Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, said Monday that he is confident that the airplane's crew would have destroyed sensitive materials before landing. Navy officials estimated that it took the plane between 30 minutes and an hour to fly to Hainan after the collision. In one of its last communications from the plane, the crew told U.S. authorities the aircraft was being boarded by the Chinese, a senior U.S. official said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao today quoted President Jiang Zemin as saying the plane violated international law and intruded into Chinese airspace by making an emergency landing without permission on Hainan. The responsibility fully lies with the American side.
China is the victim.
By seeing the equipment up close, military experts say, the Chinese could gain an unprecedented window on how the U.S. monitors enemy capabilities. The EP-3's 24 crewmembers would have had several options, including ditching the airplane at sea or opening the main cargo door to jettison as much gear as possible in weighted bags that would sink. The crew also might have used specially configured grenades, computer memory erasure devices or having someone wield an ax to shatter equipment. The Chinese would not be able to see what the airplane had collected, and would have a hard time understanding the capabilities of the plane if they could not turn the computers on.