… U.S. govt gave Peru $48million in narcotics control aid last year as well as $32million for helicopters as part of Plan Colombia, … Adam Isacson, sr assoc. Ctr for Intl Policy WashDC: "It's often called jokingly the 'You fly, you die' policy. Colombia says they shoot down, but they don't do it very often. What they do more often is just sort of force down planes then strafe them on the ground. Venezuela hasn't done much of anything lately. But the real air transit point is between Peru & Colombia from growing areas to processing areas. … this was done with U.S. intelligence, with a plane given by the U.S., by pilots & airmen trained & equipped by the U.S.; everything there was paid for, bought and sold by us. The A-37 was given to Peru for counternarcotics purposes. It's time we look more closely at who we give this stuff to. Institutions with long histories of corruption & human rights abuses call into question their professionalism and what they can be relied on to do." … Actually, now that Fujimori is gone, it's more politically palatable to increase military aid, something that's going to happen in 2002 if you look at GWBush's request. Only thing disrupted over past few months is that many officers loyal to Montesinos were forced out. … In general, whole operation happens with almost no transparency. … Why is the CIA involved? What are these contractors? How do they chose their targets? Oversight eventually falls on Congress, the intl relations & armed services committees paying for this stuff. Rather than overworked & underpaid congressional staff doing all of this, the agencies should be forced to make information about this more & more accessible for more evaluation of where we're headed.

Deadly mistake 4.24.01   Fiona Morgan Salon

… Mr Bowers' brother, Phil, said he had spoken to his brother and had been told the fighters continued to attack, after the wounded pilot, Kevin Donaldson, managed to crash-land the plane on the Amazon. "It happened very fast. The planes flew by first, did some swooping and then came in from behind and started shooting," he said. Mr Bowers was able to unstrap the bodies of his wife & daughter from their seats and pull them on to a pontoon. He told his son to jump into the water. The survivors were rescued by locals in dug-out canoes who ferried them along the river to the nearest town.

CIA misidentified plane downed in Peru as possible drug runner
4.23.01   Bob Drogin LATimes

Congress passed a law in 1994 that allows the CIA and other U.S. govt employees to assist foreign nations in the interdiction of aircraft when there is "reasonable suspicion" that the plane is primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking. The law limits U.S. assistance to those countries with "appropriate procedures … to protect against innocent loss of life" and that "at a minimum include effective means to identify & warn an aircraft" before an attack is launched. Peru was approved for such assistance 12.8.94   Since then, Peruvians shot, forced down or strafed more than 30 drug-running aircraft and seized more than a dozen on the ground, according to U.S. officials. Several U.S. agencies involved in pgm, incl State Dept, CIA, Defense Dept & DEA.

In this case, the CIA crew members were aboard a small two-engine surveillance jet on patrol at 9:43 a.m. Friday when they notified their base, which U.S. officials refused to identify, that their sophisticated radar was tracking a small aircraft that had crossed 3 or 4 miles into Brazilian territory. The Americans radioed a second report 12 minutes later, as the unidentified aircraft reentered Peruvian airspace. At that point, following standard procedures, the Americans requested that the Peruvian air force officer in charge at an air base at Pucallpa determine whether the plane was on an approved flight plan. The U.S. intelligence official said the officer could not find an approved flight plan for a plane in the border area, which is covered by airspace known as the Air Defense Identification Zone. Under procedures approved by the commanding general of the Peruvian Air Force 6th Territorial Air Region, the Peruvian air force then launched a fighter jet to visually identify the aircraft, verify its registry, attempt to establish radio contact and, if necessary, force it to land or shoot it down. The aircraft was quickly identified as a single-engine, high-wing floatplane. The Peruvian lieutenant colonel aboard the U.S. plane then tried to communicate in Spanish with the aircraft over 3 separate radio frequencies but heard no response. The Americans did not try to communicate in English.

"Our guys would never try to communicate with the suspect aircraft," said the U.S. intelligence official. "In any case, we're told the pilot was fluent in Spanish. But we didn't hear anything. If he was transmitting, we weren't hearing it in English or Spanish." The Peruvian officer aboard the U.S. plane had flown numerous similar flights over the last nine months or so. He told the pilot of the Peruvian fighter, an aging A-37, to go to "Phase 2" and fire warning shots at the floatplane.
[ Downed plane was on standard approach 10 minutes or less from local airport and in standard radio comm with the tower but the spy plane & the jet fighter aren't listening to the tower freq. This is not some backwoods airport; 737s land there. Bower doubtless felt safe in her Iquitos hometown because drug interdiction training camp is there. U.S. plane crew weren't locals; U.S. style community based policing might have recognized plane. ]

