Airbridge Denial Program: Murder in the Andean Skys

Report says CIA withheld info from White House
Fri Nov 21
The CIA withheld information from the White House, Justice Department and Congress about the 2001 shooting down of a plane over Peru carrying an American missionary family, part of a years long cover-up of lethal violations in U.S. drug-interdiction procedures, according to a classified internal CIA report.
Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, [my bold] 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.
[...] 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 White 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.
Missionary Veronica "Ronnie" Bowers, 35, and her seven-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed when their single-engine plane was riddled with bullets before ditching into the Amazon River. [They were working for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism]

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 [my bold] 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.”
The Peruvian fighter jets often did not give targeted aircraft any visible signals they had been intercepted before they were shot down. [my bold] [This means “suspects” are tried, convicted and murdered in cold blood thout benefit of a hearing, in a New York minute] Nevertheless, between 1995 and 2001 the CIA "incorrectly reported that the program complied with the laws and policies governing it."
The IG report said Peruvians and Americans participating in the counternarcotics program explained that they violated the procedures because they thought them too time-consuming and worried they "might have resulted in the escape of the target aircraft."
"Violations of required procedures occurred in every shoot-down the CIA took part in" [my bold] for the six years of the CIA's Airbridge Denial Program with Peru, Hoekstra said.
The number of shoot-downs was not made public.
The report says the CIA specifically withheld information from then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Rice asked the CIA on several occasions who had approved the change in procedures.
The investigation "found no evidence that any Agency officer ever responded to her request for information, despite the fact that certain senior agency managers were aware of the agency's own findings that the (program) had not fully complied with presidential requirements," the report states.
It also suggests the cover-up was sanctioned by the agency's top attorney. [my bold]
The CIA's Office of General Counsel advised agency managers to avoid producing written reports [my bold] about the incident "to avoid both criminal charges against agency officers and civil liability," the report says.
The classified version of the report identified personnel by name who, Hoekstra said, misled Congress and obstructed the Justice Department investigation into whether criminal charges should have been filed in the case. Justice ultimately decided against filing charges.
[...] CIA Director Michael Hayden has made no decisions regarding the IG's recommendations, but has asked a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to advise him, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal CIA matters. Myers, a former fighter pilot, is an expert in air interdiction operations.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield pledged the agency's full cooperation. He said the CIA will consider all of the facts to determine the way forward.
"This situation obviously calls for careful deliberations that will result in sound, fair decisions," Mansfield said.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20081121/US.Missionaries.Shootdown/

The Transnational Institute has studied and reported on this issue and I strongly urge interested readers to click on the link below to read the full report. Following is the final paragraph of their conclusion:

[...] Government repression, increasingly militarized, thus finds itself before an "enemy" ever more disperse, far flung, and socially variegated. In sum, they find themselves criminalizing poverty and in confrontation with ever larger sectors of society, a recipe for social disaster and greater, more generalized violence. In countries with weak democracies and/or increasing levels of social violence and repression, these "side effects" of the US's drug war "remedy" may prove more detrimental than the narco-trafficking disease.
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=reports_drugs_drugwar

Correa Casts Out US Military

Seems like the right move on his part. The president really should be "in the loop" about matters of international espionage with one's generalissimos and neighbors. But this story has been brewing for a while. See my previous post on April 10, 2008: Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion for more.
Ecuador's leader purges military and moves to expel American base
By Simon Romero, Published: April 21, 2008
MANTA, Ecuador: Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 American military personnel from an air base here in this coastal city.
Correa — who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs — said that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA." He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America.
[...] Still, tensions persist over his clash with top generals, which emerged after Colombian forces raided a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last month. The raid against the rebel group, the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, put Ecuador and its ally Venezuela on edge with Colombia. Twenty-five people were killed, including Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean operative for the group, known as the FARC.
The face-off between Ecuador and Colombia ended at a summit in the Dominican Republic, but it has begun again over revelations that Ecuadorean intelligence officials had been tracking Aisalla, information that was shared not with the president, but apparently with Colombian forces and their American military advisers.
The leak became evident when video and photo images surfaced in Colombia and Ecuador showing Aisalla meeting with FARC commanders.
[...] In a rebuke of senior military officials, Correa named as defense minister his personal secretary, Javier Ponce, who was an outspoken critic of the armed forces in his previous careers as a poet and an editorial writer at some of Ecuador's largest newspapers.
[...] Unlike the armed forces of most other countries in Latin America, Ecuador's military has retained substantial economic might since a military junta transferred power to a civilian government in the 1970s.
[...] Correa has not challenged these financial interests. But he and his political supporters are moving forward with efforts to shift the military away from its traditional reliance on training and assistance from the United States and toward strengthening ties with the armed forces of other South American countries.
The first indication of his plans to shift the country's focus was his promise to end the American presence at the Manta base once the United States' lease expired in 2009.
[...] Meanwhile, the assertions that American intelligence agencies were exerting too much influence in Ecuador have raised concerns among Correa's critics in Ecuador that he could take a radical turn like that of Chávez in Venezuela. Correa has been relatively moderate in his policies so far during his presidency.
For now, at least, the last word on the issue may rest with Ponce, the rumpled poet thrust into the public eye as Correa's new defense minister.
In an interview in Quito, Ponce, 59, mentioned the moderately leftist governments of Brazil and Chile as potential partners for increased military cooperation, subtly suggesting a reluctance to depend heavily on Venezuelan aid, as countries like Bolivia have done. But he was also clear about relying far less on the United States.
"We must get past our legacy of relying too much on military relations with the United States, with President Bush showing little regard for national borders or sovereignty," Ponce said. "The risk of remaining too close to such a partner is one of ideological contagion."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/america/21ecuador.php

