Lt Col Arnold Balthazar, a cum laude graduate of the University of Portland, OR, which he attended on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. In 1978,  Balthazar graduated from USAF Pilot Training, and became an Air Combat Maneuvering Instructor the same year, training in basic interceptions. He became a Flight Commander in 1982 and an F-15 instructor pilot the same year, a position he held, with increasing responsibilities, until 1988.

Between 1988-1991 Balthazar was Chief of Weapons and Tactics at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, during which time he was selected by the USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chariman Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney on the F-15's capability and employment during Operation Desert Storm.

Balthazar retired from the Air Force in 1991, joining the Air National Guard and working out of the Air Force Reserve Test Center in Tucson, AZ, from 1991-1998. He retired as a lieutenant colonel USAF.

Awards earned during his career included the Wing Top Gun F-15 Award in 1988, the Pacific Air Force's Outstanding Performer of the Year Award in 1991; and the Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Channault Award as the USAF's Outstanding Aerial Tactician of the Year in 1995--the only time the award has been presented to someone not on active duty in the Air Force. He also developed no-cabin-light night-flying systems currently in use in the Air Force, and developed an F-15 Training Plan that was included in USAF manuals "in its entirety".

Following his retirement Balthazar became an owner/operator of Lead Turn Enterprises, a flight-test, navigational training, air-to-air engagement and aviation systems consulting firm. He contracted with Flight Test Associates of Tucson, AZ, to install his night-vision system in FAP interceptor planes in 1999, and had a second contract with Flight Test Associates as a counter-drug intercept instructor for Colombian and Peruvian instructor pilots that ran from 1999-2000.

PLAN COLOMBIA'S SECRET AIR FORCE

PROGRAM IN PERU

DEATH PLUNGE ON THE PACIFIC

On August 19, 2003, more than two years after the suspensions began, the White House announced that President Bush had approved resumption of the Colombian Airbridge Denial Program within three days. Among the changes to the program was that the State Department, through Plan Colombia, would take over the training of Colombian pilots and the flying of the identification planes, effectively taking it out of the hands of the CIA. The subcontractor DynCorp, which had been assigned the mission of identifying the drug flights for the CIA, lost that contract. (The company continues to carry out aerial fumigation flights in Colombia.)

However, a new State Department contract went to ARINC, a Maryland-based aviation company that regularly contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense--particularly in the areas of providing communications, electronics and night-vision capacity to fighter craft. According to an ARINC press release dated April 24, 2002, over a year before the program was resumed in Colombia, the company was "awarded a competitive contract by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command to act as contractor for the U.S. Airbridge Denial Program in Colombia and Peru." The release said the contract was to run "through July 28, 2003." Yet the Airbridge Program has never been officially resumed in Peru.

In fact, ARINC was working with the Airbridge Denial Program long before the missionary plane shoot-down. A contract between the FAP and ARINC dated June 2, 2000, secured by WW4 REPORT, has ARINC in charge of upgrading Peru's fleet of Cessna A-37B Dragonfly jets and training FAP pilots in interception techniques and tactics. Calls to ARINC and Flight Test Associates, an Oklahoma company subcontracted by ARINC to run the pilot training program, verifies that the contract was ongoing even prior to 2000. No White House announcement of the continued training after the Amazon shoot-down was made, however, and no one outside a small group of people involved it was aware of its existence.

Nonetheless, the training did continue after the shoot-down, and on August 23, 2001, several months after the Airbridge Program was suspended, FAP pilot Lieutenant Miguel Angel Lama Barreto, 28, and USAF Lt. Col. (r) Arnold Balthazar, 47, plunged into the Pacific Ocean just north of Piura, on Peru's northern Pacific coast, while executing drug-plane interception practice maneuvers in a Dragonfly. Both Lama and Balthazar died in the crash, caused when their jet stalled and their ejection equipment failed. Lama's body, still strapped into his seat in the ejection position, was recovered two days later. Balthazar's body has never been recovered. A team of U.S. Navy divers brought in from Hawaii searched for more than eight days before search was called off.

Lt. Miguel Angel Lama was one of Peru's brightest pilots, specializing in flight maneuvers in the Dragonfly. A drug-plane interdiction instructor, he was the son of FAP Captain Carlos Lama, a highly respected pilot in the Peruvian Air Force. Miguel is referred to in official Peruvian materials as "an instructor's instructor."

Arnold Balthazar's resume reads like an induction speech at the Air Force Hall of Fame. A cum laude graduate of the University of Portland, OR, which he attended on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, he graduated from USAF Pilot Training in 1978, became an Air Combat Maneuvering Instructor the same year, training in basic interceptions. He became a Flight Commander in 1982 and an F-15 instructor pilot the same year, a position he held, with increasing responsibilities, until 1988. Between 1988-1991 he was Chief of Weapons and Tactics at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, during which time he was selected by the USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chariman Gen. Colin Powell, Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney on the F-15's capability and employment during Operation Desert Storm.

Balthazar retired from the Air Force in 1991, joining the Air National Guard and working out of the Air Force Reserve Test Center in Tucson, AZ, from 1991-1998. He retired as a lieutenant colonel USAF.

Awards he earned during his career included the Wing Top Gun F-15 Award in 1988, the Pacific Air Force's Outstanding Performer of the Year Award in 1991; and the Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Channault Award as the USAF's Outstanding Aerial Tactician of the Year in 1995--the only time the award has been presented to someone not on active duty in the Air Force. He also developed no-cabin-light night-flying systems currently in use in the Air Force, and developed an F-15 Training Plan that was included in USAF manuals "in its entirety".