It was unclear Sunday whether the pilot actually fired a warning with tracer rounds or, if they were fired, whether the pilot or passengers saw them. The U.S. intelligence official said the CIA crew did not see any warning shots fired. The Peruvian officer then quickly requested permission from his commander on the ground to order the fighter to move to "Phase 3", to fire his weapons with the goal of disabling the Cessna. If that failed, the plane could be shot down. The U.S. intelligence official said the CIA crew "attempted repeatedly to slow the intercept process" & "voiced objections" and expressed "serious concerns" when the fighter plane was authorized to fire. The CIA crew members were "not in the chain of command," the official said. "They just kept questioning him. They kept saying: 'Are you sure? It's not clear to us.' " The U.S. crew then asked the Peruvian fighter pilot to note the suspect plane's tail number and to fly alongside it to ensure that the other pilot saw him. For reasons still unclear Sunday, the tail number was not radioed back to the Peruvian officer in Pucallpa.
But at 10:43 a.m., an hour after the plane was spotted by the CIA crew, Peruvian military authorities on the ground authorized the shoot-down.
[ auth. 17 minutes before seaplane radio contact with civilian airport tower, 37 minutes before attack. ]

The U.S. official said "well-established procedures … may not have been fully or properly adhered to" by Peruvian air force authorities. An official at the destination airport in Iquitos said the missionaries' plane did not have a flight plan when it took off Friday morning from Islandia near the Brazilian border, the Associated Press reported. But the pilot relayed the necessary information when he radioed the control tower in Iquitos, airport chief Mario Justo was quoted as saying. During the brief radio conversation, the missionary pilot said a military plane was nearby, according to the AP report. "He added in his report that there had been a military plane, but that he did not know what it wanted," Justo said.

In Pennsylvania, an official with the Assn. of Baptists for World Evangelism said it appeared that the accident occurred because the missionary plane was using a civilian radio frequency to communicate with the Iquitos airport, while the Peruvian air force personnel were using a military frequency. Neither side could hear the other's transmissions, said Hank Scheltema, the Baptist association's aviation director, according to a Reuters report. The missionary pilot "was saying to the tower: 'They're going to kill us! They're killing us! They're killing us! And he tried to communicate [with the Peruvian plane], but they were on different frequencies," Scheltema said.

Shoot-Down Scenario Disputed
Relatives Say Downed Plane Was Following Procedures But Peru's Military Says Plane Was Flying Unannounced. White House Suggests Peru Breached Rules Of Engagement
4.23.01   CBS News

After being hit by the gunfire, the Cessna 185 crash-landed in the Amazon River near the jungle town of Huanta, 625 miles northeast of Lima. Peruvians rescued husband, son & pilot, 42yr old Donaldson, who suffered a crushed leg bone & severed arteries in his foot. Husband, Jim Bowers, 37, from Michigan, was debriefed by Peruvian authorities before flying to N.Carolina to visit relatives Sunday. Donaldson, taken to Reading Hospital & MedCtr after arriving Sunday at Philadelphia Intl Airport, was listed in fair condition Monday morning. Doctors performed surgery on the lower portions of each of his legs.
Scheltema said missionary plane and fighter jet were communicating on different radio frequencies. He said the Iquitos control tower recorded the missionary pilot's panicked radio call to controllers. Iquitos airport chief Mario Justo confirmed that the plane had a flight plan and that its pilot was in radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower. He later "clarified" his statement, saying a flight plan was only established at 10:48 a.m. when Donaldson radioed his position, about 45 minutes after Peru's air force says the plane was first detected. Justo said Donaldson indicated he had taken off from Islandia, a Peruvian river town just across from Brazil. Richmond Donaldson disputes that, saying he saw a copy on Saturday of the plan his son filed with Iquitos airport.
… Under current agreements, Peru can use U.S. data to attack a plane only if it is flying without a flight plan. Peruvian fighters must first try to make radio contact and visually signal a suspect aircraft to land for inspection before opening fire. If the pilot balks, warning shots must be fired.

video report
4.23.01   Bob Martin CBS News

  Roni Bowers   autobio

I was 12 years old when I saw my need for a Savior.
[ Impressionable teen female, following beloved daddy's lead, gets brainwashed into cult just like Manson. ]

Our home was always open, especially for single GI's. My dad felt they needed a place to go for a good meal. My mom always did a great job of that, especially on Sundays. Not only did we have military personnel in our home, but also pastors, evangelists and missionaries. What a wonderful opportunity it was to sit at the table with godly men & women and to be influenced by their lives.
[ Jesus never was a soldier. ]

