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U.S. plane banked before impact©Washington Post © St. Petersburg Times, published April 5, 2001 BEIJING -- 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 American aircraft banked to the left, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. The new details of Sunday's accident, the Post said, 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. The newspaper based its report on Western sources whom it did not name who were briefed by U.S. officials. 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 American 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. According to the Post, citing a U.S. defense official, Chinese planes began flying extremely close to American surveillance planes late last fall, prompting the United States to raise the issue with Beijing in December. Chinese pilots have been coming as close as 50 feet to American planes, one American official said, although the distance between the planes before Sunday's collision was not known. After 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 Post reported, the American crew began destroying sensitive software and data in the technology-laden aircraft. When the plane landed at Lingshui air base on Hainan, armed Chinese guards surrounded it and boarded it, escorting the Americans out at gunpoint, the Post reported, citing a Western source. A day after the crash, 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 Post reported, adding that Chinese soldiers later were seen by U.S. intelligence satellites removing equipment from the plane. U.S. officials have told allies they are fairly confident that the most sensitive data was destroyed during the 26 minutes between the accident and an emergency landing on Hainan, the Post cites one Western source as saying. Nonetheless, that source, after a briefing by American officials, described the arrival on Chinese soil of the EP-3 as a huge windfall for China's military intelligence. The Washington Post, citing Western officials, said China is not interrogating the Americans but has separated the pilot from the rest of the crew. The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhu Bangzao, did not rule out charging the pilot with crimes.
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