CIA WARNING WAS LATE

U.S. Crew Objected Moments Before Attack

An audiotape made aboard a U.S. surveillance plane shows that its CIA
crew expressed doubts about whether a civilian aircraft they were
tracking was smuggling drugs 20 minutes before it was shot down last
week by the Peruvian air force. But they did not vigorously object
until just before it came under fire.

U.S. officials previously said the three crew members strenuously
resisted the shootdown. But the tape, described to The Washington Post
by U.S. officials, shows that the crew displayed little urgency as the
Peruvian jet approached the plane because they expected it to take a
closer look and read the plane's registration number. They sounded
surprised when the jet attacked.

The tape also indicates that a Peruvian official aboard the U.S. plane
who was communicating with the jet was paying little attention to
their concerns. The Americans' voices rise as the jet makes a series
of passes at the civilian plane and begins to shoot.

The hour-long operation also was captured on videotape, which
officials said supports U.S. statements that the Peruvian air force
rushed to shoot without completing procedures established by the two
countries to prevent the downing of innocent aircraft.

An American missionary, Veronica "Roni" Bowers, and her 7-month-old
daughter were killed when their single-engine Cessna was mistakenly
shot out of a clear morning sky by the Peruvian jet using targeting
information provided by the CIA surveillance aircraft under a
six-year-old intelligence sharing agreement.

During a closed briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, members of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence pressed CIA Director George J.
Tenet to explain why the American crew had not acted more decisively
to abort the mission if they suspected that the target aircraft was
not involved in drug trafficking. The senators asked whether the CIA
crew could have diverted their surveillance flight, depriving the
Peruvian A-37B jet of radar information needed to locate the suspect
plane.

Under the intelligence-sharing agreement between the two countries,
the decision to open fire on an aircraft can be made solely by
Peruvian military officials, while the U.S. crew remains out of the
chain of command. This understanding, designed to relieve personnel of
responsibility for intercepting civilian aircraft, also precludes them
from interceding to call off questionable missions.

But two former pilots for the CIA operation said the surveillance crew
might have been able to avert the downing of the missionary plane
simply by changing course and withholding radar information from the
Peruvian jet. The A-37B is not equipped with radar essential for
locating a target.

"The U.S. pilot could have backed up several miles [from the suspect
plane] and the A-37 would never have found him," said one of the
former CIA pilots.

The videotape, however, suggests that the U.S. crew refrained from
taking dramatic action to avert the downing because they did not
anticipate that the Peruvian jet would open fire so
precipitously.

"I cannot imagine that the American crew thought just because the
interceptor shows up and takes down the number, it's going to end up
in a shootdown," said a U.S. official who described the tape.

The tape indicates that the CIA personnel thought the jet was
approaching the small plane to take a closer look, observe the
registration number on its side and perhaps fire warning shots. Once
the jet had the target plane in sight, it no longer needed U.S. radar
information.

According to U.S. officials who provided a detailed, minute-by-minute
account of the audio and videotapes, the CIA crew first began to
wonder about the identity of the plane about 20 minutes before it was
shot down. The Americans commented casually to each other that the
plane -- flying at a high altitude, in a straight line, in daylight --
did not appear to fit the usual profile of a drug flight. They aired
their doubts more and more seriously as time went on.

A U.S. official said these discussions amounted to "vigorous"
objections. "Different people can define vigorous in their own way,"
he said.

He added that there was very little time for the CIA crew to resist
the shootdown once the Peruvian air force escalated to "Phase 3"
status, under which the jet can open fire.

Despite the CIA crew's doubts, they did not attempt to approach the
suspect plane so they could check its identity by reading its
registration number themselves. Though the official procedures leave
it to the Peruvian air force to verify the registration number, U.S.
officials said it has been standard procedure during hundreds of
surveillance missions over Peru for the CIA personnel to try to obtain
the number before an attack is launched.

In this case, U.S. officials said the CIA plane did not approach the
civilian aircraft for fear that it might flee into Brazilian airspace,
where neither U.S. nor Peruvian planes could follow.

But the civilian plane was headed away from the border toward the city
of Iquitos, and the audiotape indicates the CIA crew might have had
time to act on its doubts once the plane was at a distance from the
border. A U.S. official said the crew decided at that point to leave
the task to the Peruvian jet, which was already airborne.

On the tape, the Peruvian liaison officer aboard the surveillance plane is
clearly heard trying to reach the suspect plane on several radio frequencies
and saying in Spanish: "This is the Peruvian air force. You're being asked
to proceed directly to Iquitos." No response is received.

But it is uncertain from the tape whether the surveillance plane was
monitoring the radio frequency on which the missionary plane talked
with the Iquitos airport. This communication could have tipped the CIA
personnel and their Peruvian colleagues to the innocent nature of the
flight before the jet made its final assault.

Hank Scheltema, aviation director for the Association of Baptists for
World Evangelism, said yesterday that his group's plane had contacted
the Iquitos airport about 45 minutes after it took off -- or about 15
to 20 minutes before attack.

But Mario Justo, civil aviation chief at the Iquitos airport, said the
tower received no communication from the missionary plan until moments
before it was downed. "At that moment, the pilot radioed the tower and
said in a very calm voice that a military jet was beside him but he
didn't know what the jet wanted him to do," he said.

The tape also makes clear that the CIA crew members had difficulty
communicating with the Peruvian liaison on the plane because they
spoke little Spanish. One of the former CIA pilots said this
shortcoming has bedeviled the intelligence-sharing program for years.
"That's one of the fallacies of the whole program: the language
barrier," he said. "Language is terrible."

After Tenet's closed briefing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Bob Graham
(D-Fla.) raised similar concerns. "My judgment is, there was a
communication problem and we'll have to go from there," he said.

Graham, vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said President
Bush had been correct on Monday to suspend all drug surveillance
missions over South and Central American until the incident was
reviewed and the safeguards reassessed.

"We frankly don't have a full picture of what transpired, and until
you have that, you can't make a judgment of whether the practices,
policies and standards by which these operations are conducted are
going to require some changes," he said. Graham said Tenet had told
the committee that the CIA would complete most of its investigation by
Thursday and would report back then.

Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this
report from Washington. Correspondent Anthony Faiola contributed from
Peru.