interdiction & corruption

… U.S. govt gave Peru $48million in narcotics control aid last year as well as $32million for helicopters as part of Plan Colombia, … Adam Isacson, sr assoc. Ctr for Intl Policy WashDC: "It's often called jokingly the 'You fly, you die' policy. Colombia says they shoot down, but they don't do it very often. What they do more often is just sort of force down planes then strafe them on the ground. Venezuela hasn't done much of anything lately. But the real air transit point is between Peru & Colombia from growing areas to processing areas. … this was done with U.S. intelligence, with a plane given by the U.S., by pilots & airmen trained & equipped by the U.S.; everything there was paid for, bought and sold by us. The A-37 was given to Peru for counternarcotics purposes. It's time we look more closely at who we give this stuff to. Institutions with long histories of corruption & human rights abuses call into question their professionalism and what they can be relied on to do." … Actually, now that Fujimori is gone, it's more politically palatable to increase military aid, something that's going to happen in 2002 if you look at GWBush's request. Only thing disrupted over past few months is that many officers loyal to Montesinos were forced out. … In general, whole operation happens with almost no transparency. … Why is the CIA involved? What are these contractors? How do they chose their targets? Oversight eventually falls on Congress, the intl relations & armed services committees paying for this stuff. Rather than overworked & underpaid congressional staff doing all of this, the agencies should be forced to make information about this more & more accessible for more evaluation of where we're headed.: Deadly mistake 4.24.01 Fiona Morgan Salon

US freezes drug-watch flights after mother & baby killed in Peru

… Mr Bowers' brother, Phil, said he had spoken to his brother and had been told the fighters continued to attack, after the wounded pilot, Kevin Donaldson, managed to crash-land the plane on the Amazon. "It happened very fast. The planes flew by first, did some swooping and then came in from behind and started shooting," he said. Mr Bowers was able to unstrap the bodies of his wife & daughter from their seats and pull them on to a pontoon. He told his son to jump into the water. The survivors were rescued by locals in dug-out canoes who ferried them along the river to the nearest town.

CIA Misidentified Plane Downed in Peru as Possible Drug Runner

LATimes

… The 3 Americans on the surveillance mission were not full-time CIA staffers but work under contract for the agency, according to the senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity as a matter of govt policy. … The incident, which occurred at midday Friday in northern Peru, was a reminder of the series of targeting errors by the CIA that led a U.S. bomber to mistakenly strike the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo conflict in Yugoslavia. …

Congress passed a law in 1994 that allows the CIA and other U.S. govt employees to assist foreign nations in the interdiction of aircraft when there is "reasonable suspicion" that the plane is primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking. The law limits U.S. assistance to those countries with "appropriate procedures … to protect against innocent loss of life" and that "at a minimum include effective means to identify & warn an aircraft" before an attack is launched. Peru was approved for such assistance 12.8.94 Since then, Peruvians shot, forced down or strafed more than 30 drug- running aircraft and seized more than a dozen on the ground, according to U.S. officials. Several U.S. agencies involved in pgm, incl State Dept, CIA, Defense Dept & DEA.
In this case, the CIA crew members were aboard a small two-engine surveillance jet on patrol at 9:43 a.m. Friday when they notified their base, which U.S. officials refused to identify, that their sophisticated radar was tracking a small aircraft that had crossed 3 or 4 miles into Brazilian territory. The Americans radioed a second report 12 minutes later, as the unidentified aircraft reentered Peruvian airspace. At that point, following standard procedures, the Americans requested that the Peruvian air force officer in charge at an air base at Pucallpa determine whether the plane was on an approved flight plan. The U.S. intelligence official said the officer could not find an approved flight plan for a plane in the border area, which is covered by airspace known as the Air Defense Identification Zone. Under procedures approved by the commanding general of the Peruvian Air Force 6th Territorial Air Region, the Peruvian air force then launched a fighter jet to visually identify the aircraft, verify its registry, attempt to establish radio contact and, if necessary, force it to land or shoot it down. The aircraft was quickly identified as a single-engine, high-wing floatplane. The Peruvian lieutenant colonel aboard the U.S. plane then tried to communicate in Spanish with the aircraft over 3 separate radio frequencies but heard no response. The Americans did not try to communicate in English.

"Our guys would never try to communicate with the suspect aircraft," said the U.S. intelligence official. "In any case, we're told the pilot was fluent in Spanish. But we didn't hear anything. If he was transmitting, we weren't hearing it in English or Spanish." The Peruvian officer aboard the U.S. plane had flown numerous similar flights over the last nine months or so. He told the pilot of the Peruvian fighter, an aging A-37, to go to "Phase 2" and fire warning shots at the floatplane.
[ Downed plane was on standard approach 10 minutes or less from local airport and in standard radio comm with the tower but the spy plane & the jet fighter aren't listening to the tower freq. This is not some backwoods airport; 737s land there. Bower doubtless felt safe in her Iquitos hometown because drug interdiction training camp is there. U.S. plane crew weren't locals; U.S. style community based policing might have recognized plane. ]

It was unclear Sunday whether the pilot actually fired a warning with tracer rounds or, if they were fired, whether the pilot or passengers saw them. The U.S. intelligence official said the CIA crew did not see any warning shots fired. The Peruvian officer then quickly requested permission from his commander on the ground to order the fighter to move to "Phase 3", to fire his weapons with the goal of disabling the Cessna. If that failed, the plane could be shot down. The U.S. intelligence official said the CIA crew "attempted repeatedly to slow the intercept process" & "voiced objections" and expressed "serious concerns" when the fighter plane was authorized to fire. The CIA crew members were "not in the chain of command," the official said. "They just kept questioning him. They kept saying: 'Are you sure? It's not clear to us.' " The U.S. crew then asked the Peruvian fighter pilot to note the suspect plane's tail number and to fly alongside it to ensure that the other pilot saw him. For reasons still unclear Sunday, the tail number was not radioed back to the Peruvian officer in Pucallpa.
But at 10:43 a.m., an hour after the plane was spotted by the CIA crew, Peruvian military authorities on the ground authorized the shoot-down.
[ auth. 17 minutes before seaplane radio contact with civilian airport tower, 37 minutes before attack. ]

The U.S. official said "well-established procedures … may not have been fully or properly adhered to" by Peruvian air force authorities. An official at the destination airport in Iquitos said the missionaries' plane did not have a flight plan when it took off Friday morning from Islandia near the Brazilian border, the Associated Press reported. But the pilot relayed the necessary information when he radioed the control tower in Iquitos, airport chief Mario Justo was quoted as saying. During the brief radio conversation, the missionary pilot said a military plane was nearby, according to the AP report. "He added in his report that there had been a military plane, but that he did not know what it wanted," Justo said.

In Pennsylvania, an official with the Assn. of Baptists for World Evangelism said it appeared that the accident occurred because the missionary plane was using a civilian radio frequency to communicate with the Iquitos airport, while the Peruvian air force personnel were using a military frequency. Neither side could hear the other's transmissions, said Hank Scheltema, the Baptist association's aviation director, according to a Reuters report. The missionary pilot "was saying to the tower: 'They're going to kill us! They're killing us! They're killing us! And he tried to communicate [with the Peruvian plane], but they were on different frequencies," Scheltema said.

Shoot-Down Scenario Disputed

Relatives Say Downed Plane Was Following Procedures But Peru's Military Says Plane Was Flying Unannounced. White House Suggests Peru Breached Rules Of Engagement

CBS News

… Relatives of U.S. missionaries whose plane was shot down over the Amazon River said the aircraft received clearance to land moments before the Peruvian air force fired on it without warning. The Peruvian military has a different account: The plane was flying unannounced and did not identify itself as it made its way through a remote jungle region frequented by drug traffickers. … Associates of the pilot said over the weekend that he pleaded with civil aviation officials as bullets tore through the fuselage, sending the tiny plane careening 4,000 feet down into the Amazon River.… A U.S. intelligence official claims the U.S. drug interdiction aircraft tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the missionary plane, and then asked Peruvian authorities to check for a flight plan. The Peruvians said they could not find one, and sent an interception flight into the air. But the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, the missionaries' group, posted this copy of a plan on its Web site, which it said had been filed with the authorities. Hank Scheltema, aviation director for the Harrisburg PA based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, … said the control tower recorded the missionary pilot's panicked radio call to controllers. "They have recorded his voice when he was crying, 'They're going to kill us! They're going to kill us!"' Scheltema said. …
The single-engine plane, which was being tracked by a U.S. counter-drug surveillance plane, had contacted the air tower in the jungle city of Iquitos and received landing clearance about 10 minutes before it was downed, said Richmond Donaldson, father of pilot Kevin Donaldson. "Here was a plane following a regular route. Drug runners do not follow regular routes," he said.
[ Then CIA procedure uses a flawed tracking profile. Or drug runners DO fly regular routes, relying on bravado. ]

After being hit by the gunfire, the Cessna 185 crash-landed in the Amazon River near the jungle town of Huanta, 625 miles northeast of Lima. Peruvians rescued husband, son & pilot, 42yr old Donaldson, who suffered a crushed leg bone & severed arteries in his foot. Husband, Jim Bowers, 37, from Michigan, was debriefed by Peruvian authorities before flying to N.Carolina to visit relatives Sunday. Donaldson, taken to Reading Hospital & MedCtr after arriving Sunday at Philadelphia Intl Airport, was listed in fair condition Monday morning. Doctors performed surgery on the lower portions of each of his legs.
Scheltema said missionary plane and fighter jet were communicating on different radio frequencies. He said the Iquitos control tower recorded the missionary pilot's panicked radio call to controllers. Iquitos airport chief Mario Justo confirmed that the plane had a flight plan and that its pilot was in radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower. He later "clarified" his statement, saying a flight plan was only established at 10:48 a.m. when Donaldson radioed his position, about 45 minutes after Peru's air force says the plane was first detected. Justo said Donaldson indicated he had taken off from Islandia, a Peruvian river town just across from Brazil. Richmond Donaldson disputes that, saying he saw a copy on Saturday of the plan his son filed with Iquitos airport.
… Under current agreements, Peru can use U.S. data to attack a plane only if it is flying without a flight plan. Peruvian fighters must first try to make radio contact and visually signal a suspect aircraft to land for inspection before opening fire. If the pilot balks, warning shots must be fired.

video report
4.23.01 Bob Martin

… born 7.17.65 & reared in military family. My father was Air Force for 20 years, so we moved a lot. … My parents were good, moral people but they knew something was missing in their lives. The week we moved into our home, following my dad's retirement, a pastor came to welcome us. He invited us to church and, surprisingly, we all went the following Sunday. For the first time, we heard that Jesus Christ gave His life as a living sacrifice so that people could be forgiven, and could spend eternity with a righteous God. I vividly remember the night, several weeks later, that my dad got on his knees & asked Jesus Christ to be his Savior.
[ Daddy, floundering in midlife crisis with too much time on his hands, looks to bible beating church for another monolithic force like the military to take care of him & family. ]

I was 12 years old when I saw my need for a Savior.
[ Impressionable teen female, following beloved daddy's lead, gets brainwashed into cult just like Manson. ]

Our home was always open, especially for single GI's. My dad felt they needed a place to go for a good meal. My mom always did a great job of that, especially on Sundays. Not only did we have military personnel in our home, but also pastors, evangelists and missionaries. What a wonderful opportunity it was to sit at the table with godly men & women and to be influenced by their lives.
[ Jesus never was a soldier. ]

Jennifer Odom more
Pentagon says this Army pilot's crash in Colombia last July was "mishap" but her family believes she was shot down, first of many soldiers likely to die in undeclared war
7.5.00 Jeff Stein Salon

WASHINGTON Jennifer Shafer Odom, 29, a slim, motorcyle-riding brunet & top graduate of West Point, become first U.S. military casualty of Washington's "war against drugs" in Colombia. Now, a year later, Congress is sending $1.3 billion in direct military aid to Bogot�, raising the stakes even higher. The measure includes an untold increase in U.S. military and civilian "advisors," on top of the several hundred DEA agents and Green Berets already there …
[ She had to go; she was too clean & due to be promoted to command level ]

Air & Marine Interdiction Division
premier integrated air & marine law enforcement interdiction agency Exec. Dir. Chas. E. Stallworth II
… Essential element of President's National Drug Control Policy. In addition to protecting borders of U.S., USCS air & marine crews work in conjunction with the law enforcement agencies & military forces of other nations in support of their counter-narcotic programs. The AMID provides detection & monitoring, interceptor support, and coordinated training with military & law enforcement personnel of other countries. The Customs P-3 AEW airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft provide radar coverage over the jungles & mountainous regions of Central & S.America. They also patrol the vast Southwest Border & intl waters to monitor shipping lanes & air routes in search of smuggling activities. P-3 interceptor aircraft often augment the AEW aircraft to identify & track suspect targets.
The Air & Marine Interdiction Coordination Center (AMICC) in Riverside, California is the only law enforcement facility of its kind in the nation. Information from a wide array of civilian & military radar sites, aerostats, airborne reconnaissance aircraft and other detection assets is assimilated to provide 24-hour, seamless radar surveillance along the entire southern tier of the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. The AMICC provides communications & control to Customs air, marine and ground units on patrol or engaged in special operations. It also integrates information systems with other domestic & intl counter-drug centers & law enforcement agencies and serves as a focal point for tactical coordination between agencies.
[ Is the Peruvian operation on the Riverside tac grid? ]

Customs air and marine crews are law enforcement officers who receive extensive training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia.… Detection Systems Specialists (DSS) are primarily responsible for monitoring ground-based & airborne detection systems. Using the latest in detection equipment & experience, the DSS is able to acquire, track and alert Customs crews of suspicious aircraft and vessels for identification. The typical DSS generally has prior experience as a military or civil air controller. … Every year hundreds of professionals from the USCS Air and Marine Interdiction Division visit primary & secondary schools, civic groups, charitable gatherings and business groups to disseminate the anti- drug message. Organizations interested in obtaining more information about this free community service should write to the following facility.
Air and Marine Interdiction Division Rm. 6.2C
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW WashDC 20229

2000 Narcotics Certification Determinations
3.1.01 Special Briefing
Randy Beers, AsstSec for Narcotics & Law Enforcement,
Robt Brown, DDir. Off.National Drug Control Policy ONDCP aka czar

ASST SEC BEERS … certification process. Under U.S. law, President must certify each year whether govts of the major drug-producing & drug transit countries cooperated fully with U.S. or taken adequate steps on their own to meet the goals & objectives of 1988 UN Drug Convention. The President certified 20 of 24 countries. Cambodia & Haiti were not granted certification for cooperating but were granted national interest waivers. Burma & Afghanistan were denied certification.If the President does not certify a govt, it is ineligible for most forms of US assistance, with exception of humanitarian & counter-narcotics assistance, and the US is obliged to vote no to any assistance loans in multilateral development banks for countries denied certification. The law also provides for waivers of countries vital to U.S. national interest for exemption from denial of certification per sanctions. Narcotics certification process is integral part of our drug control policy, and it provides opportunity to make objective assessment of each country's drug control efforts during previous year.
Some govts resent unilateral subjective assessment of their performance; the process encourages openness & reveals areas where we can improve collective effort. Throughout 15-year existence of certification process, it's proved to be an effective, if blunt, instrument of policy for enhancing counter-narcotics cooperation. Prior to the March 1 deadline for introducing our decisions each year, we have seen countries introduce legislation, pass laws, eradicate drug crops, and capture elusive drug kingpins. The timing is no coincidence. …
DEP.DIR. BROWN And I would highlight … astounding progress & successful pgms in 2 principal source countries, Peru & Bolivia. … 68% decline since '95. in Peru, some years ago the principal source of coca cultivation & cocaine production, …

question on Peru … related to corruption, Vladimir Montesinos & narco-traffickers in Peru. Reports in Latin America media signaling his relations with narco-traffickers. In the report, there is little mention of Montesinos or his relationship with narco-traffickers. Is it because he was mentioned as CIA informant of U.S.?

ASST SEC BEERS (doesn't address topic of corruption or Peru, instead speaking of "process" & seizures)
DEP.DIR. BROWN Corruption. It is a problem in part fueled by our estimate of -- I think we say $63 billion annually we put --Americans and citizens put -- into the illicit drug trade. Some portion of that has this corrosive, corrupting effect, both in our own country and all the transit countries back to the source of these drugs. So clearly that is a contributor to this common problem of drug-inspired or drug-induced corruption.
… On the issue of Peru, I assure you that the allegations that Mr. Montesinos was a CIA agent have nothing to do with what you regard as scanty reporting on Mr. Montesinos' involvement in the drug trade or corruption, first point. Second point, we are still uncovering Mr. Montesinos' activities, as are you. As they become relevant and revealed to us & you, I am sure we will have more to say about them in the future.

… Q: Will this Administration have any new ideas regarding what has been called "the balloon effect," which is when one country's neighbor has a decrease, or has a successful eradication, while other countries bordering it will have an increase? It seems that that is what has happened as we watch a decrease in production in Peru & Bolivia, with an increase in Colombia.

ASST SEC BEERS This Administration will announce specific numbers for State Dept budget, along with the same time frame that Bob Brown indicated at beginning of April, and at that point in time we will be able to talk specifics. But as I have said, and as Bob has said, what we are talking now about is a significant budget request for an Andean regional program, which will cover not just Colombia, but Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela & Panama, as a geographic area. And it will be balanced so that Colombia does not have the 85% funding that it did in the Plan Colombia Supplemental. It will be closer to a 50/50 ratio between Colombia & other states in the region, and it will be more heavily devoted to economic pgms like alternative development, and that too will approach closer to a 50/50 relationship overall.
But I don't have any of the specific numbers to give to you at this time. We are still working on budget details and how to present it to the Congress, and of course to you all.

Q: As you mentioned before, there are some in Congress & some within the Administration, and also, Mr. Brown, your predecessor, Gen. McCaffrey, who say to the process of certification, what's the point if we are going to certify 20 of the major drug producers, and also give a waiver to some of the countries because it is in our national interest? Could you explain the point of certification? Would it be more fruitful to kind of just work on these cooperative programs without having to finger-point or grade countries, when we know we are going to pass, give them a pass anyway, at the end of the day?

U.S. wants increased drug interdiction efforts in Peru

ENN

… Pentagon officials say that drug lords have circumvented U.S.- Peruvian interdiction of air shipments by beginning to use Peru's 8,600 miles of Amazon River tributaries like it was an interstate highway. …

The U.S. military, the DEA and the Customs Service share intelligence that is gathered from surveillance flights over the northern portion of S.America and two radar stations that are located deep in the Peruvian Andes. Since 1993, the Peruvian air force has shot down or intercepted more than 60 drug smuggling aircraft, with the assistance from U.S.

drug interdiction training center near Iquitos, Peru. U.S. Southern Command developed the course curriculum & will help the school reach an average class size of 60 students.

upcoming event LAD 2001 Latin America Exhibition & Conference on Defense Technology Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 4.24-27.01

Peru rank #7 1996 Direct Commercial Sales
IMET 2001 $475K/75

… secret operation … CIA contract employees from Aviation Development Corp. … 9 years ago the Peruvian Air Force shot a U.S. military cargo plane, killing one person ADC ^{1
2} Dyncorp ^{1
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privateers in Colombia (Castano)
Rwanda Sierra Leone
UN peacekeepers

subcontracting war & law enforcement for
reduced liability & diminished Cong. oversight
Inquiry on Peru Looks at a C.I.A. Contract
4.28.01 Christopher Marquis NYTimes reg. req.

WASHINGTON With inquiries beginning into Peru's downing last week of a flight carrying American missionaries, Cong. officials are examining Aviation Development Corp. (Montgomery AL) contract employees' role who worked for CIA. … said one official, who asked not to be identified. "Not one person on that aircraft had a commission from the U.S. govt to do what they were doing. No one took an oath to the Constitution. They were just businessmen."
[ Offsetting liability is the reason to outsource in the first place. Let ADC pay Bowers' wrongful death suit instead of U.S. Treasury. ]

American anti-narcotics officials privately expressed similar doubts about contractors. Some note Aviation Development crew identified missionary plane as suspect even though it was en route to Iquitos, Peru, rather than leaving that country's airspace. State Dept announced today it was sending sr. anti-narcotics official Rand Beers to Peru to lead joint investigation with authorities there. In Congress, intelligence committees are gathering information about the incident; House Govt Reform subcommittee scheduled hearing for Tuesday. Whether Aviation Development employees on surveillance plane worked exclusively for the C.I.A. isn't clear. Phone calls to co. office at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery went unanswered this week, and calls to home of president, Lex Thistlethwaite, not returned. Authorities at Maxwell allowed company to operate out of remote hangar at the base since 1997. But even the officials responsible for handling private contractors said they knew almost nothing about Aviation Development or its activities.
"If they're who I think they are, they've been here for 2 or 3 years," said Susan Smith, who is in charge of business operations. "My office has no relationship with them. The contract was written out of some organization in Washington, D.C." … At their peak in the mid-1960's, wholly- owned CIA subsidiaries named Civil Air Transport Company, Air America and Intermountain Aviation employed as many as 20,000 people and operated about 200 planes, rivaling the size of TWA. In recent years, American military & intelligence agencies increasingly contracted workers from private companies to reduce visibility of sensitive operations by substituting paid civilians for American troops or career intelligence officers. In Colombia, for instance, where Congress has strictly limited the number of American troops & their activities, federal officials have hired DynCorp, information technology & aviation giant, to conduct drug crop fumigation runs & ferry Colombian troops into conflict zones.

Unlike American military advisers, Colombia contract workers are not bound by lawmakers' orders to avoid combat. Extent of C.I.A. involvement with aviation companies became public in the mid-1980's, when longtime employees of agency- owned airlines applied for govt pensions for perilous missions decades earlier to air-drop agents into China or supply the French at Dien Bien Phu. Govt blocked request on grounds they never officially worked for the C.I.A. Eugene Hasenfus, pilot shot down over Nicaragua while flying supplies to American-backed contra rebels in 1987, filed suit against 2 airlines with C.I.A. connections, Corporate Air Services & Southern Air Transport, for negligence & fraud, casting light on their ties to American intelligence. Hasenfus had flown for C.I.A. airline Air America in SE Asia.
C.I.A. spokesman Bill Harlow today declined to discuss agency's relationship with Aviation Development. "We have no comment on the company involved & contractors in this case," he said. When Aviation Development first settled at Maxwell in 1997, was greeted with considerable fanfare. Mr. Thistlethwaite announced at the time that he had received a $10million Pentagon contract to test & evaluate several different airborne sensors, according to a news release. The company would use 5 Cessna Citation V twin-engine jet aircraft, he said. Mr. Thistlethwaite, who said Aviation Development was his first company, delighted local officials by joining the Chamber of Commerce and pledging to employ about 45 people, with about a third hired locally. Montgomery mayor Emory Folmar said the completion of a 1000ft extension to Maxwell's runway had helped lure the company to the base. That runway extension, which cost $5.7 million, had been advocated by Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican who has since become Select Committee on Intelligence chairman, and Rep. Terry Everett, GOP, for Montgomery area. Sen. Shelby spokeswoman Andrea Andrews confirmed his role in winning the runway improvement at Maxwell. Said senator had no ties to Aviation Development or to Mr. Thistlethwaite.

Private Companies Fight Drug War

Contractors Give Support To Interdiction Efforts Some Worry They Are Leading Edge Of Military Conflict Linked To Peru's Downing Of American Missionaries

… war on drugs in South America in which private citizens are running military missions. The Americans were employees of a private U.S. company, one of several helping fight the drug war in Colombia and Peru. 2 of the largest are VA based DynCorp and, until recently, MPRI. The firms hold the contracts for air support and logistics through the $1.3 billion Plan Colombia anti-drug aid package.
Washington says the plan, and other aid to Latin America, is intended to help local governments cut drug production. But some in Congress are skeptical, worried about the possibility of an escalating American military commitment. "This is supposed to be an aid package, this is supposed to be a counter narcotics package and yet all the elements of a war are beginning to emerge," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. " We could be sucked into a kind of Vietnam conflict.that's going to take lots of lives and many years to get out of." Schakowsky and others say they can't get the State Dept to answer questions about private military involvement in South America. [ like John Bolton re contras ]

Ed Soyster, retired general, says until last month his company, MPRI, was involved in the anti-drug effort in Colombia. "Our focus is with the ministry of defense assisting them with restructuring & focusing their efforts in the counter-drug area," he said. "We work with logistics, we work with their training, intelligence, those things that function at the ministry level." Private military companies are barred by State Dept license from ever taking part in combat. But observers say it happens. "For DynCorp and these other companies to say, 'We're not involved in combat' is ridiculous," said Wayne Madsen of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. DynCorp will not discuss one recent incident in which two of its private soldiers flew a helicopter into a jungle battle under heavy fire from rebel forces. The Americans, said to have been armed with M-16 rifles, went in to rescue trapped Colombian police.
[ A humanitarian mission to Jesse Helms & Trent Lott ]

"Either we're involved or we're not. And I think it's clear that we are, because most these people are retired military, retired CIA. They are armed & they are engaged in ground fights." said Schakowsky. "For risk-averse U.S. military, employing private contractors helps overcome political reluctance where risks are high and there is little domestic constituency for U.S. troops' involvement." Military expert Thomas K. Adams in U.S. Army War College Quarterly.
[ Precisely the thinking when King Geo.III put Hessians in the American colonies. Mercenaries are typically employed in latter stages of empires when citizens no longer identify with policy or national identity enough to fight for either, whether for govt or against. This was echoed in 2001 presidential selection where not one of 100 senators felt compelled by constituent sentiment to challenge specious U.S. electoral college results' certification lest it disturb placid domestic status quo. Thank you for trying, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, Rep. Bob Filner & Cong. Black Caucus. ]

A 1993 presidential directive shifted U.S. anti-drug efforts from Mexico & the Caribbean to so-called source countries, like Colombia & Peru. The U.S. carries out joint drug interdiction efforts with Latin American governments under the National Defense Authorization Act of 1995. "The U.S. Govt provides aerial tracking assistance to many countries in the region," Boucher said this week. "Colombia is the only other country that employs a program of interdiction similar to that of Peru."
[ All others retain enough sovereignty & stability to at least pretend to sustain borders. Once that capability is lost, the nation no longer exists in fact. Then it becomes imperial vassal until barren & abandoned like W.Sahara ]

… In terms of the dollar value of contracts it was awarded, DynCorp ranked 17th among Defense Dept contractors in 2000, garnering $771 million worth. Some recent deals included $29 million for work on the Defense Message System Transition Hub, $12 million for work with the Central Command's Prepositioned War Reserve Materiel in Southwest Asia pgm, and $78 million "for long range strategic planning & support for Directorate of Strategic Planning, USAF Dep.Chief of Staff for Plans & Pgms," according to the Pentagon. MPRI was in 1999 awarded a contract that could be worth a total $58 million "for overall support for Army Force Management planning, integration and execution."

Lawmakers: Say No to Drug Missions

WASHINGTON Lawmakers are trying to force the government to stop hiring U.S. companies for dangerous counternarcotics missions in South America. 2 proposals, one to phase out use of contractors in Colombia, the other to end it entirely in the entire Andean region, were introduced recently in Congress. … Lawmakers are angry that the CIA has refused to publicly identify the contractor or provide details of its work. "I think it really underscored the need for transparency & accountability," said Rep. William Delahunt, D-MA, HIRC member. With bipartisan support, Delahunt last Wednesday amended the committee's version of the State Dept authorization bill to say that govt should try to phase out use of U.S. companies for antidrug missions in Colombia. Responsibility would be transferred to Colombian security forces. Delahunt's amendment also would require annual reports identifying the U.S. businesses hired for the missions and providing information about their pay, purpose and the risks they face. A bill introduced last month by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., would effectively ban the use of private businesses for counternarcotics operations. "I think the American taxpayers are funding a secret war that could suck us into a Vietnam-like conflict," she said.
State Dept's counternarcotics bureau said it could not comment on the Delahunt & Schakowsky proposals. It noted that the bureau director, Asst Sec.State Rand Beers, was in Peru leading the team investigating the missionary plane shooting. At House Govt Reform subcommittee meeting last week, Schakowsky, one of the most liberal lawmakers, and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., one of the most conservative, found common ground in their outrage over the little information released about the missionary plane incident. … The CIA has declined to identify the contractor. News reports have said it is Aviation Development Corp. of Montgomery AL.Company President Lex Thistlethwaite did not return messages seeking comment.

Anti-drug agencies rely on contractors for a variety of counternarcotic purposes in the Andes. In some cases, they are needed for short-term missions in which it doesn't pay for the U.S. to hire new employees, said Dennis Jett, a former ambassador to Peru. But there's another reason, Jett noted. "In terms of politicians, there's less sensitivity if there were a fatality for a contractor than a man in uniform or a woman in uniform," he said. This has been seen as a big consideration in Colombia, where the State Department uses Reston, Va.-based Dyncorp to fly fumigation missions over fields of coca & poppy, the raw materials for cocaine and heroin. Dyncorp employees have come under fire while flying eradication missions in territory controlled by leftist guerrillas. On Feb. 18, contractors flew by helicopter into a gun battle in southern Colombia and rescued the crew of a downed police helicopter. Delahunt said his proposal would help avoid "mission creep", gradual escalation of U.S. involvement in Colombia, by having Colombians take on more anti-drug missions.
[ Like Burma, this means putting the biggest drug profiteers in charge of stopping themselves. ]

State Dept says policy has always been to help prepare Colombians to take over the eradication missions, some of which have been handled by Colombian National Police. In 1998, the U.S. Embassy in Bogota began developing a plan to phase out the use of contractors, Congress' GAO reported last year. But it said the plan was never approved and was set aside following the approval of the $1.3 billion anti-drug package. A State Dept internal audit last year noted that it is much more expensive to rely on contractors instead of Colombians.
[ Castano isn't bonded for liability damages ]

It said a Dyncorp pilot receives $119,305 a year, compared with $45,000 for contractors hired by Colombian National Police. The State Dept also must pay higher costs for housing & security. Dyncorp has a $200million 5 year contract with the department, company spokeswoman Janet Wineriter said.
[ Why does State Dept pay the tab for CIA temps? ]

*If it was good enough for Ted Shackley & Richard Armitage*, …
Treachery over the Andes 4.24.01 Jeff Stein Salon … Salon investigation of several U.S. air units flying drug interdiction flights over Colombia shows American military personnel routinely worried about the trustworthiness of their local allies. They also complained of poor security, compromise of flight plans, and friction between U.S. military, CIA and local military personnel. "It was bound to happen sooner or later," said a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who served on several anti-drug missions in the region, including in Colombia. While he was flying a counternarcotics mission out of Haiti in 1995, he said, his Blackhawk helicopter was nearly shot down by a Venezuelan fighter because the chopper pilot had forgotten to activate the onboard IFF "friend or foe" signal that identifies the craft. "Those guys are so trigger-happy, especially the fighter jocks. It doesn't matter whether they're from Peru, Colombia or wherever." He said it was "entirely possible" that a similar mix-up downed the Cessna in Peru. But in Colombia, problems of coordination & communication are only part of the problem, veterans say. There is also evidence that Washington's host & ally in the Colombian drug war has been penetrated by the narcotics cartels. Pilots have complained that Colombian military personnel riding along on their surveillance flights notified drug traffickers of their whereabouts. "In Vietnam, you called them Victor Charles, or Charlies," said 26yr old former U.S. Army Ranger who served as advisor in Colombia in 1997, referring to nickname for Communist Viet Cong. "We call them 'Julios'", drug traffickers & their agents inside Colombia's military units. … July 1999, when wife Jennifer Odom's U.S. Army spy plane crashed in Colombia, killing her, 4 other U.S. crewmembers and 2 Colombian military "ride-alongs". "I'll always believe that plane was shot down, and now because of Peru, maybe we'll someday find out it was by one of our own," said husban Chas. Odom, himself a retired Army colonel. Odom has long theorized that a drug cartel, tipped off to the spy plane's movements by corrupt military personnel, was responsible for downing his wife's plane, because she was constantly taking ground fire and had often been "lit up" by missile radar when flying over the coca fields. The Army insists Jennifer Odom's 4 prop Dehaviland-7 crashed into the Andes because the crew put faulty target coordinates into the onboard navigation computer. But her husband says the data was always provided by the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, a view backed up by other members of her unit, the 204th Military Intelligence Battalion, based in El Paso, Texas. Moreover Odom, who won two DEA citations for helping down suspected narcotics flights, also worried about the reliability of the Colombians who often ride along, her husband says. So did former crewmember Briana Krueger, U.S. Army intelligence specialist who, unlike Odom, lived to tell about it herself. But Krueger's husband Ray was not so lucky; he perished along with Odom on the fateful July surveillance mission. Like Chuck Odom, Krueger believes her spouse lost his life because officials within the Colombian military, possibly even the U.S. military, were collaborating with drug traffickers. Ironically, the Odom & Krueger deaths helped lead to expanded use of for-hire civilian contractors, like CIA-paid crew that first identified the Bowers' plane as drug-trafficking suspect, in order to avoid more U.S. military casualties. …	The corruption of Col. James Hiett 7.5.00 Bruce Shapiro Salon BROOKLYN, NY … Col. Jas.Hiett, former commander of U.S. Army anti-drug advisors in Colombia, due to be sentenced in mid-July for covering up his wife's drug smuggling, … By 1998 she was under investigation by the Army not only for using drugs, but for shipping $700,000 worth of cocaine, wrapped in brown paper, to the U.S. in diplomatic mail. She handed some cash proceeds … to her husband who … spent it on household bills to "dissipate," in his own word, the money trail. In May Laurie Hiett pleaded guilty to smuggling & was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison. … revealed in her sentencing hearing last May, is how the Army worked to protect her husband. After his wife was arrested, those same Army investigators quickly cleared Hiett of any wrongdoing. It was only U.S. Customs Service director Ray Kelly who insisted on pushing the investigation further … What makes Colombia a quagmire is the utter corruption on all sides. Every faction, left-wing guerrillas, right-wing death squads, corrupt Colombian military elements and, under Hiett at least, the U.S. Army, has some involvement in the drug trade. Hiett's corruption itself is not necessarily that unusual. Former U.S. Amb. to El Salvador & Paraguay Robt White "There's always been a fear of this by sensible people in the Pentagon. The legend is that the U.S. military is incorruptible, but that has proven not to be the case. There are quite a few instances of this corruption." … the Hietts also neatly demonstrate the profound social inequity & inverted justice of the whole drug war. Judge Korman contrived to sentence Laurie Hiett to 2 years less prison time than called for in federal sentencing guidelines, and Col. Hiett himself was indicted for the smallest offense prosecutors could find on the books. Mrs. Hiett's "mule," Hernan Aquila, Colombian-born resident of Queens whom she recruited to transport her coke after its arrival in New York, last month received a longer prison term than her employer who initiated the scheme. … last Wednesday the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-MN, to the Colombia drug- war bill which would have diverted much of that money into making effective drug-treatment programs widely available. … policies that officers like Hiett are supposed to enforce … bear no relationship to the reality they see every day: informants paid in drugs, family members who use drugs and drug agents who sell drugs. … what Congress buys with $1billion entry into Colombia's drug-drenched civil war is the Hietts on a massive scale with Pentagon as major stockholder; Diplomatic pouches & military planes as drug pipelines; pilots, drivers & returning officers as couriers; American partnership with Colombian military already profoundly mired in drug trafficking, paramilitary violence & human-rights abuses. Every act of interdiction raises the price of coca even higher, making it ever more profitable for farmers and smugglers. "Our own repressive apparatus," says Eric Sterling, head of Criminal Justice Policy Fdtn, "is what will make the market attractive and draw people like Mrs. Hiett further into the trade." … In May, Alejandro Gertz Merero, the police chief of Mexico City, called for policies that end "the economic interest in drug trafficking," instead of increasing the street value of drugs with enforced scarcity.

The Missionary Plane & U.S. Military Ops In S.America
4.24.01 Wm M. Arkin, military affairs columnist

washingtonpost.com

Houston TX When the Citation V's were originally built for counter-drug work, instead of delivering them to the U.S. Customs Service (who was operating a fleet of 26 Citations at that time) drug czar Gen. McCaffery gave them to the CIA for their operational use. This, in spite of the fact that these law enforcement missions in S.America were being handled by Customs at that time (And seem to be still done to some degree based on news reports that a Customs P-3 monitored the radio broadcasts of the shootdown). My question is twofold. Why do these law enforcement missions continue to be controlled by the military out of Southcom instead of a law enforcement agency (esp. considering that the military was supposed to "support" enforcement originally) and why did Gen. McCaffrey assign those interdiction aircraft to CIA instead of a law enforcement agency?

WM ARKIN The aircraft, as far as I can tell, are owned by the Air Force, operated by Dyncorp, on behalf of the CIA. It is all very convoluted & generally exists in this fashion because there is no one institution that embraces the counter-drug mission,
[ Least embraced by cocaine importing & money laundering CIA which is best suited by convolution. ]

and no national consensus as to whether it is desirable or successful.
[ There is ample consensus that existing drug policy of prohibition is NOT successful hence undesirable, but more effective & ethical alternatives such as harm reduction require legal accountability & decentralization of authority contrary to national security hegemony ]

In pure bureaucratic terms, the tangled relationships also keeps the operations out of the public eye, and evades Congressional oversight. Sure a more "pure" law enforcement operation would be better, but I would argue that even that operation needs to be closely looked at.

CIA Failed to Identify Plane Downed in Peru

WashPost

… Peruvian jet, using U.S. intelligence, shot down a private aircraft in 1997 without following safety procedures. … CIA quickly launched an "intensive dialogue" with Peruvian officials … according to a former State Department official who was posted in Peru at the time. In the 1997 incident … the Peruvian Air Force hurried precautionary steps and failed to fire warning shots, former State Dept official said. "Because it was a drug flight, it wasn't a disaster," he said. "But people realized an accident could happen. … The incident prompted CIA and other U.S. officials to pursue the issue with top Peruvian officers and those operating in the field. U.S. officials required the Peruvians to read and sign statements that they had reviewed all the procedures for interdiction operations, the intelligence official said. Training sessions also were conducted twice a month for Peruvian pilots.
"We wanted to make sure the Peruvians not only acknowledged the standard operating procedures at the upper levels but made sure these were communicated to the middle & lower levels," the former State Dept official said. … The American program of sharing radar & other intelligence information with the Peruvian Air Force began in 1995 … Initially the operations were run by both CIA & U.S. Customs Service. But for most of the time, they have been conducted exclusively by CIA using contract personnel & Defense Dept aircraft. … "The biggest problem was trying to operate the rudder pedal," Donaldson told reporters yesterday. "The rudder was there. My foot was not. … State Dept spokesman Richard Boucher said … U.S. officials would be sent to Peru to investigate the incident in cooperation with Peruvian authorities. …

The decision of the crew on the CIA's Citation surveillance plane not to approach the missionary aircraft and observe its registration number underscores one of the main challenges facing the anti-narcotics missions. While more than 30 smuggling flights have been intercepted in the last six years, far more suspicious planes have escaped over neighboring borders to Colombian & Brazilian airspace, where neither Peruvians nor Americans can follow. In Friday's case, the crew of the CIA plane made a decision not to approach close enough to the missionary plane to read the registration number clearly painted in big black letters on its side. "The reason they didn't go close was that, if it was a bad guy, they didn't want to give it a chance to go over the border before the interceptors showed up," a U.S. official said. … But a former CIA pilot familiar with these missions said this was unusual. "I do not know of a single instance where a daytime intercept was performed and the Citation crew did not get the registration number prior to a decision to launch an interceptor airplane," he said. During daytime operations, the American crew ordinarily uses zoom lenses on cameras located in the belly of the Citation to view the number. The information is then communicated to the ground station, first in English by the Americans and then in Spanish by the Peruvians, according to officials familiar with the missions.
Shortly before firing on the missionary plane, the Peruvian pilot observed its registration number and radioed it back to a Peruvian liaison officer aboard the American plane but he did not call it into ground commanders for verification, according to an American intelligence official. Once the military jet was airborne, the American crew began to notice that the plane they were tracking was not behaving like a standard drug flight. The missionary's Cessna was flying too high, on too steady a course, and making no attempt to hide itself or head for the border. The crew tried to get the attention of a Peruvian Air Force liaison officer on board the CIA flight, but he "was talking" into the radio "and not listening," a U.S. official said. … "They questioned him repeatedly," the official said. "The problem is, once the interceptor shows up, it's now an interdiction operation. The commander [of the mission] is now the commander of the Peruvian Air Force. … Our guys become a taxi service at this point." In a radio communication overheard by a U.S. Customs Service P-3 Orion electronic-intelligence gathering plane over Colombia at the time, the American crew then contacted the CIA directly in Lima, asking that the shoot- down be stopped. …

Wounded Pilot Downplays Role in Landing Plane

WEST READING, PA Nursing a right leg shattered by gunfire, pilot of missionary airplane shot down in Peru was reluctant to take credit today for saving 2 passengers' lives by landing in the Amazon River. "It certainly is no credit to me. It was obviously the Lord that landed the aircraft," said Kevin Donaldson, … 41, was in fair condition a day after surgery. He is expected to remain hospitalized for at least 10 days, but may not be able to walk for a year, doctors said. … Donaldson was shot in both calves, with two bones in his right leg shattered above the ankle. … Bowers' mother, Gloria Luttig, grieved the loss of her daughter today but said she died in pursuit of her "life's calling" as a missionary. "I just lost my baby, but I know where she is, and I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt," Luttig said in phone interview from suburban Pace, FL. home. "It's going to be OK. She died doing what she wanted to do. I don't harbor any bitterness in my heart," Luttig said. "What good would it do me? It would eat me up. It would make me very ugly & mean. I don't want to be that way."
Bowers & his son are staying with Cory's brother, Daniel, outside of Garner, south of Raleigh, N.C. Spokesman for Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (New Cumberland, PA) missionary group that supported the Bowers' work said Bowers did not plan to speak publicly until a funeral Friday in his hometown of Muskegon, MI.

U.S. Role in Peru Plane Downing Adds to Mystery
4..22.01 Sebastian Rotella (Buenos Aires) & Natalia Tarnawiecki (Lima) LATimes

LIMA, Peru … As part of an anti-drug pgm in which U.S. aircraft help interdict smuggling flights, an unarmed U.S. surveillance plane was providing support Friday morning when the Peruvian A-37B jet shot down a private seaplane carrying 5 people, U.S. Embassy officials here revealed Saturday. 35yr old Baptist missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, died after being hit by gunfire, … both killed apparently by a single bullet that passed through the woman's body and entered the child's skull as she sat on her mother's lap, her brother-in-law Phil Bowers said.
[ Randy Weaver's wife at Ruby Ridge ]

U.S. surveillance plane involvement, reportedly close enough for the Cessna185 seaplane 's pilot to see. Cessna was spotted about 10am; shoot-down occurred about 11:20 a.m., according to the Peruvian govt & informed sources. Peruvian air force officials insist that the missionary pilot, Kevin Donaldson, ignored radio warnings & other internationally established procedures with which the Peruvian pilot tried to contact him. U.S. officials gave no signs Saturday that they doubted the Peruvian version. Yet it is hard to understand why Donaldson, a veteran missionary who grew up in Peru, would not comply with a Peruvian air force pilot.
Donaldson was flying over a jungle area rife with airborne border smugglers. His seaplane fit the profile of smuggling aircraft, which use clandestine landing strips & rivers to fly coca paste into neighboring Colombia & Brazil. The aggressive shoot-down policy of Peru's air force, which has downed more than 2 dozen suspected drug flights since 1994, is well known.… "U.S. govt aircraft provide location data about aircraft flying in the region apparently without a flight plan," U.S. Embassy spokesman said. "The U.S. aircraft hands off this data to the Peruvian air force. Peruvian aircraft conduct the identification and interception missions."

Acknowledging the gravity of the matter, President Bush took time out from the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City to say he planned to discuss the shoot-down with Peruvian Prime Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar. "The U.S. is certainly upset by the fact that 2 citizens lost their lives," Bush said.
[ Baby born in Peru? U.S. citizen? ]
"I will wait to see all the facts before I reach any conclusions about blame." Facts were scarce Saturday because Peruvian govt officials and the victims had little to say. … Pilot Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, told Peruvian journalists Friday night that her husband had told her he saw a U.S. plane in the vicinity during the interception. She said the pilot said he had tried to communicate with his pursuer by radio and that he did not understand why the Peruvian anti-drug plane opened fire. … U.S. officials confirmed that the missionaries' plane had been en route to Iquitos from Leticia, Colombian town on Brazil border. Bowers family lived in the Iquitos area, made the trip to Colombia to obtain permanent Peruvian visa for the infant girl, a procedure requiring her to leave & reenter the country.

Amazon area where Peru, Brazil & Colombia converge is notorious for drug trafficking and guerrilla activity. But the Bowerses were apparently unfazed by the dangers: They had lived in Peru since 1994,
[ Same year tracking for Peru air interdiction sanctioned ]
They traveled by houseboat as missionaries for the … religious group which asserted that its seaplane followed "all regulations, such as a flight plan, remaining in Peruvian airspace and maintaining contact with the flight towers. The plane had recently been refurbished and was in top condition & was well marked." Donaldson radioed the air traffic controllers in Iquitos just before 11 a.m., according to the news release.
[ Why wasn't this tail number registry available to surveillance plane? ]
After Veronica Bowers, known as Roni, and her baby, Charity, were killed by bullets that tore through the fuselage, Donaldson was able to land the plane on a river and get the survivors out, according to the news release. "They were rescued by a Peruvian in a dugout canoe and were taken to the clinic in the town of Pebas," the press release said. "The Peruvian military, along with some U.S. personnel, evacuated husband & 7yr old son to Iquitos, along with the bodies."

Peru Denies Wrong in Downing Plane

LIMA, Peru Peru's Air Force on Monday denied suggestions from the White House that it failed to follow the rules of engagement before opening fire on a plane carrying American missionaries that was mistaken for a drug flight. … "The only thing I can tell you is that the air force followed the procedures. It regrets this lamentable accident in which two people died,'' said air force spokesman Cmdr. Robert Roca … His comments came hours after White House spokesman Ari Fleischer information indicated that standard rules of engagement which include checking the plane's registry, attempting to raise the pilot by radio, and firing warning shots were not correctly followed. Fleischer said the joint U.S.-Peru anti-drug pgm was suspended with President Bush 's approval because "there are questions about the way the mission was carried out.'' The CIA plane had alerted Peruvian jet fighters the missionaries' plane was possibly ferrying illegal drugs as part of a long-standing U.S. counter-narcotics surveillance pgm run in cooperation with Peru.
But Americans aboard the surveillance plane voiced objections to Peruvian air force authorities before a jet from that country shot down the missionaries' plane, a U.S. official said Sunday. Survivors of the attack maintain they were fired upon without warning and that air force jets continued to strafe them even after they had crash landed, according to relatives.

U.S. says Peru at Fault for Plane Attack

WASHINGTON … The CIA has been involved in such surveillance flights over Peru since 1995 under authority provided in a law passed in 1994. The law permits U.S. govt employees to assist foreign nations in interdicting aircraft when there is reasonable suspicion of illicit drug trade. … White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday that "the U.S., in the process of passing on information, as part of an ongoing operation, did its best to make certain that all the rules were followed.'' Asked if the standard rules of engagement were, in fact, followed, he said: "As I indicated, the information that we are in receipt of indicates no.'' He later said the U.S. crew complied with standard procedures, but declined to say the same for the Peruvian crew. "There have already been determinations about procedures that were not followed,'' Fleischer said. "I'm going to suspend on further evaluations of it until all information is received.'' Peru's air force denied suggestions that they failed to follow the rules of engagement. … Fleischer did not go into details of the mission, but said the joint U.S.-Peru anti-drug pgm was suspended with Bush's approval because ``there are questions about the way the mission was carried out.'' But he defended the pgm as a success in drug interdiction. "The war on drugs is an important mission of the U.S. govt,'' Fleischer said. …
The Peruvian officer aboard the CIA plane requested permission from his superiors on the ground for the Peruvian jet to fire on the suspect aircraft in order to disable it, the U.S. official said. At this point "the U.S. crew voiced objections'' and asked that the interceptor jet's pilot fly alongside the suspect aircraft and get its tail number. The number was obtained but apparently was not called back to the Peruvian air force operations center on the ground before the shootdown was authorized … The U.S. surveillance aircraft is owned by the Defense Dept but was operated by the CIA, a second U.S. official said.
[ Spooks running the battlefield, just like 'Nam ]
This official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said it appeared that the Peruvian authorities moved too quickly to attack the plane carrying the American missionaries. As a result, all such surveillance flights have been suspended, he said. Fleischer stopped short of blaming Peru for the incident. "The president is not interested in assigning blame. The president is interested in making certain that we don't let it happen again,'' he said.

U.S. Objected to Peru Plane Attack
4.23.01 Robt Burns

WASHINGTON In Quebec for a hemispheric summit that included Peru, Bush pledged on Sunday to find out what went wrong, but said the role of the U.S. surveillance plane was "simply to pass on information'' about aircraft suspected of carrying drugs.

CIA Plane Contacted Peru Officials

WASHINGTON … Specifically, the American role is to spot planes' tail numbers & identify aircraft that fail to file flight plans, Bush said.
[ Donaldson filed flight plan. U.S. surveillance is incapable of tracking filings. ]
The surveillance flights, he said, have been suspended "until we get to the bottom of the situation, to fully understand all the facts, to understand what went wrong in this terrible tragedy.'' The U.S. official said U.S. plane crew included a civilian pilot, co-pilot & systems operator who work under contract for the CIA. Also on board was a Peruvian air force officer responsible for coordinating with Peruvian authorities on the ground. … This official said the CIA employees believed the Peruvian air force officer, once he was unable to contact the other plane's pilot on three different radio frequencies, moved too quickly through the established procedures for determining what action to take against the suspect plane. The official offered the following description of the incident:
The CIA plane notified its base at 9:43 a.m. local time Friday of the radar sighting of an aircraft that crossed three to four miles into Brazil. A second sighting was called in 12 minutes later as the unidentified plane crossed back into Peruvian air space. The CIA crew asked the Peruvian officer to determine whether the aircraft was on an approved flight plan. The Peruvian officer could not locate a flight plan for a plane in that area.
[ This is a job for the FAA to train the Peruvian aviation industry how to keep the sky cowboys from shooting up approach patterns. ]

Intl Fed. Air Traffic Controllers
Intl Plane Owners & Pilots Assoc. de
Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana & Brazil ¹ ²

Intl Aviation Safety Assessment Pgm (IASA)
#70 Peru = Category 1 Meets ICAO Standards

Arms Traffickers
7.3.01 NTYimes

Since his arrest on June 23 in Venezuela, Vladimiro Montesinos, the former Peruvian spy chief, has begun answering charges of torture and death squad activities, money laundering and arms trafficking. At the heart of the arms trafficking allegations being assembled by Peruvian officials is a convoluted deal in 1998 in which Jordan may have inadvertently sold nearly 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles through Peruvian, Lebanese and American middlemen to drug-trafficking leftist guerrillas in Colombia. That deal opens a window on the shadowy world of small arms trafficking just as the UN is about to convene a conference to devise intl standards & procedures for curtailing this destructive trade.

At the time of the deal, Mr. Montesinos was working closely with the CIA on covert anti-terrorism & drug- interdiction programs that the U.S. had operated in Peru since the late 1980s. His alleged arms broker, a Lebanese man based in Miami, likewise had long-standing relationships with American intelligence and law enforcement. They operated in a netherworld of smugglers and brokers who have thrived for years by working both sides of the street, doing deals not just with the world's warlords and criminal groups but with legitimate governments as well. Low-tech light arms like assault weapons and hand grenades have been responsible for as much as 90 percent of the world's conflict-related killing in the decade since the end of the Cold War. The easy availability of small weapons magnifies ethnic conflicts, empowers warlords & criminal groups, encourages the exploitation of child soldiers and contributes to an appalling toll in civilian casualties. The UN conference, which will start next Monday, represents a long overdue recognition by the world's diplomats that legal and regulatory solutions need to be coordinated at a global level to be effective.

If member states can agree on a standardized international system for vetting weapons exports and documenting where they wind up, something positive will have been achieved. But there will be limited impact if major arms brokers continue to enjoy the protection or indifference of govts, not least in Europe, that are afraid to reveal their covert business and intelligence relationships. In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the 1976 Arms Control Export Act that requires American arms brokers anywhere in the world and foreign nationals living or working in the U.S. to register and obtain licenses for all arms deals they do, whether on or off American soil. The law has been widely hailed as one of the best legislative instruments in the world for controlling arms middlemen. Yet to date not a single broker has been prosecuted for failing to register deals under the statute. The American law on arms brokers could be a valuable model for worldwide standards to curtail illicit arms brokering. But even the best laws will be ineffective without the political will and resources required to enforce them.

U.S. Anti-Drug Strategy Stalls in the Andes

Reuters

WASHINGTON U.S. anti-drug strategy in the Andes has stalled as officials figure out how an American missionary plane was shot down by a Peruvian Air Force plane and politicians ask why U.S. allies in Peru are now wanted for corruption. The State Dept this week expanded an inquiry into the downing of the plane that killed an American woman and her baby in April to a review of its program to intercept airborne drug shipments in Peru and Colombia. Interceptions have been suspended. The shoot-down policy adopted in 1994 was key to cutting off an air bridge used by traffickers in Peru, once the world's largest producer of cocaine before Colombia took that role. As Colombia pushes ahead with a controversial U.S.-funded military and police offensive against drug plantations, U.S. officials acknowledge there are signs that coca growing is on the rise again in Peru.
Democratic senators, now in control of the Senate agenda, plan to hold hearings early this Fall on Andean counterdrug policies, aides said on Thursday. They also want to look at U.S. ties to Peru's former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, now a fugitive accused of crimes including involvement in massacres, arms & drugs trafficking, money laundering and vote rigging. Human rights groups had long warned that the U.S. was turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Peru for the sake of advancing its drug war objectives under president Alberto Fujimori, who was brought down in November by a series of political scandals surrounding his spy master, including the running of guns to Colombia's Marxist guerrillas. ¹

Cozy Deal
"I think there was a little cozy deal with the previous government that I have my suspicions about. I cannot say that with absolute certainty, but boy there is an awful lot of smoke around," Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd told Reuters. Dodd said he has held private talks with other senators about holding a hearing on U.S. links to Montesinos. "The U.S. was allied with Montesinos for counternarcotics purposes and it turns out that he may have been controlling the drug trade in Peru," said Gina Amatangelo, an expert at the independent Washington Office on Latin America. Amatangelo said it was not the first time that a U.S. ally was found to be involved in the drug trade, pointing to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who like Montesinos once was an informant of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to overthrow Noriega, who is now serving 30 years in a Florida high-security jail for drug trafficking.The Clinton administration conducted a review of its ties to Montesinos in the mid-1990s, but decided that his role in providing Peruvian cooperation in the drug war was too vital, a former official said.

Eyes Wide Open
"It was not a matter of turning a blind eye. It was more troubling than that. It was eyes wide open to the good and the bad," a former Clinton administration official told Reuters. "It was so patently clear that what Fujimori and Montesinos were doing undermined democracy in Peru," he added. When Fujimori sought an unprecedented third term last year, U.S. officials knew the vote was rigged by Montesinos. "That was all engineered by Montesinos. Everyone knew that. It was no secret," the former official said. Washington brought international pressure to bear on Fujimori that contributed to his downfall. But there had been constant run ins between the CIA and the National Security Council and the State Department over Peru, he said. "There was friction between the NSC and the CIA, between the drug czar's office and the NSC, between the Pentagon and State, and within the embassy in Lima," the official said.

No Alternative
Despite rumors that he was corrupt, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies maintain they had to work with Montesinos because he was the equivalent of national security advisor and head of Peru's intelligence service at the time. "The U.S. govt by necessity had to deal with him," a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters. Under Fujimori, the Peruvian government defeated Maoist and Marxist guerrilla groups and succeeded in reducing coca leaf cultivation by 70 per cent in five years. Fujimori fled to Japan and is wanted in Peru to stand trial for corruption. Clinton's drug policy director Gen. Barry McCaffrey admits Montesinos was a "dangerous character" responsible for the "corruption and authoritarianism" of Fujimori's govt.The shadowy Montesinos infuriated McCaffrey in 1998 by doctoring a video tape of their meeting to show Peruvians that he was on good terms with the U.S. drug czar. But McCaffrey insisted: "Montesinos was a Peruvian creature, not a U.S. creature."

Our ( & their) man in Peru

NYTimes

LIMA, Peru According to former Peruvian intelligence officials, Mr. Montesinos became CIA paid informant in early 1970's when, as young capt., he worked in prime minister's office. A left- wing military dictator was in power; Montesinos funneled documents to American embassy that detailed Russian arms purchases. Charged with treason in 1976 & served a year in jail. Through 1980's, Montesinos kept close relationship with American embassy even while serving as drug traffickers' lawyer. By late 1980's, though, his most important relationship was with Fujimori; the spy made himself invaluable by leaking presidential candidate govt polls then using his lawyerly skills to fix a tax problem. Years later, Mr. Montesinos even took care of Fujimori's divorce. When Fujimori took power in 1990, Montesinos became unofficial intelligence chief and soon CIA's main liaison. When C.I.A. created counter-narcotics operation in Peru's intelligence agency, it put Montesinos in charge. As the man who could coordinate Peru's often fractious military & police commands, he became invaluable to American war on drugs. Between 1994 & 1998, cocaine production & trafficking shrank sharply, and American diplomats still give Montesinos grudging credit.

CIA links to Peru's backfired arms deal

NYTimes

also

Salon

WASHINGTON Late in 1998, Jordanian officials went to the chief of the CIA's station in Amman with a routine question. Would the U.S. mind if they sold 50,000 surplus AK-47 assault rifles to the Peruvian military? The CIA official did some checking and got right back. "Our answer was, 'No, we can live with that,' " an American intelligence official recalled. What seemed a modest arms deal, however, turned out to be anything but. Last spring, CIA officials told the Clinton administration that they had discovered that thousands of the rifles had gone not to Peru but to leftist guerrillas in Colombia, perhaps the most baneful of Washington's enemies in Latin America.
Peru's longtime intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, a crucial CIA ally in the region, then stepped forward to take credit for dismantling an intl ring that he said had smuggled the guns. But his account was immediately challenged by officials in Jordan & Colombia, who suggested that the Peruvian government was more deeply involved than it cared to admit. Now, since his ouster in September, Mr. Montesinos has himself been implicated in the arms deal by two of the men who organized it. Peruvian officials are moving to prosecute him in connection with a large personal fortune he apparently hid in Swiss banks, and State Dept officials are complaining privately that the CIA was slow to inform them fully about what had gone on. American officials say the evidence of Mr. Montesinos's possible role in the gun running remains unclear. But they say the CIA's handling of the case has raised new questions about the agency's ties to Mr. Montesinos, deepening a rift in the Clinton administration over how closely it should dealing with an official who has been linked to human rights abuses and other crimes.

"We don't know for sure that he was involved, but there's a lot of smoke coming from his direction," an administration official said. "We do know that we should have had a lot of the information a lot earlier than we got it." Intelligence officials, who like others would discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity, defended the CIA's actions. They

said that while the agency may have been slow to uncover what had happened, it informed administration officials promptly this year after the guns had been traced back to Jordan. While the CIA had worked closely with Mr. Montesinos and depended on him to support covert anti-terrorism & drug-interdiction programs the U.S. has operated in Peru since the late 1980's, they said, the agency has also reported in detail on his purported misdeeds. Mr. Montesinos has not been heard from. He fled to Panama on Sept. 24, after the disclosure of a videotape that showed him bribing an opposition legislator. When Panamanian officials refused private pleas from the U.S. & the OAS to grant Mr. Montesinos political asylum, he flew back to Peru on Oct. 23 and went into hiding.
On Friday, after Switzerland's discovery of five bank accounts holding some $50 million, Peruvian officials announced that they would try to prosecute him for illegally enriching himself during his decade-long tenure as Pres. Alberto Fujimori's most powerful adviser. If Mr. Montesinos was in fact earning money from arms trading, that apparently never crossed the minds of the American intelligence officers in Amman. Intelligence officials said there was nothing unusual about Jordanian military or intelligence officials running a proposed arms sale past the CIA, even though they were under no formal obligation to do so. "They said, 'Would it upset our relationship with you if we sold these weapons to the Peruvian govt?" one of the officials said. "It's not unreasonable that the Peruvian govt might want weapons of this type. The Jordanians aren't required to ask us."

