Drug Planes a U.S. Target Again

by James Risen
New York Times

July 4, 2002

WASHINGTON — President Bush is expected to approve the resumption of a program to force down or shoot down airplanes suspected of ferrying drugs in Latin America, a year after the program was halted by the mistaken downing of a plane carrying American missionaries in Peru, American officials say.

Once the president gives final approval, the State Department would take over the program from the Central Intelligence Agency. American officials said air interdiction operations could begin in Colombia as early as this fall and would likely be expanded to Peru later. The Pentagon would support the program as well, providing intelligence about suspected drug flights gathered from ground-based radars and from other sources, officials said.

The program calls for the United States to identify and locate suspected drug planes and for Colombian and Peruvian air force planes to shoot them down if they do not respond to calls to land. American officials said the governments of both countries had expressed support for restarting the operation.

The program's many critics had assumed that the mistaken downing of the missionaries' plane, in which two Americans were killed, would make it impossible for the White House to start it up again. But the plans for resumption began months ago, and in recent weeks, Colombia's incoming president, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, visited Washington to urge an aggressive American role in stemming drug traffic from Latin America.

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