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. 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. 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.