Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Opposes Policy That Encouraged Shooting Missionary Family

Although it's not exactly the way he put it, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations (as well as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee) said on the Senate floor last Friday, that he's against the current and long-standing policy of our country's anti-drug establishment, a policy that encouraged the shooting down and strafing of a missionary family in Peru, in April of 2001.

(Now that the opposition party is in the policy-setting role) the senator thinks the policy should be changed. He told his fellow senators, "I urge the administration to reconsider this policy. Yes, we want to stop drugs. Yes, we want to conduct aerial surveillance of suspected aircraft. But shooting civilian aircraft out of the sky when there is no cause for self-defense, no imminent threat to innocent life, and not even proof of illegality, I believe goes too far."

[Mrs. Donaldson, right, and her infant daughter were killed by machine-gun fire, her husband and the pilot were also injured --ed.] He continued (blaming "foreign pilots" for the killing, and ignoring the CIA's role in finding the orange and white Cessna, identifying the "threat," and encouraging the Peruvian Air Force to scramble the A-37 that did the actual shooting): "I am concerned that the foreign pilots are performing the role of prosecutor, jury and executioner, even when there may be no cause for self-defense and no proof that the operators of the targeted aircraft have broken any law."

[The AOPA notes that the rules in question differ from the U.S. military's shoot-down authority within U.S. national airspace because they govern actions over foreign soil, and because the activities of the suspect aircraft do not pose an imminent threat to U.S. national security or continuity of government.]

FMI: www.dea.gov; www.state.gov