Episode Six: Airborne Imperialism

Veronica and Charity Bowers a young Christian missionary and her daughter are killed when the Peruvian Air Force shoots down a small client plane in The plane had been mistaken for a drug smuggling plane and was shot down as part of a joint anti-drug agreement between the CIA and the Colombian and Peruvian governments President Donald Trump has made the Bowers s deaths newly and urgently relevant since he began ordering the U S military to strike down alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean in September By early November the U S had launched a total of strikes killing at least people and those figures seem to grow almost by the day The attacks are illegal under both U S and international law The administration also provided no documentation of the alleged drug trafficking The attack on the Bowers family pierced the veil that obscures drug war foreign approach because of their nationality skin color and relatability More than years ago House Oversight Committee hearing members Jan Schakowsky and Elijah Cummings demanded accountability after U S drug interdiction forces killed the Bowers They demanded to know how such a mistake could happen and how we could prevent the loss of innocent life going forward The kind of action we saw in Peru amounts to an extrajudicial killing noted Schakowsky at the time Cummings added The Peruvian shootdown framework would never be permitted as a domestic United States approach precisely because it goes against one of our most of sacred due process principles namely that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty Related Trump Administration Admits It Doesn t Know Who Exactly It s Killing in Boat Strikes Now a new administration openly celebrates summary execution of alleged drug brokers without a hint of due process and is now threatening to topple another establishment to prevent the U S from sating its appetite for illicit drugs The story of Veronica and Charity Bowers is a stark reminder of how aggressive drug strategy is wasteful and futile how we never seem to learn from past failures and how the generations-long effort to stop people from getting high also and necessarily treats human lives as expendable Transcript Radley Balko It s April In the skies above the Peruvian Amazon a small floatplane flies over the rainforest along the river There are five people aboard They don t know it but their plane is being tracked A U S -based surveillance plane contracting with the CIA is closely following U S Pilot We re trying to remain covert at this point but what we do know is it s a high-wing single-engine floatplane that we picked up just along the dividing line between Peru and Brazil Radley Balko Working with the CIA contractors a plane from the Peruvian Air Force begins to pursue the mystery plane It doesn t appear to have an authorized flight plan and it isn t responding to their radio messages The CIA and Peruvian regime suspect that it could be trafficking illicit drugs In one telling exchange the piloting crew discuss whether they should try to identify the plane But the U S officer directs them to stay covert They re concerned that the plane might get away U S Pilot You know we can go up and attempt the tail number but the trouble with that if he is dirty and he detects us he makes a right turn right now and we can t chase him U S Pilot See I don t know if this is bandido or if it s amigo OK Peruvian Air Force pilot OK U S Pilot in Spanish I don t know Radley Balko That s one of the CIA contractors speaking really poor Spanish telling the Peruvian Air Force pilot that he s not sure if the plane in question is a bandito or amigo a bandit or a friend The plane was then given multiple warnings to land Peruvian Air Force pilot in Spanish If you do not comply we will proceed to take you down U S Pilot This guy doesn t this guy doesn t fit the profile U S Pilot OK I understand this is not our call but this guy is at feet He is not taking any evasive action I recommend we follow him I do not recommend Phase at this time Radley Balko Phase is code for the greater part drastic action viable shooting the plane down from the sky Under an agreement between the United States and the governments of Peru and other Latin American countries any planes suspected of running drugs in the region could be plucked from the clouds That effectively put U S administrators from the CIA or Drug Enforcement Agency along with authorities in the Peruvian leadership in the role of judge jury and executioner Peruvian Air Force pilot It s three phase authorized OK U S Pilot OK But you sure it s bandito Are you sure Peruvian Air Force pilot Yes U S Pilot It s bad OK Peruvian Air Force pilot OK U S Pilot If you sure Peruvian dispatch Tucan Tucan autorizado fase U S Pilot I think we re making a mistake but U S Pilot I agree with you Radley Balko You can hear the hesitancy in their voices in their words And there s good reason to be unsure It turns out that in addition to the pilot the plane is carrying a family of American missionaries Jim and Veronica Bowers and their two children -year-old Cody and -month-old Charity The pilot had indeed been in touch with a control tower down below in the town of Iquitos but on a different radio frequency But by the time the CIA and Peruvian Air Force realize their mistake it s too late U S Pilot unintelligible Peruvian Air Force pilot S U S Pilot He s going to Santa Clara now Peruvian dispatch Approximente mille de Iquitos U S Pilot The plane is talking to Iquitos tower Bowers s Pilot in Spanish They re killing us They re killing us U S Pilot Tell them to terminate U S Pilot Don t shoot U S Pilot Tell them to terminate No m s Radio chatter Roger No m s no m s Tucano no m s Radley Balko As gunfire strikes the floatplane the pilot screams They re killing us They re killing us The plane then drops from the sky leaving a streak of smoke as it plummets on to the Amazon river The whole thing is caught on video by the CIA observers U S Pilot There s a plane right there Where s the plane U S Pilot See them And there s the people getting them U S Pilot Yeah but I don t see the plane U S Pilot It s upside down See the float s upside down and the people getting them Right there U S Pilot Yeah Yeah OK U S Pilot There s a bunch of boats down there U S Pilot Yeah I only see one Oh over here by the U S Pilot You got a good good film of that U S Pilot Uh-huh U S Pilot OK Let s go Radley Balko Miraculously Jim Bowers and his son Cody survive the crash as does the pilot despite being shot in the leg But Veronica Bowers and -month old Charity are killed by gunfire before the plane goes down The affair fleetly makes international news George W Bush The development that took place in Peru is a terrible tragedy And our hearts go out to the families who have been affected Radley Balko But as is often the scenario with the drug war s