CIA'S HISTORY IN PERU PLAGUED BY PROBLEMS

Peru Shoot-Down Policy Of Drug Flights Tainted By Revelations Of Bribes,
Futility

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- The Peruvian air force's downing of a
single-engine Cessna airplane, which killed an American missionary and her
infant daughter, is simply the latest chapter in a troubled story of the
CIA's tangled connections to Peru's armed forces.

The Clinton administration called the Andean nation's 120,000-man armed
forces a vital partner in U.S. anti-narcotics efforts, thanks in large
measure to an aggressive shoot-down policy that has wiped out at least 30
small aircraft operated by suspected drug traffickers. Production of coca,
the raw material used to make cocaine, also dropped sharply.

Yet it was recently revealed that although Peru's air force may have downed
some drug traffickers, it was taking huge bribes from others to let them
pass. Between deep corruption and this latest accident, there are serious
questions about how successful the partnership between the two countries
has been and whether the shoot-down policy makes sense.

Roger Rumrill, a Peruvian expert and author on the drug trade, called
Friday's downing of the Cessna the "most absurd accident in the world,"
because more than 70 percent of the drug trade between Peru and Colombia
now moves by sea along the Pacific Coast, not by air.

When Peru's air force took over efforts to control airborne drug
trafficking, there were more than 100 drug flights a week along the Amazon
border with Colombia and Brazil. Successful downings moved that trade to
the river system, and that later gave way to ocean transport, Rumrill said.

"Right now, interdiction and control efforts are at their lowest, because
there are no serious air or river routes," he said.

With U.S.-backed efforts at coca eradication picking up steam next door in
Colombia, many fear that scandal-induced disarray in Peru's military will
help shift production back to Peru.

"If the price of coca goes up as a result of success in controlling supply
in Colombia, then more and more producers are going to return to growing
coca" in Peru in response to market forces, John Crabtree, head of Andean
research programs at England's Oxford University, said in an interview in
Lima earlier this month.

Although Colombia and Peru continue a shoot-down policy, Brazil's law
allowing it remains "under study" by the president's office nearly two
years after the legislature passed it.

"It's too controversial," said a Brazilian defense official, citing fear
over a possible tragic accident such as the shooting down of the missionaries.

The shoot-down policy has a dark history in Peru. Former President Alberto
Fujimori, a longtime U.S. ally in wars against drug traffickers and leftist
guerrillas, fled to exile in Japan in November to avoid corruption charges,
and his powerful spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, became an international
fugitive. Fujimori's top military leaders are all in jail, facing charges
ranging from corruption and running arms to Colombian guerrillas in the
drug trade to protecting drug traffickers from the shoot-down effort.

On April 5, retired Gen. Nicolas Hermoza, Fujimori's armed forces commander
from 1992 to 2000, was arrested and charged with protecting drug
traffickers. Captured drug baron Demetrio "El Vaticano" Chavez testified he
paid $50,000 each to Montesinos and Hermoza to allow safe passage for
planes carrying cocaine.

Chavez alleges that the shoot-down policy protected some traffickers over
others instead of blasting all suspected shipments out of the sky.

More damning evidence came last summer, when word leaked to the news media
that the military leadership had moved Jordanian weapons to Colombia
guerrillas, who control the world's prime cocaine-production region. That
threatened U.S. efforts in Colombia, where a $1.3 billion military aid
package called "Plan Colombia" began last year.

The arms trafficking raises questions about why the CIA so steadfastly
supported Peru's military and Montesinos. It would be embarrassing if the
CIA knew nothing of its partner's activities, but more embarrassing if it
knew he was working for both sides.