BY TIM JOHNSON

 WASHINGTON -- A Senate oversight panel Wednesday cited serious flaws in a suspended U.S.-backed program to shoot down suspected drug flights in the Amazon and
 questioned whether the program should even be renewed.

 ``This program needs a dramatic overhaul before we should consider restarting it,'' said Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the
 Senate intelligence panel.

 U.S. officials halted the program April 20 after a CIA radar plane helped Peruvian jet fighters pepper a U.S. missionary plane with machine-gun
 fire, killing Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter Charity.

 The sweeping recommendations in the report are nonbinding. But they pose a major hurdle if the Bush administration wants to obtain
 congressional funding to revive the program.

 The panel recommended that authorities remove the CIA as manager of the anti-drug interdiction effort, automate Peru's system of flight plans,
 broaden training and make it more systematic, and establish annual certification by the White House that rigorous safety procedures are in
 place. It also said Peru does not have the right aircraft to interdict suspicious planes safely and effectively.

 ``Most of these things, at best, will take a very long time'' to implement, said a legislative aide who helped supervise the review, speaking on
 condition of anonymity.

 The report said the air interdiction policy, which began in 1994, initially had a dramatic impact on coca cultivation in Peru. But the report said it
 is less clear whether the program did much to reduce overall cocaine production in the Andes. It suggested that ``a different mix of
 counter-drug policies'' might be equally effective.

 The report exonerated the U.S. missionary pilot of the floatplane, Kevin Donaldson, of any action that ``merited his aircraft being shot down.''
 The ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, blasted ``lax management'' at the Pentagon and CIA for
 the April 20 shooting.

 ``Established safety procedures were permitted to erode unchecked for a period of years,'' Shelby said. ``CIA officials, from the program
 manager to the director, failed to properly manage this program with tragic results.''

 A previous report, conducted by Peruvian and U.S. officials and released by the State Department Aug. 2, was softer in tone and said both
 nations shared blame for the accident. That report offered no concrete steps to revive the program.

 A separate, still-secret review, completed by former U.S. Ambassador Morris Busby for the National Security Council, assesses what
 Washington needs to do to renew the sharing of radar information with Peru and Colombia.

 Without U.S. radar data, neither Andean nation can hunt and shoot down suspicious aircraft.

 In the early 1990s, as Peruvian officials pondered using lethal force against suspicious aircraft, conditions were far different, the report noted.

 Then, Peru grew 61 percent of the world's coca, the raw material for cocaine. And smuggling by air was the preferred method to move cocaine
 paste to laboratories in Colombia.

 Backed by five CIA-operated Cessna tracker aircraft, the Peruvian air force shot down or forced down 30 suspicious planes between 1995 and
 2000, the report said. Soon the coca market in Peru was disrupted and foundering.

 As coca acreage fell in Peru, the report noted, it soared in neighboring Colombia.

 In the early years, skies were filled with drug planes, but smugglers began using boats rather than aircraft. Among other changes, it added, the
 Peruvian guerrilla groups who managed much of the drug trade had fallen apart, and supervisors of the program failed to assess the need to
 alter policy.

 By the late 1990s, the report said, officials of both nations developed a ``mindset that assumed a target plane was a trafficker unless proved
 otherwise.''

 The report accused an unidentified Peruvian official aboard a CIA radar plane April 20 and his superior officers of a ``precipitous rush to
 authorize use of legal force.''

 Neither of the aircraft used by the Peruvian air force in shootdowns -- the A-37 jet and the slower T-27 Tucano turboprop -- can fly at the same
 speed of most suspected narcotrafficker planes, the report said, making it difficult for them to signal suspicious flights to land.

 In the fatal case in April, no aircraft flew alongside the missionary plane to signal it to land.

 The tracer shots fired to warn the missionary aircraft were at an angle and speed that made them invisible to the pilot, the report said.

 Contributing to the accident, the Senate report said, were an ``inadequate'' air traffic control system in Peru, ``cumbersome'' communications
 systems, poor language skills of both Spanish-speaking Peruvians and English-speaking Americans, and inadequate oversight ``to adequately
 monitor the operation of this risky program.''

                                    © 2001