In short, both Lama and Balthazar were superior pilots who should not have crashed and died while performing an exercise. But they did. And they did it while exercising for a program that was supposed to be suspended. Unraveling their deaths leads to a web of corruption as well as an abyss of incompetence.

THE TRAIL 

Following his retirement Balthazar became an owner/operator of Lead Turn Enterprises, a flight-test, navigational training, air-to-air engagement and aviation systems consulting firm. He contracted with Flight Test Associates of Tucson, AZ, to install his night-vision system in FAP interceptor planes in 1999, and had a second contract with Flight Test Associates as a counter-drug intercept instructor for Colombian and Peruvian instructor pilots that ran from 1999-2000. Flight Test Associates was itself subcontracted by ARINC, already established as a contractor for both aircraft upgrades and intercept training for the Defense Department. Balthazar's partner in the intercept training, USAF Captain (r) Neville Sonner, was employed directly by Flight Test Associates.

After the missionary shoot-down, someone--though neither the State Department, DoD, ARINC or Flight Test Associates will admit it was them--decided that one of the key ingredients to maximize the safety of non-drug flights was to have Peruvian pilots pull up alongside all planes suspected of carrying drugs and make eye contact with the pilots. Eye contact would theoretically allow the pilots to make a judgment as to whether the suspect plane was being piloted by someone who looked like a drug-smuggler or a missionary and respond accordingly. For some aircraft--those capable of flying at speeds the A-37B is capable of--this was a wacky but physically possible maneuver. For others--like the single-engine Cessna that Kevin Donaldson was flying when it was hit--eye contact with the pilot of an A-37B was impossible: Donaldson's plane had a top speed of 137 mph when empty; with five passengers it couldn't hit 125 mph. The A-37B, on the other hand, with a top speed of over 500 mph, stalls at under 140 except when the flaps are in a take-off or landing position.

On the flight in question, FAP pilot Miquel Lama and Balthazar were practicing exactly this intercept maneuver with a second plane piloted by FAP Lt. Nilton Lopez Zuniga and Sonner. They had already practiced three maneuvers; the fourth called for the planes to drop in altitude to under 3,000 feet, slow to 140, intersect, and then for one of them to try an evasive maneuver. Lopez and Sonner did just that; when Lama and Balthazar turned to chase, their plane stalled. Moments later Sonner claimed he saw the cockpit roof fly off the stalled plane; he expected to see both pilots eject and parachute to the sea. He and Lopez took their plane up to 9,000 feet to be able to identify the exact points where the parachutes landed, but there were no parachutes. The ejection seats failed and both pilots crashed into the Pacific still strapped into the plane.

A Peruvian military investigation into the accident quickly blamed it on "pilot error"--blaming Lama and Balthazar for their own deaths. But Lama's father, retired FAP pilot Carlos Lama, demanded a Peruvian congressional investigation and launched a lawsuit against both the FAP and ARINC. His legal demands unleashed a mountain of official paperwork--nearly 1,000 pages, including the contracts between the FAP and ARINC, Balthazar's training logs in Peru, US Embassy and DoD paperwork, and a host of other materials.

But Carlos Lama's investigation turned up more than he'd anticipated. Shortly after his investigation into his son's death began his home in Lima was subject to a robbery in which all of his initial notes and nearly everything he owned pertaining to his son was looted. "They took pictures, his military things, paperwork, his letters telling me about the intercept program--everything. I was supposed to stop looking. No one wants anyone looking too deeply into this."

IN THE END

What began as a father's concern that his son was being wrongfully blamed for pilot error in the accident that cost his life, is certainly more than that. How much more is difficult to ascertain given that no one will answer the questions. And there are several.

First: Who authorized the Airbridge Denial Program practice exercises to continue after the program was suspended indefinitely?

Second: Who decided it was in the interests of the pilots to look into the eyes of the pilots they were intercepting, potentially requiring them to fly at stall-speed?

Third: Who was actually supposed to modernize the ejection systems? A second stall occurred over Piura on Feb. 10, 2004 while the pilots performed the same maneuver as Lama and Balthazar, but in that crash both pilots ejected successfully. ARINC's Warner says his company's contract ran out at the end of 2003, and so denies any knowledge of it. In a second suit, Carlos Lama brought a civil action against the Peruvian government for continuing to perform the dangerous maneuver; Peruvian authorities claimed they were no longer carrying out such maneuvers, and dismissed the case.

Fourth: Who allowed Luis Filipe Gamboa's address to be utilized as the official Peruvian address of ARINC and FTA--and why didn't anyone notice that that would be the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?

No one is liable to take the responsibility for any of those decisions. Carlos Lama has already been offered a settlement by the Peruvian FAP for the loss of his son's life, but he has turned it down, preferring to find out who was responsible rather than taking the money to shut up. His lawsuit against ARINC is proceeding but may not get far: ARINC has apparently never officially registered as a company in Peru and therefor not only has avoided paying taxes, but has avoided having any assets to lose either. And it is doubtful that the DoD will permit any lawsuit to be pursued in the U.S. that would require the release of classified documents--which involve much of ARINC's work in Peru.

"My Angel is gone," says Carlos Lama. "I just want to find out who is responsible, but I don't know if they will let me. They have too much to protect and don't want light in those dark corners."

"Excerpts taken from Mr. Gormans report found on the site "World War 4 Report."