ABC NEWS WORLD NEWS NOW (2:00 AM ET) April 3, 2001, Tuesday
CHINA DETAINS TECHNOLOGY-FILLED US SPY PLANE AND CREW
LIZ CHO, co-anchor:
Chinese officials promised to let American diplomats meet with the crew of the US spy plane today, now in their third day of captivity. But the US officials are demanding the immediate return of the technology-filled plane and the crew. Details from ABC's national security correspondent John McWethy.
JOHN McWETHY reporting:
As for the 24 men and women who were on the American plane, US officials believe they are being held somewhere on this Chinese air base at Lingshui. Chinese sources say they're at a guest house. Based on the US pilot's final radio transmission, American officials now believe the flight crew was forced off their plane at gunpoint soon after landing. When their EP-3 Aries surveillance plane, similar to this, was bumped by a Chinese jet fighter, the American plane reported damage to a propeller, engine, and wing. The Chinese fighter apparently crashed into the ocean, the pilot lost.
Using American spy satellite images and some communications intercepts, officials say the Chinese appear to have been inside the US plane nonstop since Saturday.
Mr. TONY CORDESMAN (ABC News Military Analyst): Two days of crash effort certainly could give you a lot of information on how the aircraft is structured, something about its technology, time to make some preliminary probes into the hard drives.
McWETHY: But US sources say it appears the air crew did manage to disable, destroy, or erase the memories of at least some of the most sensitive equipment on the plane. That includes cryptographic code machines and computers that recorded information from the day's mission. But if the Chinese were to hold the EP-3 Aries longer and take it apart, it could be a bonanza.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (Director, GlobalSecurity.org): The United States has spent billions of dollars and decades perfecting the technology on the Aries, and there's simply no other country that could copy this capability unless they got one of ours.
McWETHY: This aircraft gathers electronic signals like an airborne vacuum cleaner that provides the US with crucial insights into what China's military is doing and where, how its radar, its missiles, aircraft, and ships could be jammed or destroyed in a war.
The US has designated a team to go in and repair that damaged American
aircraft. The team is ready to move quickly, all the Chinese have to say is
yes. John McWethy, ABC News, the
Pentagon.
Copyright 2001 ABC NEWS
