Peruvian No-Fly Zone.

• Author: Madsen, Wayne
• Position: Case of the missionaries shot down in Peru - Brief Article

When Veronica Bowers and her even-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, died on April 20 after the Peruvian air force strafed the Cessna airplane they were riding in, they became the latest martyrs in America's ill-conceived war on drugs. Pentagon spokespeople called their deaths a tragic case of "friendly fire"--an odd term, since it usually refers to soldiers killing their fellow soldiers by accident. But Bowers and her daughter were not soldiers.

Nor were they drug dealers. They were on a mission for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania.

The downing of the Bowers's plane was not an extraordinary event either for Peru or for the U.S. anti-drug warriors who played a part in it.

The skies over Peru are decidedly unfriendly, thanks to the U.S. "shoot first" policy. Acting under the command and intelligence support of the United States, Peru has shot down more than thirty civilian aircraft during the past seven years. The U.S. government tells us that all the downed aircraft were flown by drug dealers transporting their contraband from one remote airstrip to another. But there's no way to know for sure.

The Clinton Administration temporarily suspended the shootdown program in May 1994. This came after the Departments of Justice and State, as well as the Pentagon, said that the United States might be in violation of treaties on international aviation safety. State Department officials warned that the shooting down of an innocent civilian plane could result in wrongful death suits being brought against the United States and its contractors. Congress quickly adopted legislation, backed by Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, exempting U.S. government officials and contractors from any liability resulting from the killing of innocent air travelers.

Since then, U.S. intelligence operatives, private military contractors, Green Beret advisers, and expatriate pilots have turned Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia into a dangerous "no-fly" zone.

"You fly, you die," is their motto, says a former CIA official.

The "private" companies play a crucial role. The Bowers plane was hit after it was vectored for an attack intercept by a radar-equipped U.S. military Cessna Citation surveillance plane operated by a CIA contractor, Aviation Development Corp., which is located at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

Aviation Development Corp. is but one of a dozen or so U.S. contractors operating...