03 August 2001
Transcript: State Dept. Briefing on April 20 Plane Shootdown in Peru
On-the-Record Briefing on the Joint U.S.-Peruvian Investigation Report of the April 20, 2001, Accidental Shootdown of U.S. Missionary Plane Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Washington, D.C. August 2, 2001 MR. BOUCHER: Okay, ladies and gentlemen. If we can begin, please. What I would like to do is first go over the ground rules of what we are going to do right now, and then introduce Mr. Rand Beers, our Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who will be introducing the rest of the investigative team and then running through the basics. What we are going to do is we are going to open with some brief remarks from him about what happened in this situation in Peru, and then he will take questions on the basic report and the conclusions that it reached. And then we will show the video to those of you who wish to stay, and he will remain here and offer commentary and discuss the video as it is going on, but also take questions on the video afterwards. So this afternoon, we are making available to you, I think, an abundance of information on this subject, and Mr. Beers will be here to help walk you through it. So without further ado, let me introduce Rand Beers, the State Department's Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. Randy? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Let me introduce the other members of my team before we begin here, although they are not all here. Al Matano from the State Department -- Al, raise your hand -- Ed Frothingham from the Defense Department, Regis Matlock from the Agency, and Jeff Hathaway from the Coast Guard. We also had a representative from the JIATF-E, who was a member of the team. This report is the product of a joint US-Peruvian accident investigation. It includes an examination of documents, interviews of participants, and other relevant individuals, as well as field visits to Iquitos and Pucallpa. Cooperation between both sides was very good. Private discussions were quite candid. The report is jointly drafted by several members of the team and was reviewed by all members of the team. In some cases, specific report language may suffer from being a committee draft in two languages. We apologize for that, and are here to try to translate if that is an issue. That said, the conclusions are fully shared by both the Peruvians and Americans. The documents, which we are providing, are the report and the video transcript. The report in the main presents a background section, a sequence of events for the 20th of April, and our conclusions. The transcript, which is in English, is essential in order to hear the tape, because there is so much that is actually happening at several points on the tape. It records what is said -- in some cases in two languages, in some cases at the same time. Let me now say, for those of you who may choose to leave and seek to use the transcript and/or the tape, that the tape and the transcript can be misleading. First, it is possible for more than one conversation to be going on at the same time. There are four communication channels, as well as a cockpit intercom, all of which may be recorded simultaneously. That said, the recording is done at the sensor operator station in the rear of the plane, and some of the conversations which we know took place were not recorded or fully recorded because the sensor operator may have overridden them with his own conversations. Second, not every conversation recorded was heard by every, or even any, member of the crew. Everyone wore headsets, everyone could deselect any channel, and thereby not hear them. Some of the individuals who were highly focused on their tasks, particularly at the high stress moments during this flight, could have mentally tuned out some of the conversations, and anyone who was transmitting automatically overrode any of the other channels appearing on his earset at that particular time. Finally, the English and Spanish language differences cause many or most of the non-native speakers to not understand conversations in the other language. And even if you here a "yes" in response to that conversation, that does not mean that the person actually understood what was said to him if it was not said in his native language. So it is important to bear that in mind. The sequence of events is a significant part of our report because it goes beyond the video and benefits from additional information which we derived from interviews of the participants. It is therefore more complete than the transcript and is a melding of the various pieces of information which we brought to bear. Since we will be going through the sequence of events later when we look at the tape, let me conclude my remarks by focusing on the conclusions and what we did not conclude. The report has several conclusions: first, that over the lifetime of the program, references to the full range of intercept procedures became less detailed and explicit in the joint official documents implementing the program; two, that joint training used an abbreviated set of procedures and was very much focused on safety of flight, especially following a collision between the surveillance and interceptor aircraft in 1999; three, the key participants involved in the April 20, 2001, incident narrowly viewed their respective command and control roles; four, that the characteristics of the flight of OB-1408, the floatplane, generated suspicion within the Peru-U.S. counter-narcotics aircraft; five, that the language limitations of the participants played a role in reducing the timely flow of information on April 20th; and six, that the communication system overload and cumbersome procedures played a role in reducing timely and accurate compliance with all appropriate directives. The report did not conclude that any individual was responsible. In fact, the charter of the joint investigative team specifically did not authorize that the team would examine misconduct or fix blame. Rather, the team was charged with establishing the facts and circumstances surrounding the April 20 interdiction of the U.S. missionary floatplane and the death of the two U.S. citizens. Moreover, we will not be addressing today questions about recommendations regarding the future of the program. Finally, let me specifically say, because there have been press reports suggesting otherwise, the team did not conclude that the floatplane pilot, Mr. Donaldson, was at fault. The intercept procedures followed by both governments should be robust enough to prevent such an accident. Mr. Donaldson, Mrs. Donaldson, and Mr. Bowers were kind enough to meet with us in mid-May to answer our questions at a time when the April 20 events were still immediate in their minds, and when Mr. Donaldson was still very much in the early stages of recovery from very painful injuries. We deeply appreciate their participation. And lastly, and I know that I speak for all of the team, we regret the tragedy that occurred on April 20th, and especially the deaths of Mrs. Bowers and her daughter, Charity. We hope our report will help in an understanding of the events of that day, and we hope that it will contribute to preventing any similar recurrence. I would be happy to take questions now. Thank you. QUESTION: My question is why you are not ready to discuss the future of the program. What is the situation if you already have your conclusions? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The decision within our government was that this accident report would then be followed by a report which would examine the future of the program. That report was done under the leadership of former Ambassador Morris Busby. That report is done and finally, just very recently, delivered to the National Security Council. The decision process to take that report and turn it into a decision is now at the very most initial stage. I am not in a position to tell you how long that process is going to take, but the concept here is to separate the accident report and the decision on whether to go forward with the program. QUESTION: In the identification phase of the incident, the apparent decision by the Citation not to get the registration number of the plane, was that part of these abbreviated procedures that had developed or was that in fact even beyond those procedures as they were understood at the time by the two? In other words, were they supposed to check it? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: To the best of our knowledge, there was no formal agreement of who or when the identification of the plane was to have been made. Having said that, I think that more often than not it was likely that the Citation would identify the tail number. But it was not always, and in some cases, based upon the incident itself, there was not even a tail number identification because the plane immediately began to flee and take evasive action. QUESTION: (Inaudible.) ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: That's not in this report because it is background information that is not relevant to this particular investigation. QUESTION: Can you talk about your first conclusion of the report that over the years some of the procedures became less and less detailed, and how you think that might have contributed to this accident? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The decision by the two governments in 1994 to participate in this program jointly had a series of procedures which were agreed between the two governments, and they were rather detailed. By the time of this particular incident, there were procedures which were in place which were less detailed. Specifically, and you will see that in the video, the procedures -- it's also on page four and five in the background section of the report which we've given you -- at the time of the incident, the procedures that were basic to conducting these kinds of operations referred to three phases. The three phases were to attempt to make radio contact, to fire warning shots, and then to use deadly force. The procedures that were laid out in 1994 included an attempt to make visual contact between the time of the radio contact and the firing of the warning shots. Those procedures, while generally alluded to under a phrase which said general ICAO procedures, were not explicitly enunciated and were not practiced and did not take place during this incident. QUESTION: Is it unusual for a plane to stay on VH frequency and not go to the other one? Is that an issue? And secondly, if I read this correctly -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: You're referring to who now? QUESTION: To the suspect aircraft here. It was on VH, as I read it. And the second question is, as I understand this, they believed that he was taking evasive action because he was slowing down? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The first question: Mr. Donaldson's plane had two radios on it, but he could only use one radio at a time. His procedure was to be on the HF channel, which is longer-range and which allowed him to communicate with his wife if anything happened when he was out of range of the tower. It was his practice to stay on that channel until he got within range of the Iquitos tower, and to then make contact with the tower roughly 50 miles out. That was the radio range that he reported to us, and at that particular point in time, come in on the Iquitos tower frequency. That is his explanation of why he was on those channels, and it is understandable if you think in terms of the context of flying in very remote areas in which you are between places that you could communicate. The second question again, please? QUESTION: As I read this -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Ah, slowing down, right. QUESTION: Slowing down. That they said it was evasive action. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The perceptions of the people in the plane and the reality of the event were not necessarily the same. But I think it is fair to say that the folks in the plane looked at the occasional change of course by Mr. Donaldson, who was trying to follow the river in order to be within glide distance of the river since he was flying a floatplane. The fact that he had been in a border area as the flight initiated, which was one of the reasons that the Citation was in that area to begin with because of intelligence information that there had been suspicious air tracks in that area in the two weeks prior to this particular event; the fact that he flew through some foul weather; and the slowing down created the sense of suspicion. But on the issue of the slowing down, let me specifically say we are not in a position to determine whether he slowed down or not. He indicates he did not. There is a very good reason to believe that the sense of slowing down may more have been the product of the differential speed between the A-37, which stalled at a speed that was higher than the speed that the floatplane was flying at. So he had to conduct maneuvers which may have created the illusion that Mr. Donaldson was slowing down, when in fact he wasn't slowing down. But as to the general proposition of what Mr. Donaldson was doing, he was following the course of the river, which you can see here is not a very straight line, and he was maintaining a steady altitude. And after he passed this point where this boundary of Colombia comes south, he was going deeper and deeper into Peru during the entire course of his flight. QUESTION: I'm a little confused reading through your narrative. Early on, you talk about how the -- just on a couple points -- the pilot says -- or someone says it's OB-1408. But then later you get the sense from reading this that they didn't really know the registration number. I'm just a little confused. Is that the same as the registration number or the tail -- is the tail number different from a registration number? What is the -- because later you -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: You are illustrating the point that I was trying to make. Just because you read in the text or hear on the tape that a piece of information was provided does not mean that the people on the plane, or all of the people on the plane or the person who needed to know that information on the plane, necessarily understood it. The A-37 pilot identified the plane, OB-1408, at an earlier point in the time frame, but it is clear from the transcript and the interviews that the host nation rider did not perceive the tail number until later and did not communicate the tail number to the ground station in Pucallpa until later still, and it is not clear that anyone in Pucallpa ever registered that he had in fact transmitted the tail number of the plane to the ground in Pucallpa. QUESTION: So does no one on the ground ever check the tail number? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: That is correct. QUESTION: So they got it, but they didn't check it, and they never looked in the -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Well, they say they never actually realized they were in possession of that information. QUESTION: I have a question on something you just said, which is interesting because I remember the CIA was very adamant when this happened that there were four phases to the process, and what you are saying now is that they had abbreviated that to three phases. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I'm not in a position to comment about what the CIA said at an earlier point in time about this process. QUESTION: Okay. Well, anyway, you are now saying that there were only three phases. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I am saying that the procedures -- radio, warning shots, and use of deadly force -- were written down as three phases. You can call the identification of the tail number an earlier phase if you want to, or whatever. QUESTION: But clearly there was some -- as you said, an abbreviation of what was the original practice. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There was no specific reference to visual communication. QUESTION: Was there ever a policy decision in Washington, by the State Department or any other agency, to begin this -- to abbreviate the process? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No. QUESTION: So this was just done on the ground by the people locally? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: To the best of my knowledge. QUESTION: Would you please describe in greater detail what happened in 1999, the U.S. tracking aircraft? Was it a Customs plane, was it a CIA plane? As a result of that incident, was there a new agreement signed with Peru? That incident is highlighted here as a pivotal incident. Explain why, please. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Was this -- and it was a Citation also? There was a midair collision between a Citation -- was it an A-37 or a Tucano? -- and an A-37 aircraft in February of 1999. As a result of that there was a serious concern about safety of flight. There was thereby a new set of procedures which were agreed to, and in those procedures there is reference to phases one, two and three only. QUESTION: Can I ask just one more question? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Please. QUESTION: I thought that general international aviation principles said that when you are trying to force a plane down, you always have to waggle your wings. Why would that have been eliminated if it was so common? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I am not in a position to tell you why that was done, but I can tell you that that same set of procedures, as I mentioned earlier, did have a general reference to following ICAO procedures as a general matter. But it did not specifically refer to visual communication. QUESTION: Am I understanding correctly that language was a problem in this incident, that some people didn't understand English or Spanish, or whatever the case was? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: You sure did. QUESTION: Okay, I have a follow-up. Why, in such a crucial program, which resulted in death, such a basic -- I think it's a basic requirement to understand the language -- why did you have people that didn't understand the language? And secondly, in the future, if you continue these flights, would it be a good idea to have people understand the language? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The answer to your second part is of course, with the benefit of hindsight. The answer to the first part of your question was there was training for the Peruvian participants in a series of technical terms and phrases in order that they could communicate at a basic level about the procedures. But I think it is also fair to say that the stress levels that occurred in the cockpit on the 20th of April created impediments to any level of understanding, although you will hear the host nation rider talk in English occasionally, and you will hear some very broken Spanish by one or another of the participants on the US side. But as I also said earlier, you will in some cases hear a response that suggests understanding, but subsequent action clearly indicates that that particular message was not at all understood, and it was simply a polite yes or okay. QUESTION: When you get into that aircraft, do they already know -- both sides already know that they don't understand the language? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No, they practice together and they train together, and they believed before they took off that they could communicate with one another. This was not sort of folks coming together only for the first time in this particular instance. They had been together -- what, for two or three weeks. Before they had trained together, they had flown together. This was not even the first operational flight that they had been on together. So there was an expectation or understanding that, yes, they could communicate. And it didn't show up, at least not in so pronounced a manner, until this particular incident. QUESTION: Since this incident, is the program -- does it remain suspended? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Yes. QUESTION: And have you noticed any effect upon drug exports from the region or is there increased drug activity or is there a negative effect of the suspension? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The information that exists in the broadest sense have not indicated an upsurge in air flights that are suspect. Our sensors, for example, over the horizon radar are still functioning. Having said that, we don't have all of our collection capabilities and we may be missing something, but the information we have does not suggest that there is an increase, although you will hear anecdotal information which says that things are happening. But we can't -- I can't stand up here today and tell you that, as a general proposition, we are seeing that. QUESTION: Now, if I could just follow up, when we say "suspended" it means the shooting down of the suspect, but do you still have airborne radars in that area? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Jeff? MR. HATHAWAY: No, no airborne radars. QUESTION: That's the Citation? That was the airborne radar? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: That would be an airborne radar, yes. QUESTION: If I am reading the report correctly, at 10:46:18, Citation Pilot 1 said that it probably was an illegal flight. That's less than two minutes, if I understand it correctly, before the actual shooting occurred. And this may be clearer in the transcript, but I don't really see here that there was any explicit statement by anyone aboard the Citation saying, "Abort." The only reference is at one point they say, "Wait a minute," which seems to get lost in the confusion. Were there any explicit instructions from the Citation -- from the Americans on the Citation to the host country rider to abort? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: At the very end, after it's too late, the pilot tells the host nation rider to stop the intercept, and very dramatically says, "No mas." The procedure is that the chain of command is entirely Peruvian. The US participants were there to assist, to provide information, to support, to act as a platform in order to have the host nation rider aloft. They were not supposed to intervene in the actual conduct of the phases one, two and three. Having said that, I think there was an attempt that is at least worth noting where the pilot calls his ground commander in Pucallpa and says something to the effect, "I know it's not our call, but I have reservations. Can you do something about this?" That ends up, to the best of our information, never having been acted upon in the sense that there is obviously not an action by the Peruvian counterpart to stop the engagement. QUESTION: Can you tell us what it means when the pilot repeats a couple of times this guy doesn't fit the profile and he's trying to slow the process down, the decision-making process? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: What he is talking about is that the floatplane is flying at 4,000 feet. Normally you would expect a trafficker to fly lower. His actual flight plan is deeper and deeper in Peru, although there are these occasional deviations, and even the pilot refers to he's turning north, maybe that means something. What he is really talking about is there is no evasive action on this guy's part. He doesn't appear to respond to any of the efforts to communicate with him. QUESTION: But that's saying two different things. The guy doesn't look like our typical drug dealer, but he's also not responding to us. So they just didn't make sense of it? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No, but you see that the standard engagement scenario is when the call sign went out. They sought to flee because they were aware that they had been intercepted. QUESTION: Do the drug dealers ever respond? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Do the drug dealers -- QUESTION: Do the drug dealers ever respond to contact on radio waves? I mean, if these are guilty -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Have we ever had record of an engagement where they actually answered, as opposed to fled? We just don't know the answer to that. QUESTION: And also, how often are those planes Twin Otters? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I couldn't tell you how frequently they -- QUESTION: I mean, when you see a Twin Otter flying, does that add to not fitting the profile? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Remember, this is a single-engine floatplane. It was misidentified as a Twin Otter. What is interesting about that, though, is that the plane that they followed the day before was a Twin Otter floatplane. It turned out not to be a trafficker and they broke off the engagement. QUESTION: But the type of plane it is didn't give them any indication that this wasn't a drug dealer? You can't tell that from -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: They use a variety of different planes, including floatplanes. QUESTION: There are in this area a number of American companies, certainly missionary groups -- there may be other kinds of groups -- that may use small aircraft. Is there any attempt by our government to brief these people on safety rules and regulations when flying around, given that this operation is in the area? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: To the best of our information up to this time, no. The requirements for flying in Peru are dictated by the Government of Peru. There are licensing requirements. There are pilot certification requirements. There are a series of other kinds of information which are supposed to be provided. But having said that, we and the Peruvian members of our team have recognized that the actual distribution of that information has been faulty and that that is something that has to be fixed in terms of making that kind of information available to everybody. Secondly, we wouldn't necessarily know that a U.S. citizen in Peru was actually -- as Mr. Donaldson was -- was necessarily engaged as a pilot, as opposed to he was there as a missionary. So I don't mean that as an apology; I simply mean that as normally citizens who enter foreign countries do come in to the embassy, do let the embassy know where they are and what they're doing there. But what they say in any given instance is dependent upon what they volunteer. QUESTION: In this case, it says that the A-37 was not able to hit the non-vital portions of the plane. Is that the protocol under phase three to go for non-vital, or is it a shoot-to-kill? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: It is supposed to be disabling fire. QUESTION: Disabling? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Disabling fire. But let me be clear. This is not a precision munition. This is a machine gun, if you will, and it is more of an area fire weapon than it is a point weapon, so an attempt at disabling fire and the actual place that the rounds might impact are different depending upon what is happening. QUESTION: In the narrative it doesn't -- it's not spelled out at any stage the procedure leading up to the decision to go to phase three, to the shootdown. Why is that? And are you satisfied from your investigation that the procedures were carried out correctly at that stage? