CONGRESSMAN: FIRING AT MISSIONARY PLANE WAS UNPROFESSIONAL

Hoekstra Reviews Tapes Of Peru's Deadly Attack

WASHINGTON -- A congressman who reviewed video and audiotapes of the
Peruvian downing of a missionary's plane with one of the survivors
said Friday he was "very disturbed" by the chaos and lack of
professionalism that marked the incident.

"This wasn't even a close call. There was no reason to shoot down
that plane," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who listened to the
tapes this week with Jim Bowers, a Baptist missionary whose wife,
Veronica (Roni) Bowers and infant daughter, Charity, were killed in
the April 20 attack over Peru. Bowers is from Hoekstra's Michigan
district.

Hoekstra, like other conservatives in Congress, said he could not
support the resumption of the U.S.-Peru program that was suspended
after the shoot-down unless the final option -- firing on a plane
suspected of being a drug flight -- is eliminated.

"You're talking about machine-gun bullets going through a clearly
marked civilian plane that was doing nothing out of the ordinary,"
Hoekstra said. "You'd expect they would go through a careful
procedure, but that did not happen."

U.S. and Peruvian officials have been investigating the accident, and
their report will probably go to President George W. Bush and
intelligence committees on Capitol Hill after next week's
congressional recess.

Whatever the findings, support for the so-called air bridge
interdiction program, designed to deter, force down or even shoot
down drug planes, has all but disappeared on Capitol Hill.

Hoekstra and Bowers recently watched a 45-minute videotape taken from
the U.S. plane, with a crew of CIA contract employees, that tipped
off the Peruvians about a slow-moving Cessna pontoon plane might be a
drug flight. He listened to the often overlapping conversations as a
Peruvian jet gave chase and caught up with the Cessna, which carried
Bowers and his family.

The planes were not on the same frequency; Bowers said he never felt
threatened; pilot Kevin Donaldson said he never saw or heard the
Peruvian jet ordering him to land.

Bowers, Hoekstra said, remembered "holding up his son to the window
to show him the jet when it came alongside -- they felt no threat at
all."