THREE STORIES FROM THE APRIL 30 ISSUE OF "FROM THE WILDERNESS"
- MORE HOLES IN THE COVER-UP THAN IN THE AIRPLANE
- DEA VET CHALLENGES GOV'T POSITION, ABC NEWS CHANGES STORY, WAS DYNCORP
INVOLVED?
- REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY OF ILLINOIS INTRODUCES BILL TO BAN USE OF CONTRACT
COMPANIES IN THE ANDES
----------
COULD DOWNING OF MISSIONARY PLANE IN PERU HAVE BEEN A PLAN COLOMBIA
PUBLICITY STUNT GONE BAD? -- Plenty Wrong With The Story We've Been Told
By Peter Gorman -- (Special to "From The Wilderness")
IQUITOS, PERU - On Friday, April 20th at 9:43 AM, a US Department of Defense
radar-aircraft manned by three former US-military men who were under
contract to the CIA and one Peruvian Air Force officer, notified the
US-controlled radar station at Peru's Morona Cocha military base that it had
sighted a plane that had crossed 3-4 miles into Brazilian territory just off
the Jivari river, the Peruvian border with Brazil. According to US
officials, a second sighting of the plane occurred 12 minutes later, when
the same aircraft re-entered Peruvian airspace. US officials say the
American crew then asked Peruvian authorities to determine if the craft had
filed a flight plan; when told it hadn't the Peruvian authorities decided to
launch an intercept and attempted to make radio contact; when they couldn't
they began firing, despite the desperate pleas of the CIA contract pilots to
halt the assault.
About one hour and twenty minutes from the time the plane was spotted
re-entering Peruvian airspace, it was shot down. Two passengers, 35-year-old
missionary Veronica Bowers and her seven-month old adopted daughter Charity,
were killed in the Peruvian fighter jet's assault. Three other passengers,
Bowers' husband, Jim, 38, and their son, Cory, 7, were uninjured. The pilot,
42-year-old Kevin Donaldson, was shot in the legs and is recovering.
On the surface, the story is clean. The US routinely runs radar checks on
planes flying in Peru as part of a program that has been in place since
1995. When they spot a suspected drug plane Peruvian authorities are alerted
and a call made on whether to shoot it out of the sky or try to force it to
land. This should be a simple case of mistaken identity and an unfortunate
accident, but it may be more than that.
In 1995, the US and Peru came to an agreement on trying to stop the air
transport of basta, coca base, from Peru, to the refining labs in Colombia.
As part of the agreement, the US built a radar station just outside
Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon. The base is run by former
Special Forces troops. The US runs the radar and suggests which planes might
be drug-planes; the Peruvian airforce does the dirty work. The reason for
the US running the radar show is to keep temptation away from Peruvian
officials who might be taking bribes.
But according to Peruvian pilots formerly involved in the program-who for
obvious reasons won't give their names-no plane is intercepted or shot down
unless the US gives the go-ahead. And this is where the story of the
shootdown as reported in Reuters and the AP falls apart. By Sunday morning
the US was changing it's official story to accept that it had notified
Peruvian authorities of the sighting but was officially claiming that it had
tried to prevent the shoot-down. "The US crew repeatedly expressed their
concern that the nature of the aircraft had not been determined," a US
official in Washington told Reuters. "Despite serious concerns raised by the
US crew, the shoot-down was authorized by Peruvian authorities."
One report had the Peruvian pilots as cowboys who shot the Bowers' plane
against US wishes. While that is not an impossibility, that's not the way
it's generally done in Peru. The US calls the shots, period, and since only
roughly 40% of the planes they recommend for downing can be connected with
the drug trade-again, according to pilots who have been part of the
program-Peru takes the public heat for downing innocent planes, but explains
that it only does what the US asks and thus keeps its hands clean. The US
makes the calls but doesn't do any shooting, thus it too keeps its hands
clean.