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The procedures are phase one, radio; phase two, warning shot; and, phase three, the use of deadly force. QUESTION: But there is no -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There is no checklist in between phase two and phase three for all of -- any series of things to have occurred in order for that to happen. And so as you look at the narrative, while we can look back in hindsight and ask ourselves a lot of questions, the procedures themselves simply say, after phase two, then obtain authorization for phase three, and, if received, proceed to phase three. QUESTION: But nowhere in the narrative does it say who gave the order to proceed to phase three. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Oh, I'm sorry. If you look at the background section, the order -- page five I think it is, four or five -- the order to use deadly force comes from the Commander of the Sixth Region of the Air Force. This is a general officer. He was contacted. He happened to be in Lima at the time. He knew that the incident was ongoing before he was asked to authorize phase three, and he did so. That doesn't show up in the transcript because the transcript is only of the radio tape. QUESTION: The six points of conclusion, are they in any particular order of significance to what contributed to the shootdown? And if not, could you put them in order of what you think contributed most to the events? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: They are in order. QUESTION: I would like to know about the language thing. What language were they supposed to communicate in, and also, if the U.S. officers participating in these kinds of surveillance programs are required to be fluent in Spanish or not? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The officers participating in this program are not required to be fluent in Spanish. The effort was to make the Peruvian participants sufficiently fluent in English in order that they would be able to communicate. But the Peruvian side of the mission was conducted in Spanish, and everyone knew that that would be the case. But since the U.S. participants were not supposed to be participating in that chain of command, the decision was they didn't have to be aware of what was being said in Spanish. QUESTION: To follow that, given what you know now about the problems of communication between the two sides, are you surprised there aren't more cases like this? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There have been a number of cases in a number of different individuals, and the language qualifications of each of them have been different. To repeat this particular situation at any other time, I am not in a position really to speculate on that. I mean, I understand the point of your question, but you're asking me to engage in a hypothetical discussion that I don't have enough facts on to know what the frequency of the level of qualification of the Peruvian participant was as it was in this situation, or the inadvertent knowledge of Spanish was as limited as it appears to have been in this, although there were some at least basic abilities to understand some phrases in Spanish. QUESTION: At what point did we discover that these folks aren't drug traffickers, and what happened next? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I can't tell you precisely when we discovered that they weren't drug traffickers. By later in the afternoon, we in Washington had been informed by the Embassy that it was a mistake. But I don't know when actually during the day or who during the day actually made that discovery. There was some question in Mr. Bower's mind as to whether or not he was still considered a suspect when he was removed from the crash site to Iquitos. So I just don't have that information. QUESTION: I have a question and a clarification. The question is: Were there any injuries or deaths in the 1999 incident? And the clarification is again on this registration question. According to your report and the transcript, a specific decision was made by the American pilot not to approach the plane and obtain the registration number, for reasons that you spell out in the report. And in the transcript, there's a conversation between the two pilots where one says, "Aren't you going to approach to see it?" And he says, "No, I don't want him to see me." My question is on that -- you have said that the registration thing was not part of the procedures, as they existed at the time of the incident. Was it part of the original procedures in '94, and had it been in play before '99? And second, I still don't understand your background comment about how -- you said the pilot immediately tried -- immediately began to flee and take evasive action as a reason for why -- one of the reasons why they didn't get the registration number, and I don't quite understand that. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Let me try to answer those questions. If you look at the map here, and you notice that the plane originally took off from this location in the vicinity of Leticia, in a place called Islandia, which is on the river itself. During the flight path by Caballococha, which is one of the places that you will hear mentioned on the tape, and until you get roughly to this point, they are in an area in which the borders are very close. So in the mind of the crew, and given tactics that traffickers have used in this particular location, and even a little away from that, the ability to flee into an adjacent country and therefore be out of the jurisdiction was a concern, a concern that is more pronounced because there wasn't an interceptor aircraft there as well. The Citation, as such, is not able to do anything except look. And so what motivated them was, since all they could do was look and follow, they felt that their role was better played out by remaining in an unseen position in order to follow the plane until the interceptors arrived. As the process moves deeper and deeper into Peru, and as the interceptor joins up with the surveillance plane, that particular motivation for remaining covert no longer pertains. But at that point in time, the interceptor is in fact able also to obtain the tail number, and in fact ends up doing so. QUESTION: The number was written on the top of the fixed wing, which they easily could see. It appears even in the tape. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: They could not see the tail number -- that's all I can tell you -- from their position at a mile and a half behind the aircraft. QUESTION: And on the question of the registration -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Oh, I'm sorry. What was the -- QUESTION: Whether that had -- whether -- because it appears that he made a specific decision not to seek the registration, the implication is that that would have been part of their normal procedure, except in this case they decided not to. You have said it was not part of the normal procedure. But had it ever been? