INQUIRY ON PERU LOOKS AT A C.I.A. CONTRACT

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.

But some Congressional officials privately voiced discomfort that
civilians could be detailed to such a delicate mission.

"They have a higher impression of their tactical and technical
proficiency than they should," said one official, who asked not to be
identified. "Not one person on that aircraft had a commission from
the U.S. government to do what they were doing. No one took an oath
to the Constitution. They were just businessmen."

American anti-narcotics officials have privately expressed similar
doubts about the contractors. Some note that the Aviation Development
crew had identified the missionary plane as suspect even though it
was en route to Iquitos, Peru, rather than leaving that country's
airspace.

The State Department announced today that it was sending a senior
anti-narcotics official, Rand Beers, to Peru to lead a joint
investigation with the authorities there. In Congress, intelligence
committees are gathering information about the incident; a House
Government Reform subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.

It is not clear whether Aviation Development, whose employees on the
surveillance plane first identified the missionaries' plane as a
potential d rug flight, worked exclusively for the C.I.A. Phone calls
to the company's office at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery went
unanswered this week, and calls to the home of its president, Lex
Thistlethwaite, were not returned.

The authorities at Maxwell have allowed the company to operate out of
a remote hangar at the base since 1997. But even the officials
responsible for handling private contractors said they knew almost
nothing about Aviation Development or its activities.

"If they're who I think they are, they've been here for two or three
years," said Susan Smith, who is in charge of business operations.
"My office has no relationship with them. The contract was written
out of some organization in Washington, D.C."

The C.I.A. has long been known to set up front companies to mask its
activities, especially in aviation. At their peak in the mid-1960's,
companies that were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the agency and had
such names as the Civil Air Transport Company, Air America and
Intermountain Aviation employed as many as 20,000 people and operated
about 200 planes, rivaling the size of Trans World Airlines.

Yet in recent years, American military and intelligence agencies have
increasingly contracted workers from private companies. The practice
allows federal officials to reduce the visibility of sensitive
operations by substituting paid civilians for American troops or
career intelligence officers.

In Colombia, for instance, where Congress has strictly limited the
number of American troops and their activities, federal officials
have hired DynCorp, an information technology and aviation giant, to
conduct drug crop fumigation runs and ferry Colombian troops into
conflict zones.

Unlike American military advisers, the contract workers in Colombia
are not bound by lawmakers' orders to avoid combat.

The extent of the C.I.A.'s involvement with aviation companies became
public in the mid-1980's, when longtime employees of agency-owned
airlines applied for government pensions. The employees, who decades
earlier had undertaken perilous missions to air-drop agents into
China or supply the French at Dien Bien Phu, were dismayed when the
government blocked their request on the grounds that they never
officially worked for the C.I.A.

Then, in 1987, Eugene Hasenfus, a pilot who was shot down over
Nicaragua while flying supplies to the American-backed contra rebels,
filed suit against two airlines with C.I.A. connections: Corporate
Air Services and Southern Air Transport. Mr. Hasenfus, who had flown
for Air America, a C.I.A. airline, in Southeast Asia, sued the
companies for negligence and fraud, all the while casting light on
their ties to American intelligence.

Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the C.I.A., today declined to discuss
the agency's relationship with Aviation Development. "We have no
comment on the company involved and the contractors in this case," he
said.

When Aviation Development first settled at Maxwell in 1997, it was
greeted with considerable fanfare.

Mr. Thistlethwaite announced at the time that he had received a $10
million Pentagon contract to test and evaluate several different
airborne sensors, according to a news release. The company would use
five Cessna Citation V twin-engine jet aircraft, he said.

Mr. Thistlethwaite, who said Aviation Development was his first
company, delighted local officials by joining the Chamber of Commerce
and pledging to employ about 45 people, with about a third hired
locally.

Emory Folmar, the mayor of Montgomery at the time, said the
completion of a 1,000-foot extension to Maxwell's runway had helped
lure the company to the base.

That runway extension, which cost $5.7 million, had been advocated by
Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who has since
become the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and
Representative Terry Everett, a Republican who represents the
Montgomery area.

Andrea Andrews, a spokeswoman for Mr. Shelby, confirmed his role in
winning the runway improvement at Maxwell. But she said the senator
had no ties to Aviation Development or to Mr. Thistlethwaite.