Ecuador’s Prez Charges Disloyalty in Defence Dept./CIA Collusion

Ecquador's President, Rafael Correa

CIA said to control Ecuador's military intelligence
By Jeanneth Valdivieso, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador's defence minister has resigned amid allegations the country's military intelligence is controlled by the CIA.
No official reason has been given for the resignation of Defence Minister Wellington Sandoval.
However his departure was confirmed Wednesday by Deputy Defence Minister Miguel Carvajal.
The announcement came a day after the military high command requested a meeting with President Rafael Correa to discuss his demand that Ecuador's intelligence services be investigated for disloyalty.
Correa became outraged after learning in the media that Ecuador's military intelligence apparently advised Colombian officials - and not him - about an Ecuadorian man's contacts with Colombian rebels. [my bold]
The man was killed in a cross-border raid March 1 that also killed a key rebel leader and 23 others in a camp maintained by the rebels inside Ecuador. The attack led both Ecuador and Venezuela to break diplomatic relations with Colombia, Washington's closest ally in South America.
Correa said he had to learn about the contacts from media reports, and his government launched a civilian investigation into alleged foreign influence in Ecuador's military intelligence services.
Correa's attacks apparently provoked discontent in military circles. [...]

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2008/04/09/5238291-ap.html

Right ON, Presidente!

Is Colombia the New Iraq?

