Dave,
Bush losing military secrets to the Chinese. Good thing he didn't apologize right away, and get the crew and plane back immediately.
Crew Unable to Destroy All Secrets on China Plane
Photos
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The crew of the U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane that made an emergency landing in China had not been able to destroy as much of the secret materials on board as originally believed, and some of it could be exploited by Beijing, U.S. government sources said on Wednesday.
``It's pretty bad. They weren't able to get a lot of it,'' said a source knowledgeable about a secret damage assessment being conducted by the Pentagon (news - web sites) on how much classified material was destroyed. ``It's very serious,'' the government source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The crew of the EP-3 reconnaissance plane made an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island on April 1 after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet.
The incident strained diplomatic ties between the two countries as China held the 24-member American crew for 11 days before releasing them, and the United States refused China's request for an apology. The Chinese fighter jet crashed and its pilot was presumed dead.
But the badly damaged U.S. Navy (news - web sites) reconnaissance plane, which is full of sophisticated electronics, is still in Chinese custody.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, shortly after the crew was released, said they went through the check list for such situations and did everything possible in the time they had.
But the source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the crew did not have the ability to destroy everything in an expeditious manner so as ``to not subject it to compromise.''
In some cases the crew was not able to physically destroy the material, and in others what they tried to destroy was not destroyed to the extent that rendered it useless, the source said.
``What they attempted to destroy or get rid of was not destroyed to the extent that it was not exploitable,'' the government source said.
A senior U.S. Navy official, on condition of anonymity, said the situation was not necessarily worse than Pentagon officials believed at the very beginning.
``We knew that there would be computer disks and drives, even though smashed, that could be compromised by a determined investigator,'' the official told Reuters.
The Defense Department will know more when China returns the $80 million plane, the official said. The United States has said it wants the plane returned and is in talks with China to resolve the situation.
``They got through the check list. but we never intended to imply that there was no loss,'' the Navy official said.
Although the crew got through the check list they could not burn things or throw things out of the plane in ``that tumultuous time'' while the pilot was wrestling to get the aircraft to the ground, the official said.
``We knew from the outset that this was not going to be complete. We knew there were going to be compromises and that there was going to be a significant windfall for the Chinese,'' the U.S. Navy official said.
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