WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anti-Castro lawmakers are accusing the Air Force of being derelict in its duty by not scrambling U.S. interceptors against Cuban MiGs that shot down two planes piloted by Cuban-Americans over the Florida Straits.
The Congress members complained of military stonewalling and threatened Wednesday to subpoena top administration officials if necessary to explain the Air Force's failure to prevent the attack that killed four people aboard the planes.
``What does it take to bring a proper reaction from the U.S. Air Force to Cuban MiGs heading for the Florida Coast?'' asked Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. ``We have a potentially serious breach of U.S. security which must be explained.''
``At the very least it was a dereliction of duty,'' Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., added at a Capitol news conference.
Burton said his House International Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere plans a full investigation, quizzing U.S. military and customs officials with knowledge of the incident, including even the Defense and Treasury secretaries.
``If there is any hesitation whatsoever we will issue up to 50 subpoenas,'' he said. ``We want to put everybody under oath, because we have been lied to, misled and stonewalled by everybody including the Air Force,'' Burton said.
The subcommittee already investigated events leading to the deaths of the two pilots and two other men with them last February. Cuba contends the planes were shot down over Cuban territorial waters. The United States maintains the flyers, representing the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, were shot down in international airspace.
The downed aircraft were among three flown by Brothers pilots on a Feb. 24 mission looking for Cubans fleeing their island nation by boat. Burton and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said lawmakers learned that a Cuban MiG came within minutes of the Florida coast when pursuing the surviving plane ``not because of military cooperation'' but from a U.S. Customs officer's testimony.
Defense officials disputed the testimony and statements of the surviving pilot, Jose Basulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue.
A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Joe March, told the subcommittee last month that Cuban MiGs were considerably farther from U.S. territory than Basulto's estimate of 32 miles from the Florida keys.
Alerted to the approaching MiGs, U.S. fighters at Homestead Air Force Base, Fla., were on the runway with engines running when the MiGs turned back, March said. That was ``entirely consistent'' with established procedure, March said.
Burton said he plans ``four, five or six hearings in October'' -- before the Nov. 5 presidential election -- and perhaps more in November. President Clinton hopes to become the first Democratic presidential candidate since Georgian Jimmy Carter in 1976 to carry Florida with its strong anti-Castro Cuban-Americans strong voting bloc.
Clinton's popularity rose among Cuban-Americans after he signed into law a bill coauthored by Burton that authorizes banning from the United States executives of foreign firms that invest in enterprises seized by President Fidel Castro's communist government. The law also allows exiles to sue in American courts for damages against such companies.