilot Kevin Donaldson was
seriously wounded.

Although the United States preliminarily concluded in the days after
the incident that Peru did not comply with shootdown procedures
established in a 1994 agreement between the two countries, the report
does not assign direct blame, according to several sources, all of
whom refused to be identified. Instead, the report compiles facts
about the aerial interdiction program as well as the immediate events
leading to the April 20 deaths.

Although the sources declined to provide specific details of the
report, they said it characterizes the program as having limited U.S.
oversight and having evolved over the years into lax adherence to
procedures by both the United States and Peru. They said it is likely
to prompt calls from Congress and elsewhere to circumscribe or shut
down U.S. ground and air radar and tracking assistance to
interdiction programs in Peru and Colombia -- neither of which has
the radar capability to operate on its own.

The Bush administration suspended intelligence agreements with both
countries after the missionary plane shootdown, pending the results
of the investigation to be jointly conducted by the United States and
Peru. But Bush officials, and Clinton administration officials
before, have cited the program as the key factor in a sharp decrease
in the cultivation of coca and export of cocaine from Peru over the
last five years. They have repeatedly warned that the shipments could
easily start up again now that traffickers know the skies are
unpatrolled.

Officials said U.S.-based over-the-horizon radar fixed on the Andean
region had detected no increase in suspected drug flights during the
past three months. But Colombia's ambassador to Washington, Luis
Alberto Moreno, said last week that his government, using its own
resources, is now detecting only about three or four flights a month,
compared with about 20 each month with the Colombia-based U.S. radar
and tracking assistance that has been cut off.

Although the CIA has near-exclusive control over the air surveillance
program in Peru, the U.S. Customs Service has provided much of the
service in Colombia. The Colombians have used the assistance
primarily to follow planes reentering the country after suspected
drug runs to the Caribbean and the United States, attacking them
after they land rather than shooting them down. Much of Colombia's
cocaine, which supplies 90 percent of the U.S. market, is transported
by sea or land, or a combination of the two.

Administration concern about the program's future has been reflected
in its reluctance to release the State Department's Peru report,
which was completed weeks ago. Last month, the administration hired
an outside expert, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia Morris D.
Busby, to study the report and conduct a broad review of the entire
policy before it decides what to do.

Based on videotapes and audiotapes from the CIA two-engine Cessna
Citation V, it initially appeared to U.S. officials that the Peruvian
colonel aboard, his fellow officers in radio contact on the ground
and the pilot of the Peruvian Air Force A37B had rushed through, or
even skipped, steps set out in the 1994 agreement. The agreement
prescribes a sequence of identifying, contacting and then warning a
drug flight before firing shots.

But the situation became more complicated after investigators
interviewed U.S. and Peruvian program participants and discovered
correspondence, training information, memos and other documents from
the last six years that made it more difficult to dismiss Peru's
insistence that it had not done anything the United States had not
agreed to.

The State Department report indicates that tracking and shootdown
procedures had evolved, with mutual awareness, into something "much
less detailed and defined" than when they started in 1994, a source
said. "In bureaucratic language . . . [the report] comes out and says
we were sloppy."

Even before the report, questions were raised by former U.S.
employees of the program about the initial decision by the CIA
contract pilots, on a routine surveillance flight, to track and then
target a civilian aircraft that was headed directly toward the
region's main airport in Iquitos at midday.

It also appeared that the Peruvians had not checked the registration
number, which was written clearly in large black letters on the wing
and sides of Donaldson's single-engine Cessna 185.

The State Department and the Association of Baptists for World
Evangelism, which employed Donaldson, Bowers and her husband, still
disagree on whether Donaldson -- who flew regularly in the area --
had filed an acceptable flight plan for their round-trip mission to
the Brazilian border. Bowers's husband and son survived the crash.

Beyond procedural problems, sources said, investigators found that
overall training of CIA and Peruvian program participants -- many of
whom did not share a common language -- was less than ideal. They
also found that there was little U.S. oversight of how the policy was
conducted beyond the CIA station and American Embassy in Lima.

"There wasn't somebody each and every year, every quarter, going in
and saying, 'Hey, are we sure this policy is still being carried out
correctly? Is there a checklist of procedures in the plane? Is
training being done correctly?' " a source said. The checklist
"didn't exist."

A draft report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which
conducted its own investigation of the interdiction program and April
20 incident, reaches similar conclusions, sources said. Although the
CIA said it also would investigate, officials there declined to
provide information on the inquiry.

The shootdown provoked widespread public and congressional outrage in
April, echoing concerns raised inside the Clinton administration in
early 1994, when Peru and Colombia said they intended to force
airborne smugglers located and tracked with U.S. assistance to land
or, if necessary, to shoot them down. As a result, the Clinton
administration suspended an earlier version of the air
intelligence-sharing program.

Lawyers in the Defense and Justice departments argued at the time
that it was against U.S. and international law to fire at civilian
aircraft except in self-defense. They said it would undermine U.S.
arguments on air terrorism in international forums, and that the
United States could be held liable if it provided assistance to shoot
civilian planes out of the air, no matter what was aboard them.

But President Bill Clinton was under strong political pressure to
adopt a tough line against drug smuggling and, after a prolonged
administration debate, he proposed, and Congress passed, a law
exempting U.S. government employees from liability for any "mistakes"
that might occur while cooperating with another country's shootdown
policy.

In December of that year, Clinton certified that such cooperation was
a national security necessity and that the countries in question --
Peru and Colombia -- had "appropriate procedures in place to protect
innocent aircraft."

Before Bowers and her daughter were killed, Peru had carried out 38
shootdowns or forcedowns with U.S. assistance since the program
restarted in late 1994, resulting in 20 deaths. All were confirmed as
drug smugglers after Peruvian investigations conducted on the ground
with no U.S. participation.

After the April incident, the Bush administration fended off
congressional demands for immediate details about the overall program
and specifics of the shootdown by ordering the investigation. Based
on its findings, officials said, they would take whatever measures
were necessary to prevent future mistakes before reactivating the
program.

Officials estimated that the inquiry, headed by Rand Beers, assistant
secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement
affairs, would take no more than a few weeks, and promised the report
would be handed over to Congress immediately. But a "collective"
decision was made in June by "the most senior levels of this
government" to withhold the Beers report pending a separate policy
review, an administration official said.

An administration official said last week that Busby's findings and
recommendations would "not necessarily result in immediate action. It
will be used to stimulate discussion within the administration about
what the policy should be with regard to that program."

In the meantime, the House voted last Tuesday to withhold $65 million
in military and development aid for Peru next year, part of the
administration's overall counterdrug plan for the Andean region,
until it gets the report and the president, State Department and CIA
certify that corrective steps have been taken. The Senate
intelligence committee is still considering what recommendations will
accompany its report.

In apparent response to concern over the aid cuts, and the imminent
release of the Senate intelligence committee report, sources said the
administration has decided to release the Beers report this week
before Busby's policy review is completed.