collateral damage no one would be held accountable Brian Ross ABC Nightline In Congress this day the CIA was accused by a top Republican of running a nine-year-long effort to stonewall and mislead Congress failing to reveal how and why all of the operation s strict rules were ignored by the CIA Pete Hoekstra on ABC If the rules as outlined had been followed the Bowers plane would not would not have been shot down Garnett Luttig on ABC I want to know the truth I want to know why I wonder why my baby s gone Radley Balko The CIA had been working with the governments of Peru and Colombia to shoot down planes they suspected of carrying drugs for years We don t know how multiple times it happened or how plenty of of the sufferers were innocent because the people in almost all of those planes weren t American citizens So there was no media outrage No congressional hearings No demands for transparency from powerful people Rep Jan Schakowsky We have spent billions of taxpayer dollars employed personnel from numerous agencies around the world and the drugs continue to flow into the United States Are the Bowers acceptable collateral damage in this war on drugs Ian V squez The drug war creates all sorts of innocent casualties People who may have absolutely nothing to do with the drug war which of unit was the circumstance with the shootdown of the airplane in Peru That was a mistake but it was directly related to bad protocol that Peru was following with the help of the United States Radley Balko As we were producing this episode President Donald Trump s administration made the Bowers s deaths newly and urgently relevant In early September Trump released that he d ordered the military to strike a small boat in the Caribbean that he claimed was being used by drug traffickers Eleven people all inferred to be Venezuelan were killed Related Trump Administration Conjures Up New Terrorist Designation to Justify Killing Civilians The attack was illegal under both U S and international law The administration also provided no documentation of the alleged drug trafficking The U S military then expanded its attacks to include the eastern Pacific Ocean By early November the U S had launched a total of strikes killing at least people and those figures seem to grow almost by the day The attack on the Bowers family pierced the veil that obscures drug war foreign program because of their nationality their skin color and their relatability Even Republicans criticized how the George W Bush administration reacted But we now face a brazen new administration that has carried out multiple extrajudicial executions in international waters one that even jokes about how various of those they ve killed may in fact be innocent Donald Trump I don t know about the fishing industry If you want to go fishing a lot of people aren t deciding to even go fishing JD Vance Crowd laughter I would stop too Hell I wouldn t go fishing right now in that area of the world laughter Radley Balko It s also an administration now openly preparing to invade Venezuela under the pretext of fighting a drug war The story of Veronica and Charity Bowers is a stark reminder of how aggressive drug procedures is wasteful and futile how we never seem to learn from past failures and how the generations-long effort to stop people from getting high also and necessarily treats human lives as expendable From The Intercept this is Collateral Damage I m Radley Balko I m an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than years The so-called war on drugs began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country s fervent commitment to defeating drug addiction but the war part promptly became all too literal When the drug war ramped up in the s and s it brought helicopters tanks and SWAT teams to U S neighborhoods It brought dehumanizing rhetoric and the suspension of basic civil liberties protections All wars have collateral damage the people whose deaths are tragic but deemed necessary for the greater cause But once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs we were more willing to accept specific collateral damage In the modern war on drugs which dates back more than years to the Nixon administration the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn t just tolerated it s inevitable This is Episode Airborne Imperialism The Tragic Deaths of Veronica and Charity Bowers Collateral Damage Podcast Collateral Damage It could be laborious to remember how the world worked and how it felt back before the attacks of September It was easier to fly then People felt safer Life was less complicated Former congressman Pete Hoekstra certainly thought so Pete Hoekstra So it s everything in America is great I got on the House Intelligence Committee in January of Radley Balko Hoekstra a Republican was serving his fifth term in Congress representing Michigan s nd District Pete Hoekstra Someone from West Michigan called me and announced Hey a couple of your constituents have died in Peru They were shot down What can you find out about this And so that s when you go to the Intelligence Committee and say All right will you help me take a look at the circumstances of this tragic event Two of my constituents are killed It appears that the CIA may have been involved in this And I just want to get as much information as I can Radley Balko During his time in Congress Hoekstra hadn t focused much on either the drug war or on Latin America But now two of his constituents were dead because of an incomprehensible mistake So he had specific catching up to do Pete Hoekstra And so I still remember George Tenet coming who at that time is the director of the CIA and comes in to brief the Intelligence Committee And it was a fascinating hearing It s when we veritably in Congress on the Intelligence Committee we did things in a bipartisan way And so Tenet comes in and he explains to us exactly what happens And the director says There s a protocol in place And every step in the protocol was followed So basically justifying the shootdown of the Bowers plane Radley Balko But then one of Hokestra s colleagues spoke up Pete Hoekstra It was one of the Democrats says Mr Director do you have an audio or a video capturing the events of that day of that flight of that interdiction And he kind of says no there s no recording He looks around There s a little commotion in the wall by someone sitting against the wall And Tenet looks around and the guy whispers something to the director and the director says Excuse me I am mistaken There are recordings of exactly what happened at that event Radley Balko It seems unlikely that the CIA wouldn t have known that there was video of the development Perhaps Tenet longed to keep the damning footage away from Congress and the populace Or perhaps someone further down at the CIA longed that and so they never stated Tenet that it existed Hoekstra isn t sure But that recording