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Missionary's parents want answers

Nearly four years after the woman and her daughter were killed in Peru, her family still doesn't know why.

PENSACOLA - The parents of a missionary killed with her adopted baby when a plane was shot down in Peru renewed their quest for answers Monday after learning prosecutors had dropped a criminal investigation of CIA operatives.

The parents said they consider the killings murder.

Veronica Bowers, 35, of Muskegon, Mich., and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed in April 2001 when a Peruvian warplane shot down their float plane after a surveillance aircraft contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency misidentified it as a possible drug flight.

"I'd like to know what's at the bottom of this and why it happened," said Gloria Luttig, the slain missionary's mother.

She lives in suburban Pace with her husband, John Luttig. Their daughter and granddaughter are buried inPensacola.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra confirmed Saturday that his agency had looked into possible misconduct by intelligence officers, including whether they lied to a Senate committee in 2001, but last week decided no one would be prosecuted. That only has raised more questions for the Luttigs, who never were told such an investigation was being conducted.

"This was all hushed up," Gloria Luttig said in a telephone interview. "We were appeased. We were told it was a bad, bad accident."

To the Luttigs, however, it was much more. "They came up behind and shot her in the back with no warning," John Luttig said. "To me, that's murder."

The Luttigs said they planned to contact their congressman, Jeff Miller, R-Chumuckla, to again ask for help. Shortly after the deaths, he visited them and they received a call of apology from President Bush, but the Luttigs want someone held accountable.

A U.S.-Peruvian inquiry placed no blame but found that procedural errors, language problems and an overloaded communications system contributed. The CIA contractors tried to call off the attack at the last moment, but it was too late. The Senate Intelligence Committee put most of the blame on "lax management" that let safety procedures erode. The United States pulled out of the Peru surveillance program.

The Luttigs had previously written lawmakers, the president and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and other officials but said most letters were ignored.

"From what I understand, the Americans didn't understand the Peruvians, the Peruvians couldn't understand the Americans," Gloria Luttig said. "Well, how come? Why?"

Her daughter's husband, Jim Bowers, also a missionary with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism based in New Cumberland, Pa., and the couple's son, Cory, then 6, were aboard the plane as well. They and the pilot, Kevin Donaldson, survived.

[Last modified February 8, 2005, 15:46:11]