Trafficking: The Boom and Bust of the Air America Cocaine Ring

From 1980 to 1984, pilots for a Scranton, Pa., aircraft company flew more than $2 billion's worth of cocaine from Colombia to the U.S., earning an estimated $40 million. The freight company was named Air America, conjuring up images of the CIA's Vietnam-era front in Southeast Asia, and leading many to believe that the outfit was affiliated with the government. The pilots, products of upper-middle-class families and college educations, were apprehended when in 1984 one of them, Peter Cooper, became a Drug Enforcement Agency informant. Rice ( The C-5A Scandal ) is particularly effective in his analysis of motives--greed, he asserts, and also a sense of romance and adventure. Alarmingly, the author maintains that few of the pilots feel remorse; if anything, they are indignant at being imprisoned with ``criminals.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)