prevented the happening from being swept under the rug It made the deaths of Veronica and Charity Bowers an explosive international story Pete Hoekstra If my Democratic colleague had not urged the question Is there a video or an audio tape of what happened before that shootdown if he had not required that question that first hearing might have been the end of it Radley Balko Instead it was just the beginning Ray Suarez PBS NewsHour Peru and the United States offered differing views in the current era on the downing of a missionary plane Newscaster ABC According to senior administration officers the Citation V surveillance plane used in the operation is owned by the Pentagon Its crew was hired by the CIA from a private contractor Richard Boucher State Department spokesperson The father Jim Bowers the son Cory Bowers and the pilot Kevin Donaldson returned to the United States on Sunday We think that the remains of the mother Veronica Bowers and the daughter Charity can be brought back to the United States in contemporary times and we re assisting with that as well Funeral organ music Radley Balko The memorial organization for Charity Bowers and her mom Veronica known as Roni by those closer to her was broadcast by a Grand Rapids Michigan TV station Jim Kramer Bowers friend Shall we pray Dear Heavenly Father we have come here the present day to honor your servant your faithful servant Roni Bowers and her baby girl Charity We thank you dear God for the confidence that we have that they are with you right now in Heaven Radley Balko Here s Jim Bowers speaking at his wife and daughter s memorial Jim Bowers We were shot down right over a town of onlookers which helped at the very beginning And a few of them were very good friends of mine Incredibly the town had a radio in which we were able to call for help That s very exceptional And the radio worked Radley Balko The development was demanding for a few in the neighborhood to comprehend As missionaries the Bowers were deeply religious people And Hoekstra a Republican was generally supportive of the drug war as were preponderance of the people in his conservative district That s also true of Jim Bowers himself who was torn about doing an interview with us and ultimately declined In an unrecorded call Bowers emphasized to me that while he thinks the drug war has clearly gone too far in particular strategies he s opposed to legalizing or decriminalizing drugs including marijuana But Bowers does advocacy ending the CIA operation that killed his wife and daughter known as the Air Bridge Denial Initiative Here s President George W Bush describing it as questions raged about the tragedy in Peru George W Bush Our leadership is involved with helping and a variety of agencies are involved with helping our friends in South America identify airplanes that might be carrying illegal drugs These operations have been going on for quite a while We ve suspended such flights until we get to the bottom of the situation to fully understand all the facts Radley Balko The U S authorities restarted the operation just two years later in Colombia but shut it down in Peru They made minor protocol tweaks adding supervisors to enforce rules setting Spanish language fluency standards and creating a dedicated communication channel But protocols weren t really being followed in the first place And what s more Air Bridge Denial was just one part of a much broader much more destructive U S agenda in Latin America PBS NewsHour The Latin America drug connection is where our major attention goes tonight The State Department issued a major overview on the subject nowadays as part of a process aimed at denying U S aid to countries that fail to act against drug trafficking It s a story of politics and murder corruption and revolution a story that grows more sensational with majority passing new days Radley Balko Coca is a crop that s been cultivated in Latin America for centuries It has medicinal nutritional and religious uses But of class coca is also used to make cocaine It was a crop that had not only been a part of Andean heritage dating back to pre-Colombian times but due to Western appetites it had become extremely lucrative for farmers in an impoverished part of the world And by the mid- s the United States was facing twin epidemics fueled by the rise of the crack form of the drug both in overdose deaths and in black-market violence as distributors fought over turf So the U S establishment provided foreign aid military training and weapons to the Peruvian government to halt the cultivation of coca Ian V squez In the s in Peru there was a concerted effort to go against the production of drugs And what that led to at that time Peru was the world s largest producer of coca Radley Balko That s Ian V squez vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute Ian V squez And what that led to was it just pushed coca production to other countries namely to Colombia Colombia then became the world s largest producer of coca Radley Balko This is sometimes called the balloon effect When there s enough demand for an illicit drug someone will figure out a way to supply it So when the U S has helped precipitate a crackdown on coca heroin or meth production in one country or region the production just ramps up somewhere else Peru and Colombia are neighbors they share the same ecosystem that s ideal for growing the coca plant So when the U S squeezed the balloon in Peru coca production entirely moved next door Then the U S administration squeezed the balloon again In President Bill Clinton signed the bill funding Plan Colombia a sweeping anti-drug operation in Latin America Ian V squez Plan Colombia spent about billion supported by the United States in fighting the drug war and trying to pacify the country The United States did not accomplish its primary goal there but it did spend a lot of money It did try to repeat that kind of procedures in other places with the same kinds of unfortunate results Radley Balko Plan Colombia had two primary goals The first was to end the armed conflict between the Colombian establishment and the narcotics-funded guerrilla group known as FARC The second goal was to crack down on coca growing and the production of cocaine The U S planned do this by giving money weapons and strategic assistance to the Colombian leadership Ian V squez When Peru started to crack down this led to coca production in Colombia But it didn t take that a great number of more years until the crackdown in Colombia to lead to an increase in coca production in Peru Radley Balko That back and forth continues to this day with coca production now spilling into Ecuador as well Ian V squez And that s true with almost every aspect of the drug war Crop substitution drug interdiction eradication You can see temporary successes if you want to call it that in the drug war where you see production in one region go down but it ends up