I’m speaking specifically of the attack on the Bowers family back in April 2001. You can read the whole CBS News report here. A few notes.
- The family was, sadly, traveling through Peruvian airspace apparently known for drug smuggling. According to the audio and video of the mission, no flight plan had been submitted as is required.
- The CIA never opened fire on the American citizens. The agency had no power to fire on the plane or even order the firing. The Peruvian Air force did and, well, did.
- The CIA operatives clearly expressed their doubt that the plane was a drug runner. They clearly stated that it didn’t match the profile and that it shouldn’t be fired upon. They were evidently ignored.
- The CIA operatives wanted the plane watched — not fired upon. They openly advocated just following the plane, and noted that it didn’t attempt to flee when an Air Force jet got close.
- The Peruvian contacts got to the point of snotty when the CIA operatives, who had no say over the final decision, questioned the decision to engage.
- The CIA operatives took note when the plane finally contacted the control tower. They made sure it was known that the plane was talking with the ground control.
- Once the firing started, the operatives screamed that it needs to cease immediately. Only then, when the plane was on fire, did the Peruvian Air Force stop its engagement.
Things should’ve been conducted better, and it shouldn’t have taken 9 years for this video to be released. But let’s not make it out to be a case of black-op CIA agents brutally murdering American citizens like it’s a Hollywood film. That’s not what happened.
5. February 2010 at 5:58 am
It’s often difficult for a lot of the American public to grasp what a rough and rude part of the world Peru can be, and how so. The attack on the plane carrying the Bowers, to me, at any rate, is neither shocking nor surprising. This perspective comes from participating in counter-drug operations with the US Air Force during the mid-1990′s, in some of the same extended airspace as this incident.
Standing rules of engagement at that time, and I have no reason to believe there were changes, prohibited US personnel (Military, Customs, CIA – everybody) from requesting, authorizing, or having anything to do with the use of force against a “target of interest”. Because of the frequency of use by the drug runners, practically anything smaller than an airliner was usually, at some point, considered a “target of interest” – particularly when the proper flight planning filings and notifications were absent, as they were in the Bowers case.
Keep in mind – the Peruvians were the ones that shot up a US Air Force C-130 in the early 90′s. When in doubt, shoot it down – that was SOP for them.
Having been in similar situations to the CIA operatives, their reaction sounds entirely credible, and is reflective of the environment I experienced during my involvement. Convoluted communications, almost ensuring there was no ‘real time’ interaction. Stringent rules, insisted upon by the host nations and our own diplomats, restricting who could talk to who, when they could do it, and what could be discussed. Again, involvement in the Command and Control of host nation forces prosecuting a target was virtually forbidden, and just about THE quickest way to get oneself into more trouble than anyone would ever want to deal with. The fact that the CIA guys tried to intervene to stop the engagement is, in my eyes, much to their professional credit. The ‘safer path’ for them, in the short term, would have been to ‘shut up and color’.
Beating up on our own folks (the CIA guys) may provide some sort of ‘feel good’ moment for some, but it is a badly misplaced and misdirected sentiment. CBS’s write-up of the matter is disingenuous at best, and a pretty bold lie, at worst, opening as it does with the characterization of the incident as “a botched CIA narcotics mission attacking what turned out to be an American missionary plane”. The CIA didn’t ‘own’ the mission – at most, they were there in a ‘support’ role – and the support they provided was to tell the Peruvians they were making one big assed mistake. Which the Peruvians ignored.
It’s nice to see Pete Hoekstra is willing to stand up and speak out for people that have gotten the raw end of a deal, but smearing dedicated professionals who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and used every limited means at their disposal to stop it, is a pretty crappy way to go about it. If he wants to hop up and down on a soapbox about what happened to the Bowers, Hoekstra needs to turn his rhetoric where it rightly belongs – towards the Peruvians.
As a politician, however, he’ll probably stick with going for the ‘low hanging fruit’ – he’ll get a lot more of a response and therefore a lot more coverage by slamming “the CIA”, and saying that “the US Government” has failed to provide “justice” (whatever that may be – two people will still be dead, a family still destroyed) than he ever will by calling the Peruvians on it. The Peruvians are, after all, the folks that awarded their pilots that shot up the USAF C-130 with nice medals for their mistake. And also, the CIA won’t react as badly as foreign sovereign governments tend to do when you insult them.
Still Hoekstra’s actions here were pretty Murtha-esque (Haditha, Marines, etc), and CBS’s write up takes sensationalism over the line into defamation.
5. February 2010 at 11:18 am
I agree with your assessment. The CIA officers should have followed protocol and verified the tail number, and should not have covered this video up for 9 years. This is exactly the frustrations people are expressing over the Jim Treacher incident, and it hasn’t even been 9 days yet, much less nine years.
The video doesn’t seem that bad for the CIA (other than skipping the tail number verification) so the 9 year stonewalling shouldn’t have happened.