SIERRA VISTA — A recent international airspace incident involved a critic of the government’s illegal-immigration policies and two F-16 fighter jets.

Glenn Spencer, head of the American Border Patrol, apparently triggered a security trip wire on Jan. 15 as he was flying from El Paso, Texas, in a Cessna 206.

“I was monitoring the progress of the government in securing our border, and I was intercepted by an F-16!” Spencer stated in a letter to his supporters. He uses the letter to drum up support for his watchdog cause.

The incident happened shortly after noon, about eight miles east of Douglas, as Spencer was descending from about 8,000 feet altitude, he said. And, he said, it’s possible his aircraft strayed into Mexico and came back into U.S. airspace.

Glenn Spencer stands off to the side as Mike Christie prepares their Cessna 206 for a flight along the border on Oct. 19, 2007, at the Bisbee Municipal Airport. The airplane was flying very close to the U.S.-Mexico border on Jan. 15 when it was intercepted by fighter jets from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. (File photo by Ted Morris-Herald/Review)

His letter continued, “I thought I was going to die! He (F-16 pilot) made two passes within 100 feet of me!”

Another local private pilot says the airspace Spencer was in might have been that used for military operations.

The Bisbee Police Department noted the incident in its log of that day: “12:50 p.m., a federal air marshal reported that a Cessna 206 Highwing single engine aircraft crossed the border from Mexico to Arizona illegally. Contact was to be made with the pilot and he was to call the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) Command Center. Two air fighters were launched from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.”

The Air Force confirmed a sortie occurred.

“I know for sure one (F-16) was scrambled,” said Capt. Lisa Dowling on Friday. She is a public affairs officer with the Western Air Defense Sector, or WADS, based at McChord Air Force Base in Washington state. WADS’ mission, according to its Web site, is to “detect, identify, track and can scramble fighters to intercept unknown or threatening airborne objects.”

On Saturday, she confirmed that two F-16s were involved in the incident.

WADS is part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, which is jointly operated by the United States and Canada.

Dowling said NORAD has conducted air patrols throughout the U.S. and Canada since the start of Operation Noble Eagle, the command’s response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, NORAD agencies have responded to more than 2,100 possible air threats and controlled more than 48,000 patrol sorties.

The fighter intercept surprised Spencer, who for 18 months has been flying his amateur surveillance missions along the U.S.-Mexico border without incident.

“I do it all the time,” Spencer said, noting he is in regular radio contact with regional flight authorities, including Libby Army Airfield on Fort Huachuca.

“And we’re squawking, and they know who we were,” he said, describing the moments leading up to the Jan. 15 incident.

Squawking is aviation jargon meaning an airplane’s transponder is sending signals to ground radar to help controllers identify the aircraft.

During the flights between San Diego and El Paso, with the Bisbee Municipal Airport as their home base, Spencer’s crew videos the border with high-definition cameras, paying close attention to fence construction.

Using Google Earth to match video to specific locations along the border, Spencer compiles reports for Congress and other interested people. Spencer’s nonprofit group is known as the American Border Patrol, which is not to be confused with the federal government’s U.S. Border Patrol.

Spencer did travel to Washington, D.C., and met a fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, Edwin Meese III, who served as the U.S. attorney general in President Reagan’s administration.

During his visit, Spencer also met staff members of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. Both are staunch anti-illegal-immigration representatives.

As of Feb. 1, according to Spencer, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security claimed to have installed 284 miles of border fence, but by his reckoning there were only 163 miles of visible fencing.

“There’s a big difference. We have proof,” Spencer said, not counting certain “fence” segments that are barriers to vehicles but remain open to foot traffic.

The Jan. 15 incident rattled Spencer as the jet fighter roared past his single-engine aircraft. “You better believe it did,” he said. “I thought he was going someplace and didn’t see me.”

The 57-year-old, who lives on the border in the Palominas area, is an experienced pilot, but he said he was more frightened from the F-16 pass than any previous incident in the air.

Spencer said, “Even though we adhered to all aviation regulations, on the ground I was met by: five patrol cars from the Bisbee Police Department, three Border Patrol vehicles, two Arizona Highway Patrol cars, two Customs and Border Protection vehicles, a drug sniffing dog … and various other officials … All the while two F-16s were flying overhead.”

