They suggested Fidel Castro should be indicted in the inquiry. The episode over the Florida Straits, between Cuba and the Florida Keys, claimed the lives of four.
``Castro ordered the shoot down. We need President Clinton to say that Fidel Castro does not enjoy immunity as head of state for this crime. That's what needs to happen here,'' George Fowler, general counsel of the Cuban American National Foundation, told the House Judiciary crime subcommittee.
The subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., agreed that Castro should be indicted. ``I will do whatever it takes within my power'' to bring the case to a close, including finding out why U.S. fighter jets were not scrambled to intercept the Cuban MIGs that shot down two civilian planes in the February 1996 incident, McCollum said.
He said that, if necessary, Congress would issue subpoenas to force appearances by administration witnesses who have refused to appear.
Jeffrey Houlihan, a Customs radar operator in Riverside, Calif. who followed the incident on his screen, said he was ``startled'' when he saw images of the three small Cessna civilian aircraft being pursued by fast-moving blips he took to be Russian-built Cuban MiGs.
He told the panel he immediately made an emergency call to the Southeast Air Defense unit at Florida's Tyndall Air Force Base and was told, ``We're handling it. Don't worry.''
Houlihan told the panel he did not know why the Air Force did not launch its own fighter jets. A former Air Force radar controller, Houlihan said it was standard practice for the United States to put its planes in the sky whenever a Cuban fighter is seen heading toward the United States.
``I asked the Air Force -- are you seeing what I'm seeing? It looked like two aircraft were shot down,'' Houlihan said.
Jose Basulto, the pilot of the only surviving aircraft, said two Cuban MiGs pursued him for 53 minutes before abandoning the chase about 30 miles west of Key West.
Basulto is the founder and president of the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue, which routinely flies humanitarian missions to help refugees in rafts and boats.
The Defense and Justice Department were invited but declined to send witnesses to the hearing, McCollum said.
In a December 1998 memo, the Pentagon's inspector general, Eleanor Hill, told lawmakers that ``national security classifications prohibit us from providing detailed responses,'' including to the question of why U.S. jets were not launched in the incident.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who is of Cuban descent, told the panel, ``We know who is ultimately responsible for this blatant act of aggression. Yet, the Department of Justice has yet to conclude its investigation and issue indictments against the Castro regime.''
In December 1997, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence King in Miami demanded that the Cuban government pay a bit more than $187 million to the relatives of three Cuban-American pilots who died in the incident. The fourth man killed was not a U.S. citizen, and his relatives were not eligible to sue under the terrorism law, the court held.
Cuba maintains that the planes violated Cuban airspace and even flew over land to scatter political pamphlets.
Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., jointly wrote to President Clinton demanding that the United States halt cooperation with Cuba in the war on drugs.
They said information the U.S. was providing to Cuba on suspected drug planes that could prompt Cuba to shoot down civilian planes.
``Providing such information risks exposing U.S. officials to criminal liability,'' Helms and Gilman wrote.
Also Thursday, Helms met with Lazaro Betancourt Morin, a former bodyguard for Castro who defected to the U.S. in April during a trip with Castro to the Dominican Republic.
Betancourt Morin, 37, said the Cuban leader has as many as 1,000 men who serve as his security detail, including 40 or 50 ``private guards.''
``The economic situation is very grave,'' he said, through a translator.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press