A video has just been released that shows the Peruvian Air Force – with the help of the CIA – shooting down a small plane flown by a family of missionaries. They thought the plane was being flown by drug traffickers when the pilot didn’t respond to radioed warnings sent on the wrong frequency.
The video is from 2001 – that is to say, the CIA has been covering this up for nine years. Here’s the video, as broadcast by ABC:
The first thing I noticed in this video is the amazing linguistic incompetence of CIA officials who presumably hold people’s lives in their hands. Hard to call off the dogs when you think the word for “machine gun” is “ratatatatat.” (CIA history tends to indicate that incompetence is one of the agency’s defining characteristics.)
Second, the reason this story is being reported at all – even nine years later – is because the victims are Americans. Non-U.S. citizens certainly wouldn’t get the same consideration, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the CIA continues to participate in extra-judicial killings in many parts of Latin America.
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[...] war planes are dangerous. Here’s a video of what sounds like a Peruvian Tucano in action, shooting down a planeload of missionaries with the help of the CIA. Nice job, [...]