popping up in another region You can see temporary successes if you want to call it that in the drug war where you see production in one region go down but it ends up popping up in another region Radley Balko And so despite decades of international drug suppression efforts in individual countries the overall supply and consumption of cocaine has remained relatively stable In real dollars the price per gram of the drug hasn t changed much since the early s And to the extent that the cost does fluctuate it s driven far more by demand which drugs come in and out of vogue than it is by supply France The first ever global record on the cocaine industry paints a picture of unprecedented enhancement CGTN America The rise of coca the leaf used to make the illicit drug has reached highs not seen in decades BBC Now the United Nations says Colombia has broken its own record for cultivating coca the main ingredient of cocaine Radley Balko As of Colombia Peru and Bolivia remain the largest cocaine producers on the planet For years the United States has unleashed destructive anti-drug policies in Latin America And for years those policies have done little to reduce the supply of cocaine Related We Need to Reverse the Damage Trump Has Done in Latin America Biden s Plans Don t Cut It Crop eradication programs have poisoned farmland with pesticides often making the soil unusable for years at a time Those efforts have pushed coca and poppy cultivation into the rainforest where the farming does yet more environmental damage Here s the publication Vice reporting on that ecological tragedy a scant years ago Vice It is not just the drug traffickers who are dumping toxic chemicals into the rainforest Between and the Colombian and American militaries sprayed tons of the chemical pesticide glyphosate onto the Amazon in an attempt to destroy coca crops Kendra McSweeney If the establishment comes along and eradicates your crop they may be spraying glyphosate a known carcinogen on your family your animals and your neighbors So it comes at great jeopardy But the requirements of small farmers is often so great that they re willing to take that threat for the economic return Radley Balko These fumigation programs use highly concentrated herbicides which have destroyed other crops and can drift far afield from their intended targets Much of this eradication work has been done by private contractors who operate in a legal netherworld unaccountable to either the U S ruling body or the establishment of the country in which they re operating At the same time every squish of the balloon disrupts the black markets where turf and realm share are established and controlled with violence So each new disruption means more death and destruction V squez says that due to U S wealth influence and military might it has often been formidable for leaders of Latin American countries to say no to these programs Ian V squez A lot of the countries that are receiving the United States so-called aid are countries with governments that want the money that want their politicians to declare that they re being tough on crime and drug trafficking And unfortunately it s countries like Peru like Bolivia or Colombia or Central American countries that have weak governments in the sense that the institutions are weak there the rule of law transparency accountability Radley Balko But specific Latin American countries have been pushing back In new years Bolivia has attempted to reduce U S influence by promoting legal coca cultivation And in Colombia s President Gustavo Petro suspended fumigation efforts and other government-enforced eradication of coca He argued that suppression programs had failed to curb cocaine demand while having devastating consequences on poor farmers In early speaking at a cabinet meeting Petro mentioned President Gustavo Petro in Spanish Cocaine is not worse than whisky And what hit the United States is fentanyl It is killing them and that s not done in Colombia Radley Balko But like Venezuela Colombia now faces renewed tensions with the U S from the Trump administration When one of the U S military strikes in international waters killed a Colombian man Petro wrote on social media The United States has invaded our national territory fired a missile to kill a humble fisherman Trump responded by calling Petro an illegal drug leader and threatened military strikes in that country too After the break how Washington s counter-narcotic policies in Latin America failed the Bowers family Break Radley Balko Ian V squez remembers hearing about the death of Roni and Charity Bowers in He wasn t surprised Ian V squez Peru in the early s was a country that was transitioning to a more open more prosperous commercial sector It still though had a lot of problems like it does the present day in terms of weak rule of law So that when you set up a shootdown initiative you should fully expect that a few tragedy is going to happen and that s exactly what happened Radley Balko In the days and weeks after the Bowers plane went down Rep Hoekstra began trying to piece together what went wrong Pete Hoekstra There was a protocol a protocol that the CIA was supposed to follow something like seven to nine initiatives of escalation identify the plane verify the tail numbers reach out try to establish contact with the plane If you fail to reach the pilot to potentially fly next to the missionary plane kind of wiggle your wings I guess which could be interpreted as an international signal to follow the plane So there were like seven to nine moves that should have been put in place should have been conducted before there was any type of activity aggressive activity that would outcome in the possible downing of the plane Radley Balko Part of the confusion was due to the unclear chain of command leading up to the decision to shoot down the plane The crews of these surveillance teams typically consisted of former military personnel and pilots recruited by the CIA often working as private contractors There would also be an officer from the Peruvian military And in this development the unarmed surveillance plane was property of the U S Air Force When the crew on the surveillance plane decided the Bowers plane looked suspicious they alerted the Peruvian Air Force pilot who was waiting on standby The U S authorities later claimed that its contractors had no authority and were exclusively advisers to the Peruvian military But listening back to recordings of the cockpit chatter it s not at all clear exactly who was in charge U S Pilot OK I understand this is not our call but this guy is at feet He is not taking any evasive action I recommend we follow him I do not recommend Phase at this time Peruvian Air Force pilot It s three phase authorised OK U S Pilot OK But you sure it s bandito Are you sure Peruvian Air Force pilot Yes U S Pilot It s bad OK Peruvian Air Force pilot OK U S Pilot If you sure