WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the CIA found that agency officials engaged in a coverup to hide negligence in the downing of a private airplane over Peru in 2001. It was a mistaken attack on an aircraft suspected of carrying illegal narcotics.
Excerpts of an internal CIA report released Thursday accuse agency officials of lying to Congress and withholding critical information from criminal investigators and senior Bush administration officials.
The disclosure could lead to the reopening of a probe into whether CIA officials committed crimes in the attack on the aircraft, which was transporting American missionaries, and then covering it up.
The attack on the airplane, which was carried out by a Peruvian warplane working with CIA surveillance craft, led to the deaths of Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter, as well as injuries to three others, including Bowers’ husband and young son.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, described the revelations as “a dark stain” on the CIA and called for information to be shared with the Justice Department to determine whether a new probe is warranted.
The missionary family came from Hoekstra’s Michigan congressional district. Hoekstra’s office released portions of the inspector general’s report and sent a letter to CIA Inspector General John Hel gerson requesting that other portions also be declassified.
A CIA spokesman said the agency’s internal review “is still open.”
The report concludes that CIA officials repeatedly violated rules of engagement that were designed to prevent potentially fatal mishaps in the drug-interdiction program, which was launched in 1994 by the administration of President Clinton.
“In many cases, suspect aircraft were shot down within two to three minutes of being sighted by the Peruvian fighter without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land, and without being given time to respond,” according to the report.
The report was the culmination of a long-running internal probe of the shooting of the Bowers’ aircraft, a small floatplane owned by the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. The plane was carrying the family from Brazil to their home base in Iquitos, Peru.
The inspector general found that “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.”
Over time, the report said, CIA officials told lawmakers and other officials that the program complied with the laws and policies governing it, despite evidence that there had been repeated violations dating back to the very first shootdown.
