Accident Suspected in Death of Crew Employed by Pentagon to Find Captured U.S. Contractors

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 26 -- Three Americans working for the Pentagon died in a plane crash Tuesday evening in southern Colombia as they searched for
three other Americans captured by rebels after a similar accident last month, U.S. and Colombian officials said today.

A Cessna 208 carrying the workers crashed near the Colombian army post of Larandia, 240 miles south of here, around 7:30 p.m. Officials said the plane, which
was the same model as the one that crashed Feb. 13 with a five-member crew, did not transmit a distress signal before ground controllers lost radio contact. The
plane apparently hit a sheer mountain face behind the town of El Paujil, 15 miles northwest of the army post.

Colombian troops who have been scouring the mountainous jungles of Caqueta province for the three missing Americans arrived quickly at the crash site, officials
said. They found the plane's charred wreckage and what appeared to be the remains of the three-member crew. Officials did not identify the men, pending
notification of next of kin.

"We believe the plane exploded on impact," said a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.

Although investigators had just begun their work, officials here said early indications pointed to an accident. U.S. officials said that the site's rugged topography
prevented a helicopter from landing there Tuesday night and that bad weather delayed investigations today.

The region is a longtime stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, an 18,000-member insurgency. But U.S. officials said there are no
signs so far that the guerrillas had a hand in bringing down the plane.

The FARC captured three U.S. civilians working for the Pentagon on Feb. 13 after their plane made an emergency landing on a hillside clearing minutes after
reporting engine trouble. One American and a Colombian army sergeant were found shot to death at the site, located to the southwest of Tuesday's crash. The
FARC has declared the survivors prisoners of war. The missing men were beginning a reconnaissance mission over southern Colombia's coca fields, the target of a
large, mostly military U.S. aid package and the source of the FARC's war financing.

The three-member crew that crashed Tuesday -- sometime after taking off from Larandia -- were part of the six-week search effort that has involved thousands of
Colombian troops, U.S.-donated UH-60 Black Hawk and UH-1H Huey II helicopters, and American signals intelligence.

But the search has yielded little so far. The Pentagon is offering $300,000 and a U.S. visa in return for information leading to the rescue of the three Americans.

                                               © 2003