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Plane goes down { February 14 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5241-2003Feb13.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5241-2003Feb13.html
5 Missing After U.S. Plane Goes Down in Colombia
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 14, 2003; Page A18
BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 13 -- A U.S. government aircraft crashed in southern Colombia today after its engine failed. The fate of the four Americans and one Colombian on board remained uncertain as night fell in the guerrilla-controlled zone where the plane went down.
Colombian military officials said two unidentified bodies were found at the crash site and they warned that the passengers and crew may have been taken captive by members of the country's largest leftist guerrilla group, which regards U.S. government personnel as legitimate targets. The four Americans on board the Cessna 208 were contract employees of the Central Intelligence Agency at work on an anti-drug operation in the area, U.S. officials said.
Colombian soldiers arrived at the rugged crash site near the provincial capital of Florencia within 30 minutes of the 9 a.m. crash. Officials raised the possibility that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla group known by its Spanish acronym, FARC, could have arrived before the government troops and taken away any survivors. Officials also acknowledged that it was possible that the men set off on their own, knowing they were in a guerrilla zone.
Although the exact location of the crash was not disclosed, Colombian officials said the flight control tower lost contact with the pilot over the airport at the town of Puerto Rico, 220 miles south of the capital, Bogota. U.S. officials said the pilot told air traffic controllers that the plane's engine had stalled, and that he was trying to glide to the airport. Radio contact was lost soon afterward.
The town is just outside a 16,000 square-mile swathe of pasture and jungle that former president Andres Pastrana ceded to the FARC in 1998 as an incentive to begin peace talks. Those negotiations collapsed a year ago without yielding results, and Pastrana's successor, Alvaro Uribe, has increased the military presence in the area.
One of the FARC's most potent military fronts operates between Puerto Rico and Florencia, a 25-mile-long territory bordering steep, jungle-covered mountains that provide cover for the guerrillas. Colombian military officials reportedly dispatched five Black Hawk helicopters -- likely among those donated by the United States under a $1.3 billion aid program -- in support of the search-and-rescue mission.
The FARC has opposed the U.S. aid package and said repeatedly that it would consider U.S. government operatives to be legitimate military targets. The guerrillas earn millions of dollars a year protecting drug crops in southern Colombia. Eradication of those crops has been a chief goal of U.S. military aid.
Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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