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I'm sorry. Right. What I meant to say was it was not specifically laid out who was responsible for obtaining the tail number and when in the process. The original procedures that were looked at in '94 talked about identifying the registration of the aircraft, and the participants in all of these operations recognized that that was a piece of information that had value in the whole process. Having said that, the tail number does not necessarily end up being an identification of the airplane, and there is a problem that occurs in this flight that never becomes a significant issue. But despite the fact that the pilots of the Citation correctly identify the aircraft as a single engine, the host nation rider, looking through the scope -- which you all will have an opportunity to see what it looks like -- misidentified the type and said it was a twin engine. If the aircraft tail number had been provided to the ground in a timely fashion, if the ground had investigated the tail number versus the registration, while they would have seen it was registered to a missionary organization, they would also have seen that it was single engine. Given the fact that traffickers have on occasion forged tail numbers, there would have been possibly a greater presumption of suspicion as a result of that. Now, they could also have gone back and checked to make sure that they hadn't misidentified it, but my point is that one of the tactics of the traffickers was to paint bogus tail numbers on the plane. QUESTION: (Inaudible.) ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Excuse me? QUESTION: And if anyone was killed or injured in the '99 incident? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Not to my knowledge. More of a touch than a collision. QUESTION: So the answer is no? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Regis? In '99, no, it was more of a touch than a crash. QUESTION: I have two questions. Number one, when you said that you didn't see an increase in drug -- I don't know if it was trafficking, or -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Air traffic. QUESTION: You haven't seen an increase in movement along that area? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No. QUESTION: Okay. Another question -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Remember that the traffickers have had roughly five years of adaptation to the major impact of this aerial interdiction program. And while they are still flying in that north-south corridor, they are also sending a lot more drugs over land through Bolivia into Brazil and to the coast for maritime shipment. So the traffickers in Peru have made adaptations to the disruption of that air corridor. QUESTION: But aren't you concerned the longer that this goes on, this suspension, that they might kind of re-adapt? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Sure. QUESTION: Actually, that's not my -- I have one other question. In this transcript, there are about six separate instances, maybe seven if you count right before the shooting down, that the United States Citation plane voiced concerns that this was not a suspect craft, that they were pretty sure, and whether it's a combination of the language or communications overload, that basically those US concerns went -- I don't want to say ignored but -- I don't know what the word would be. But are you uncomfortable that as part of a U.S.-Peruvian interception program that the United States doesn't have a say in whether such a plane should be declared a plane worthy of shooting down? I mean, you're providing intelligence information or reconnaissance information on whether you deem this to be suspect, and then at the end of the day your opinion didn't mean much as to whether the plane was shot down or not. Does that make you uncomfortable? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Well, first, let me say that it is not clear how much of those concerns -- which are very manifest in the tape -- were actually understood or fully understood on the part of the host nation rider, who was, as far as the operation concerned, the on-scene commander. But, sure, we are concerned that the concerns that those individuals -- even though they were not supposed to be in the chain of command -- went either not understood or unheeded. There is a lot of information that comes out on this tape, and one of the things that I think all of us took away from it was that we would have wished, in any possible way, that any one of those warnings or suggestions had been understood and heeded and prevented this horrible tragedy. QUESTION: Do you think that the United States should have a say in the chain of command as to -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: That goes to the heart of recommendations pertaining whether or not to reinitiate the program. We didn't do that, and I am not in a position to talk about that. MR. BOUCHER: Can we do one or two more in this phase, and then move on to the video? QUESTION: Can I just ask you, just to get back to this abbreviation of the phases, it strikes me that the U.S. crew clearly knew that we had gone down to three phases and that the U.S. base in Peru knew that there had been this abbreviation, and that now phase three meant you shoot the plane down rather than some intermediate step. Is it possible that these base commanders, U.S. officials, never told Washington that this change had taken place, or did someone in Washington know that this had happened? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: We are not aware that anyone in Washington knew that these were the phases and that they were abbreviated. QUESTION: So does someone need -- is there any disciplinary action for that -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: This particular investigation didn't look to the issue of fixing blame or disciplinary action. QUESTION: The HCR at one point, quite late in the process, again repeated the registration number once they knew the registration of the aircraft, but he immediately -- and this seems to be within the same sentence -- requested authorization to perform phase three. Isn't that, I mean, a complete jump? If you've got the registration number, why couldn't you wait a couple of minutes for them to check it out on the ground? That seems fairly significant to me that he immediately requested phase three? And also, what did -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: It is puzzling. We have the same puzzlement. QUESTION: Why did Mr. Donaldson say he didn't have his radio on? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Excuse me? QUESTION: Why didn't he hear any of these -- why was he not on the right frequency that he could have heard any of these requests for information? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: As I said earlier, from his perspective, he believed that he could not effectively communicate with Iquitos until he was within 50 miles of Iquitos. The incident occurs in this area, and he is about between 80 and 90 miles from Iquitos at this point. He comes up and talks to Iquitos because he wants to make an attempt to find out what's going on. The first communication when he finally raises Iquitos, he says, "There are military here, and I don't know what they're doing." So he is obviously registering concern at that point in time, and he is changing from his high frequency radio channel to the Iquitos tower frequency because of that. But in a normal procedure, by his standard practice, he wouldn't have come up that soon. And the tape from Iquitos tower doesn't even register the first two calls that he makes to Iquitos. So he was, at that point of transmission with his radio, really at the range limit of being able to communicate with Iquitos. The plane heard it because the plane was right there and had that radio frequency as one of the frequencies that it was tuned to during the entire phase of this particular operation. MR. BOUCHER: Can we do the video now? And then there will be a chance for more questions after that. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There will be plenty of time for more questions, you all, if you want to stay. Forty-five minutes. (The video is shown.) ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: After that, they remain in the area. You can see that on the transcripts. There was no indication from the crew or from Mr. Donaldson or Bowers that there was any shooting at the plane on the ground, as was mistakenly reported in the press. I think you can see from the tape the sense of pressure and tension and stress -- the complexity of the communications, the uncertainty on the part of the Citation crew, the rapidity with which events culminate at the very end -- that might not come out from simply reading the transcript. But I am open to additional questions at this point. QUESTION: Before this incident happened, have you ever seen or watched any of these situations? I mean, all of these procedures, how they work -- have you ever seen it before? And which was your first reaction to seeing this? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I have not personally watched one of these tapes from any prior incident, either before or since. My own personal reaction from watching it is the sense of tragedy and the sort of wish at points during the process when I can hear pieces of information that somehow they might have been acted upon. But - QUESTION: But a sense of tragedy waiting to happen? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Well, because I know what the end of the story is when I look at the tape. QUESTION: But not just looking at the (inaudible) -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Excuse me? QUESTION: Looking, just watching and looking, listening to the communications, the way they communicate, it looks very fragile. I mean, it looks like a tragedy waiting to happen, actually. It doesn't look like a tragedy just because a mistake, but a lot of mistakes. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There were a series of pieces of information that were un-acted upon. Yes, you're right. Are they mistakes? I'm not sure I would want to characterize them. QUESTION: Despite the fact that the report doesn't blame either side, and I understand the necessity of not doing so, it is clear that the Americans were the only ones urging any kind of caution, and the Peruvians were overruling them. Isn't that true? Or can you point out places in this transcript where the Peruvians were also saying, slow down, they don't look so dangerous, maybe he's not a bandito. You don't see the Peruvians saying that. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No, I can't say that. But I would say that that is why we drew the conclusion that nobody stepped back far enough, except for the pilot at the very end, to actually stop the process. He tried, or he thought about it, but that's all that happened. And I think we have to give the pilot, or the pilots, a great deal of credit in terms of having some perspective on the situation. But we still had an event that occurred. QUESTION: But the way this is set up, he has no power to stop it, right? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: That's correct, although you notice at the end his action did cause (inaudible). But it was too late at that particular point in time. QUESTION: Right, but isn't that a fault of the program, then? Are you considering giving the American side more authority? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I'm sorry, I can't answer that question. That goes to the recommendation period that is under way right now. You can draw that conclusion. I'm not commenting on that. MR. FROTHINGHAM: Once again, consider that this is the sovereign nation of Peru, and if you analyze it a little, step back and put it the other way, if it were in the United States, we wouldn't be taking directions from somebody else with the law enforcement activity within the United States. So you have to kind of remember that relationship. QUESTION: Has anyone on either side been disciplined, first? And secondly, have the families seen this video yet? The Donaldsons or Mr. Bower? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I cannot tell you that anybody has yet been disciplined. The families have seen the transcript. The families saw the transcript prior -- or excuse me, they saw the tape with the transcript prior to our meeting with them in mid-May. QUESTION: No one yet has been disciplined? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: To my knowledge. QUESTION: Is there something in the works? The way you phrase that, is there something likely to happen, or expected? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There are proceedings that are looking at the situation in Peru, but I am not able to tell you where they are in terms of process. QUESTION: (Inaudible) on the American side? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Not that I am aware of at this point in time. QUESTION: And the previous 25 planes that were shot down, about 28 -- 38? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Thirty-eight. QUESTION: Did you -- were you able to recover most of these -- go to the sites and determine whether or not these were in fact drug-carrying planes? And were any of them in fact mistakenly shot down that were not carrying drugs? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: We have no information that any were mistakenly shot down. We were -- or I should say the Peruvians were not able to recover all of them for sure. Is it the majority that they got to the site? Of the Peruvians, yes. That they actually got to the site and inspected what had transpired. The destruction of the plane may have caused the evidence to be destroyed. QUESTION: Is there going to be any compensation for the family victims? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I'm not really in a position to talk about that. We did not have that as one of the elements of our charter. QUESTION: Do you think in hindsight that it would have made any difference had the civilian contractors been U.S. military personnel, in terms of their relationship with the Peruvian military? There has been some debate about the use of contractors. In hindsight, what do you see? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: We saw no evidence that the fact that they were civilian contractors would necessarily have made a difference in this particular incident. There's nothing to suggest that that particular characteristic was a responsible characteristic. QUESTION: Two questions. One is I am interested in your thoughts on the significance that no flight plan had been filed. Is it common procedure to file a flight plan in that region on a flight to Iquitos? And I'm also wondering if you can clarify a little bit point three of the conclusions of participants involved in the incident narrowly viewed their respective command and control roles, if you could elaborate on what exactly that refers to? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I indicated to you earlier what Mr. Donaldson viewed as his common practice in terms of calling Iquitos from a location at about 50 miles away in order to alert them that he was actually coming in. There really isn't anything that I could call an absolutely common practice. This is the jungle. Different individuals, different pilots do things differently. QUESTION: It seems on the video that the Peruvians put a lot of weight on the fact that no flight plan was filed. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: They did. That is absolutely correct. That is absolutely correct. Without the tail number, without the availability of the tail number, the other piece of information that they were looking for in the reference during the incident to sorting was whether or not there was any kind of a flight plan filed in that particular area. And they were getting back an answer that there was not. It is interesting to note and it is in the sequence that when the original call for the sort went out, the Santa Clara base in Iquitos, having seen the fact that OB-1408 went from Iquitos to Leticia on the 19th, specifically asked the tower in Iquitos where was OB-1408, having some reason to believe that this plane might be coming back on this day -- most of the time because those kinds of flights would be out and back in a day -- whether they had any knowledge of the fact that he had tried to get that information to the Iquitos tower. They asked. At that point in time, the Iquitos tower did not have a record of a flight plan coming out of the Leticia-Islandia area. So the tower replied to the Santa Clara military base that they did not have a flight plan and he was still in Islandia. That information died there in the sense that they simply then reported to Pucallpa that there were no flight plans and they didn't ever reference the tail number of the plane. And as a result of that, if there had been a chance for that tail number to have acquired any significance, it didn't. QUESTION: Would it be expected that a pilot leaving from Islandia would contact the tower in Leticia, even though it's a different country? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: That's a possibility, but as again, you are asking me what the common practice is, and I can't tell you what the common practice is because there isn't one. QUESTION: The other part of the question, as far as the key participants narrowly viewing their respective command, could you elaborate on that? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Yes. What that means is that the reference here that we are trying to put out is, as I indicated earlier, when the flight path gets over into this area, if you measure by distance how far it is to the border, and you recognize that you have an interceptor, which is a speed which is well faster than the floatplane, and you see the altitude, then why would you use deadly force at that point, as opposed to simply trailing the plane and see where it goes. And if it makes an effort to escape, then the interceptor is available and the time factor is long enough that the interceptor is going to be able to perform the phase three part of the mission if it looks like there is a cause to go to phase three that would be created by an escape or a significant evasion attempt, which there was not in this particular situation. That's the primary conclusion that we are drawing there. QUESTION: Is there any legal requirement to file a flight plan in Peru? And if not, why would the Peruvian Air Force place so much importance on the non-existence of a flight plan in this case? I mean, there may be any -- if there's no legal requirement, there may be any number of planes flying around without flight plans and it would hardly be -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Yes, we are getting into a semantic issue here. File a flight plan, activate a flight plan. QUESTION: Whatever you do, I don't know what the procedure is. But is there a legal requirement? Is it a legal -- ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I can't tell you whether it's a formal legal requirement, or a procedural requirement but, yes, there is, on the part of the Peruvian authorities, an expectation that a flight plan will be filed and that a flight plan will be activated. What happens in practice in this area doesn't always comport with what the procedural requirements are, which is why when you all ask me, well, what's common practice, if not procedurally required, I'm not able to tell you. We were unable to obtain a sufficient sample of information to tell you anything with assurance that would look like a common practice. QUESTION: Had this particular crew or the host country rider been involved in any of the previous shootdowns? ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No, not to my knowledge. QUESTION: Maybe I perhaps missed it, but there doesn't appear to be any communication back to the host country rider in terms of the results of the sort. In other words, did they tell him that they couldn't find a flight plan? He appears to just be proceeding. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No, it's in there. I'll help you find it afterwards, if you want. But it is in there several times. QUESTION: (Inaudible) second pilot here also trying to communicate with Iquitos? Because that is obviously something a drug trafficker would not be doing. ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Our understanding is, no, the frequency that they were on, except in the instance when they were specifically told to go to another channel and make an effort to communicate, was that the channel that they were on was the channel between the A-37 and the host nation rider on the Citation. Other questions? (No response.) ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Thank you all very much. (end transcript). (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)