"On April 14, 1994, on a clear morning over the northern Iraq No Fly Zone, two U. S. Air Force F-15 jets encountered two U. S. Army Black Hawk helicopters on a routine mission. Within ten minutes, the F-15s misidentified the helicopters and shot them down with fire-and-forget missiles. For three years, aircraft had patrolled these skies with a near-perfect safety record. Although the Black Hawk downing was one of the worst air-to-air friendly fire incidents involving U. S. aircraft in military history, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Air Force would officially conclude the pilots had made a reasonable mistake. ". "One victim was ebullient, twenty-five-year-old intelligence officer Laura Piper, in love with life and with being an Air Force lieutenant. A Chain of Events is the story of Laura's final flight, the Air Force's mishandling of the subsequent investigation, and the Piper family's battle with government bureaucracies for accountability. It is about duty, patriotism, a mother's devotion to a daughter's memory, and a family's disappointment in a beloved institution. "--BOOK JACKET.