The reason so many planes have been downed wrongly is simply the reality of
small plane traffic in the Amazon region of Peru: They're generally old
puddle-jumping Cessnas and very few have any instrumentation left, including
radios, and fewer still file flight plans. They're generally piloted by bush
pilots who fly by sight at low altitudes, basically running errands for
people who live our work out on the rivers in the dense jungle.
This case was different. The Cessna 185 had full instrumentation. Moreover,
while the US insists the CIA-contract plane contacted the Peruvian air tower
in Iquitos to inquire about the Cessna's flight plan and were told it had
none, it is now possible to download copies of that flight plan from CNN or
from the American Baptists for World Evangelism's website. The Peruvian air
tower initially agreed there had been a flight plan filed-showing the plane
leaving Iquitos for Islandia the day before the shootdown, a tiny Peruvian
city on the river border between Peru and Brazil and returning the following
day. The Peruvian air controllers later amended their statement to say the
plan was filed while the plane was in flight back to Iquitos from Islandia.
Two of those accounts have to be inaccurate.
Moreover, the Bowers' plane was in regular radio contact with Iquitos
throughout its flight, including the moment when it was shot down just
outside of the river city of Pevas, about 100 air miles outside of Iquitos.
The US version of the story to date is this: the US plane, operated by CIA
contract agents spotted a suspicious plane and alerted the Peruvian
authorities to the possibility that it was a drug plane. The Peruvian air
tower in Iquitos mistakenly told the US crew that the Bowers' plane had not
filed a flight plan, compounding the suspicions that it was a drug plane.
The interceptor jet then tried to reach the Bowers' plane on the radio but
only tried military frequencies, which the Bowers' were not on. The
Peruvians then seriously breached military protocol by shooting down the
plane while the US plane heroically and frantically tried to call them off.
In sum: the deaths are tragic; the fault lies with the Peruvians who made
multiple errors and seriously breached standard protocol for the situation.
That story does not hold up to scrutiny and only raises several questions.
First: The shooting occurred more than 160 miles from the original sighting.
The Bowers' Cessna 185 has a top speed of 130 MPH. In this case it was
probably slower as it was near full-load with five passengers. Which means
it took 80-90 minutes to reach the intercept point. The Peruvian fighter jet
was a Cessna A37B, which has a flight speed of 507 MPH. Taking off from the
military airport in Iquitos then it could have made the flight to the
intercept point at Pevas in about 15 minutes. So the first question is why
did the intercept take place where it did and not closer to the
Brazilian/Peruvian border?
To occur near Pevas meant the Peruvian jet either took more than an hour to
take off, or the shoot down was purposely timed to occur at Pevas. That it
took the Peruvian jet more than an hour to take off seems unreasonable given
that the crew is on 24-hour alert for exactly the purpose of intercepting
drug-smuggling planes. That the intercept was timed to occur at Pevas would
imply that it was intended that there be witnesses to the shootdown-Pevas is
the largest city on the Amazon between Iquitos and the Brazilian border,
with a population of about 4,000. It also has a Peruvian military base, the
closest base along the Peruvian Amazon to the Putumayo river, which is the
Peruvian border with Colombia and territory under the control of Colombia's
FARC rebels. The region is currently being militarily bolstered on the
Peruvian side (See FTW March, 01) in anticipation of
the-presumably-imminent start of Plan Colombia bloodshed which is
anticipated to drive FARC rebels across the Putumayo onto Peruvian soil. Who
stood to gain in this scenario?
A second question involves the alleged attempts of the Peruvian fighter jet
to reach the Bowers' plane on the radio. That the Bowers' radio was on and
working has been confirmed by the air traffic controllers in Iquitos. The
Peruvian government claims its pilots tried and to communicate by radio with
the Bowers' on three separate frequencies during that time. But the
Peruvian's allegedly only tried to communicate on military frequencies. Why
didn't they try the standard commercial frequencies even once during the
entire 80-90 minutes it took from the time they were alerted to the Bowers'
plane's existence until they shot it down. Was it simply a human error on
their part? Or were they under orders or military protocol not to
communicate with their target? Human error-simply forgetting to change
frequencies-seems unlikely since these are professional military officers
well trained in just this sort of activity. But if they were either under
orders not to communicate with their target whose orders were they?
