Forest Service Ordered to Seize 35 Planes It Traded

WASHINGTON — The Forest Service has been ordered to confiscate 35 airplanes it traded to private firefighting contractors in an unusual case that one congressman says involved CIA missions in the Persian Gulf.

Two of the former military planes were the target of a congressional hearing in 1993 after they turned up hauling cargo for pay in Kuwait in 1991 following the war in Iraq.

In a letter the Associated Press obtained Friday, the General Services Administration said the aircraft should never have been turned over to Forest Service contractors.

Former Forest Service Chief Dale Robertson told Congress in 1993 that “mistakes were made” but no laws broken when 23 C-130 Air Force cargo planes and 12 P-3A Navy planes were transferred to the Forest Service, then into the hands of preferred contractors.

But the GSA told the Forest Service in the Sept. 21 letter this year that a federal probe in Arizona has produced evidence that the exchange program was illegal.

“Based upon information received from the United States attorney in Tucson, we have determined that the Forest Service illegally removed these aircraft from its inventory,” said the letter by Peggy Lowndes, chief of the GSA’s property management branch in San Francisco.

“Since the exchanges of these aircraft were not performed legally, these aircraft are still the property of the Forest Service. You should take immediate action to bring them under your control and place them back on your property account,” Lowndes wrote to Ron Hooper, Forest Service deputy for procurement and property.

Lowndes declined to comment Friday.

The Justice Department began investigating in 1993, said Assistant Agriculture Secretary James Lyons, but has brought no charges or indictments.

The planes were to be used only for fighting forest fires, but Lyons acknowledged during a congressional hearing in August, 1993, that several of the planes wrongly flew supply missions in Kuwait during the Desert Storm operation.

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Rep. Charlie Rose (D-N.C.) former chairman of the House Agriculture subcommittee on forestry, said during the hearing that he was convinced that the CIA was running covert operations with the planes, saying, “This situation stinks to high heaven.”

The planes, considered military surplus and valued at $65 million to $80 million, were given free of charge to Forest Service contractors that had given their own planes to government museums as historic aircraft.

Recipients included: T&G; Aviation Inc. of Chandler, Ariz.; Hawkins & Powers Aviation Inc. of Greybull, Wyo.; Hemet Valley Flying Service of Hemet, Calif.; T.B.M. Inc. of Tulare, Calif., and Aero Union Corp. of Chico, Calif.

Agriculture Department investigators said in a November, 1992, audit that Roy D. Reagan of Medford, Ore., who arranged most of the plane swaps, made more than $1 million in reselling four of the aircraft.

Spokespersons for all five companies said they had not seen the GSA letter and had no immediate comment.