DRUG PLANES A U.S. TARGET AGAIN

State Dept. To Take Over Program Shelved After Missionaries Downed

Washington -- President Bush is expected to approve the resumption of a
program to force or shoot down airplanes suspected of ferrying drugs in
Latin America, a year after the program was halted by the mistaken downing
of a plane carrying American missionaries in Peru, U.S. officials say.

Once the president gives his final approval, the State Department would
take over the program from the Central Intelligence Agency, and U.S.
officials said air interdiction operations could begin in Colombia as early
as this fall and would most likely be expanded to Peru later.

The Pentagon would support the program as well, providing intelligence
about suspected drug flights gathered from ground-based radars and from
other sources, officials said.

The program calls for the United States to identify and locate suspected
drug planes, and for Colombian and Peruvian air force planes to shoot them
down if they do not respond to calls to land. U.S. officials said the
governments of both Colombia and Peru had expressed support for restarting
the operation.

The program's many critics had assumed that the mistaken killings of two
Americans would make it impossible for the White House to start it up
again. But the plans for resumption began months ago, and in recent weeks
Colombia's incoming president, Alvaro Uribe, visited Washington to urge an
aggressive U.S. role in Latin American anti-drug efforts.

The decision to shift the management of the program to the State Department
came after CIA Director George Tenet made it clear that his agency no
longer wanted any part of the operation, officials said. Since the
missionary plane's downing, Congress has placed restrictions on the CIA's
involvement, officials said.

The CIA said last year that a contractor, Aviation Development Corp. in
Alabama, ran the program on its behalf. But Aviation Development was
actually a CIA front company, and public scrutiny of the program after the
downing of the plane prompted the CIA to dissolve it, officials familiar
with the program said. Alabama state records show that Aviation Development
was dissolved in January.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has expressed strong support for resuming
the air interdiction operations. Although Bush has not given a final green
light, the administration is already far advanced in its preparations for
resuming the program, several officials said.

The Cessna Citation surveillance jets that the CIA previously operated in
the air interdiction program have been upgraded and transferred to the
State Department, officials said. Colombian air force pilots have just
completed basic training in the United States on how to fly the Citation
jets and are scheduled to begin more advanced training in how to perform
the complex interdiction missions as early as August.

In April, the State Department awarded a contract to an aviation company
based in Maryland, ARINC Corp., to help train Colombian and Peruvian pilots
and manage the air operation, officials said. A spokeswoman for ARINC
confirmed that the company had received the contract.

ARINC has tried to hire back many of the same workers who were involved
with the program when it was run by the CIA. But some have refused, at
least in part because they do not believe that the State Department is
allotting sufficient time for training, according to people familiar with
the program.

One of the biggest changes under the new plan is that the Citation
surveillance aircraft, previously flown by CIA contractor crews, would be
flown by Colombian and Peruvian pilots, officials said.

ARINC will have one bilingual observer on each surveillance plane, offering
recommendations. But the final decision on whether to direct fighter planes
to fire on suspect aircraft would be with the Peruvian and Colombian pilots.

The United States would still provide the crucial intelligence for the
missions, however, through an organization called the Joint Interagency
Task Force-East. Based in Key West, Fla., the task force, which is part of
the military's Southern Command, would provide radar and other information
to help the Peruvian and Colombian air forces know when to start their
interceptor missions.

The administration suspended the air interdiction program immediately after
the April 2001 downing in Peru, which killed Veronica Bowers, a missionary,
and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity. Her husband, James, and their son,
Cory, survived. The pilot of the small Cessna, Kevin Donaldson, was able to
crash-land it along the Amazon River despite his wounds from the attack by
a Peruvian air force interceptor.

The administration has asked Congress to approve an $8 million compensation
payment to the survivors of the attack, but officials said a final
settlement was still pending.

The purpose of the air interdiction program, first begun during the Clinton
administration in 1995, was to halt the shipment of semirefined cocaine
from Peru to Colombia, where it was processed into cocaine and then shipped
to the United States. American counternarcotics officials realized that the
"air bridge" between Peru and Colombia was a vulnerable choke point in the
narcotics trade.

The air interdiction program in Peru quickly had a major impact on drug
flights. Between 1995 and 2001, the Peruvian air force shot down or forced
down at least 38 aircraft involved in drug trafficking and seized another
dozen on the ground.

Eventually, drug traffickers began switching to ground or river
transportation, and by the time the missionary plane was shot down, U.S.
officials said, there were few drug flights still using the air bridge.

American officials say they are uncertain how much drug smuggling by air
between Peru and Colombia has increased since the suspension of the air
interdiction program last year. Authorities say there is now evidence of
increased drug-related air traffic inside Colombia, but they have only
limited information about the volume of drug flights out of Peru.

Some drug flights are now trying to skirt the Peru-Colombia border region
by flying over Brazil, but the administration has not asked Brazil to get
involved in an expanded air interdiction program, officials said.