A POLICY GONE WRONG? PERU DRUG PROGRAM CAUSED CONCERN BEFORE

WASHINGTON - The Peruvian air force's attack on a small plane carrying U.S.
missionaries focused attention yesterday on how U.S. intelligence and
Peru's military coordinate their fight against narcotics trafficking.

CIA personnel on the U.S. surveillance plane did not attempt to read the
registration number on the side of the civilian aircraft before it was shot
down by the Peruvian air force Friday because they were afraid it would
flee if they got too close, U.S. officials said yesterday.

An American missionary, Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old
daughter, Charity, were killed when, according to U.S. accounts, the
Peruvian air force rushed the procedures established by both countries to
distinguish drug-trafficking flights from innocent aircraft.

Those procedures require Peruvian pilots to identify a plane before
attacking it. But the practice during hundreds of U.S. surveillance
missions has been for U.S. personnel to fly close enough to obtain a
suspected plane's registration number before a Peruvian military jet is
ordered into the air, U.S. officials said.

As the Bush administration prepared to send a team of top officials to
investigate Friday's mistaken attack, the U.S. yesterday suspended all its
drug-surveillance flights in Central and South America while officials
reassess the rules they follow.

"We've got to review the entire program," Secretary of State Colin Powell
told PBS's "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

A previous mistake

U.S. officials previously raised concerns with their Peruvian counterparts
after a Peruvian jet, using American intelligence information, shot down a
private aircraft in 1997 without following safety procedures established by
both countries.

Though the aircraft downed in August 1997 proved to be a drug plane, the
CIA quickly launched an "intensive dialogue" with Peruvian officials out of
fear that providing American radar data could end in tragedy, according to
a former State Department official who was posted in Peru at the time.

The incident prompted CIA and other U.S. officials to pursue the issue with
top Peruvian officers and those operating in the field. U.S. officials
required the Peruvians to read and sign statements that they had reviewed
all the procedures for interdiction operations, the official said. Training
sessions also were conducted twice a month.

Congress to investigate

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has led previous inquiries into U.S.
anti-drug policy overseas, was planning to call for a congressional
investigation of the incident, aides said.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, cited a wealth of "conflicting facts as of this evening on
this case" and said the panel hoped to resolve those discrepancies during a
closed-door briefing today.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged that a CIA
air-surveillance crew flying near the missionary plane notified the
Peruvian air force the plane might be smuggling narcotics. But, he added,
"there are certainly indications that some of our folks - that our folks on
the plane were trying to hold the Peruvians back from taking action in this
case."

The Peruvian air force said yesterday it regretted the deaths of Bowers and
her daughter but denied suggestions that Peru did not follow proper
procedures to identify the aircraft before firing.

"The only thing I can tell you is that the air force followed the
procedures," said air-force spokesman Cmdr. Rommel Roca.

The survivors of the attack maintain that they were fired upon without
warning and that air-force jets continued to strafe them even after they
had crash-landed into the Amazon River in Peru's northern jungle, according
to relatives.

Among the facts in dispute is whether a flight plan was filed before pilot
Kevin Donaldson set out from Iquitos to Islandia, a Peruvian jungle town
near a section of the Amazon and one of its tributaries that separate Peru,
Brazil and Colombia.

Donaldson's father said he believed one was filed. Their Pennsylvania-based
missionary organization posted a copy of the document on its Web page.

Though it can't be determined from the page if or when the plan was filed
with authorities, the plan clearly indicates a flight route of
Iquitos-Islandia-Iquitos for five passengers. It is signed by Donaldson,
who is listed as the pilot.

The air-interdiction policy originated in 1994, when Congress pressured the
Clinton administration to stem the flow of drugs from Latin America. The
policy included the authority to shoot down drug smugglers, and it
insulated U.S. forces from liability in the case of an accidental shooting.

The Bush administration's version of the fatal error is based on a
videotape and soundtrack recorded by the U.S. surveillance plane, a Cessna
Citation executive jet packed with surveillance equipment, officials said.

"It's a bit confusing because it was multiple conversations, radio
transmissions from different people. Many of them step on each other. A lot
of it was in Spanish," said a U.S. official who reviewed the videotape and
spoke on condition he not be identified.

