ALABAMA CIA AIR CONTRACTOR: WE DON'T KNOW NUTHIN' 'BOUT NO PERU

Washington -- In January 1998, five twin-engine Cessna Citation V
jets owned by the Defense Department arrived at Alabama's Maxwell Air
Force Base. Their landing was heralded by the local Montgomery
Advertiser, which noted in a short but enthusiastic piece that the
aircraft were part of a $10 million program the military had
outsourced to a recently incorporated local contractor.

According to the paper, the new company, Aviation Development
Corporation, had been retained to test state-of-the-art airborne
radar, forward-looking infrared, and signals intercept sensors --
sensors that, according to a base spokesman, had broad applications
for aerial law enforcement operations and military search-and-rescue
missions.

It wasn't a stretch to conclude that the sensors-equipped aircraft
were destined for Latin America, where a number of private military
companies have spent the past decade flying a variety of anti-drug
missions for the U.S. government.

On April 20, 2001, a Peruvian air force jet shot down a small
single-prop plane full of Baptist missionaries, killing Veronica
Bowers and her infant daughter.

The Baptist plane was not fingered by the Peruvians, but by what the
Washington Post initially reported was a CIA surveillance aircraft --
a Cessna Citation V, to be precise.

Subsequent reports noted that the aircraft was in fact owned by the
Defense Department, but operated by a crew of outside contractors who
have gone unidentified -- a perfect example if the lack of
accountability due to the privatization of the drug war.

An In These Times investigation has revealed that the contract
aircrew is employed by Aviation Development Corporation, the same
company that handled the Cessna surveillance tests in Alabama. "All
I'm going to say about who was flying that plane in Peru," a Pentagon
official told In These Times, "is that you should look around Maxwell
Air Force Base," where ADC is based.

No one answers ADC's phone, and its president, Edward A. "Lex"
Thistlethwaite Jr., did not return messages left at his home. Despite
having a listing in the Maxwell Air Force Base phone directory,
spokesman Capt. Ken Hoffman was also unable to reach anyone from ADC.
Nor was he able to find anyone at the base who knew anything about
the company or the current location of the Cessna Citations.

When Glenn Owen -- whom Alabama records list as the company's
secretary -- was reached at his home, he refused to answer any
questions about ADC's connections with the U.S. government or its
Latin American operations. "I'm not free to comment," he said,
refusing to elaborate. "And I don't see anyone getting back to you."

In the name of counter-narcotics, the U.S. government has been waging
a private war in the Andes for years.

While active-duty U.S. soldiers are allowed to train South American
military units, under congressional mandate and Pentagon regulations,
they're not allowed to take part in combat, and limitations are
placed on the number of personnel who can be in-country. (For
example, Plan Colombia caps the number of active-duty soldiers
in-country at 500.)

However, the same restrictions do not apply to private military
companies under contract with the U.S. government. While a State
Department rule technically prohibits contractors from taking part in
combat operations, the rule has been clearly violated, and a handful
of contractors have been killed in combat operations. Three
helicopter pilots employed by Virginia-based DynCorp were shot down
and killed in Peru in 1992, and this past February, four DynCorp
"contractors" -- all ex-Special Forces -- ended up in a near-fatal
firefight rescuing the crew of a helicopter downed by Colombian FARC
rebels.

Because these U.S. agents in Latin America are contractors, as
opposed to actual servicemen, both their activities and their deaths
attract little attention.

This is hardly surprising given the notoriously opaque qualities
intrinsic to private military companies, and very attractive to U.S.
policy-makers who tremble at the thought of actual servicemen either
being linked to local human rights violators or shipped home in
coffins.

Drug war critics have long argued that it's time to reconsider this
approach to overseas counter-narcotics operations. On April 25, Rep.
Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) introduced the Andean Region Contractor
Accountability Act, a measure that calls for the U.S. government to
cease using outsourced contractors as surrogates for American
military and law enforcement elements in the Andes. The bill's
introduction came a day after Schakowsky and Rep. Cynthia McKinney
(D-Georgia) sent a letter to President Bush asking him not only to
cease aerial intelligence sharing with all the Andean countries, but
to "immediately suspend all contracts with private military firms and
individuals for narcotics control and law enforcement services in the
Andean region."

Holding that the Bowers incident was a direct result of U.S. drug
policy, the duo added: "The U.S. uses private military companies in
its drug operations throughout Latin America, and they operate
largely out of the public eye. Now that their operations have
resulted in the deaths of two Americans, we believe it is time to
take a closer look at the policy that permits this practice."

"The most important thing the congresswoman is trying to say here is
that our current drug interdiction policy has failed, and we need to
re-examine our strategy in dealing with narcotics," says Schakowsky
spokesman Nadeam Elshami. "We have to be clear -- if we're going to
participate in these kinds of activities, taxpayers need to know. It
should be our military that is participating, and not private
companies given taxpayer money to do the military's dirty work."

Though Virginia-based Military Professional Resources Inc. (whose
dubious claim to fame is helping the Croatians plan the ethnic
cleansing of the Serbian Krajina in 1994) has not renewed its
contract in Colombia, airborne units from U.S.-based AirScan, East
Inc. and DynCorp are all still active in the Andes. According to
provisions of their contracts with the U.S. government, their
operatives are forbidden from interacting with the press, though a
few enterprising journalists have interviewed operatives who report
that their aircraft routinely return home with bullet holes courtesy
of narco-trafficking rebels.