The format is the same, be it Vietnam or Iraq or the Americas after European invasion. As Warren Zevon said: send lawyers, guns and money. Here are excerpts from today's Democracy Now! Amy Goodman interviews Mario Murillo, Helga Serrano and others about Colombia's "incursion" [just a little one!] into Ecuador:
With US Assistance, Colombian Troops Attack and Kill 20 FARC Rebels Inside Ecuador
Mario Murillo: [...] Raul Reyes, as you rightly put forward in the introduction, is the—was the second in command. Basically, he was considered the official ambassador, diplomat of the FARC, who traveled all around the world, to El Salvador, to Latin America, to Europe, talking with all different kinds of leaders, and he was perhaps the most visible of all the FARC commanders,[...] So knocking him down, killing him the way he was killed, was a big public-relations victory for Alvaro Uribe Velez, the President of Colombia, especially in light of what has been going on over the last couple of weeks.
[...] It [Colombia's "incursion"] came at an opportune time, because there’s been criticism of Uribe Velez for not really carrying out serious measures to release the hostages that the FARC have been holding for some time now. Just last week, four hostages were released by the FARC to the Venezuelan government because of the intervention of Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan government. And those people, when they got to Venezuela, those people who were in captivity for five, six years, immediately started criticizing and calling into question Uribe Velez’s positions, basically saying that, you know, we were walking through the jungles for 250 kilometers, and we didn’t see one soldier in sight. One of them actually said that—the FARC operate in the countryside—they move in the countryside and the jungles much like fish in water. So there was a lot of criticism as to the security policy of Uribe, not to mention the political strategy of refusing to negotiate with the FARC to eventually release the hostages.
Now that you knock out somebody like Raul Reyes, such a high visible figure in the FARC for so many years, it’s almost as if it’s a moot point, because it adds to the idea that Uribe Velez has been arguing for so long, that we can win this fight militarily, and we’re not going to sit down and negotiate with these, quote-unquote, “terrorists.”
[...] And what we see right now in 2008 is a process where the US military assistance, eight years of Plan Colombia, six years of Uribe’s total war carried out against the FARC, and a real stepped-up improvement in the communications technology that the Colombian armed forces are using, resulting in this kind of attack leading to the death of Raul Reyes, it would be hard to imagine that this kind of cross-border incursion could have occurred without the knowledge, without the understanding of the United States, especially given the large presence that the US has particularly in the southern part of the country.
[...] HELGA SERRANO: [...] We are outraged in Ecuador. We cannot imagine that our country that is a neighbor and that we have about 500,000 Colombians here, which our country has received in solidarity, because they have been displaced because of the conflict of the war in Colombia, and that President Uribe pays us like this, by bombing our country, by being a puppet to the Bush administration, by using military bases like the Tres Esquinas in Colombia to carry out the attack. And we are asking and demanding an investigation to see if the base in Manta was also used in this attack.
[...] We are outraged, and we are having a big demonstration on Thursday, March 6 at 6:00 in the afternoon. There are demonstrations already going on yesterday. There will be another one today. And many organizations are calling—are supporting President Correa’s position. He has got a very firm position. And we are demanding, once again, the closure of these military bases, which we feel are the structure from which these kinds of activities are carried out.
Read or watch more at:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/4/with_us_assistance_colombia_carries_out
I hope I'm wrong but this situation may get very, very hot now that the "nuclear threat" is becoming part of our downstairs neighbors' arsenals.
Here’s a cute little “news” report from Assyrian International News Agency [uh huh!] which states:
Colombian Terrorist Was After Nuclear Bomb
Posted GMT 3-4-2008 7:55:32
Colombia's armed forces and national police performed one of the most spectacular anti-terror strikes in history, taking out FARC chieftain Raul Reyes, the No. 2 terrorist in the Marxist cocaine-trafficking guerrilla group.
Using American training and satellite technology, the hit took out a member of the FARC's inner circle for the first time, ending all illusion of safety at the top. Identified by his Rolex watch, the Marxist thug had a $5 million price on his head.
Better still, Colombia's well-trained armed forces seized three of his computers with some surprising contents: A FARC plan to buy 50 kilograms of uranium to expand into international terrorism.
Colombia's victory followed a series of powerful blows against other FARC leaders. As defections from the group rise and the terrorist leadership is decapitated, a picture emerges of a war being won after nearly 50 years of fighting.
Mmmmm boy! Smells like yellowcake with oregano! But reading this is like a blast from Pravda’s past. Hold your noses, or just have a good laugh at this "news" report:
http://www.aina.org/news/20080304015532.htm

Learning to Love Your Economic Hit Man

Greg Palase will never bore you, even when talking about hanging chads and caged lists. This American reporter who can only get a real audience (and employment) through the BBC was THE MAN with regards to the stealing of the 2000 election. This new report by him should be enlightening, coming to us in the thick of phony salutes to our in'juns, Cristóbal Colón, aka Columbus, and the working class stiffs who think they have the rights to, well, anything!

War Paint and Lawyers: Rainforest Indians v. Big Oil
Greg Palast investigates for BBC Newsnight - TONIGHT
Chevron: "Nobody has proved that crude causes cancer." BBC Television Newsnight has been able to get close-in film of a new Cofan Indian ritual deep in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. Known as "The Filing of the Law Suit," natives of Ecuador's jungle, decked in feathers and war paint and heavily armed with lawyers, are filmed presenting a new complaint in their litigation seeking $12 billion from Chevron Inc., the international oil goliath.
[...] For Newsnight, reporter Greg Palast, steps (somewhat inelegantly) into a dug-out log canoe to seek out the Cofan in their rainforest village to investigate their allegations.

[...] The Cofan's leader, Emergildo Criollo, tells Palast that when Texaco Oil, now part of Chevron, came to the village in 1972, it obtained permission to drill by offering the Indians candy and cheese. The indigenous folk threw the funny-smelling cheese into the jungle.
Criollo says his three-year son died from oil contamination after, "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood."
[…] "It's the largest fraud in history!" asserts Chevron lawyer Jaime Varela reacting to the Cofan law suits against his company.... What about the Indian kids dying of cancer? Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez asks, "And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible." The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."
[…] Watch the story live on BBC2 or, in the US, on the net at http://mailings.gregpalast.com/lt/t_go.php?i=55&e=MzU4MDY=&l=-http--news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm after broadcast - or via a link from http://www.gregpalast.com/.
WARNING: The day's news events may require Newsnight to delay broadcast to another evening.