During the 1990s, the Governments of Peru and the United States established a counternarcotics air interdiction program called Air Bridge Denial over the Peruvian Amazon. During this program the United States Central Intelligence Agency conducted surveillance missions over Peru’s coca growing regions, and passed suspicious aircraft location data to the Peruvian Air Force, who would then intercept the suspected narcotrafficking aircraft and force them to land or be shot down. The program was interrupted in 2001 following the accidental shootdown of a missionary floatplane over Peru, which resulted in the deaths of two United States citizens. This thesis examines the development, operations, and fallout of Air Bridge Denial in Peru, including its patterns of errors, complexities and challenges such as binational interoperability, bilingual communications failures, neglect of mandatory pr...

During the 1990s, the Governments of Peru and the United States established a counternarcotics air interdiction program called Air Bridge Denial over the Peruvian Amazon. During this program the United States Central Intelligence Agency conducted surveillance missions over Peru’s coca growing regions, and passed suspicious aircraft location data to the Peruvian Air Force, who would then intercept the suspected narcotrafficking aircraft and force them to land or be shot down. The program was interrupted in 2001 following the accidental shootdown of a missionary floatplane over Peru, which resulted in the deaths of two United States citizens. This thesis examines the development, operations, and fallout of Air Bridge Denial in Peru, including its patterns of errors, complexities and challenges such as binational interoperability, bilingual communications failures, neglect of mandatory pr...