The Andean insurgents are not, however, the only ones in the region
known for being trigger-happy. Over the years, a perennial problem
for the United States has been the "shoot first, ask questions later"
mentality of Latin American military pilots, and, in the name of
satiating zealous drug-war cheerleaders, the American agencies in the
drug war have done everything they can to divest themselves of any
responsibility for a mishap such as the Bowers incident.

As far back as seven years ago, Washington knew its counternarcotics
allies were a little too quick on the draw and, in May 1994, abruptly
suspended sharing real-time intercept intelligence with the
Colombians and Peruvians. Lawyers from the Justice, Defense and State
departments concluded that furnishing foreign powers with
intelligence used to shoot down unarmed civilian aircraft was a
violation of a 1984 amendment to the International Convention on
Civil Aviation. (That the amendment had been backed by the United
States as a response to the Soviet downing of Korean Airlines flight
007 gave the issue a particularly poignant edge.)

Of greater concern was the lawyers' conclusion that if U.S.-provided
intelligence was used in the accidental downing of an innocent
aircraft -- something the Pentagon was seriously concerned about --
U.S. personnel, at both the executive and operational level, would be
in definite violation of the 1984 amendment, and, under its
provisions, subject to criminal charges and even the death penalty.

But upon appraisal of the freeze and the reasons for it, drug war
boosters in both the administration and Congress went into fits of
apoplexy and indignation, charging the Pentagon with undercutting an
effective counter-drug program.

Among those infuriated by the Pentagon move was New Jersey's Robert
Torricelli -- then a Democratic representative, now a senator.

At a June 22, 1994 House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing,
Torricelli lambasted the Pentagon, calling it "incredible" that a
trifle like the "legal vulnerabilities of U.S. government officials"
would require a suspension of activity.

In light of recent events, it's worth revisiting one of Torricelli's
riffs on this point:

The U.S. government tracks narco-traffickers bringing cocaine to the
United States. That information is merely provided to the Peruvian or
Colombian governments. They pass it to their own officials, who make
their own judgments.

Peruvian aircraft tracks a narco-trafficker, operating with no flight
plan, often at night, with no lights.

The plane is approached and [there's an] attempt to communicate.
There's no response. They attempt on radio communications on multiple
frequencies. There's no response.

There's an effort to lead them to an airport for a forced landing.

They refuse and attempt to evade.

And then warning shots are fired.

Do you seriously believe that there is a jury in America, of any
combination of American citizens, anywhere, under those
circumstances, that would find a liability for U.S. government
officials?

Given recent circumstances, the question is perhaps best posed to a
suddenly widowed husband and father from Michigan. At the time,
however, a beleaguered Robert Gelbard, then an assistant secretary of
state, responded that the issue of balance between
intelligence-sharing and compliance with the law was "not an easy
issue susceptible to a sound-bite solution."

Making the hearing even more surreal was the flip-flop of rationality
between Torricelli and Gelbard. Gelbard maintained that the Peruvians
and Colombians had not actually downed any planes using U.S. radar
information. Torricelli, recently returned from an Andean junket,
said that in private he had been told by Colombian and Peruvian
officials that dozens of planes either had been forced or shot down
by both governments. "If they admit that they're shooting down
aircraft, you suspend cooperation and sharing information with them,"
Torricelli said. "Of course they're going to [officially] tell you
they're not shooting down any aircraft."

Torricelli's remarks reflected the "wink and nod" view taken by drug
warriors irked by legal restrictions on downing unarmed civilian
aircraft. In the end, those drug warriors carried the day: The 1995
Defense Authorization Act included language that not only allows
American military aircraft to take part in downing civilian planes,
but relieves pilots from any responsibility should they be complicit
in a wrongful shooting.

Since then, the United States has made sure its surveillance
personnel are not part of the chain-of-command that shoots down
planes over the Andes, and has expanded the use of private military
contractors in an effort to maintain an arms-length approach in the
regions.

There are hopes that Schakowsky's bill will prompt a serious inquiry
not only into drug war orthodoxy, but this type of contractor use;
according to her staffers, even some Republicans are warming to her
proposed legislation. But she can expect a fight from the
contractors, many of whom have profitable, longstanding ties to the
defense and intelligence establishments, as well as the usual lot of
craven politicians from both parties who perpetuate the mythology of
a righteous drug war.

In the wake of the Bowers incident, Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala) --
Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on the Intelligence and drug
war hawk -- has called for a thorough review of the U.S.'s aerial
intelligence sharing program.

While he's gone to pains to point out that blame for the shootdown
seems to lie more with the Peruvians than anyone else, it bears
noting that Shelby himself had an indirect role in the incident. In
1994, the senator successfully shepherded through the House and
Senate a $5.7 million appropriation to extend Maxwell Air Force
Base's runway by 1000 feet, giving the base a "competitive edge."
When the Montgomery Advertiser announced in 1998 that the area
economy was the recipient of a positive $10 million financial impact
courtesy the Aviation Development Corporation contract, the mayor
said that a major factor in ADC's presence at Maxwell was Senator
Shelby's fine work in getting that runway extension funded.