Radley Balko Subsequent investigations only underscored just how opaque U S overseas drug operations could be PBS s Jim Lehrer questioned then-Secretary of State Colin Powell about the effort Jim Lehrer PBS NewsHour Is it a CIA operation Don t read anything nefarious into the words CIA Colin Powell A number of establishment agencies are involved in it The CIA has the lead on it and they will be taking all the specific questions on it But don t read anything nefarious into the words CIA Radley Balko Powell then defended Operation Air Bridge Colin Powell It was a good solid campaign that has been well known People have known about it It is not something that is dark and secret In fact we have credited this project with helping to reduce drug trafficking coming out of Peru so it s a effective campaign that has had this tragedy now associated with it and we ve got to review the entire effort Radley Balko Less than two weeks after the Bowers plane went down a House Oversight Committee held hearings on the case that aired on C-SPAN Mark Souder The Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Drug Approach and Human Support is now called to order Radley Balko That s Rep Mark Souder a Republican from Indiana and the chair of the subcommittee that held the hearing Mark Souder Just a little over a week ago a terrible tragedy occurred that broke the heart of every American when through a preventable mistake a missionary whose life had been committed to serving others on behalf of God was killed along with her little girl Radley Balko By the crack epidemic was in the end on the wane along with the violence that came with it The U S had begun what would be a historic -year drop in crime But those trends were not yet apparent So for various the urgency of eradicating illicit drugs was still as apparent as ever Souder himself was one of the greater part enthusiastic supporters of a restrictive militaristic drug protocol That even he was bothered by the shootdown of the Bowers plane that even staunch drug war Republicans were demanding answers that was a big deal Mark Souder From a general approach standpoint where is the United States leadership to head What will the United States anti-drug efforts in South America be after the Peru development Radley Balko The Bush administration first tried to blame the Peruvian military for the Bowers deaths But the media various members of Congress and outside experts pushed back on the official establishment position At the time that was pretty rare with respect to the drug war Here s Adam Isacson from the Center for International Guidelines testifying before Souder s committee Adam Isacson While the Peruvian pilot pulled the trigger he pulled the trigger of a gun provided by the United States while flying a plane provided by the United States He was trained in these operations by the United States and he was alerted to his target by intelligence provided by the United States Radley Balko Up to that point the Air Bridge Denial Operation had enjoyed bipartisan sponsorship as did majority U S anti-drug policies in Latin America And Plan Colombia had of program been signed and championed by President Clinton But at least specific congressional Democrats like Jan Schakowsky and Elijah Cummings lambasted the operation Rep Jan Schakowsky The kind of action we saw in Peru last week amounts to an extrajudicial killing and we in this country now have innocent blood on our hands because of it It goes against one of our the greater part sacred due process principles namely that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty Rep Elijah Cummings The Peruvian shootdown approach would never be permitted as a domestic United States framework precisely because it goes against one of our the bulk sacred due process principles namely that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty Rep Jan Schakowsky The U S taxpayers are unwittingly funding a private war with private soldiers This is a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later protocol encouraged by the United States in its war on drugs Rep Elijah Cummings Certainly Veronica and Charity Bowers are not the first innocent casualties of the war on drugs Is a guidelines that also sacrifices core American values a prudent and acceptable lesson to follow Radley Balko In one particularly telling moment Rep Cummings inquired John Crow who led the State Department s narcotics efforts in Latin America how a great number of planes had been shot down through the Air Bridge Denial Initiative It was an entirely reasonable question How a large number of times had the U S pressured foreign governments to shoot down civilian aircraft based on nothing more than mere suspicion of drug running And yet Crow couldn t answer How plenty of times had the U S pressured foreign governments to shoot down civilian aircraft based on nothing more than mere suspicion of drug running Elijah Cummings Can somebody tell me how a great number of airplanes have been shot down since Shootdowns and force-downs John Crow We were not able to come up with one or agree on the same figure Our figures would show that starting in aircraft were not all shot down a few forced down but through a combination a figure of particular aircraft and that is not precise Elijah Cummings Why can t you tell me that We are talking about shooting down people John Crow Yeah Elijah Cummings Like dead I mean we are talking about using I mean this is specific serious stuff I am trying to figure out if I was just a regular citizen just sitting here looking at this and I ve got certain of my top-flight people in the drug war talking about they don t know how multiple shootdowns or force-downs I would be a little bit concerned about what s going on Radley Balko Cummings s frustrations back then seem almost prescient in the modern day as the Trump administration continues to elude questions about its own killings off the South American coast Still this is the drug war And so it didn t take long for a reliable foot soldier like Souder to retreat to familiar territory Mark Souder Unfortunately a great number of people in America are becoming convinced falsely that the war on drugs has not worked Radley Balko Souder then deployed the sort of hyperbole and demagoguery that had long defined U S drug program Mark Souder And what is the alternative of those who oppose the war on drugs Having more weed-wacked meth-wasted heroin-junkie crackheads driving a car headed in your direction or prowling your neighborhood Or perhaps even more painfully coming home to beat you or your child The facts are simple When this country focuses on the war on drugs we make progress Radley Balko Rep Schakowsky responded with a laundry list of reasons why the status quo was not working Jan Schakowsky I know particular of those with us this day would like to put this tragedy behind us and get back to the business of the