A third question relates to what occurred after the Bowers' plane had made
its emergency landing in the Amazon. One wing was already on fire, according
to both Jim Bowers and Kevin Donaldson. Yet both Bowers and Donaldson have
said the Peruvians continued to strafe them after they landed. Why? It is
certainly not normal military protocol in dealing with unarmed planes. There
are no roads out, so why fire on them while they languished in the river?
Who ordered that? Were the Peruvians simply blood thirsty? Or is it possible
they realized a terrible mistake had been made and were trying to ignite the
Bowers' fuel to eliminate the evidence of the error?
Another question relates to the initial CIA contract team's identification
of the Bowers' plane as a possible drug-smuggling plane. US procedures
demand that US planes attempt to identify planes by their tail numbers. The
Bowers' plane's number was clearly marked and the US initially did not
answer the press' questions regarding the issue. On Tuesday, April 24,
several days after the shootdown, The Washington Post reported that US
officials had explained that the CIA contract crew had breached its own
identification procedures because they were afraid that the suspected drug
plane-the Bowers' plane- would flee the country if they got close enough to
read the tail numbers. The Post further reported that the US claims the CIA
contract crew gave the tail number-identification task to the Peruvians, and
that they failed to follow through.
The Peruvians do not agree with the US story. Peruvian Prime Minister Javier
Perez de Cuellar, the former U.N. secretary-general, has defended the
Peruvian military in the shootdown. On Tuesday, April 24, in his
government's first official response to the US allegations that the
shootdown was Peru's fault, he said "For the time being, it would be hasty
to say that the Peruvian air force is responsible, or that the pilot of the
[missionary] airplane was responsible."
If the events unfolded the way the US claims there are too many unanswered
questions. The Bower's plane was well known around Iquitos: the Bowers' had
been there a long time and made regular flights from-and-to the city. Could
the Peruvians really have simply shot it on their own? Would the pilots risk
their position, and very likely jail time, to shoot down the Bowers' plane
on their own? And even if they were authorized to shoot it down by someone,
why would they risk their posts and jail time by continuing to strafe it
once it was in flames on the Amazon?
And again, why in front of Pevas, a reasonably good sized river town with a
military base. There were hundreds of witnesses to the entire affair. If
there were some reason to want the Bowers' dead, why do it at Pevas? Between
Pevas and the next town toward the Brazilian border there is a stretch of
nearly 100 miles of almost nothing but tiny villages and a leper colony. The
Peruvian craft certainly had the speed to intercept at any point along that
stretch. Was there a purpose in making the intercept near the closest large
town to the Colombian border and FARC territory? Was someone trying to make
it look as though the plane was coming out of Colombia?
In truth, Peruvians don't shoot down planes without the authorization of the
US. And of all the planes shot down during the several years of the joint
US/Peruvian interdiction program-25 are admitted to, though local figures
put it several times higher than that-none has been shot down entering
Peruvian airspace. Planes are shot down leaving, because when they leave
they are carrying coca paste to Colombia for refining. But planes entering
Peruvian airspace, particularly drug-running planes, are entering with cash.
Nobody shoots down planes loaded with cash. They are simply forced down so
their cash can be confiscated.
So very little of the official US story makes sense the way it was told,
unless the Peruvians were completely at fault, either through utter
incompetence or malicious intent. What might the real story be? One
important background event must be put into the equation at this point: On
the day the Bowers' plane was shot down the Third Summit of the Americas was
opening in Quebec. With the exception of Fidel Castro the head of every
country in the Americas was present, including George Bush. He was pushing
the ratification of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement. In recent
weeks he has also changed the name of Clinton's Plan Colombia to The Andean
Initiative and has been working hard to give it his own stamp.