WASHINGTON   Jennifer Shafer Odom, 29, a slim, motorcyle-riding brunet & top graduate of West Point, become first U.S. military casualty of Washington's "war against drugs" in Colombia. Now, a year later, Congress is sending $1.3 billion in direct military aid to Bogotá, raising the stakes even higher. The measure includes an untold increase in U.S. military and civilian "advisors," on top of the several hundred DEA agents and Green Berets already there …
[ She had to go; she was too clean & due to be promoted to command level ]

Air & Marine Interdiction Division
premier integrated air & marine law enforcement interdiction agency Exec. Dir. Chas. E. Stallworth II
… Essential element of President's National Drug Control Policy. In addition to protecting borders of U.S., USCS air & marine crews work in conjunction with the law enforcement agencies & military forces of other nations in support of their counter-narcotic programs. The AMID provides detection & monitoring, interceptor support, and coordinated training with military & law enforcement personnel of other countries. The Customs P-3 AEW airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft provide radar coverage over the jungles & mountainous regions of Central & S.America. They also patrol the vast Southwest Border & intl waters to monitor shipping lanes & air routes in search of smuggling activities. P-3 interceptor aircraft often augment the AEW aircraft to identify & track suspect targets.
The Air & Marine Interdiction Coordination Center (AMICC) in Riverside, California is the only law enforcement facility of its kind in the nation. Information from a wide array of civilian & military radar sites, aerostats, airborne reconnaissance aircraft and other detection assets is assimilated to provide 24-hour, seamless radar surveillance along the entire southern tier of the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. The AMICC provides communications & control to Customs air, marine and ground units on patrol or engaged in special operations. It also integrates information systems with other domestic & intl counter-drug centers & law enforcement agencies and serves as a focal point for tactical coordination between agencies.
[ Is the Peruvian operation on the Riverside tac grid? ]

Customs air and marine crews are law enforcement officers who receive extensive training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia.… Detection Systems Specialists (DSS) are primarily responsible for monitoring ground-based & airborne detection systems. Using the latest in detection equipment & experience, the DSS is able to acquire, track and alert Customs crews of suspicious aircraft and vessels for identification. The typical DSS generally has prior experience as a military or civil air controller. … Every year hundreds of professionals from the USCS Air and Marine Interdiction Division visit primary & secondary schools, civic groups, charitable gatherings and business groups to disseminate the anti- drug message. Organizations interested in obtaining more information about this free community service should write to the following facility.
Air and Marine Interdiction Division Rm. 6.2C
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW WashDC 20229

2000 Narcotics Certification Determinations
3.1.01   Special Briefing
Randy Beers, AsstSec for Narcotics & Law Enforcement,
Robt Brown, DDir. Off.National Drug Control Policy ONDCP aka czar

ASST SEC BEERS   … certification process. Under U.S. law, President must certify each year whether govts of the major drug-producing & drug transit countries cooperated fully with U.S. or taken adequate steps on their own to meet the goals & objectives of 1988 UN Drug Convention. The President certified 20 of 24 countries. Cambodia & Haiti were not granted certification for cooperating but were granted national interest waivers. Burma & Afghanistan were denied certification.If the President does not certify a govt, it is ineligible for most forms of US assistance, with exception of humanitarian & counter-narcotics assistance, and the US is obliged to vote no to any assistance loans in multilateral development banks for countries denied certification. The law also provides for waivers of countries vital to U.S. national interest for exemption from denial of certification per sanctions. Narcotics certification process is integral part of our drug control policy, and it provides opportunity to make objective assessment of each country's drug control efforts during previous year.
Some govts resent unilateral subjective assessment of their performance; the process encourages openness & reveals areas where we can improve collective effort. Throughout 15-year existence of certification process, it's proved to be an effective, if blunt, instrument of policy for enhancing counter-narcotics cooperation. Prior to the March 1 deadline for introducing our decisions each year, we have seen countries introduce legislation, pass laws, eradicate drug crops, and capture elusive drug kingpins. The timing is no coincidence. …
DEP.DIR. BROWN   And I would highlight … astounding progress & successful pgms in 2 principal source countries, Peru & Bolivia. … 68% decline since '95. in Peru, some years ago the principal source of coca cultivation & cocaine production, …

question on Peru … related to corruption, Vladimir Montesinos & narco-traffickers in Peru. Reports in Latin America media signaling his relations with narco-traffickers. In the report, there is little mention of Montesinos or his relationship with narco-traffickers. Is it because he was mentioned as CIA informant of U.S.?