drug war However there are so various questionable aspects of our protocol and so various unanswered questions Why do we have to hire private contractors to do our work in Andean countries How much of the population s money has been spent to hire what specific have referred to as mercenaries Where is the accountability Who exactly are they Do they even speak Spanish From what I do know outsourcing in the Andean region is a way to avoid congressional oversight and community scrutiny The use of private military contractors risks drawing the U S into regional conflicts and civil war It is clear to me that this practice must stop Radley Balko Rep Hoekstra took a subtler tone He wasn t interested in overhauling the war on drugs But because the casualties were his constituents he focused instead on the need for selected level of transparency Rep Pete Hoekstra at Oversight Committee hearing The families and the American people deserve to know how this happened I know there are certain pieces of this complex puzzle that we will never be able to explain but there should be no part that we keep hidden It was pretty clear that there were people inside the agency that were ready to cover this up from day one Pete Hoekstra And so it was pretty clear that there were people inside the agency that were ready to cover this up from day one Radley Balko Looking back on that time Hoekstra says that the executive agencies involved slow-walked the investigative process Pete Hoekstra Because the information especially the information going out to the masses was so different from what veritably happened it provided cover for people to reimplement this flawed scheme Radley Balko So the establishment agencies involved avoided accountability and there would be no substantial change in program The CIA s inspector general summary on the situation was published in but it wouldn t be fully declassified until When it at last was made society the details were damning Brian Ross ABC News In the current era the CIA was accused of an almost year long campaign to mislead and stonewall Congress and others about how and why the rules were broken Pete Hoekstra at Oversight Committee hearing If there s ever an example of justice delayed justice denied this is it Brian Ross ABC News The CIA insists the entire episode was handled thoroughly and professionally and that there was no cover-up to the outrage of the dead woman s parents Gloria Luttig Veronica Bowers s mother I want somebody to tell me why they killed my girl Pete Hoekstra Those of us on the committee and I think a number of members of Congress knew exactly what happened The CIA knew exactly what happened The Justice Department should have known exactly what happened They would have had access to the tapes and those types of things And the calculus at chosen point in time that is made by the Justice Department by the intelligence region and by the administration at that point is this effort is more fundamental than focusing or rehashing the mistakes that were made This operation is more critical than focusing or rehashing the mistakes that were made Radley Balko The CIA inspector general tallied incidents in which a plane had been shot down through the scheme between and The watchdog unveiled violations of required procedures in all incidents In several cases suspected aircraft were shot down within minutes of being sighted by the Peruvian fighter without being properly identified given required warnings or given time to respond Another congressional committee estimated that there could have been multiple more planes shot out of the sky as a multitude of as More disturbing still the statement concluded that CIA officers knew of and condoned bulk of these violations fostering an milieu of negligence and disregard for procedures designed to protect against the loss of innocent life that culminated in the downing of the missionary plane Brian Ross ABC News Currently the CIA explained its nine-year long examination had determined that CIA employees should be disciplined including we learned the woman then in charge of counternarcotics Several of the are no longer with the CIA and one of them described us his discipline was no more than a letter of reprimand placed in his file which he was recounted would be removed in one year That s the punishment for his role in the wrongful deaths of two innocent Americans Diane Diane Sawyer After nine years Brian Ross Yes after nine years Diane Sawyer OK thanks Brian Pete Hoekstra Even after nine years I d say there was never really a full accountability to the individual or the organizations that precipitated these events I m worried that there were more That the Bowers family is not the only family or the only Americans or the only innocent people that were impacted Were there other Peruvians were there other innocent individuals that might have been killed through this process I don t know the answer but I suspect that the answer would ostensibly be yes Ian V squez I think that a lot of times when people talk about the war on drugs they think about going after the bad guys the criminals who are ruthless the mafia guys the cartel guys the people who are latest the law knowingly The drug war is much more about turning innocent ordinary people into casualties It s not just the farmers It s the entire populations of countries whose institutions of civil society and governing body are undermined Radley Balko Ian V squez again Ian V squez But the larger picture is that the drug war is not just about going after the so-called bad guys It is much more about turning innocent ordinary people into casualties And it s a lot of them It s not just the farmers It s the entire populations of countries whose institutions of civil society and administration are undermined Radley Balko It s now been more than two decades since the Bowers s plane plunged into the Amazon River But Jim Bowers expressed his forgiveness right away back in speaking at his daughter and wife s memorial in Michigan Jim Bowers One thing I want you to know Roni has forgiven the pilot who shot her She s forgiven the Peruvian cabinet and whoever might have made their mistake And so should I And I have How could I not when God has forgiven me so Radley Balko The U S regime paid million to the Bowers family and the pilot of the plane That payout came years before the examination and analysis were ultimately made general Meanwhile according to the United Nations global coca production reached a new high in jumping percent over the year before Colombia s coca output drove much of the increase Bolivia s production has remained steady Peru saw a slight decline but had produced a record amount of the drug in The air in the balloon just keeps moving around V squez says the futility of drug prohibition is inescapable Ian V squez It s just virtually impossible to fight against an industry that because it is prohibited because