Washington: The CIA withheld information from the White House, Justice Department and Congress about the 2001 shooting down of a plane over Peru carrying an American missionary family, part of a years long cover-up of lethal violations in U S drug-interdiction procedures, according to a classified internal CIA report.

Rep Pete Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, called for a criminal investigation and said Congress would hold hearings on the matter in the new year.

"This is as ugly as it gets an agency operating outside of the law, covering it up and getting away with it as long as they did," Hoekstra said.

The CIA inspector general's report dated August 25, excerpts of which were released yesterday, said the agency hid from Congress, the National Security Council and Justice Department the results of multiple internal investigations that documented "sustained and significant" violations of White House-sanctioned aircraft intercept procedures. The procedures were created to prevent the shooting down of innocent aircraft over the Amazon jungle like the April 2001 downing of the missionaries aircraft.

"The plane, following the Amazon River in its westward journey in daylight, was tracked by a CIA aircraft as a suspected narcotrafficker and was fired on by the Peruvian Air Force. A Michigan woman and her infant daughter were killed and the American pilot was seriously wounded. The woman's husband and son survived.

"Within hours, CIA officers began to characterise the shootdown as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. In fact, this was not the case," the report says.
Source : PTI