DOGGING THE DRUG WAR: SECRET MISSIONS AND EXTORTION CLAIMS TROUBLE
CONGRESS, ANDEAN NATIONS

PANAMA CITY -- A U.S. surveillance plane crashes in a Colombian
combat zone, killing all aboard. A private U.S. military contractor
sends Americans into combat against rebels who have downed a police
helicopter. A civilian aircraft flown by missionaries is shot out of
the skies after being tracked by a CIA-contracted aircraft over Peru.

These are the types of U.S. operations - all conducted under the
cloak of secrecy and all in the name of fighting drug traffickers -
that inadvertently have come under public scrutiny during the past
two years.

Watchdog groups and members of Congress are demanding answers about
what they say is an increasingly secret drug war that U.S. government
personnel and private U.S. contractors are waging in and around
Colombia, using $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds.

In Washington this week, conservative and liberal members of Congress
demanded that the U.S. government explain its need for so many secret
operations related to the counternarcotics mission in the Andean
region. And if answers are not forthcoming, some members of Congress
warned, future funding might not be forthcoming either.

"The key word here is accountability," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky,
D-Ill., who has introduced a bill to curtail the use of private
contractors in policing and military-related missions in the Andean
region. "If this is a valid mission that we're on then it seems to me
that to have it shrouded in secrecy and keeping it more than at arm's
length from the public is a very dangerous process."

Danger Requires Secrecy

U.S. officials say that in a nefarious zone where drug traffickers
regularly mingle with leftist guerrillas, kidnapping rings,
paramilitary militias and international money launderers, secret
operations play a crucial role in America's overall security strategy
for the Andean region.

Many operations must be kept secret because of the dangers American
personnel regularly are exposed to, officials say. Would-be
kidnappers and leftist guerrillas can be found barely a 20-minute
drive from the Colombian capital or in the jungles of northern
Ecuador, where the United States is outfitting and expanding an air
base for counternarcotics missions.

To make public the activities of private defense contractors or
intelligence personnel involved in these missions would effectively
make it impossible for them to do their jobs, officials say.

But according to groups that monitor such activities, an increase in
so-called "black ops" means U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to fight
a covert war whose expenses are not submitted for public scrutiny.
Little will be known, and few explanations will be provided to inform
the American public about their government's activities.

The issue arose anew April 20 after a U.S. counternarcotics aircraft,
operated by a private company reportedly under CIA contract, tracked
a single-engine civilian plane over the skies of Peru.

Instead of carrying drugs, the plane turned out to be transporting
U.S. missionaries. A mother and her infant daughter were killed.

"The history of these black ops doesn't inspire confidence," said
Andrew Miller, who monitors human-rights issues in Latin America for
Amnesty International. "If overtly they're shooting down civilian
planes, it makes you wonder what's being done covertly."

Activities Hidden From Public

Of the $1.3 billion in U.S. counternarcotics and military aid now
pouring into the Andean region, $55.3 million is devoted to
classified, intelligence-related activities that are being hidden
from public view, according to the Washington-based Center for
International Policy.

Those activities include CIA-run aerial-surveillance missions to
track drug traffickers and a sophisticated network of radio
intercepts that allow the National Security Agency to monitor
guerrilla communications in Colombia, according to U.S. government
sources.

Last year, secret U.S. satellite intelligence enabled authorities to
track a major drug shipment from Panama to the coastal waters of
Ecuador and then to the northern Chilean port of Arica. Without the
help of U.S. intelligence, Chilean authorities said, authorities
would never have found the 9.7 tons of cocaine hidden in one of the
ship's cargo cranes, leading to the third-largest cocaine seizure in
history.

For some of its most important missions, Schakowsky complained, the
United States is relying more and more on private contractors who
employ retired military officers and U.S. Army Special Forces members
to conduct combat-related tasks that the military is barred by law
from carrying out.

Employees for one such contractor, DynCorp of northern Virginia, say
they regularly are exposed to combat situations in Colombia while
conducting missions such as aerial spraying of drug crops or
maintaining aircraft in areas where guerrilla attacks occur.

Last February, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) shot down a Colombian police helicopter during a
U.S.-supported spraying mission in southern Caqueta province. In
order to rescue the helicopter pilot and crew members, DynCorp
ordered its combat-trained personnel to assist.

"The FARC were maybe 100 or 200 yards away," the pilot, Colombian
police Capt. Giancarlo Cotrino, told a Bogota newspaper after his
rescue. "We were in combat for seven or eight minutes. One of my crew
had a grenade launcher and I had my pistol. We were under heavy
gunfire up until the (DynCorp) search-and-rescue helicopter landed
behind us."

U.S. law allows up to 500 U.S. military personnel and 300
civilian-contract personnel to be deployed in Colombia at any time.
They provide counterinsurgency instruction, maintain listening
outposts, or monitor air traffic from any of five U.S.-built rural
radar stations, among various other tasks.

Military personnel also are deployed in Peru at three U.S.-built
radar stations, in addition to hundreds of troops helping to
refurbish an air base in Manta, Ecuador, and to construct several
military bases in Bolivia.

"If this is a legitimate U.S. mission, we ought to know exactly what
it is, and we can't seem to find out," Schakowsky said in a phone
interview. "What happens if there is a ground skirmish and there are
casualties? What is the obligation of the United States toward these
(privately contracted) personnel?"

Nature of Missions Unclear

Similar questions arose in 1999, when a U.S. de Havilland RC-7
reconnaissance plane crashed in a southern Colombia combat zone,
killing all five U.S. service personnel and two Colombian military
officers on board. A subsequent investigation blamed the crash on
pilot error, but little else was revealed publicly about the nature
of the mission.

The government sometimes imposes strict rules of secrecy even when
missions are not technically classified as secret. Last year, Alex
Pinero, a retired U.S. Special Forces medic who once flew
search-and-rescue missions for DynCorp, posted his resume on the
Internet in hopes of finding another job.

When The Dallas Morning News published a story mentioning Pinero's
credentials and his current work in Colombia, the State Department
immediately revoked his security clearance. The same day, DynCorp
notified him that his contract in Colombia was canceled, Pinero said.
A DynCorp corporate attorney declined to comment.