He said the CIA contract employees are heard questioning the Peruvians'
decision to attack the aircraft, because it did not fit the profile of a
drug-smuggling plane.

"Our guys were concerned because the profile just didn't fit for them,"
said the official. "The plane was flying straight and level. There were no
evasion tactics."

The videotape also shows that the Peruvians omitted or "truncated" various
parts of the procedure designed to avoid the downing of civilian aircraft,
he said.

Low profile for U.S. planes

The U.S. military, Coast Guard and Customs Service operate numerous
surveillance flights to detect and interdict narcotics-smuggling aircraft
over the Caribbean, Central America and the Andean drug-producing region.

But the U.S. surveillance plane that tracked the missionaries was part of a
classified program jointly run by the Pentagon and the CIA. It is designed
to maintain a low profile to protect the crews from being targeted by
narco-traffickers, the U.S. official said.

The aircraft, which are unmarked, are owned by the Pentagon and operated by
employees of a private firm contracted by the CIA, said the official. He
declined to identify the company.

Since March 1995, the Peruvians have "shot, forced down or strafed" more
than 30 aircraft suspected of carrying drug traffickers and have seized
more than a dozen on the ground, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Strict procedures established by U.S. and Peruvian authorities govern when
a suspect plane could be shot down.

In Friday's incident, Peruvian authorities told U.S. officials they could
not find a flight plan for the plane, which was seen by U.S. officials
traveling in a trafficking zone between Peru and Brazil at 9:43 a.m.

The Peruvian military officer who was flying the U.S. spotting plane
attempted to raise the missionary plane on the radio in Spanish on three
different frequencies but heard no response, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The same officials said it was "unclear" whether warning shots were fired,
and if they were, whether the pilot or passengers of the missionary plane
saw them.

Peruvian officials did not present any evidence to contradict U.S. claims
that the pilot skipped intermediate steps before firing on the plane. Nor
did they offer evidence to contradict the U.S. assertion that the
surveillance-plane crew issued warnings to delay any attack pending
identification of the missionaries' aircraft.

The air-force official also said that investigators are trying to determine
what frequency Donaldson had the plane's radio tuned to. The pilot has said
he heard nothing on the radio.

Families reflect

The friends and relatives of Veronica and Charity Bowers had their own
answer yesterday for what happened: It was God's will.

Even the wounded pilot, whose foot nearly was severed by a machine-gun
blast but who managed to land the plane in the river, insisted yesterday
that the incident was guided by divine hand.

"It certainly is no credit to me," Donaldson, 42, said in a brief statement
from Reading Hospital and Medical Center in Reading, Pa., where his
shattered foot was being treated. "It was obviously the Lord that landed
the aircraft."

Some who knew "Roni" Bowers said they remain baffled by the gaps in
official explanations offered by both the U.S. and Peruvian governments.

Despite the conflicting accounts, many who knew the couple said they were
finding acceptance in a tragedy that promised no immediate peace.

"They knew a drug war was going on, but they weren't concerned because they
figured they were in the Lord's hands, and he would take care of them,"
Grace Zandstra, the slain woman's aunt, said yesterday from her home in
Muskegon, Mich.

But others close to Bowers strained to understand how the Baptist
missionary plane her family rode in could have been mistaken for a
drug-smuggling craft.

Donaldson reported that the evangelists' plane was strafed while he,
37-year-old missionary James Bowers - Roni's husband - and their 6-year-old
son, Cory - tried to keep from drowning.

The dead woman's husband, who was detained and interrogated by Peruvian
authorities before he returned with his son to his brother's home near
Raleigh, N.C., said yesterday that he was "thankful" for both countries'
efforts to "investigate why this tragedy occurred."

Bowers expressed concern yesterday for his wife's family and for "our
Peruvian friends." But he declined to speak in detail about what happened
until his wife's funeral, scheduled for Friday in her hometown of Muskegon.

Roni Bowers and the child were apparently killed by a single bullet that
passed through the woman's body and entered the skull of the infant, who
was sitting on her mother's lap.

Information from the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press is included
in this report.