But just weeks before the summit, Uruguay's President Jorge Batlle Ibanez
proposed the worldwide legalization of drugs when he told The Washington
Post, "Imagine the money you spend to impede drug traffic and imagine that
huge amount of resources on education for the people who really need help."
Moreover, he had promised to lobby for drug legalization in a speech in
front of all 34 heads of state at the Quebec Summit.
Given that as a background, could it be that the downing of the Bowers'
plane was a high-profile publicity stunt that went bad? Would it be a leap
to imagine the CIA contract crew was told it would be just terrific if they
managed to intercept a drug smuggling plane during the summit? Better yet,
if a drug plane were thought to be carrying drugs from the FARC rebels, the
primary targets of Plan Colombia/the Andean Initiative. That publicity would
completely defuse Uruguay's drug legalization message by tying drugs to
revolutionary movements in bright, bold letters.
Now if that suggestion was made to the US CIA contract crew and they thought
they had a drug smuggling plane when they caught radar-sight of the Bowers'
Cessna, all of the rest of the questions would be answered: The call was
given to the Peruvian authorities to intercept and take down the craft. The
location would place the shootdown in front of Pevas, ensuring witnesses
and, because of Pevas being less than 60 mile proximity to Colombian FARC
held territory, the suggestion could be made that it was a FARC
drug-smuggling plane. No radio contact was made because the order to kill
was given in code by the US. When it was later determined that the Bowers'
plane was not a drug-smuggling plane the US desperately tried to call off
the kill. But the order, once given, could not be rescinded. Which would
explain why the Bowers' were strafed even after their emergency landing and
while their plane was on fire. At that point it would be better to simply
explode the plane to eliminate the evidence and give both the US and Peru
more time to come up with credible and matching stories about the shootdown.
That scenario would also explain why the US story has changed daily since
the shootdown. It would also explain why Peru says it is not at fault in the
incident.
[Peter Gorman is a Senior Editor for High Times Magazine and a veteran
journalist who has spent many years living in Peru. He can be contacted at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] In the Feb issue of FTW he wrote a chilling account of
the arrival in Iquitos of former Navy Seals to man gunboats along rivers
bordering FARC controlled regions of Colombia]
----------
"IT'S BULLSHIT!"
* More Holes in Shootdown Story, Was DynCorp Involved? - ABC News Changes
Web Site
FTW -- "It's bullshit! I was in Iquitos and I flew on those shootdown
missions. Nobody, I mean nobody, shoots down anything unless the CIA says
so." So says retired DEA Agent Celerino Castillo, a Bronze Star winner in
Vietnam who served as a DEA Agent in Peru from 1982-4. Castillo, author of
the book Powderburns (available at www.copvcia.com) was emphatic about the
US government's control of all military operations in the region. "In those
days we flew on helicopters and the Peruvian soldiers would lean out the
window with FN rifles and blast holes from above drug smugglers' planes. I
was on those flights. Yes, the Peruvians did the shooting but it was always
the US who gave the OK."
Asked for a possible explanation for the shootdown Castillo observed, "I
think it all has to do with Plan Colombia and the coming war. It's going to
crank into high gear very soon. I think that the CIA was sending a clear
message to all non-combatants to clear out of the area and to get favorable
press. It sounds like a bigger shooting war is going to erupt any minute.
Iquitos is at the heart of everything the CIA is doing right now. They don't
want any witnesses." Castillo, who risked his DEA career for exposing direct
CIA involvement drug smuggling from the Ilopango airfield in El Salvador
during the Contra war, now works as a substitute teacher in McAllen Texas.