ASST SEC BEERS   (doesn't address topic of corruption or Peru, instead speaking of "process" & seizures)
DEP.DIR. BROWN   Corruption. It is a problem in part fueled by our estimate of -- I think we say $63 billion annually we put --Americans and citizens put -- into the illicit drug trade. Some portion of that has this corrosive, corrupting effect, both in our own country and all the transit countries back to the source of these drugs. So clearly that is a contributor to this common problem of drug-inspired or drug-induced corruption.
… On the issue of Peru, I assure you that the allegations that Mr. Montesinos was a CIA agent have nothing to do with what you regard as scanty reporting on Mr. Montesinos' involvement in the drug trade or corruption, first point. Second point, we are still uncovering Mr. Montesinos' activities, as are you. As they become relevant and revealed to us & you, I am sure we will have more to say about them in the future.

… Q: Will this Administration have any new ideas regarding what has been called "the balloon effect," which is when one country's neighbor has a decrease, or has a successful eradication, while other countries bordering it will have an increase? It seems that that is what has happened as we watch a decrease in production in Peru & Bolivia, with an increase in Colombia.

ASST SEC BEERS   This Administration will announce specific numbers for State Dept budget, along with the same time frame that Bob Brown indicated at beginning of April, and at that point in time we will be able to talk specifics. But as I have said, and as Bob has said, what we are talking now about is a significant budget request for an Andean regional program, which will cover not just Colombia, but Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela & Panama, as a geographic area. And it will be balanced so that Colombia does not have the 85% funding that it did in the Plan Colombia Supplemental. It will be closer to a 50/50 ratio between Colombia & other states in the region, and it will be more heavily devoted to economic pgms like alternative development, and that too will approach closer to a 50/50 relationship overall.
But I don't have any of the specific numbers to give to you at this time. We are still working on budget details and how to present it to the Congress, and of course to you all.

Q: As you mentioned before, there are some in Congress & some within the Administration, and also, Mr. Brown, your predecessor, Gen. McCaffrey, who say to the process of certification, what's the point if we are going to certify 20 of the major drug producers, and also give a waiver to some of the countries because it is in our national interest? Could you explain the point of certification? Would it be more fruitful to kind of just work on these cooperative programs without having to finger-point or grade countries, when we know we are going to pass, give them a pass anyway, at the end of the day?

U.S. wants increased drug interdiction efforts in Peru
2.13.97   Steve Macko ENN

drug interdiction training center near Iquitos, Peru. U.S. Southern Command developed the course curriculum & will help the school reach an average class size of 60 students.

Peru rank #7 1996 Direct Commercial Sales
IMET 2001 $475K/75

… Salon investigation of several U.S. air units flying drug interdiction flights over Colombia shows American military personnel routinely worried about the trustworthiness of their local allies. They also complained of poor security, compromise of flight plans, and friction between U.S. military, CIA and local military personnel. "It was bound to happen sooner or later," said a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who served on several anti-drug missions in the region, including in Colombia.
While he was flying a counter-narcotics mission out of Haiti in 1995, he said, his Blackhawk helicopter was nearly shot down by a Venezuelan fighter because the chopper pilot had forgotten to activate the onboard IFF "friend or foe" signal that identifies the craft. "Those guys are so trigger-happy, especially the fighter jocks. It doesn't matter whether they're from Peru, Colombia or wherever." He said it was "entirely possible" that a similar mix-up downed the Cessna in Peru.

But in Colombia, problems of coordination & communication are only part of the problem, veterans say. There is also evidence that Washington's host & ally in the Colombian drug war has been penetrated by the narcotics cartels. Pilots have complained that Colombian military personnel riding along on their surveillance flights notified drug traffickers of their whereabouts. "In Vietnam, you called them Victor Charles, or Charlies," said 26yr old former U.S. Army Ranger who served as advisor in Colombia in 1997, referring to nickname for Communist Viet Cong. "We call them 'Julios'", drug traffickers & their agents inside Colombia's military units. …

July 1999, when wife Jennifer Odom's U.S. Army spy plane crashed in Colombia, killing her, 4 other U.S. crewmembers and 2 Colombian military "ride-alongs". "I'll always believe that plane was shot down, and now because of Peru, maybe we'll someday find out it was by one of our own," said husban Chas. Odom, himself a retired Army colonel. Odom has long theorized that a drug cartel, tipped off to the spy plane's movements by corrupt military personnel, was responsible for downing his wife's plane, because she was constantly taking ground fire and had often been "lit up" by missile radar when flying over the coca fields. The Army insists Jennifer Odom's 4 prop Dehaviland-7 crashed into the Andes because the crew put faulty target coordinates into the onboard navigation computer. But her husband says the data was always provided by the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, a view backed up by other members of her unit, the 204th Military Intelligence Battalion, based in El Paso, Texas. Moreover Odom, who won two DEA citations for helping down suspected narcotics flights, also worried about the reliability of the Colombians who often ride along, her husband says.