it s in the black domain creates astronomically high black region profits and so creates these massive incentives for people to go into the business all the way down from ordinary farmers who produce coca to the big drug traffickers And the structure of the industry itself because it s outside of the legal framework of the realm means that the profits just shoot up incredibly especially once the drug comes into the United States Radley Balko V squez breaks down the numbers Ian V squez And to give you an idea of what we re talking about In Colombia it can take I don t know to to get the coca leaves and then another I don t know or so to produce the coca paste that then produces cocaine in Colombia So that one kilo of cocaine produced in Colombia is maybe about By the time it crosses the United States the retail price of that same kilo is So there s this enormous markup Radley Balko In the Colombian establishment brokered what it called a Total Peace agreement with the armed guerrilla groups vying for control of key cocaine trafficking routes But it wasn t long before the violence returned In January the guerrilla group ELN resumed a bloody territorial war with FARC dissidents In less than a week the fighting left at least people dead and forced people to flee their homes But Colombia is not alone Black-market drug violence persists across Latin America ABC News Officers in Ecuador inspecting a brazen attack on a constituents television station by an apparent armed gang as acts of terrorism gunshots PBS NewsHour Here in the Honduran heart of the drug arrangement the cartel has everything under their control NewsNation It s a region of Mexico where residents are inevitably either in mourning or living in fear Ian V squez If you look at homicide rates the top countries in terms of homicide rates in the world it s not really a surprise that out of those are on the cocaine direction from the Andes to the United States That kind of statistic changes from year to year depending on where the drug war is really cracking down on But overall those numbers stay high Radley Balko This has been particularly true in Central America Mexico and the Caribbean Aggressive militaristic drug enforcement by local administration nearly constantly prodded and often financially backed by the U S regime has resulted in a bloody perpetual war between the military police and competing drug cartels And those entities can often be formidable to distinguish as cartels exert control over politicians police and military executives through corruption and through the threat of violence The fighting in Mexico alone has wrought more than homicides since That s the year the Mexican ruling body began warring with the cartels Not learning from previous mistakes in President George W Bush launched what was described at the time as a Plan Colombia for Mexico It was a framework that would continue into the Obama administration Hillary Clinton These drug cartels are now showing more and more indices of insurgency all of a sudden car bombs show up which wasn t there before So it s looking more and more like Colombia looked years ago where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country Radley Balko That s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in She s talking about how Mexican drug traffickers had taken over the routes used by Colombian cartels in the late s Hillary Clinton Mexico has quota and they re using that ceiling And they ve been very willing to take advice They re wanting to do as much of it on their own as workable but we stand ready to help them Radley Balko Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations Clinton demonstrated that the Obama administration had learned nothing from her husband s own mistakes in the s Hillary Clinton I know that Plan Colombia was controversial I was just in Colombia and there were problems and there were mistakes but it worked And we need to figure out what are the equivalents for Central America Mexico and the Caribbean Radley Balko The United States still budgets more than billion annually on overseas drug interdiction The U S also often conditions additional foreign aid on cooperation from foreign governments on drug guidelines The international drug war is also as opaque as it is bloody and destructive Media investigations have uncovered clandestine operations involving the U S military private contractors and CIA FBI and DEA agents all over the world So the real amount of money we spend on overseas drug eradication is likely quite a bit higher The United States has also helped fund notoriously brutal drug crackdowns like the extrajudicial executions in the Philippines U S anti-opium efforts also have effectively funded and propped up the Taliban in Afghanistan Ian V squez With much of the international operations of the United States it s arduous to get a handle on what s exactly going on How much do the United States spend internationally on the war on drugs Well there s so a large number of different agencies involved in that There are aid agencies There s the Defense Department There s the DEA You can t find one budget line that says International War on Drugs budget Radley Balko In the present day the fight isn t so much about marijuana or cocaine as it is fentanyl And while the drugs of choice come and go the same counterproductive policies persist Donald Trump We re talking about a tariff of percent on China based on the fact that they re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada Radley Balko While fentanyl can be far deadlier than other illicit drugs the incentives for producers are similar Prohibition has no effect on demand It only makes the payoff more lucrative for suppliers Prohibition has no effect on demand It only makes the payoff more lucrative for suppliers Ian V squez Fentanyl is even more of an enormous markup The precursor chemicals for fentanyl are about And the retail value for the same amount of fentanyl in the United States is about So what we re talking about is a situation where the incentives to consistently bring in fentanyl are going to be enormous and any disruption however violent that you can cause to that illicit industry will only be seen as a small price that the business has to pay in order to get the drug to the United States Radley Balko Fentanyl itself is popular because of the prohibition on other opioid drugs Yet our regime seems intent on continuing to make those same mistakes too Ian V squez It is not true that somehow Mexicans are smuggling in fentanyl into the United States and that s the main matter through specific sort of illegal routes or whatever We ve looked into it here at Cato and percent of the fentanyl is coming in through regular ports of entry in the United States and at least percent of it is being brought in by Americans It s easy to blame Mexicans for this but it s something that Americans are very much