Begin forwarded message:
From: "Mario Profaca" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: May 7, 2007 4:56:04 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SPY NEWS] CIA Air America pilot seeks long-delayed
recognition
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/
2007/05/05/0506metpilot.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13
Pilot seeks long-delayed recognition
Federal benefits denied those who flew for CIA's clandestine airlines
By RON MARTZ
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/06/07
Jack Stiles of Sharpsburg spent nearly 20 years as a government
pilot and didn't know it.
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Stiles was one of several hundred pilots who flew for the Central
Intelligence Agency's clandestine airlines in Southeast Asia in the
1950s and '60s. Many of the pilots now say they thought they were
working for private companies — Air America, Civil Air Transport
and Air Asia — under contract to the U.S. government. Only years
later did many of them learn they were actually working for the CIA.
Brant Sanderlin/Staff
Jack Stiles flew missions in Southeast Asia for airlines the CIA
owned.
The CIA has long acknowledged that it owned and managed those
airlines.
But it still does not recognize the service of the pilots and
ground crews — 240 of whom were killed in what those surviving now
consider the line of duty — when it comes to paying retirement
benefits because of an obscure federal policy and an appeals court
decision upholding it.
But as those men age, they want the recognition for what they did
and the benefits they believe they earned.
Stiles is part of an effort to persuade Congress to pass
legislation that would grant government benefits for the years
those pilots and ground crew members served. While that legislation
has been introduced, it has languished in committee and attracted
few co-sponsors.
Stiles and others are beginning to think it will not happen in
their lifetime.
"If the government waits long enough, they won't have to pay us
because we'll all be dead," Stiles said in a recent interview at
his Sharpsburg home.
"If it doesn't happen this year, it's not going to happen," said
William Merrigan, who served as an Air America attorney from 1962
to 1974 and is tracking the legislation.
But there is hope because of the legislation's supporters, added
Merrigan, now a Department of the Army attorney in Washington.
Among them is Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader,
who has sponsored a bill to bring former employees of Air America —
the largest of the proprietary airlines — and those who worked for
other such airlines under the federal umbrella.
Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) has offered legislation on the House
side and is a strong proponent of the measure because of the number
of former Air America workers who live in her district, said David
Cherry, a spokesman for her office.
"The employees of Air America risked life and limb for our nation,
and they should be recognized for the role they played in our
military efforts in East Asia," Berkley said when she introduced
the bill.
Stiles said he does not consider his service with Civil Air
Transport or Air America to be particularly heroic, although he was
often shot at in Laos and flew covert missions to Tibet with only
the moonlight to guide him through the Himalayas.
A Navy pilot who flew 70 combat missions in the Korean War, Stiles
had returned to his hometown of Louisville, Ky., after the war and
was about to take a job in a paint store when he saw an
advertisement seeking pilots to fly in Southeast Asia.
"It was absolutely vague. All I knew was it was a flying job,"
Stiles said.
It did not strike Stiles as odd at the time that his interviewer
with Civil Air Transport had all his Navy flying records. Or that
he later flew cargo and passengers in U.S. aircraft with French
markings in Vietnam in the 1950s.
Stiles said he began to question just whom he was working for when
Civil Air Transport pilots "began flying in Laos, making air drops
to indigenous forces."
But at the time, it did not matter to him, or to most of the other
pilots. They saw themselves as part of the effort to stem the
advance of communism in Southeast Asia.
"I've always been a patriot," Stiles said.
"If you don't pay me anything, that's fine. I believe in what I'm
doing."
"I'd do it again, with or without the civil service," said Boyd
Mesecher, 74, of Hollywood, Fla., president of the Air American
Association. Mesecher was an aviation engineer for the company for
15 years, much of it in Vietnam.
Because of the secrecy of their jobs and their missions, Air
America employees say they were reluctant to speak out and seek
their benefits until the early 1980s.
When they did, they learned that the federal Office of Personnel
Management had changed its regulations so that contract employees
such as those in Air America were not considered federal employees.
A federal court challenge to the regulation was rejected, leaving
legislation as the only remedy.
The OPM and CIA have written to Reid opposing his bill.
"Granting retroactive retirement benefits to former Air America
employees would undermine principles of fairness and consistency
and could prompt countless requests from other individuals who have
served the Government in similar capacities. Such requests could
compromise Agency activities and carry a significant cost burden,"
the CIA wrote Reid in an October 2005 letter.
But Merrigan said the former employees of proprietary airlines and
surviving widows, just over 500 now, would cost the government
about $20 million to $25 million over the life of payouts.
"A lot of the people who will get the money will be the widows of
these people who made an awful lot of sacrifices. Many of them are
living only on Social Security," Merrigan said.
For Stiles, who has become a missionary and frequently travels to
Africa for Source of Light Ministries International out of Madison,
the issue is one not of money, but of principle.
"I think it's justified," he said. "I think it's way overdue."
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