U.S. HAD ROLE IN DOWNING PLANE

American Surveillance Aircraft Spotted Missionaries' Cessna, Directed
Peruvian Military To It

IQUITOS, Peru -- A U.S. government surveillance plane flying over
northern Peru had identified a small aircraft carrying American
missionaries as a possible drug flight and passed the information to
the Peruvian air force shortly before a Peruvian fighter jet shot it
from the sky Friday morning, U.S. sources said Saturday.

In Lima, the U.S. Embassy said further drug interdiction flights had
been suspended, "pending a thorough investigation and review by
Peruvian and U.S. officials of how this tragic incident took place."

A mother and her 7-month-old daughter were killed by rounds fired
from the Peruvian plane.

The missionary plane, a single-engine Cessna 185 that was flying from
the Colombian border toward the city of Iquitos, 620 miles northeast
of Lima, tumbled to an emergency landing in the Amazon River. The
pilot, who was shot in the leg, survived, as did the woman's husband
and their other child.

The U.S. government plane, a twin-engine Cessna Citation jet, was
piloted by a civilian working under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy
in Lima. The U.S. Customs Service operates such flights routinely
over Peruvian airspace in search of low-flying drug couriers.

Under a longstanding intelligence-sharing agreement with Peru, the
United States passes information on suspect planes to the Peruvian
military, which has a policy of intercepting the aircraft and forcing
them to land or shooting them down.

Under the agreement with the United States, Peru cannot use U.S. air
surveillance or radar data to attack a suspected drug plane unless it
is flying without a flight plan. The rules of engagement say Peruvian
fighters must try to make radio contact and visually signal a suspect
aircraft to land before opening fire.

The Peruvian government said the plane entered Peruvian air space
from Brazil without filing a flight plan and that it was fired on
after the pilot failed to respond to "international procedures of
identification and interception."

But Mario Justo, chief of Iquitos' airport, said Saturday that the
plane did have a flight plan and that its pilot was in radio contact
with the Iquitos airport control tower.

He later "clarified" his statement, saying the plane did not have a
flight plan when it set out from Brazil on Friday morning, but that
one was established when the pilot made radio contact with Iquitos'
airport control tower at about 10:48 a.m. Friday.

Peruvian military officials insisted Saturday that the miss-ionaries'
plane failed to respond to radio messages and signals to land, but
that version of events was contested by Jim Bowers, whose wife,
Veronica Bowers, 35, and daughter Charity, 7 months, were killed in
the attack.

Bowers gave his account of the hellish flight to a Peruvian air force
colonel investigating the incident Friday evening, and his brother,
Phil Bowers, sat in on the interview. The Bowers brothers, from
Muskegon, Mich., were raised by missionary parents in the Amazon
jungles of Brazil.

Phil Bowers, who was not on the flight, said his brother told the
colonel that the Peruvian military made no attempt to communicate
over the radio before two or three jets opened fire on the small
plane.

Hundreds of villagers watched as at least one of the military planes
fired at the disabled Cessna and the survivors as they floated in the
Amazon River, Phil Bowers said. He added that the U.S. "surveillance
plane also saw the whole thing from up high."

A U.S. Embassy official declined to comment on Bowers' statements. A
spokesman in Lima said only that a U.S. radar aircraft was in the
area during the incident but declined to comment on its role, saying
that the issue is under investigation by U.S. and Peruvian
authorities.

But Washington officials briefed on the incident said the U.S. radar
plane had "guided the Peruvian jet by radio" to a "suspect
drug-runner" that turned out to be the missionaries' plane.

Though the U.S. military is heavily involved in counter-drug
operations in Latin America, Pentagon officials denied that their
planes had anything to do with the incident.

A former U.S. official with close knowledge of the anti-drug
agreement with Peru, said most of the two dozen shootdowns of
suspected drug planes over Peru since 1995 were recorded on a
sophisticated version of videotape by the U.S. surveillance planes.

The Peruvian A-37 fighter jets, he said, have no air-to-air radar and
thus are "flying blind" until the U.S. surveillance aircraft directs
them to the exact location of a suspect plane.

In many cases, both the suspect plane and the Peruvian attackers, as
well as any confrontation between them, are fully visible by eye to
the surveillance plane's crew. The reconnaissance plane is also in
radio communication with the Peruvians.

"It happened very fast," Phil Bowers said in an interview Saturday in
Iquitos. "The planes flew by first, did some swooping, and then came
in from behind and started shooting. "At some point, one of the
bullets had gone through Roni's heart, right into the baby's head,
from behind. They died instantly, which was a blessing," he said.

Pilot Kevin Donaldson, of Morgantown, Pa., was seriously injured,
shot in his legs, but managed to bring down the pontoon-equipped
plane into the Amazon, where it bounced and then flipped over.
Donaldson pulled himself out and Bowers unstrapped his wife and
daughter and carried them to a pontoon.

He told his 7-year-old son, Cory, who was not injured, to jump into the water.

About 45 minutes later, local Peruvians rescued them in a dugout
canoe and took them to the small, nearby city of Pebas. Jim and
"Roni" Bowers were well known in Pebas, according to David Southwell,
of the U.S.- based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, the
Bowerses missionary group.

"If there had been any warning given, I can guarantee you that our
pilot would have landed," Southwell said. "We have been operating for
14 years in aviation in that area of Peru and nothing like that has
happened before.

Four hours after the group reached Pebas, Southwell said, a Peruvian
Air Force Twin Otter carrying some American personnel arrived and
carried the Bowers to Iquitos. Donaldson, one of whose legs was
shattered, was brought to an Iquitos hospital Saturday.

A U.S. official said the decision to suspend the drug interdiction
program came after hours of meetings between White House and State
Department aides, including some traveling with Bush.

Since the early 1990s, Peru has been a key South American ally in the
United States' war on drug trafficking. Once the world's leading
producers of coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, Peru
supplied Colombia's drug cartels. Much of that cocaine went to the
United States, the world's biggest consumer of the drug.

U.S. officials have hailed Peru's coca eradication efforts as a
success. CIA data released in January showed Peru's coca production
fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2000.

The U.S. government suspended its cooperation with Peruvian
shoot-downs in mid-1994 amid fears of liabilities if innocent people
were killed. But it resumed after Congress passed a law in 1995
granting immunity to U.S. personnel in such incidents.