Spencer’s claim could not be verified by press time.

Originally, Spencer was flying with fellow ABP’ers Mike Christie and Wes Fleming. The latter two operate the cameras from the Cessna’s rear passenger area, through an open door. Anticipating trouble, Spencer sits on a flak jacket in case he takes rifle fire from the ground.

On this particular flight, Christie was in the right-hand seat, and Spencer was in the captain’s chair on the left. Spencer said at the time of the F-16 encounter, he was letting Christie fly the plane and was teaching him dead-reckoning, which is a low-tech method of navigation that estimates one’s position by calculating direction and distance traveled.

Christie is a novice, Spencer said, “and we weren’t paying a lot of attention.”

Spencer said it is possible the craft strayed into Mexico, but he has often brushed the border in the past. He did it consciously on Oct. 19 when he flew from Bisbee to Douglas, made a 180-degree turn, flying above Agua Prieta, then cruised along the border on the Mexican side on an uneventful journey back to Bisbee.

“You have to file an international flight plan to cross the border,” said Roland Herwig, an FAA spokesman for the Southwest Region.

Even if American pilots don’t land in Mexico, they must clear U.S. Customs when they return to the U.S., he said.

Herwig said that if a person files an international flight plan and is observed returning to American airspace, the FAA can then inform intercepting fighter jets that the pilot has clearance to fly from Mexico to the United States.

Capt. Gabe Johnson, a public affairs officer with the 162nd Fighter Wing (Air National Guard) at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, whose F-16s are deployed on WADS missions from an alert detachment stationed at Tucson International Airport, commented that “private pilots would do well to know what airspace is restricted.

“Sometimes (F-16s) are scrambled for people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they didn’t talk to the right people,” Johnson said.

Because he flies the border “all the time,” Spencer said U.S. radar operators know his tail number, and he maintains communication with those authorities.

“If they think I’ve done something wrong, call me up,” he said.

Spencer said not only did the F-16s and ground crews not attempt to radio him, but the interceptor jet fighters should have approached him from behind, below and on his starboard side and attempted to make visual contact. “They did none of that,” Spencer said.

He said there was a similar, though less traumatic, incident some time ago when he took a CNN crew up over Roger Barnett’s ranch near Douglas.

Dowling said she was not able to respond immediately regarding how the fighter jets applied the Air Force’s rules of engagement in this particular incident.

Francis McWilliams, a private pilot in Sierra Vista with 4,000 flight hours, said, “I’ve heard of people being buzzed before. It does not surprise me. They’ve either been buzzed accidentally or on purpose.”

McWilliams also has a friend whose airplane was struck by an AK-47 bullet while it flew along the border from Sierra Vista to Nogales, Ariz.

Consulting his charts, McWilliams also said it appears Spencer was intercepted in or near what is known as a Military Operation Area, which are special-use airspaces typically placed in rural areas to protect civilians from noise, debris and accidents. If an MOA is “hot” with activities such as military aircraft performing exercises, you don’t fly through them, McWilliams said.

As an experienced pilot with more than 6,300 hours of flying time, Spencer should be familiar with MOAs. He has been flying through that area for many months with no incident.

He also has been highly critical of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for “not doing its job.”

F-16 stats

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a compact, multi-role, maneuverable fighter aircraft. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the F-16 has been a major component of the combat forces committed to the war on terrorism, flying thousands of sorties in support of operations Noble Eagle (Homeland Defense), Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom. There are a total of 1,280 F-16s in the U.S. arsenal, at a cost of $18.8 million each.

Contractor: Lockheed Martin Corp.

Power plant: Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-200/220/229 or General Electric F110-GE-100/129

Dimensions: Wingspan, 32 feet, 8 inches; length, 49 feet, 5 inches; height, 16 feet; weight, 19,700 pounds without fuel

Speed: 1,500 mph

Range: More than 2,002 miles

Armament: One M-61A1 20mm multibarrel cannon with 500 rounds; up to six air-to-air missiles, conventional air-to-air and air-to-surface munitions and electronic countermeasure pods.

— http://www.af.mil

Herald/Review City Editor Ted Morris can be reached at 515-4614 or e-mail cityeditor@svherald.com. Senior reporter Bill Hess contributed to this report.