SENATE PANEL SEEKS END TO CIA DRUG ROLE

Concluding that inadequate planning and bad judgment led to the mistaken
downing of a plane carrying American missionaries in Peru, the Senate
Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that the CIA should be removed from
the task of spotting drug-runners along the Peru-Colombia border.

Under a program begun in 1994 -- but suspended indefinitely after the April
20 fatalities -- CIA-operated surveillance aircraft tracked suspected drug
flights, providing information to the Peruvian air force, which was
authorized to shoot them down.

A Peruvian warplane shot down the flight in which missionary Veronica
Bowers and her infant daughter were killed.