He can be contacted at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Even as the government line continues to lose credibility, a change in a
story by Bill Reddeker of ABC Network news raises additional questions about
the possible role of the giant military contracting corporation DynCorp in
the shootdown. (Former CIA Director James Woolsey is a stockholder in the
privately held corporation.) As repeatedly covered in FTW, DynCorp is the
largest US government contractor in the region and has armed civilian
personnel flying escort for Colombian military aircraft on coca eradication
missions in Southern Colombia. These DynCorp operations are taking place in
a region just miles from the location of the Bowers' shootdown. Last
February FTW reported on a gun battle between a DynCorp helicopter and FARC
guerillas after a Colombian military crew was shot down. But confusion
remains as to whether DynCorp personnel had been contracted by the CIA to
fly on the US surveillance plane which initiated the Bowers tragedy.
A posting on the ABC news web site (www.abcnews.com) from April 22, 2001 at
6:30 PM EDT contained the statement, "According to senior administration
officials, the Citation 5 surveillance plane used in the operation is owned
by the Pentagon. Its crew was hired by the CIA from DynCorp, a private
company. And the program is coordinated by the U.S. embassy in Peru. Dyncorp
is involved in many aspects of Plan Colombia, a controversial, $1.3 billion
American program to cripple drug production in South America."
Yet by April 24 a series of four stories on the shootdown contained an
amended statement which now reads, "According to senior administration
officials, the Citation-5 surveillance plane, the US aircraft flying with
the Peruvian interceptor, is owned by the Pentagon. The CIA hired its crew,
and the program is coordinated by the U.S. embassy in Peru." A search of
the ABC News web site reveals that all references to DynCorp in this case
have been removed. Contacted for comment, ABC Network News spokesman Jeff
Schneider had not provided a response as of press time. DynCorp officials
twice emphatically denied any involvement in the incident, either by company
employees or any of their subcontractors. Contacted by FTW, the CIA refused
to comment.
A crucial question that remains unanswered is where the CIA contract
employees who initiated the tragedy came from. If they came from DynCorp,
which has a demonstrable financial interest in continuing hostilities
another motivating factor needs to be addressed by the Congress.
Other Background - Chavez Caves In - Indications of escalating conflict in
the region poured in throughout the month of April. On April 6, citing
security concerns about terrorism, the U.S. closed its embassies Ecuador,
Uruguay and Paraguay. On April 17 the State Department, citing continuing
violence, issued a travel warning for all U.S. citizens in the region. On
April 19 under pressure to protect Venezuelan interests at the pending FTAA
summit in Quebec, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez relinquished his
longstanding opposition to Plan Colombia. As reported by the AP, "At a news
conference in Cartagena, Chavez, who has been the region's most blunt critic
of the U.S.-backed strategy to drive rebels from Colombia's coca fields and
give aid to poor coca farmers, said he had changed his mind about the plan.
"'Where there were doubts about Plan Colombia, now there is clarity,'
declared Chavez, who is seeking Venezuela's inclusion in the Andean Trade
Preferences Act."
And on April 21, The Washington Post broke the story of a brutal massacre in
the village of Naya by right-wing paramilitary forces in which as many as 80
villagers had been murdered with chain saws and machetes. This, as
preparations for wider conflict continue.
----------
http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/
BILL INTRODUCED TO BAN PRIVATE CONTRACTORS/ARMIES IN CIA WORK
FTW APRIL 25 - In the unsettled wake of the CIA connected shootdown of an
unarmed plane carrying Baptist missionaries in Peru, Representative Jan
Schakowsky (D-IL) today introduced the Andean Region Contractor
Accountability Act (ARCAA) that would prohibit the federal government from
funding private armies in the Andean region. The bill specifically targets
private contractors such as DynCorp which provide armed military support in
the region while escaping Congressional oversight.
As reported in a press release from Schakowsky's office the bill would
prohibit the US government from entering into contracts with private
organizations or individuals "to carry out military, law enforcement, armed
rescue, or other related operations [in the] Andean region."
Schakowsky stated, "The American taxpayers are funding a secret war that
could suck us into a Vietnam-like conflict... Is [this outsourcing] to hide
body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion?"
The measure is co-sponsored by Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Jim McGovern
(D-MA).
Mike Ruppert
Publisher/Editor
"From The Wilderness"
www.copvcia.com
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