REPORT SAYS

CIA withheld info from House

The agency operated outside the law in the 2001 shooting down of a plane over Peru, covered it up, and got away with it until now

AP

WASHINGTON. The CIA withheld information from the House, Justice Department and Congress about the 2001 shooting down of a plane over Peru carrying an American missionary family, part of a yearslong cover-up of lethal violations in U. S. drug-interdiction procedures, according to a classified internal CIA report.

Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, called for a criminal investigation and said Congress would hold hearings on the matter in the new year.

"This is as ugly as it gets: an agency operating outside of the law, covering it up and getting away with it as long as they did," Hoekstra said.

The CIA inspector general's report dated Aug. 25, excerpts of which were released Thursday, said the agency hid from Congress, the National Security Council and Justice Department the results of multiple internal investigations that documented "sustained and significant" violations of House-sanctioned aircraft intercept procedures. The procedures were created to prevent the shooting down of innocent aircraft over the Amazon jungle like the April 2001 downing of the missionaries' aircraft.

"The plane, following the Amazon River in its westward journey in daylight, was tracked by a CIA aircraft as a suspected narcotrafficker and was fired on by the Peruvian Air Force. A Michigan woman and her infant daughter were killed and the American pilot was seriously wounded. The woman's husband and son survived.

"Within hours, CIA officers began to characterize the shootdown as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. In fact, this was not the case," the report says.

A report released by the State Department in 2001 said the CIA aircraft initially identified the plane but then grew concerned that it was an innocent flight. But it was too late — given language problems and established procedures — to prevent the Peruvian fighter from firing.

According to the report, many aircraft were shot down by Peruvian fighter aircraft within two to three minutes of being spotted "without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land and without being given time to respond to such warnings as were given to land."

Between 1995 and 2001 the CIA "incorrectly reported that the program complied with the laws and policies governing it."

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