So did former crewmember Briana Krueger, U.S. Army intelligence specialist who, unlike Odom, lived to tell about it herself. But Krueger's husband Ray was not so lucky; he perished along with Odom on the fateful July surveillance mission. Like Chuck Odom, Krueger believes her spouse lost his life because officials within the Colombian military, possibly even the U.S. military, were collaborating with drug traffickers. Ironically, the Odom & Krueger deaths helped lead to expanded use of for-hire civilian contractors, like CIA-paid crew that first identified the Bowers' plane as drug-trafficking suspect, in order to avoid more U.S. military casualties. …

The corruption of Col. James Hiett
7.5.00   Bruce Shapiro Salon

… last Wednesday the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-MN, to the Colombia drug- war bill which would have diverted much of that money into making effective drug-treatment programs widely available. … policies that officers like Hiett are supposed to enforce … bear no relationship to the reality they see every day: informants paid in drugs, family members who use drugs and drug agents who sell drugs. … what Congress buys with $1billion entry into Colombia's drug-drenched civil war is the Hietts on a massive scale with

• Pentagon as major stockholder;
• Diplomatic pouches & military planes as drug pipelines;
• pilots, drivers & returning officers as couriers;
• American partnership with Colombian military already profoundly mired in drug trafficking, paramilitary violence & human-rights abuses.

LIMA, Peru   … As part of an anti-drug pgm in which U.S. aircraft help interdict smuggling flights, an unarmed U.S. surveillance plane was providing support Friday morning when the Peruvian A-37B jet shot down a private seaplane carrying 5 people, U.S. Embassy officials here revealed Saturday. 35yr old Baptist missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, died after being hit by gunfire, … both killed apparently by a single bullet that passed through the woman's body and entered the child's skull as she sat on her mother's lap, her brother-in-law Phil Bowers said.
[ Randy Weaver's wife at Ruby Ridge ]

U.S. surveillance plane involvement, reportedly close enough for the Cessna185 seaplane 's pilot to see. Cessna was spotted about 10am; shoot-down occurred about 11:20 a.m., according to the Peruvian govt & informed sources. Peruvian air force officials insist that the missionary pilot, Kevin Donaldson, ignored radio warnings & other internationally established procedures with which the Peruvian pilot tried to contact him. U.S. officials gave no signs Saturday that they doubted the Peruvian version. Yet it is hard to understand why Donaldson, a veteran missionary who grew up in Peru, would not comply with a Peruvian air force pilot.
Donaldson was flying over a jungle area rife with airborne border smugglers. His seaplane fit the profile of smuggling aircraft, which use clandestine landing strips & rivers to fly coca paste into neighboring Colombia & Brazil. The aggressive shoot-down policy of Peru's air force, which has downed more than 2 dozen suspected drug flights since 1994, is well known.… "U.S. govt aircraft provide location data about aircraft flying in the region apparently without a flight plan," U.S. Embassy spokesman said. "The U.S. aircraft hands off this data to the Peruvian air force. Peruvian aircraft conduct the identification and interception missions."

Acknowledging the gravity of the matter, President Bush took time out from the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City to say he planned to discuss the shoot-down with Peruvian Prime Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar. "The U.S. is certainly upset by the fact that 2 citizens lost their lives," Bush said.
[ Baby born in Peru? U.S. citizen? ]
"I will wait to see all the facts before I reach any conclusions about blame." Facts were scarce Saturday because Peruvian govt officials and the victims had little to say. … Pilot Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, told Peruvian journalists Friday night that her husband had told her he saw a U.S. plane in the vicinity during the interception. She said the pilot said he had tried to communicate with his pursuer by radio and that he did not understand why the Peruvian anti-drug plane opened fire. … U.S. officials confirmed that the missionaries' plane had been en route to Iquitos from Leticia, Colombian town on Brazil border. Bowers family lived in the Iquitos area, made the trip to Colombia to obtain permanent Peruvian visa for the infant girl, a procedure requiring her to leave & reenter the country.

