Article: State Department Details Events on Accidental Downing of U.S. Plane in Peru

02 August 2001

Article: State Department Details Events on Accidental Downing of U.S. Plane in Peru

Assistant Secretary Beers says language barrier led to shooting of plane

by Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- A serious language barrier between U.S. and Peruvian aerial counter-narcotics teams was one of the causes for the April 20, 2001, accidental shootdown of a U.S. civilian floatplane by a Peruvian military jet that led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens, says Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Briefing reporters August 2 on a State Department report released that day, Beers said a videotape of the events "clearly" indicates that the pilots of the Peruvian aircraft interceptor and a U.S. aerial tracking aircraft could not fully understand one another.

Beers said the Peruvian participants in the mission had been instructed in English technical terms and phrases to permit them to communicate at a basic level on the proper procedures for intercepting suspected drug flights over Peru.

"But I think it's fair to say that the stress level that occurred in the cockpit the 20th of April created impediments to any level of understanding," Beers said. "You will hear the host nation rider [the Peruvians] talking in English occasionally, and you will hear some very broken Spanish by one or another of the participants on the U.S. side. You will also hear a response that suggests understanding, but subsequent actions clearly indicate that the particular message was not at all understood."

Beers said the report, drawn from an investigation by a joint U.S.-Peruvian team, does not examine misconduct or fix blame for the shootdown. But the report did conclude, Beers said, that "communications system overload and cumbersome procedures played a role in reducing timely and accurate compliance with all applicable directives by participants in the air and on the ground" during what is called the "Peruvian-U.S. counternarcotics airbridge denial program." The report also found that "key participants" in the accident "narrowly viewed their respective command-and-control roles and did not individually consider their actions from a broader, overall perspective."

A transcript of the videotaped events indicates that the U.S. participants had serious misgivings about shooting down the plane, believing that it was not being operated in the suspicious manner characteristic of drug traffickers.

One of the U.S. participants said in the transcript that the plane was not taking any evasive action and should not be shot down. But under the rules of engagement of the program, the U.S. participants did not have authority to intervene in any Peruvian action against the plane. The U.S. role, Beers said, was to provide information and support the Peruvians in the mission. As it turned out, the plane was owned by the Aviation Company of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. Baptist missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter were killed, and pilot Kevin Donaldson seriously wounded, during the shootdown.

Beers said that since the accident, the airbridge program has been suspended. However, he added that U.S.-based radar fixed on the Andean region has detected no increase in suspected drug flights in the last three months. Beers said a separate report about the future of the airbridge program, headed by Morris Busby, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, has just been completed and sent to the White House National Security Council (NSC), which will decide what should happen with the airbridge program.