involved in Radley Balko But blaming Mexico Canada and now Venezuela is exactly what Trump is doing Donald Trump Billions of dollars of drugs are pouring out of Venezuela and other countries Look China what they re doing with fentanyl is a terrible thing It comes through Canada and it comes through Mexico but a lot of it s coming through Venezuela Venezuela has been a very bad actor Radley Balko Since the start of his second term Donald Trump has issued a series of executive orders claiming the power to invade countries under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking He has now explicitly threatened military action against Mexico Colombia and Venezuela Trump has designated international drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations likely illegally and declared a national exigency on the U S southern boundary He also launched those military strikes on suspected drug boats again without evidence of a crime and in violation of U S and international law And then the administration began to amass warships near Venezuela in preparation for striking military installations inside the country But Venezuela has nothing to do with fentanyl the current drug that s menacing the United States Rand Paul Number one there is no fentanyl made in Venezuela not just a little bit There s none being made in Venezuela These are outboard boats that in order for them to get to Miami would have to stop and refuel times They re all likely going to Trinidad and Tobago which is an island right off of the coast of Venezuela Radley Balko That s Republican Sen Rand Paul on Piers Morgan s show challenging the Trump administration s use of drug trafficking to justify both extrajudicial executions and potentially invading another country Related Rand Paul Reveals Venezuela Boat Attack Was a Drone Strike Unlike Colombia s president Venezuelan President Nicol s Maduro is an authoritarian who remains in office despite having lost his country s last presidential voting process But the evidence that Maduro is actively participating in the drug business is thin Yet Trump seems intent to go to war with Venezuela with or without approval from Congress Reporter And Mr President if you are declaring war against these cartels and Congress is likely to approve of that process why not just ask for a declaration of war Donald Trump Well I don t think we re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war I think we re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country OK We re going to kill them You know they re going to be like dead Rand Paul That s why when we declare war it s supposed to be done by Congress It s supposed to be thoughtful It s supposed to be debated and we re not supposed to do it willy-nilly Radley Balko That s Sen Paul again And here s Paul making another crucial point Drug trafficking is not an act of war Rand Paul Interdicting drugs has dependably been a criminal activity and a criminal anti-crime activity where we don t just summarily execute people we genuinely present evidence and convict them Radley Balko More than years ago House Oversight Committee members Jan Schakowsky and Elijah Cummings demanded accountability after U S drug interdiction forces killed Roni and Charity Bowers They demanded to know how such a mistake could happen and how we could prevent the loss of innocent life going forward Related License to Kill Trump s Extrajudicial Executions Now a new administration celebrates summary executions of alleged drug coyotes without a hint of due process and it is now threatening to topple another administration to prevent the U S from sating its appetite for illicit drugs At the time of our interview in former congressman Pete Hoekstra narrated me that the Bowers situation changed the way he looked at drug protocol and how he assesses the governing body administrators who enforce it Pete Hoekstra I don t think there s reason to have much faith or belief in what the district is telling us about a number of different programs whether it is a drug interdiction operation or its events on the ground or its engagements even inside the United States Radley Balko All these years later Hoekstra stated he still thinks about the larger ramifications of the Bowers saga and the likelihood that the Air Bridge Denial Venture may have taken other innocent sufferers The difference was the other folks that saw planes shot down or lives lost were not Americans Pete Hoekstra That s one of the haunting things that is out there I believe that there were others The Bowers were not the only family that was affected in this way The difference was the other folks that saw planes shot down or lives lost were not Americans And they didn t land in a river where they were saved by people coming from shore They were shot down over remote areas nobody there to help them There was no review no visit to the crash scenes And it was just one more statistic and it would have been taken at face value that it was a drug smuggling plane and not a lot of investigations into whether they were innocents Radley Balko Pete Hoekstra left Congress in In November of shortly after winning reelection Donald Trump disclosed that Hoekstra would be his ambassador to Canada Hoekstra has not commented on the administration s boat strikes in Latin America Collateral Damage Podcast Collateral Damage Next time on Collateral Damage Joel Berger Alberta Spruill was a Black woman a perfectly innocent person with no criminal record of any kind Derek Sells The police on May at a little past a m broke into Ms Spruill s apartment They knocked the door off its hinges They threw in a stun grenade C Virginia Fields Created the smoke And she was there getting ready or dressed to go to work Derek Sells When the police went in instead of finding certain drug den what they discovered was a neat tidy apartment of a older woman who lived alone Radley Balko Collateral Damage is a production of The Intercept It was released and written by me Radley Balko Additional writing by Andrew Stelzer who also served as producer and editor Laura Flynn is our showrunner Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief The executive producers are me and Sumi Aggarwal We had editing endorsement from Maryam Saleh Truc Nguyen mixed our show Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and David Bralow Fact-checking by Kadal Jesuthasan Art direction by Fei Liu Illustrations by Tara Anand Copy editing by Nara Shin Social and video media by Chelsey B Coombs Special thanks to Peter Beck for research assistance This series was made attainable by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund If you want to send us a message email us at podcasts theintercept com To continue to follow my work and reporting check out my newsletter The Watch at radleybalko substack com Thank you for listening The post Episode Six Airborne Imperialism appeared first on The Intercept