Amazon area where Peru, Brazil & Colombia converge is notorious for drug trafficking and guerrilla activity. But the Bowerses were apparently unfazed by the dangers: They had lived in Peru since 1994,
[ Same year tracking for Peru air interdiction sanctioned ]
They traveled by houseboat as missionaries for the … religious group which asserted that its seaplane followed "all regulations, such as a flight plan, remaining in Peruvian airspace and maintaining contact with the flight towers. The plane had recently been refurbished and was in top condition & was well marked." Donaldson radioed the air traffic controllers in Iquitos just before 11 a.m., according to the news release.
[ Why wasn't this tail number registry available to surveillance plane? ]
After Veronica Bowers, known as Roni, and her baby, Charity, were killed by bullets that tore through the fuselage, Donaldson was able to land the plane on a river and get the survivors out, according to the news release. "They were rescued by a Peruvian in a dugout canoe and were taken to the clinic in the town of Pebas," the press release said. "The Peruvian military, along with some U.S. personnel, evacuated husband & 7yr old son to Iquitos, along with the bodies."

Peru Denies Wrong in Downing Plane
4.23.01   AP

U.S. says Peru at Fault for Plane Attack
4.23.01   Robt. Burns AP

U.S. Objected to Peru Plane Attack
4.23.01   Robt Burns AP

CIA Plane Contacted Peru Officials
4.22.01   Robt Burns AP

Intl Fed. Air Traffic Controllers
Intl Plane Owners & Pilots Assoc. de
Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana & Brazil ¹ ²

Intl Aviation Safety Assessment Pgm (IASA)
#70 Peru = Category 1 Meets ICAO Standards

Police Probe Spanish TV Talk Host
7.18.02   AP

A bribery scandal involving Montesinos triggered the collapse of Fujimori's 10-year govt Nov. 2000. Since then, investigators have unraveled a web of corruption that they say is tied to the spymaster, who was Fujimori's right-hand man & security chief. Dozens of high-profile politicians, businessmen, journalists, judges and military officers have been implicated. Montesinos faces dozens of charges, incl extortion, influence peddling, arms smuggling and directing a paramilitary death squad. Fujimori has been living in self-exile in his native Japan.

Steamy film spoof attacks Peru's Montesinos
7.30.01   Reuters

Montesinos, a married father of two, had poster-sized pictures of his lover on the wall of his beach house. The movie features three dancers, who according to Lima's rumor mills are reminiscent of the intelligence agent's numerous real-life female fans. "In the movie we are Montesinos' 'spy girls' and we search heaven and earth for a video that was stolen by a businessman," said Tula Rodriguez, who plays one of Montesinos' henchwomen. In the frenzied search for the missing video, the 'spy girls' are entangled in countless steamy escapades. From time to time, they also sit on their beloved boss' lap and convince him to dole out cash.

low budget, high comedy
Most of the movie's other actors are amateurs and comedians who normally earn their pennies telling jokes to passersby in Lima's historic plazas. "What I wouldn't do for some of Montesinos' money and a few of his girls," said Ibarcena laughing, of his alter ego. He added that after hours studying Montesinos' personality, he concluded that to clinch the perfect rendition of the spy chief, he needed to act like a psychopath. But things get more serious for the actor when he walks the streets dressed as the spy chief. He often gets an earful of insults and shouts, including the occasional "Get him!"

Since his arrest on June 23 in Venezuela, Vladimiro Montesinos, the former Peruvian spy chief, has begun answering charges of torture and death squad activities, money laundering and arms trafficking. At the heart of the arms trafficking allegations being assembled by Peruvian officials is a convoluted deal in 1998 in which Jordan may have inadvertently sold nearly 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles through Peruvian, Lebanese and American middlemen to drug-trafficking leftist guerrillas in Colombia. That deal opens a window on the shadowy world of small arms trafficking just as the UN is about to convene a conference to devise intl standards & procedures for curtailing this destructive trade.

At the time of the deal, Mr. Montesinos was working closely with the CIA on covert anti-terrorism & drug- interdiction programs that the U.S. had operated in Peru since the late 1980s. His alleged arms broker, a Lebanese man based in Miami, likewise had long-standing relationships with American intelligence and law enforcement. They operated in a netherworld of smugglers and brokers who have thrived for years by working both sides of the street, doing deals not just with the world's warlords and criminal groups but with legitimate governments as well. Low-tech light arms like assault weapons and hand grenades have been responsible for as much as 90 percent of the world's conflict-related killing in the decade since the end of the Cold War. The easy availability of small weapons magnifies ethnic conflicts, empowers warlords & criminal groups, encourages the exploitation of child soldiers and contributes to an appalling toll in civilian casualties. The UN conference, which will start next Monday, represents a long overdue recognition by the world's diplomats that legal and regulatory solutions need to be coordinated at a global level to be effective.

