AMERICANS BLAMED IN COLOMBIA RAID

Bogota -- Three American civilian airmen providing airborne security
for a U.S. oil company coordinated an anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia
in 1998, marking targets and directing helicopter gunships that
mistakenly killed 18 civilians, Colombian military pilots have alleged
in a official inquiry.

The air attack on the village of Santo Domingo in oil-rich northeast
Arauca province took place on Dec. 13 of that year amid efforts to
hunt down a 200- strong column of the leftist Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC). Survivors said the aircraft attacked them
as they ran out of their homes to a nearby road with their hands in
the air to show they were noncombatants.

The raid caused some of the worst collateral damage inflicted on
civilians by the armed forces in the recent history of Colombia's
37-year conflict. Shortly after the incident, President Andres
Pastrana criticized the military's actions, saying that security
forces cannot respond to barbarism with barbarism.

The alleged role of the U.S. airmen -- emerging only now -- has raised
fresh questions about American involvement in a war that is
increasingly being outsourced to private companies not accountable to
the U.S. Congress.

According to the State Department, about 300 U.S. civilians are in
Colombia,

most of whom work on contracts ostensibly linked to anti-drug efforts,
which Washington has funded with more than $1 billion as part of the
Pastrana government's Plan Colombia. Some have even piloted
helicopters in raids on drug plantations and installations in southern
Colombia.

The pilots in the Santo Domingo incident were providing security for
Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., which operates the
nearby Cano Limon oil field, Colombia's second largest.

Investigators at the Colombian prosecutor general's office have asked
the U. S. Embassy in Bogota to help obtain information from the
American airmen involved in the attack, who worked for a private
Rockledge, Fla.-based air surveillance contractor called AirScan
International Inc.

Embassy officials issued a terse statement Wednesday saying that the
airmen were not contract employees of the U.S. government and that the
embassy did not help oil companies solve their security issues.

Although it occurred 2 1/2 years ago, the Santo Domingo attack is
becoming a cause celebre for human rights organizations protesting
creeping U.S. involvement in Colombia's guerrilla war.

They say the fact that U.S.-donated helicopters dropped cluster bombs
and rockets on Santo Domingo is a disturbing demonstration of how the
Colombian military has sometimes used U.S. aid that in theory is
earmarked only for anti-narcotics operations.

Here is an example of how U.S. aid is involved in human rights abuses,
said Robin Kirk, senior researcher for the New York-based group Human
Rights Watch.

This is really the first test case of how the U.S. government is going
to abide by its own human rights laws, Kirk said, referring to the
so-called Leahy Law that restricts U.S. aid from being spent on
counterinsurgency operations.

Colombian Air Force pilot Cesar Romero told military judge Capt. Luz
Monica Ostos in testimony last month about the Santo Domingo attack:
The coordination was done directly with the armored helicopters that
were supporting us and with the (Cessna 337) Skymaster plane flown by
U.S. pilots. The Skymaster and gunship crews talked directly to the
ground troops.

While Romero conceded that the U.S.-donated Vietnam-era Huey UH-1H
helicopter he piloted bombed a target marked by the Cessna, he said he
had no intention of causing civilian casualties.

If Romero and Jimenez are eventually accused of criminal action in the
deaths of innocent civilians, they could face up to 30 years in jail.
It is unlikely that the U.S. airmen will face any charges, analysts
say.

The raid came a day after army intelligence sources and the Skymaster
plane detected rebel movements in the area.

Air force helicopters strafed Santo Domingo with machine-gun fire,
air-to-surface rockets and cluster bombs. Eighteen civilians were
killed, including nine children, but no guerrillas.

At the time, the Colombian armed forces and U.S. officials conceded
that the aircraft and almost all weaponry involved in the attack had
been supplied under a 1989 U.S. aid package that was exempt from
current congressional restrictions.

An inquiry was launched immediately after the incident, but final
results have been delayed by military and civilian courts arguing over
jurisdiction.

In testimony to the military tribunal late last month, helicopter
co-pilot Lt. Johan Jimenez backed Romero's accounts of the role of the
AirScan spotter plane.

The Skymaster pilot chose the places for troop disembarkment,
pinpointed vulnerable areas and pointed out guerrilla presence,
Jimenez said in an official transcript shown to The Chronicle.

The (Colombian) Blackhawk (helicopter) and Skymaster pilots are the
ones that helped the pilot of our Huey UH-1H to identify the target
with visual aid from the ground, added Jimenez.

The Colombian pilots said the Skymaster -- equipped with infra-red
sensors and high-resolution cameras -- was contracted by Occidental.
Since 1997, the plane has constantly patrolled over the 120,000
barrel-a-day Cano Limon field and along the length of the 500-mile
pipeline that pumps crude to the Caribbean coast.

Oil infrastructure is regularly sabotaged by the FARC and the small
National Liberation Army (ELN), which accuse multinationals of
plundering the country's natural resources.

Juan Carlos Ucros, Occidental's legal representative in Bogota, said
the company had no contractual links with the pilots or the plane at
the time of the attack.

But a senior official for the Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol,
which has a stake in the Cano Limon field, said yesterday that
Occidental had always funded the Skymaster plane but had switched from
paying AirScan directly to channeling payments through the Colombian
Defense Ministry.

I have confirmed that the plane is paid for by Occidental although the
contract has been held at various stages by either the
Occidental-Ecopetrol partnership or by the Defense Ministry, said the
official, who requested anonymity.

AirScan director John Manser, speaking from company headquarters, said
the Skymaster plane and crew were originally contracted to Occidental
and Ecopetrol in 1997. The company then trained Colombian crews and
eventually leased and later sold the spotter plane to the Colombian
air force.

Manser confirmed that the three U.S. airmen named in the Colombian
investigation -- Joe Orta, Charlie Denny and Dan MacClintock -- had
worked for AirScan in Colombia but had since left the company. He
declined to say whether the men, like most of the company's employees,
were former U.S. servicemen.

Air Force chief Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco has declined to comment
about the allegations but told reporters briefly that there may have
been U.S. trainers aboard the spotter plane piloted by Colombians.