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CNN Talkback Live

U.S.-China Agreement: What Does 'Sorry' Mean?

Aired April 11, 2001 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan said that China has decided to release the 24 crew members of the U.S. spy plane.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're obviously delighted that the air crew is going to be going home.

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BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Who blinked?

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GEORGE WALKER BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know the American people join me in expressing sorrow for the loss of life of the Chinese pilot.

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CHEN CHI, HAINAN ISLAND, FOREIGN AFFAIRS OFFICE: He said on behalf of the U.S. government that they were very sorry for the Chinese people and the family of pilot Wang Wei, and they were very sorry for the U.S. plane entering China's air space.

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JAMES LILLEY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA: Very, very, very, very sorry. And I noticed that "sincere regret" was put in there, and this must have given them a blush of pleasure.

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BATTISTA: But is it an apology?

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But it's not, I think, an apology.

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BATTISTA: And China may want more.

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CHEN: The Chinese government and people demand that the U.S. side provide convincing explanations to the Chinese people. Stop sending aircraft to the vicinity of the Chinese coast.

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YAWEI LIU, THE CARTER CENTER: China is going to be viewed as more aggressive.

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DOUGLAS PAAL, ASIA PACIFIC POLICY CENTER: There's no question now this incident has thickened skin, left scar tissue, left people irritated.

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BATTISTA: The deal to save face. Did it work, did it go far enough? And what about all those loose ends?

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. Well, President Bush says he's sorry. Secretary of State Powell says he's sorry, but what are they sorry for exactly? Before we break down the diplomatic dance, let's talk with CNN national security correspondent David Ensor.

And David, events have literally been happening by the hour. What is the latest?

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, the latest is that the U.S. is waiting for its crew members to be allowed to leave, expects them to be allowed to leave in the next 24 hours. And as you know, there's a plane on the way to get them. People here don't expect there to be any problem with that, and they're looking forward to seeing those people out.

Now, of course, the next question is the plane. And there appears to be an understanding, if you read the letter closely, that the Chinese will return the plane. Whether there'll be any pieces missing is another question. But there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. There will be this meeting next Monday.

But the main thing is that crew members are going to be allowed out. That's the point the U.S. is stressing.

ENSOR: David, let's take a closer look at the letter, a letter they're now referring to as the-two-very-"sorrys" letter. This was the letter was sent to the Chinese government, and it says -- we're just picking out parts of it, but, "Both President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have expressed their sincere regret over your missing pilot and aircraft. Please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss. We are very sorry that the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance, but are very pleased the crew landed safely. We appreciate China's efforts to see to the well being of our crew."

Is this an apology or not?

ENSOR: No. The United States says it is not an apology. They say that saying you're very sorry that something happened doesn't mean you're accepting any blame for it. They say there's nothing in the letter that in any way acknowledges fault on the part of the United States. They are sorry, they say, and have said so repeatedly that a pilot appears to have lost his life and a plane is gone. And they're also sorry that the U.S. plane was obliged to land in China without having gotten verbal approval by the Chinese. You know, read between the lines, though, and the U.S. is in effect saying, "You didn't answer." There were many mayday calls from that plane. The Chinese did not respond affirmatively, but after a while, a plane that has no way to do anything else that is coming down basically has to land. And that's what it did, and that was within international regulations.

BATTISTA: David, you mentioned a few moments ago that there is a plane on its way from Guam to Hainan Island to hopefully pick up the crew. Do we have anymore details at this time about how and when that will take place?

ENSOR: Well, it's really up to the Chinese how quickly this goes. There may be some formalities to be gone through, but officials in this building don't think that the Chinese want to hold this up any longer. There may be, you know, passports to be issued, stamps, formalities. But they think the Chinese at this point will be just as eager as the Americans are to get this part of the chapter over with.

BATTISTA: And one loose end that you also referred to a few moments ago, the fat of that EP-3. That, you mentioned, will be discussed at that meeting next week on the 18th. What exactly will that meeting entail?

ENSOR: Well, we don't know whose meeting and where yet, but it'll be high level Chinese and American officials across the table, and they'll discuss, first, who was to blame for this accident. Whether they ever come to a conclusion is another guess, anyone's guess.