If member states can agree on a standardized international system for vetting weapons exports and documenting where they wind up, something positive will have been achieved. But there will be limited impact if major arms brokers continue to enjoy the protection or indifference of govts, not least in Europe, that are afraid to reveal their covert business and intelligence relationships. In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the 1976 Arms Control Export Act that requires American arms brokers anywhere in the world and foreign nationals living or working in the U.S. to register and obtain licenses for all arms deals they do, whether on or off American soil. The law has been widely hailed as one of the best legislative instruments in the world for controlling arms middlemen. Yet to date not a single broker has been prosecuted for failing to register deals under the statute. The American law on arms brokers could be a valuable model for worldwide standards to curtail illicit arms brokering. But even the best laws will be ineffective without the political will and resources required to enforce them.

U.S. Anti-Drug Strategy Stalls in the Andes
6.21.01   Reuters

Cozy Deal
"I think there was a little cozy deal with the previous government that I have my suspicions about. I cannot say that with absolute certainty, but boy there is an awful lot of smoke around," Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd told Reuters. Dodd said he has held private talks with other senators about holding a hearing on U.S. links to Montesinos. "The U.S. was allied with Montesinos for counternarcotics purposes and it turns out that he may have been controlling the drug trade in Peru," said Gina Amatangelo, an expert at the independent Washington Office on Latin America. Amatangelo said it was not the first time that a U.S. ally was found to be involved in the drug trade, pointing to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who like Montesinos once was an informant of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to overthrow Noriega, who is now serving 30 years in a Florida high-security jail for drug trafficking.The Clinton administration conducted a review of its ties to Montesinos in the mid-1990s, but decided that his role in providing Peruvian cooperation in the drug war was too vital, a former official said.

Eyes Wide Open
"It was not a matter of turning a blind eye. It was more troubling than that. It was eyes wide open to the good and the bad," a former Clinton administration official told Reuters. "It was so patently clear that what Fujimori and Montesinos were doing undermined democracy in Peru," he added. When Fujimori sought an unprecedented third term last year, U.S. officials knew the vote was rigged by Montesinos. "That was all engineered by Montesinos. Everyone knew that. It was no secret," the former official said. Washington brought international pressure to bear on Fujimori that contributed to his downfall. But there had been constant run ins between the CIA and the National Security Council and the State Department over Peru, he said. "There was friction between the NSC and the CIA, between the drug czar's office and the NSC, between the Pentagon and State, and within the embassy in Lima," the official said.

No Alternative
Despite rumors that he was corrupt, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies maintain they had to work with Montesinos because he was the equivalent of national security advisor and head of Peru's intelligence service at the time. "The U.S. govt by necessity had to deal with him," a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters. Under Fujimori, the Peruvian government defeated Maoist and Marxist guerrilla groups and succeeded in reducing coca leaf cultivation by 70 per cent in five years. Fujimori fled to Japan and is wanted in Peru to stand trial for corruption. Clinton's drug policy director Gen. Barry McCaffrey admits Montesinos was a "dangerous character" responsible for the "corruption and authoritarianism" of Fujimori's govt.The shadowy Montesinos infuriated McCaffrey in 1998 by doctoring a video tape of their meeting to show Peruvians that he was on good terms with the U.S. drug czar. But McCaffrey insisted: "Montesinos was a Peruvian creature, not a U.S. creature."

Our ( & their) man in Peru
10.8.00   Clifford Kraus NYTimes

CIA links to Peru's backfired arms deal
11.6.00   Tim Golden NYTimes   also Salon

"We don't know for sure that he was involved, but there's a lot of smoke coming from his direction," an administration official said. "We do know that we should have had a lot of the information a lot earlier than we got it." Intelligence officials, who like others would discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity, defended the CIA's actions. They said that while the agency may have been slow to uncover what had happened, it informed administration officials promptly this year after the guns had been traced back to Jordan. While the CIA had worked closely with Mr. Montesinos and depended on him to support covert anti-terrorism & drug-interdiction programs the U.S. has operated in Peru since the late 1980's, they said, the agency has also reported in detail on his purported misdeeds. Mr. Montesinos has not been heard from. He fled to Panama on Sept. 24, after the disclosure of a videotape that showed him bribing an opposition legislator. When Panamanian officials refused private pleas from the U.S. & the OAS to grant Mr. Montesinos political asylum, he flew back to Peru on Oct. 23 and went into hiding.

On Friday, after Switzerland's discovery of five bank accounts holding some $50 million, Peruvian officials announced that they would try to prosecute him for illegally enriching himself during his decade-long tenure as Pres. Alberto Fujimori's most powerful adviser. If Mr. Montesinos was in fact earning money from arms trading, that apparently never crossed the minds of the American intelligence officers in Amman. Intelligence officials said there was nothing unusual about Jordanian military or intelligence officials running a proposed arms sale past the CIA, even though they were under no formal obligation to do so. "They said, 'Would it upset our relationship with you if we sold these weapons to the Peruvian govt?" one of the officials said. "It's not unreasonable that the Peruvian govt might want weapons of this type. The Jordanians aren't required to ask us."

