FBI Launches Inquiry Into Attack That Downed U.S. Plane Over Sahara

The FBI, opening an inquiry into the downing of a U.S. aircraft over northern Africa, on Friday sent a team of agents to the site of the missile attack that killed five American crew members.

U.S. officials said they believe that rebels battling the Moroccan government may have shot down the DC-7 by mistake and that there is no evidence to suggest it was a “terrorist incident.”

The plane and another DC-7 that was also hit by a missile but managed to land safely had been under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of a major desert spraying operation to combat swarms of insects in the Western Sahara region, officials said.

That contract ran out Wednesday, the day before the attack, but the FBI said it had been informed that the agreement was being renegotiated.

AID officials provided a somewhat different explanation, saying that the men had completed a spraying operation in Senegal and were heading to Morocco in hopes of getting a contract there.

“On their own initiative, they chose to fly to Morocco to try to look into the project we have there. The route they flew was at their own choosing,” said Jay F. Morris, deputy administrator of AID. “ . . . These folks were not on a U.S. government, U.S.-sponsored mission. We did not direct them into that area.”

Scene of Guerrilla Activity

The two American planes were attacked over a region of the Western Sahara where a guerrilla group known as the Polisario Front has been fighting for independence from Morocco for more than a decade. The United States has provided military supplies to Moroccan King Hassan II to help suppress the rebellion.

The incident has raised questions about why the two DC-7s were following a flight path over an area rife with guerrilla activity.

“It is unusual to use DC-7s for locust control,” said Jorgen Liffner, a program officer specializing in efforts to deal with the insect problem for the U.N. Development Program. When he heard the news of the missile attack, he said: “My immediate reaction was that if I were a Polisario guerrilla out in the desert, I wouldn’t assume a DC-7 was for locust control.”

Morris and other AID officials said Friday that the U.S. agency has been using DC-7s in the locust control effort because they are more efficient and can cover a broader area than smaller planes. Other agencies use light aircraft such as Cessnas to battle the insects, which Morris says have created “a plague of biblical proportions” that threatens to damage $350 million in crops in Morocco alone this year.

The planes were owned by T & G Aviation, a private company in Chandler, Ariz., that Morris described as “just a civilian firm that provides aircraft” in the campaign against locusts.

In Arizona, Patrick Leroux Jr., 24, whose father is a co-owner of T & G, dismissed suggestions that the planes may have been involved in some form of covert operation unrelated to the locusts. They “were strictly there to help relieve the countries of their locust problems. As far as covert operations go, there’s absolutely nothing to it,” he told The Times.

‘Nothing Covert’

Joe Hillebrand, who owns a hangar at the airstrip where T & G is situated, said that “these guys have nothing to do with anything covert.”

“These planes are all fixed up for spraying,” he added. “They can spray 150,000 to 200,000 acres a day. The planes are all full of spare parts and tools so they can be repaired and (also hold) big tanks” for pesticides.

There appears to be no U.S. jurisdiction in the case under beefed-up terrorist statutes, but the FBI is studying possible violation of other U.S. criminal laws, principally one that bans interference with or destruction of U.S. aircraft traveling in interstate or foreign commerce. That law carries maximum punishment of 20 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

The U.S. denial Friday that the DC-7 was conducting a U.S. government mission at the time it was attacked contrasted with the explanation given a day earlier by officials, who had said that the plane was engaged in spraying operations and was under U.S. contract when it was shot down.

AID officials said that although the plane was not operating under any official contract, the U.S. agency plans to pay for the return of the remains of the crew members to the United States and to cover the incident as if it were an official government activity.

It was not clear whether the lack of an active contract would interfere with any U.S. attempts to prosecute those responsible for the missile attack.

Leroux, whose father had been in the second plane at the time it was hit by a missile, said the senior Leroux had telephoned Thursday night and was “pretty shaken up.”

The two planes “were flying in formation when my dad said the first craft took several hits. The last one hit the engine and it caught on fire, and the wing just blew off,” he said, adding that his father’s plane was also hit “a couple of times in the tail section.”

AID officials identified the five apparent victims as Joel Blackmer, 46, and Frank Kennedy, identified as his 21-year-old stepson, both of Phoenix; Bernard Rossini, 49, of Tempe, Ariz.; Francis Hederman, 47, of Cody, Wyo., and Wesley Wilson, 46, of North Platte, Neb.

In its statement, the FBI noted that the State Department and other U.S. agencies “are cooperating fully” in the investigation.

Times staff writer Tamara Jones in Arizona contributed to this story.