Second, what would they recommend together to try to avoid future accidents like this. And the U.S. will probably propose that Chinese planes stay a little further away in the future from American surveillance craft. And then thirdly, they will discuss the return of the aircraft. Now I understand from Senator Graham, who's the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee that he's been briefed and told that the plane will be returned forthwith right after that meeting happens. So he understands that the deal is done on the plane, but of course, U.S. officials here and around town are saying they're not quite sure whether there may be some parts of the plane that might have been removed before we get it back.

BATTISTA: All right, David Ensor, thank you again for joining us today. We appreciate it.

And with us now here in Atlanta is Betty Liu, Southeast correspondent and Atlanta bureau chief for the "Financial Times." Before her Atlanta assignment, she was bureau chief in Taipei, Taiwan.

Betty, good to see you.

BETTY LIU, "FINANCIAL TIMES": Thank you.

BATTISTA: Seems like so much of this resolution was dependent upon semantics and intent and translation. Did China get the apology that it wanted, or was it simply time to end this thing because there was so much at stake?

LIU: Well, I think for the Chinese, I think to an extent, they feel like they've gotten, if not a full apology, at least some sort of a diplomatic victory. I think they feel that at least -- they were never looking for a full apology. To some extent, they were looking for an acknowledgement of responsibility. And to that end, they feel that the U.S. at least acknowledged that they were responsible for not notifying China's authority that they were landing on their property. And so to that extent, I think that the Chinese feel that they've won something, that they've come out on top in the situation.

BATTISTA: How would you characterize the wording in this letter that they call the-two-very-"sorrys" letter? I mean, after all, as I understand it, there's a dozen ways to say "I am sorry" in Chinese. And for example, was this letter sent in English? Was it sent in Chinese or translated? What do you think?

LIU: Well, actually, that's interesting you say that because I actually called the State Department myself and said, you know, was this letter sent to the Chinese in English or was it sent in Chinese? And they said it was sent in English because this is America and our language of operation is English. And so I think that that sends a bit of a signal to China that, you know, while the Americans do feel sorry about this situation, that at the same time, they don't want to be bullied either. And I think the language is quite -- the degree of I guess sorry or the degree of apology is probably -- was a lot more than we saw a few days ago when Secretary of State Colin Powell simply said, "I regret the situation."

BATTISTA: Does it suggest to you an acceptance of blame in any way, shape or form or culpability from the Chinese point of view? LIU: I think that there's a sense of recognition that the U.S. might have been too arrogant in the beginning. Their view was that the U.S. were callous and arrogant about the situation right from the start. And their sense of victory that they've been able to sway the Americans from a position of arrogance to one of sadness and regret.

BATTISTA: As I understand it, this very letter, this text, this wording had been on the table for several days. What do you think changed in the last 24 hours?

LIU: A lot of things. And we'll probably not find out any of these things until months later. I would say probably there was some negotiations behind the scenes that we might not know about for a few months. Perhaps we'll find out about it later: reduction of arms sales to Taiwan, perhaps more support for China's bid to WTO. Perhaps behind the scenes we're going to see later the U.S. more supportive of China's bid for the Olympics. So there might have been other concessions made that we don't -- that we're not hearing about right now. And the only -- sort of the only topic that the two sides are talking about right now is the plane, how to get the plane back and reconnaissance missions.

BATTISTA: In your estimation, Betty, how do you think that this has altered the Chinese perspective on the United States? Now that they've had to go head-to-head with the United States and the new Bush administration, has it altered their perspective at all, do you think?

LIU: I think to some degree, Bush came -- when Bush was present and he sort of came on with sort of a swagger kind of tone towards China saying that, "You are no longer our strategic partner. You're our strategic competitor," and he promised and vowed that he would take a hard line against China or take a tougher line. And I think that this certain -- the situation has certainly changed the tone considerably for future negotiations between the two countries. And I think that the Chinese what they were saying wanted to use the situation would say, "Look, you can say you want to take a tougher line but are you really willing to do that?"

BATTISTA: I've got to take a quick break here. When we come back, we'll get a debate going on whether or not the president did the right thing. We'll also talk first with former defense secretary William Cohen, so stay with us. We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Welcome back. Joining us now is former defense secretary William Cohen.

Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for sharing time with us.

WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Pleasure to be here.