Although the U.S. had closely watched weapons purchases by Peru since its longstanding border dispute with Ecuador erupted in open warfare in 1995, CIA officials did only a cursory check of the deal, several American officials said. Agency officers in Amman informed senior diplomats and defense attachés at the American Embassy, officials said, but no one cabled word of proposal to the State Dept. The CIA officers did notify their headquarters in Langley, Va., where it was then passed along to the agency station in Lima. Nonetheless, intelligence officers there never raised the matter with Peruvian security officials because, an intelligence official said, "it was told to us in confidence by the Jordanians." Several administration officials argued that this amounted to far less than adequate notification by the CIA, regardless of the outcome. "This was not an appropriate thing to have happen," a senior official said. "This was an issue that should have been put before policy makers."

The arms broker who arranged the sale, Sarkis Soghanalian, said in an interview that he, too, had been told the guns were going to the Peruvian military, and that he had demanded & received end-user certificates validating that claim. But Mr. Soghanalian, who is awaiting trial in Los Angeles on unrelated money laundering & bank fraud charges, also said the Peruvians sought from the start to establish a discreet relationship they might use to buy more sophisticated weapons. And after agreeing in Dec. 1998 to sell the 50,000 Jordanian rifles for just under $500,000, Mr. Soghanalian said he flew to Lima to discuss Peru's other weapons needs. The arms dealer, a Lebanese citizen who has sold vast amounts of weapons worldwide, said he had met in Lima with several senior military officials and had lunch at a private Lima yacht club with Mr. Montesinos, who was introduced to him as "the boss." He said, `We need someone like you,' " Mr. Soghanalian recalled.

Peruvian officials presented Mr. Soghanalian with a shopping list of more than $70 million worth of hardware that he thought could have been meant only for a regular army: antiaircraft weapons, communications gear and equipment to upgrade tanks. The broker said there were some strange aspects to the arrangement: The Peruvians asked to pay for the future purchases in cash and offered him $22 million as a down payment. They insisted on air- dropping the AK-47's to their troops. The first of the cargoes was also turned back in the Amazon basin for reasons that were never clear, and the shipments were finally aborted in Aug. 1999 after 9,540 of the rifles had been sent. But Mr. Soghanalian said he did not think much of the fact that the Peruvians also wanted to buy a large quantity of Russian SA-7 Strella missiles, a shoulder-fired weapon that would immediately change the balance of power in Colombia if obtained by the insurgents.
Many military analysts have speculated that it is only a matter of time before the guerrillas try to obtain such weapons in response to a $1.3 billion package of American aid that includes almost $400 million for new helicopters for the Colombian security forces. The retired Peruvian Army lieutenant who arranged for the Jordanian shipment with Mr. Soghanalian, José Luis Aybar, has also identified Mr. Montesinos as the official who oversaw the arms deal. But Mr. Aybar said he was unaware that the Jordanian cargo consisted of assault rifles, a claim that Mr. Soghanalian and others contradicted.

American officials remain divided about Mr. Montesinos's possible role in the affair. Several officials said CIA reporting on the matter had been notably thin, despite the agency's extensive contacts in the Peruvian security forces. They said senior State Dept officials, including the under secretary, Thomas R. Pickering, had been deeply dissatisfied with the flow of information from the agency, both about the its own early role in the case and about the possible involvement of Peruvian officials. "Every time you asked a question, it would take a few days to get an answer," an official said. "And every time, their story would change a little. It was like pulling teeth."

Peru's Fujimori Denies $12M Scandal
7.8.01   AP

Peru clamps down as riots spread
6.17.02   BBC

President Toledo insisted in a televised address on Sunday that privatisation met the needs of people in Arequipa and urged citizens to show "serenity, calm and responsibility" after the clashes, estimated to have caused damage costing $100m. A man struck by a tear-gas canister has died of his injuries while the Red Cross reports that 66 people, including 24 police officers, have been injured since Thursday. Peruvian Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi said on Monday that the situation was "returning to normal". He blamed the unrest on "irresponsible violent individuals".
According to the Reuters news agency, 700 soldiers armed with automatic rifles moved into the city early on Monday morning, backed by light armoured vehicles. They were accompanied by an extra 1,000 police equipped with riots helmets & shields.

The troops moved to dismantle stone barricades erected by protesters who had crammed into the city's main square in their thousands over the weekend, for demonstrations which the police broke up with tear gas.