----------------------------Original message----------------------------
  Excerpted from The New York Times
  Wednesday, February 18, 1998
  Pp A1, A6
 
  How Wayward U.S. Pilot Killed 20 on Ski Lift
  By John Tagliabue with Matthew L. Wald
 
  "...the pilot of the EA-6B Prowler did not have Italian
  military charts provided to his commanders that marked
  the ski lift, which is also clearly noted on road maps.
 
  Instead the Pentagon, whose policy is not to use maps
  made by foreign countries, had given the crew an American
  military chart that did not show the ski-lift cable,
  which was built 31 years ago from Cavalese, on the valley
  floor, south to the top of Mount Cermis.
 
  .....
 
  The Marines will not explain why the Italian charts with
  the ski lift it were not used. American military flights
  generally use American maps, mostly because Pentagon
  officials trust American map-makers more than the
  agencies that draw local maps. Italian officials say that
  they give Italian charts to NATO officials but that they
  are poorly distributed.
 
  Defense Department officials in Washington said that at
  least two American military maps of the region do not
  include the ski lift because its towers are too low. The
  tallest towers on the lift rise only 65 feet, and
  obstacles need not be shown unless they reach
  approximately 100 feet, said Mark E. Shultz, associate
  director for geospatial imagery at the National Imagery and
  Mapping Agency. The maps cover towers, not cables, he
  said, despite the fact that the cables at Cavalese are
  more than 100 feet above the ground.
 
  "Without putting surveyors on the ground to look at
  features like that, we would have no way of knowing what
  the height was," he said.
 
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