ABLE TO FORGIVE, NOT FORGET, PERU AIR ATTACK MISSIONARY WANTS CIA TO
APOLOGIZE FOR 2001 INCIDENT

GARNER, N.C. -- When he got off the plane that brought him to North
Carolina, Jim Bowers wondered aloud to his mother whether he could ever get
the images out of his mind.

The smoke from the guns of a Peruvian air force A-37 that shot through the
small aircraft carrying his missionary family. The Cessna's pilot screaming
in Spanish: "They're killing us! They're killing us!" The blood on his
infant daughter. His wife slumped over in her seat.

More than a year has passed since a single bullet took the lives of
Bowers's wife, Roni, and their daughter, Charity, in the sky over the
Amazon River. Bowers, a Baptist, credits his faith with sustaining him and
his 7-year-old son, Cory.

He says he has forgiven the U.S. and Peruvian officials who mistook his
family's plane for a drug smuggler's. The two governments have acknowledged
that errors were made, and President Bush has called him to express regret.

But Bowers still longs for an apology from the CIA. Officials said the CIA
hired the surveillance crew that first told the Peruvians about the flight
- -- then never explicitly stopped them from shooting.

"From the very beginning, I wasn't expecting anything except for someone to
admit they did something wrong and to be punished for it," Bowers said
recently from his mother's home in this Raleigh suburb.

"It doesn't matter how much you forgive a person. When they do something
wrong, they should still suffer the consequences."

Bowers, 39, has made dozens of speeches at Bible colleges and churches in
the Americas and Europe about his experience.

A book, "If God Should Choose," and a dramatic video about the family are
now encouraging others to become missionaries.

For five years, Jim and Roni Bowers worked along the Amazon in northeastern
Peru, spreading the Gospel among the riverside villages and training
ministers through the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

On April 20, 2001, the family was being flown by missionary Kevin Donaldson
on a return trip from the Colombian border, where the Bowerses had picked
up a permanent resident visa for Charity. CIA personnel aboard a
surveillance plane spotted the aircraft and alerted Peruvian officials. A
Peruvian interceptor arrived and fired on the aircraft as the CIA crew
debated whether the plane fit a drug smuggler's profile.

Roni Bowers and Charity, who had been adopted in Michigan a few months
earlier, were dead. Cory and Jim Bowers weren't injured.

Jim Bowers brought the bodies back to America and settled in Garner, a town
of 20,000 south of Raleigh, where tobacco fields are giving way to suburban
subdivisions. There, he and Cory moved in with his mother, Wilma.

Bowers took a job at Bethel Baptist Church in nearby Cary, leading Spanish
Bible studies and church services for the area's growing Hispanic population.

An $8 million settlement from the U.S. government was reached this spring
with the crash survivors, Roni Bowers's parents and the Bowers's missionary
agency.

When asked whether the CIA would apologize to the family, an agency
spokesman referred to the White House statement released in March that
said: "The United States government and the government of Peru deeply
regret this tragic event and the resulting deaths."

All of the beneficiaries say they will give the money to support Christian
ministries. Peru also has agreed to replace the missionary agency's plane.

Jim Bowers said he sees himself returning to overseas missionary work. He
has gone back to Peru since the crash but doesn't plan to work there again.

With few answers about why this all happened, he leans on the positives
that have come out of the tragedy: People have become Christians after
learning about the crash, and his faith and that of others has grown.