Veronica Bowers: the long fight for justice A year after a missionary plane was shot down by the Peruvian military while the CIA looked on, the US State Department paid $8 million in compensation to the family of those on board and Kevin Donaldson, the pilot.
Eight years later the family of Veronica Bowers, who died in the attack, is still waiting for a full explanation of why the aircraft in which she was travelling was targeted in an operation to prevent drug smugglers operating in Peruvian airspace.
Yesterday, Pete Hoeskstra, a Republican Senator who has campaigned for justice for the Bowers family, called on Dennis Blair, the US Director of National Intelligence, to give a full account of what happened in the time leading up to the incident that killed Veronica and Charity Bowers.
"This family lost a wife, daughter and grandchild, and deserve to be fully briefed on the results of the Accountability Board's recent review," he said. "People were held accountable but it was minimal for what happened."
Jim and Veronica Bowers and their two children Cory and Charity, were travelling from Brazil in on April, 20, 2001, to their houseboat on the Amazon River in Iquitos, Peru, where they lived and worked as missionaries.
Their float aircraft was mistakenly shot down by the Peruvian military during a CIA surveillance mission to target drug strugglers. The operation was suspended after the shooting.
For almost nine years, the CIA misled Congress, the White House and the dead woman's parents about how and why the agency defied the rules established to make sure that innocent people are not killed, according to a report by the Inspector General in 2008.
It said: “Within hours
, CIA officers began to characterise the shoot-down as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run programme.” In fact, this was not the case.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7014784.ece
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