More news tonight for tomorrow...Chinese Jet Flew Below U.S. Plane Before Impact
washingtonpost.com
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 5, 2001; Page A01
BEIJING, April 4 -- The midair collision that touched off a crisis between China and the United States occurred after a Chinese F-8 interceptor started to fly directly below a U.S. surveillance plane and the U.S. aircraft executed a banking maneuver off to the left, Western sources said today.
The new details of Sunday's accident, provided by sources briefed by U.S. officials, did not make clear who was to blame. But they seemed to explain the rationale behind Chinese assertions that the American plane moved "suddenly" and thereby triggered the accident, causing the Chinese fighter to crash with the apparent loss of its pilot.
Chinese leaders, blaming the accident on the United States, have demanded that the Bush administration apologize and accept responsibility, something Washington has refused to do.
Although it was known that the U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane was being shadowed by two Chinese F-8s, neither Chinese nor U.S. officials have publicly revealed the U.S. plane's turn to the left or the Chinese jet's position -- just under the EP-3 and very close to it -- before the maneuver began.
A U.S. defense official said Chinese planes began flying extremely close to U.S. surveillance planes late last fall, prompting the United States to raise the issue with the Chinese in December. Chinese pilots have been coming as close as 50 feet to U.S. planes, one American official said, although the distance between the planes before Sunday's collision was not known.
Following the collision, which occurred in international airspace 70 nautical miles southeast of Hainan Island, the American plane plummeted 8,000 feet before the pilot succeeded in righting it. At that point, the Western sources said, the U.S. crew began destroying sensitive software and data in the technology-laden aircraft.
The pilot came into Lingshui air base on Hainan extremely fast, without slowing the plane by extending its wing flaps, a Pentagon official said. Because there was an unknown amount of damage to the underside of the aircraft, he was concerned that his controls might be damaged, and that the flaps on one side might work but the other side would be frozen, the official said. "It was an incredible landing," the official said.
After the plane stopped, armed Chinese guards surrounded it and boarded it, escorting the Americans out at gunpoint, a Western source said. A day after the crash, the sources said, the People's Liberation Army dispatched a cargo plane loaded with men and technical equipment from Beijing to the base. The men and equipment were sent to study the aircraft, the sources said, adding that Chinese soldiers later were seen by U.S. intelligence satellites removing equipment from the plane.
U.S. officials have told allies they "were fairly confident that the most sensitive data was destroyed" during the 26 minutes between the accident and an emergency landing on Hainan, one source said. Nonetheless, that Western source, after a briefing by American officials, described the arrival on Chinese soil of the EP-3 as a "fantastic windfall" for China's military intelligence.
"Given the Chinese ability to reverse-engineer these types of things, the intelligence loss is pretty serious," he said.
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a Naval intelligence reservist who was briefed by Pentagon officials on the situation, said in Washington that there has been a "considerable" loss of intelligence.
"We don't know how much they got rid of" before the plane landed, he said. "A lot of stuff is bolted, so it takes a while to get rid of it."
Kirk, who flew on a similar Air Force reconnaissance plane during the Kosovo air campaign, said the EP-3 lacks any defensive capabilities. "Its sole ability is the big American insignia on the outside of the fuselage," he said.
The new details emerged here as China ratcheted up its verbal attacks and threats against the United States in the aftermath of the accident, which has left the EP-3's 24 crew members stranded on Hainan in Chinese custody. China allowed U.S. diplomats to meet with the group on Tuesday but today refused a request for a second meeting.
The diplomats had stocked up on deodorant, shaving kits and underwear in hopes of being allowed to give the items to the crew members. The U.S. defense attache, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, led a mission through the palm-lined streets of Haikou, capital of Hainan province, to a downtown shopping mall to buy the provisions.
Western sources said China is not interrogating the Americans, but it has separated the pilot from the rest of the crew. In a briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao did not rule out charging the pilot with crimes. The Web site operated by the People's Daily, the Communist Party organ, hosted a legal scholar, Zhou Jianhai, who opined that China was within its rights to confiscate the plane and charge the pilot.
"No one thinks they will actually do this," said one Western diplomat, "but they are being very deliberate here in laying out their options."
After several days of restrained reporting on the issue, China's state-run media adopted a more shrill tone. The nightly news, normally 30 minutes, was extended to 50 minutes to make way for numerous reports on the crash. State-run TV showed, for the first time, a photograph of the missing pilot, Wang Wei.
"The wild card incident will be how China deals with the body of the pilot if they ever find him," a Western diplomat said. "This has the potential to ratchet up the temperature."
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report. |
