CIA accused over missionary death

The CIA says it takes questions of accountability "very seriously"

The CIA withheld information after the downing of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001, an internal report has said.

The plane was shot down as part of a US-led operation against drugs smugglers, killing a US missionary and her baby daughter.

The CIA inspector general's report says the incident was cast as a one-off error but that there were in fact "sustained and significant" violations.

The CIA said it would carefully consider the report's findings.

The missionary, Veronica Bowers from Michigan, died with her daughter Charity when the Peruvian air force opened fire as their plane flew along the Amazon river after being tracked by the CIA as suspected traffickers. Her husband and son survived.

Violations of required procedures occurred in every shoot down the CIA took part in Pete Hoekstra, Republican representative

"Within hours, CIA officers began to characterise the shoot down as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run programme," the report says. "In fact, this was not the case."

There were "sustained and significant" violations of procedures, the report says, which meant other aircraft were also targeted without proper checks having been made.

"The result was that, in many cases, suspect aircraft were shot down within two to three minutes of being sighted by the Peruvian fighter - without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land," the report said.

Accountability

Internal inquiries that revealed the problems were hidden from Congress, the National Security Council and the Justice Department, the report says.

Instead, for six years, the agency "incorrectly reported that the programme complied with the laws and policies governing it".

Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra, who made public the report's unclassified sections, called for a criminal inquiry into the matter.

"This is as ugly as it gets: an agency operating outside of the law, covering it up and getting away with it for as long as they did," the AP news agency quoted him as saying.

"Violations of required procedures occurred in every shoot down the CIA took part in."

The programme, targeting smugglers in Peru and Colombia, operated between 1995 and 2001.

The exact number of planes shot down has not been revealed.

A CIA spokesman said the agency had not yet decided how to handle the report's findings.

Paul Gimigliano said the agency's director, Michael Hayden, had received the full report, and the CIA took questions of responsibility and accountability "very seriously".