Marines Weigh Charges in Cable Car Disaster

The U.S. Marine Corps on Thursday ordered a pretrial inquiry to decide whether four Marine aviators should face manslaughter or negligent homicide charges for flying through a pair of Italian ski-lift cables and sending 20 Europeans aboard a cable car plunging to their deaths.

Lt. Gen. Peter Pace, commander of U.S. Marine forces in the Atlantic, announced the criminal inquiry, the equivalent of a civilian grand jury hearing, after the Pentagon concluded that “air crew error” caused the Feb. 3 accident during a training flight over the Alps.

The inquiry, to be completed by April 15, could lead to court-martial and prison sentences for the pilot and crew of the EA-6B Prowler electronic surveillance jet.

Pace ordered a second inquiry into possible administrative action against the Prowler crew’s squadron commander and at least three other Marine supervisors at Aviano air base in northern Italy but did not implicate them in the accident.

In a 70-page report issued Thursday, Pentagon investigators said the jet flew too low and too fast on two of the six legs of its 37-minute flight. They ruled out mechanical failure, asserting that the jet and its altimeter were working properly, and said the ski lift was clearly marked on the flight map.

“The cable strike was not a one-time altitude miscalculation, because the crew flew lower and faster than authorized whenever the terrain permitted--in other words, whenever there was a valley,” said Maj. Gen. Michael DeLong, Pace’s deputy commander, who headed the Pentagon’s investigative board.

DeLong’s report was finished with unusual speed. Its blunt tone and careful presentation were aimed at satisfying demands for justice in Italy and repairing damaged relations between the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, host to key U.S. air and naval bases.

The accident provoked outrage in Italy. Authorities complained at the start of the investigation about a lack of American cooperation. Francantonio Granero, the regional prosecutor in the city of Trent near the accident site, opened a criminal inquiry of his own. He said Thursday that he would press ahead.

Washington has a right under NATO agreements to assume jurisdiction in the case and is expected to reject an Italian petition that the U.S. waive that right. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said it “would be very unusual” to grant a waiver. He said a decision is near.

In summarizing the report at a news conference here, DeLong seemed to be building a case for U.S. jurisdiction. He opened the conference with brief remarks in halting Italian--a sign of courtesy to his hosts--and offered “deepest sympathy” to families of the 20 victims, who were from Italy and five other countries.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas M. Foglietta attended the conference on his way to Cavalese, the ski resort where the disaster occurred. After briefing the mayor and village council on the Pentagon report, he walked out on a ridge and peered down at the cable car wreckage on the valley floor. Then he dropped to one knee and bowed his head in silent prayer.

“On behalf of President Clinton and the American people, I wish to apologize,” he told a few dozen villagers gathered at the ridge. The Marine airmen, he said, “were flying aggressively. They exceeded maximum air speed and were flying significantly below the minimum altitude.”

“Our government will be working with yours to ensure that this never happens again,” he added.

Italy’s deputy defense minister, Massimo Brutti, praised the Pentagon report Thursday as “serious and trustworthy” and said its conclusions “coincide substantially” with those of an Italian military probe. DeLong’s four-man team included an Italian air force colonel and worked with the Trent prosecutor and other Italian authorities.

“The U.S. report contains all the elements needed to make those who were guiding the airplane assume [criminal] responsibility for their actions,” Brutti said.

Many Italian politicians said they would withhold judgment on the U.S. investigation until it runs its course.

Pace, the Marine commander, said the criminal inquiry would consider “whether charges such as involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide, damage of private and government property and dereliction of duty should be referred to a court-martial” against the four aviators, all captains.

Richard J. Ashby, 31, of Mission Viejo, was the Prowler’s pilot. Under Marine Corps rules, Ashby’s crewmen--Joseph P. Schweitzer, 30, of Westbury, N.Y.; William L. Raney II, 26, of Englewood, Colo.; and Chandler P. Seagraves, 28, of Nineveh, Ind.--shared responsibility for the flight but “obviously [had] different degrees of culpability” for what went wrong, one investigator said.

The Prowler was within its assigned flight corridor on the training run’s last leg when it sliced through the ski-lift cables at a speed of 550 nautical mph and an altitude of 364 to 370 feet above the ground, investigators said. That is 100 nautical mph faster than its Marine-imposed limit and far below the 2,000-foot minimum altitude set by the Italians in April for the Alpine region.

“At that altitude and that speed they could not have seen the cables until it was too late,” said Brutti, the Italian deputy defense minister.

Investigators are still puzzled over why the crew was flying so low and fast. The aviators, who have been grounded at the Aviano base since the accident, invoked their legal right to avoid questioning and instead issued written statements that did not address the issues.

That left investigators to reconstruct the fatal flight--code-named Easy 01--from the jet’s flight data recorder, its flight map and witness accounts. Its altitude, which dipped just below 300 feet at one point, was monitored by another U.S. surveillance plane that was flying over the region that day.

“We haven’t been able to interview the air crew,” DeLong said. “All we found was their chart. What they did, how they planned it, I have no idea. . . . I have no idea what they thought and what they were thinking about.”

One crewman’s statement admitted that the four men planned their flight for 1,000 feet above the ground, DeLong said. That led the Pentagon to question Aviano’s Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron. Investigators said they found that 15 out of 18 crewmen in the squadron interviewed thought 1,000 feet was their minimum training altitude.

As a result, Lt. Col. Richard Muegge, the squadron commander, and at least three subordinates face possible administrative sanctions for failing to inform flight crews of the Italians’ 2,000-foot minimum. The alleged lapse had no bearing on the accident, investigators said, because the Prowler was flying well below 1,000 feet.

The accident triggered a public outcry in Italy because of repeated prior complaints about low-level training missions over the Alps, where U.S. and Italian planes practice surveillance missions.

U.S. investigators interviewed all Marine squadrons that had been based at Aviano in recent months, but DeLong said they found evidence of just one other altitude violation.

Times staff writer Richard A. Serrano in Washington contributed to this report.

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What Went Wrong

A Pentagon report on the U.S. Marine EA-6B Prowler that last month severed ski-lift cables and killed 20 people in Italy found that:

* The disaster was caused by “air crew error.”

* The crew was briefed to fly at 1,000 feet above ground level, rather than the 2,000 feet limit set for the area by Italian authorities. Even so, the crew flew lower than 1,000 feet on at least two of the flight’s six legs.

* The cable car line was marked on the charts used by the crew.

* The jet exceeded the maximum air speed by 100 nautical mph on at least two legs of the flight.

* The plane was in full working order.