Cover-up claimed in plane shooting in Peru

[Judi Lynn]

Cover-up claimed in plane shooting in Peru

The Associated Press
Thursday, November 20, 2008

WASHINGTON: A classified CIA report on the 2001 downing of a small plane carrying American missionaries by the Peruvian Air Force suggests that U.S. officials may have misled Congress and withheld information from the Justice Department.

Representative Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, urged Thursday that a CIA inspector general report on the incident be declassified. An American woman and her infant daughter died in the incident. The pilot, the woman's husband and their son survived. The family lived in Michigan.

The report also questions whether procedures set up under the CIA's "Airbridge" program to prevent similar incidents were actually followed.

The downing occurred in April 2001 in a remote region of Peru near the Colombian and Brazilian borders as part of the Airbridge counter-narcotics program. A CIA-contracted surveillance plane was supposed to identify drug smuggling aircraft, and Peruvian and Colombian fighters were supposed to intercept them and order them to land. If they did not follow those orders, the fighters had authority to shoot them down.

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/20/america/cia.php