Innocents Die in the Drug War

DECEMBER 14, 2008, 11:18 P.M. ET

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Of all the casualties claimed by the U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America, perhaps none so fully captures its senselessness and injustice as the 2001 CIA-directed killing of Christian missionary Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity in Peru.

No one is suggesting that the CIA intentionally killed Mrs. Bowers and her baby. It was an accident. But according to Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.), it was an accident waiting to happen because of the way in which the CIA operated the drug interdiction plan in Peru known as the Airbridge Denial Program. Mr. Hoekstra says the goods to prove his charge are in a classified report from the CIA Inspector General that he received in October.

Under the program, initiated by President Clinton, the CIA was charged with identifying small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying cocaine over Peru on a path to Colombia, and directing the Peruvian military to force them down.
Strict procedures were put in place to minimize the risks to innocents. But after viewing the IG report, Mr. Hoekstra -- the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee -- says that it is clear that those procedures had gone out the window long before the April 20, 2001 tragedy.

On that day the Bowers family was flying in a single-engine plane over the Amazon toward their home in Iquitos. Mrs. Bowers was holding the infant on her lap when a bullet fired by the Peruvian Air Force, under direction of the CIA, hit the aircraft, traveled through her back and into Charity's skull. The plane crash-landed on the Amazon River. Mr. Bowers, his young son and the pilot survived. Neither the plane nor its passengers were found to be involved in any way in the drug business and initial reports said that the mistaken attack was a tragic one-time error.
The IG report looked at the Airbridge Denial Program from its inception in 1995 until its termination in 2001 and took seven years to complete. In statements to the press last month Mr. Hoekstra said it demonstrates every one of the 15 "shootdowns" that the CIA participated in over the life of the program had "violations of required procedures." He also said that the report "found that CIA officers knew of and condoned the violations, fostering an environment of negligence and disregard for the procedures."

Equally troubling, the congressman says, is the IG finding that after the tragedy there was an attempt to cover up what had been going on in Peru. He has also said that the IG report finds that there were "unauthorized modifications" made to "the presidentially mandated intercept procedures by people who had no authority to do so" and that "there was effectively no legal oversight of the program." He further charges that "there is evidence that CIA officials made false or misleading statements to Congress," and that "the CIA denied Congress, the NSC [National Security Council] and the Department of Justice access to key findings of internal reviews that established and documented the sustained and significant violations of the required procedures."

"It was a rogue operation," he told me by telephone on Tuesday. "They knew they weren't following the rules, and they never did anything about it. They were callous about it." When I asked him to explain further, he said: "My take on this is that they became obsessed with the mission."

The CIA says that director Michael Hayden has "recognized the seriousness of [the report's] findings" and "is absolutely committed to a process looking at systemic issues and accountability that is as thorough and fair as possible." The office of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D., Texas) won't comment on the report. But Mr. Hoekstra is calling for more of it to be declassified and for the Justice Department to review "whether further criminal investigation is warranted."

Yet to honor the memory of Mrs. Bowers and her daughter and spare innocent lives in the future, a broader discussion in Congress about U.S. drug policy in the region is needed.

Consider the fact that Mr. Clinton's justification for the Airbridge Denial Program was that drug trafficking was a threat to Peruvian national security. Of course it was: Prohibition naturally produces powerful criminal networks that undermine the rule of law. But as a 2001 Senate Intelligence Committee report found, the drug runners learned to avoid detection by altering their routes via Brazil. It also found that while Peru's coca business shrank, Colombia's took off.

Since then, U.S. interdiction has put the pressure on Colombia and the problem is now resurging in Peru. The latest reports are that Mexican cartels are teaming up with remnants of the Shining Path terror network to rebuild the business, proving once again the futility of the supply-side attack as a way of minimizing drug use in the U.S.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122930087794405393.html

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Take this with the proven fact that the CIA has been running Coke at least since Iran/Contra and the fact that one of the CIA planes used for Rendition flights crashed in Mexico loaded full of the white stuff and I think you can see where this "mistake" came from.

Sen Joe Biden was one of the chief architects of the war on drugs and i think its completely idiotic and extremly short sighted. We dont put nicotine addicts in jail, we dont put people who are addicted to alchohol in jail. The whole idea is a bunch of BS, its caused our prison system to become more over-populated than many countries around the world, while rapists get probation. Federal mandatory sentences in drug cases, are destroying the prison systems both on a state and federal level





Just another Bad Decision from a Bad System

You both got it dead on. Its funny we arrest some kid for a dime bag of a weed but let all the crooks off that started this whole mess we are living off scot free. I wont even comment on the pill pushing doctors or pharmacitical companies

It is time for a change.

The war on drugs is a complete failure.

Let's use the money in a more constructive way.

it wont happen

the anti-drug cartels are just as much a billion dollar business as the drug cartels. They'll never give up that kind of money

It's definitely not a likely situation. Once you turn on flows of cash into a system like that, they only grow larger and larger, greedier and more bloodthirsty to keep that cash flow coming and growing. It's quite a racket actually. The very groups of people who push to keep it illegal make the most profit off of the price skyrocket that prohibition causes.