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 brief-ed 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.

This story is compiled from reports by the Washington Post, Associated
Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers.