CIA Inspector: Agents Lied About 2001 Missionary Shoot-Down in Peru

Thursday , November 20, 2008
FOX NEWS

WASHINGTON ­
CIA personnel lied to Congress in April 2001 about a missionary plane shot
down in Peru that killed a woman and her 7-month-old daughter, the CIA
inspector general revealed in a report being released by California Rep.
Pete Hoekstra on Thursday.

At the time, CIA personnel said the Peruvian Air Force suspected the plane
was full of drug traffickers. The damning report, however, shows that CIA
employees misled and even lied to Congress about what happened and did not
supply accurate information to the Department of Justice or the Bush
administration.

The inspector general's report, written up about six weeks ago, said the CIA
covered up the actions of those involved. The Peruvian Air Force had claimed
that the incident was an unavoidable accident because the fighter pilot
followed international guidelines to shoot after the missionary plane
ignored repeated warnings to land.

According to an April 2001 report in Christianity Today, the Peruvian Air
Force opened fire on the Cessna 185 floatplane that was carrying a
missionary couple and their two children from the Colombian border toward
the city of Iquitos, 600 miles northeast of Lima. Veronica Bowers and her
baby, Charity, were killed. Bowers' husband, James Bowers, and the couple's
7-year-old son, Cory, survived as did the pilot, Kevin Donaldson.

The IG report has a number of recommendations to the CIA, but intelligence
sources say CIA Director Michael Hayden hasn't made any decisions yet about
which ones or whether to adopt them, and is seeking input from an external
advisory board of 12 people he set up.

The CIA will not comment yet on the substance of the report, which is still
being reviewed by Hayden.

FOX News' Jim Angle contributed to this report.
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Lawmaker Accuses CIA of Coverup
Classified CIA Report Said to Harshly Criticize Deadly Drug Plane Shoot-Down
Program

By JASON RYAN and JACK DATE
Nov. 20, 2008­


A classified CIA report shows the agency operated a drug interdiction
program outside of the law and that officials lied to Congress in an attempt
to cover it up, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said
Thursday.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., is pushing for the declassification of the
report, issued by the CIA inspector general, which is critical of the
Narcotics Air Bridge Denial program, an agency initiative designed to shoot
down suspected drug smuggling aircraft in South America.

The report, according to a congressional source, harshly criticizes the
program, which dates back to the mid-1990s.

In April 2001, one of Hoekstra's constituents lost family members who were
traveling in South America as missionaries after a plane they were in was
shot down by the Peruvian Air Force because of faulty information provided
by the CIA.

Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter Charity were both killed in the
incident; her husband Jim and their son Cory, as well as the plane's pilot,
Kevin Donaldson, survived.

The U.S. government suspended the program in 2001 after the Peru incident.
It relaunched it in Colombia in 2003.

"The IG reports states that parts of the intelligence community, parts of
the CIA were acting outside of the law with the drug interdiction program at
the time that the Bowers' plane was shot down. That there was an active
coverup within the community," Hoekstra said at a news conference in
Washington Thursday. "It was enabled by a culture that failed to recognize
either internal or external accountabilities."

The IG report, which remains classified, is said to uncover systemic
problems in the program which led to the shoot down and other incidents.
Hoekstra has called for the Justice Department to review the facts in the
matter and requested that prosecutors review the report to determine if a
criminal investigation is warranted.

In response to Hoekstra's accusations, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said,
"[the] CIA takes very seriously questions of responsibility and
accountability."

"The only accountability process worthy of this agency is one conducted with
care, candor, and common sense. That's the single goal here. It's still
unfolding, and it's not something that should ever be subjected to political
pressure of any kind," he said.

Hoekstra said at the press conference that the CIA withheld information from
lawmakers and other government officials.

"After the shoot down the CIA denied Congress, the National Security Council
and the [Justice] Department access to key findings of internal reviews that
established and documented the sustained significant violations of the
established procedures," Hoekstra said. "The Inspector General found that
CIA officials made false or misleading statements to Congress. The IG found
the CIA never informed the Department of Justice of significant material
information in connection with consideration of potential criminal charges."

According to an official briefed on the matter, in 2005 the Justice
Department declined to prosecute the case after reviewing it with the CIA
Inspector General.

Spokesman Gimigliano said that CIA Director Michael Hayden reviewed the
report in late August, but that he has reached "no decisions at this point
regarding conclusions and recommendations sent forward by the IG."

"This process is still open," he continued. "In fact, the director has
sought input from a cleared outside expert, one who would know the complex
issues involved in an air interdiction program."

Gimigliano also noted that the agency has shared the report with the Justice
Department.

An unclassified portion of the report said that within hours of the
incident, "CIA officers began to characterize the shootdown as a one-time
mistake in an otherwise well-run program. In fact, this was not the case."

Another unclassified section of the report says the "routine disregard of
the required intercept procedures" in the program "led to the rapid shooting
down of target aircraft without adequate safeguards to protect against the
loss of innocent life."

According to participants in the program interviewed for the report,
performing the takedowns according to the established protocol would have
"taken time and might have resulted in the escape of the target aircraft,"
the report continues. Because the procedure was difficult to follow, so "it
was easier to shoot the aircraft down than to force it down."

"The result," the report says, "was that, in many cases, suspect aircraft
were shot down within two to three minutes of being sighted by the Peruvian
fighter -- without being properly identified, without being given the
required warnings to land, and without being given time to respond to such
warnings as were given to land."

Those actions were in violation of Presidentially-mandated intercept
procedures, according to the report.

"Bottom line, if this program and these people had been held accountable for
implementing procedures," Hoekstra said, "the Bowers plane would never have
been shot down."
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