Although the U.S. had closely watched weapons purchases by Peru since its longstanding border dispute with Ecuador erupted in open warfare in 1995, CIA officials did only a cursory check of the deal, several American officials said. Agency officers in Amman informed senior diplomats and defense attach�s at the American Embassy, officials said, but no one cabled word of proposal to the State Dept. The CIA officers did notify their headquarters in Langley, Va., where it was then passed along to the agency station in Lima. Nonetheless, intelligence officers there never raised the matter with Peruvian security officials because, an intelligence official said, "it was told to us in confidence by the Jordanians." Several administration officials argued that this amounted to far less than adequate notification by the CIA, regardless of the outcome. "This was not an appropriate thing to have happen," a senior official said. "This was an issue that should have been put before policy makers."
The arms broker who arranged the sale, Sarkis Soghanalian, said in an interview that he, too, had been told the guns were going to the Peruvian military, and that he had demanded & received end-user certificates validating that claim. But Mr. Soghanalian, who is awaiting trial in Los Angeles on unrelated money laundering & bank fraud charges, also said the Peruvians sought from the start to establish a discreet relationship they might use to buy more sophisticated weapons. And after agreeing in Dec. 1998 to sell the 50,000 Jordanian rifles for just under $500,000, Mr. Soghanalian said he flew to Lima to discuss Peru's other weapons needs. The arms dealer, a Lebanese citizen who has sold vast amounts of weapons worldwide, said he had met in Lima with several senior military officials and had lunch at a private Lima yacht club with Mr. Montesinos, who was introduced to him as "the boss." He said, `We need someone like you,' " Mr. Soghanalian recalled.

Peruvian officials presented Mr. Soghanalian with a shopping list of more than $70 million worth of hardware that he thought could have been meant only for a regular army: antiaircraft weapons, communications gear and equipment to upgrade tanks. The broker said there were some strange aspects to the arrangement: The Peruvians asked to pay for the future purchases in cash and offered him $22 million as a down payment. They insisted on air-dropping the AK-47's to their troops. The first of the cargoes was also turned back in the Amazon basin for reasons that were never clear, and the shipments were finally aborted in Aug. 1999 after 9,540 of the rifles had been sent. But Mr. Soghanalian said he did not think much of the fact that the Peruvians also wanted to buy a large quantity of Russian SA-7 Strella missiles, a shoulder-fired weapon that would immediately change the balance of power in Colombia if obtained by the insurgents.
Many military analysts have speculated that it is only a matter of time before the guerrillas try to obtain such weapons in response to a $1.3 billion package of American aid that includes almost $400 million for new helicopters for the Colombian security forces. The retired Peruvian Army lieutenant who arranged for the Jordanian shipment with Mr. Soghanalian, Jos� Luis Aybar, has also identified Mr. Montesinos as the official who oversaw the arms deal. But Mr. Aybar said he was unaware that the Jordanian cargo consisted of assault rifles, a claim that Mr. Soghanalian and others contradicted. American officials remain divided about Mr. Montesinos's possible role in the affair. Several officials said CIA reporting on the matter had been notably thin, despite the agency's extensive contacts in the Peruvian security forces. They said senior State Dept officials, including the under secretary, Thomas R. Pickering, had been deeply dissatisfied with the flow of information from the agency, both about the its own early role in the case and about the possible involvement of Peruvian officials. "Every time you asked a question, it would take a few days to get an answer," an official said. "And every time, their story would change a little. It was like pulling teeth."

But an intelligence official noted that after the Colombian military seized some of the AK- 47's in mid- 1999, the CIA helped trace them, confirming in April that they had come from the Jordanian shipment. That discovery was promptly reported to White House, State Dept & Defense officials. The agency also informed Peru, apparently prompting the news conference on Aug. 21 at which Mr. Fujimori & Mr. Montesinos claimed to have broken up a ring of intl smugglers who had sought to pass themselves off as Peruvian officials. The intelligence official also said that despite the claims of Mr. Soghanalian & Mr. Aybar, the CIA still had no credible information that the fugitive Peruvian intelligence chief had been involved in sending guns to the Colombian rebels. "We don't have any illusions about his background," the official said of Mr. Montesinos. "But we do not have intelligence information other than the statements of a couple of individuals that ties him to it."

Peru's Fujimori Denies $12M Scandal

LIMA, Peru Former President Alberto Fujimori has denied his ex-wife's allegation that he deposited some $12.5 million from Japanese donors meant for Peruvian children into a personal bank account. "I see the necessity to categorically deny the existence of a personal bank account coming from Japanese citizens for Peruvian children,'' Fujimori said in a faxed statement that was widely reported Sunday in Peruvian newspapers. After 10 years of autocratic rule, Fujimori fled to Japan, his parents' homeland, in November amid mounting corruption scandals involving his former intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Montesinos was captured June 23 in Venezuela. Fujimori's ex-wife, Susana Higuchi, now a congresswoman, charged last week that he deposited Japanese donations meant for a Peruvian children's foundation into a Tokyo bank account when he was president- elect in 1990. In his statement, Fujimori said Higuchi was "divorced from reality,'' and called the allegation "the product of a perfect orchestration'' against him.
Japan's Jiji News Service quoted Fujimori as saying that he plans to sue Higuchi over the comments. Japan granted Fujimori citizenship, and officials in Tokyo have said that as a Japanese national, he cannot be forced to return to Peru. Peruvian Prime Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar said Friday that investigators "practically have proof'' that Victor Aritomi, Peru's former ambassador to Japan and husband to Fujimori's sister, Rosa, had committed "grave irregularities'' to "hide bank deposits for his brother-in-law, Fujimori.'' Perez de Cuellar also referred to "misuse'' of Japanese donations, but did not elaborate. Fujimori, who denies any criminal wrongdoing, has been charged with dereliction of duty and abandonment of office.

Also Sunday, the head of a congressional committee probing Montesinos' alleged ties to drug smuggling said sources had told investigators that the former spy chief diverted confiscated cocaine to Mexican drug lords. Accomplices switched fake cocaine for drugs that were slated for incineration, said lawmaker Juan Velit. "This cocaine was being stolen from the ovens then re-exported to Mexico and from there, possibly to the U.S.,'' Velit said. Velit was responding to an article in Mexico's El Universal newspaper that said Montesinos brokered the sale of 18 tons of cocaine to the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel between 1995 & 1999.

Steamy film spoof attacks Peru's Montesinos

Reuters

LIMA, Peru Audiences have hit him with insults, empty bottles, and even stones, but no one has been able to convince actor Abelardo Ibarcena to quit his imitation of Peru's most dastardly villain, ex-spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos. He has now finally landed the role of a lifetime in a new film "Vladi-skirts, Attack!" a spoof on the former spy chief who dominated Peru for a decade by allegedly dealing bribes under ousted President Alberto Fujimori. "With this role … I'm totally fulfilled but it's a little scary sometime because people get really filled with hate when they see me all done up," said Ibarcena, who has previously imitated Montesinos for television shows. The new film, which director Cucho Sarmiento says is not aiming to be a box-office hit but is a sharp satire about Montesinos' fall from grace, is due to hit screens in August.
Montesinos, who reportedly amassed a $270 million fortune and had a taste for diamond watches and secret trap- doors, was arrested last month in Venezuela after an eight-month manhunt. He now awaits trial on charges from embezzlement to murder. The spy chief fled last year after a video emerged showing him handing cash to an opposition politician. Hundreds of other tapes followed in a scandal that led Fujimori to seek refuge in Japan, where he was fired by Congress as "morally unfit." "Our purpose is not artistic … but to poke fun at Montesinos through the loss of one of his famous videos and his weakness for women," said Sarmiento.

Montesinos, a married father of two, had poster-sized pictures of his lover on the wall of his beach house. The movie features three dancers, who according to Lima's rumor mills are reminiscent of the intelligence agent's numerous real-life female fans. "In the movie we are Montesinos' 'spy girls' and we search heaven and earth for a video that was stolen by a businessman," said Tula Rodriguez, who plays one of Montesinos' henchwomen. In the frenzied search for the missing video, the 'spy girls' are entangled in countless steamy escapades. From time to time, they also sit on their beloved boss' lap and convince him to dole out cash.

low budget, high comedy
Most of the movie's other actors are amateurs and comedians who normally earn their pennies telling jokes to passersby in Lima's historic plazas. "What I wouldn't do for some of Montesinos' money and a few of his girls," said Ibarcena laughing, of his alter ego. He added that after hours studying Montesinos' personality, he concluded that to clinch the perfect rendition of the spy chief, he needed to act like a psychopath. But things get more serious for the actor when he walks the streets dressed as the spy chief. He often gets an earful of insults and shouts, including the occasional "Get him!"
But that's nothing compared to the beating Ibarcena received during the filming of the movie's final scene -- the bruises from which are still visible on his face. "The movie ends with a community barbeque where Montesinos is recognized, grabbed and beaten up while he looks for his video, but I think the movie extras forgot I was an actor because they almost killed me," said Ibarcena. Said Jose Cachay, a street actor who played a corrupt policeman taking orders from Montesinos: "This is a comedy, just so you know, so I hope nothing happens to me."
Depending on the success of "Vladi-skirts," which took 30 days to film on a shoestring budget, Sarmiento says he is contemplating sequels. "But first we need to get out of this craziness alive," he said, sitting in his small studio surrounded by photos of Montesinos from different angles. At his feet the floor is littered with wigs and fake dollar bills.

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