BATTISTA: If I may first get your reaction to the resolution of this crisis. COHEN: Well, I think it's a very positive resolution. To have allowed this controversy to have solidified by going on longer and longer I think would have resulted in damaging relations between the United States and China and relations that need to be put in good repair if at all possible. And I think this is a very positive step with getting our men and women back home safely and then to proceed to see how we can construct a positive relationship with China itself.

BATTISTA: What information do you have or what can you tell us about what possibly may have gone on up there, what events precipitated this situation?

COHEN: Well, that's one of the reasons why it was so important not to pre-judge this case. For the Chinese to insist upon a formal apology before all the facts were known was simply unacceptable. When you force someone to say you apologize, you have to say that you are at fault. It's very unclear exactly what happened. And the probabilities are that the high-flying supersonic aircraft cutting in and out of the airspace of this slow flying reconnaissance aircraft was proceeding along in all probability caused the accident, but we don't know that. And that's one of the reasons why it's important to have this exchange of information and then find out what the facts are. Sort of the old expression, "Just the facts, ma'am," and then we can proceed from that point. And so I think this is a very positive development to say that we regret the loss of life. Indeed we do. We are sorry that a life has been lost. We regret if they didn't have adequate information that one of our aircraft is going to land on Chinese territory. All of that I think is quite acceptable. To go beyond that would have been unacceptable.

BATTISTA: One of the questions that we had: Is there some sort of tenet under international law where if a plane is in distress, that a country, whether they're hostile or not, is obligated to let that plane land?

COHEN: Well, my understanding is that when you have a situation such as this, particularly an unarmed aircraft even though it's classified as being a military aircraft, it's an unarmed aircraft. And when it's in a period of peril or distress with a mayday call, there's usually an acceptability on the part of a foreign country to allow that aircraft to land as opposed to forcing it into the ocean and killing all people aboard. So I believe the international norm would be to allow such an aircraft to land under those circumstances.

BATTISTA: Is the United States going to get that EP-3 plane back? And do we need to get it back?

COHEN: Well, we should get it back. What condition it will come back to us in now remains much in doubt. I don't know what has occurred. I don't know what information aboard that aircraft was eliminated prior to its landing on Chinese territory. We'll have to await interviewing with the crew members when they return to American territory.

BATTISTA: What do you think should happen at that meeting next week on the 18th? And do you think there should be some discussion, if you will, about rules or rules of the road shall we say about air surveillance?

COHEN: Well, there should be discussions about rules of the road. While I was secretary of defense, we in fact negotiated and signed a document establishing a military maritime consultative commission as such to help work on rules of the road for ship crossing certainly because of the increased activity in the South China Sea, air traffic that's bound to increase, to make sure that we try to avoid these kinds of accidents becoming incidents, and to have a forum whereby any complaints or controversy can be discussed in a very factual formal setting so it doesn't become a real political incident which both sides then climb the rhetorical scale and then jeopardize the relationships that we have. So there is a mechanism already, and I would hope that we would find a way to utilize that.

BATTISTA: The Chinese, of course, would like these surveillance missions to stop. Is there any doubt in your mind that they will continue?

COHEN: Oh, I think they should continue. The fact is it's a normal routine reconnaissance flight. It benefits not only the United States but many of our allies in the region. It's important for us to know as much as we can about what activity is taking place that might pose a threat to any of our friends or to ourselves. So I think it's important that they continue.

BATTISTA: The arms deal that is on the table to Taiwan, do you believe that that will go through as is? Do you believe it might be altered in some way or was it negotiated in some way? And if it was, will that appear that the United States caved in, shall we say?

COHEN: Well, I don't have any information that any negotiations took place dealing with arms sales to Taiwan. The secretary of state indicated that this should be a separate matter, and indeed it should. Each request coming from Taiwan for its defensive needs ought to be evaluated on its own merits. And depending upon the nature of the threat that is posed by increased military build-up on the part of China certainly will have an impact on the nature of the request that the Taiwanese make to the United States and the reaction of the Defense Department, the State Department the entire national security team in terms of its recommendation, and of course, congressional reaction.

But I think that the best way to really diffuse this issue would be for the Chinese to reduce the build-up that they've had or pull some of those missiles on the southern tier of their country that are pointing toward Taiwan to pull them back and ease the tensions. And I think that would in fact have a positive reaction in Taiwan so there'd be less requests for defensive equipment. So there's a way to resolve this, but I don't think the two should be mixed; this is a separate issue. ought to be judged on its own merits.

BATTISTA: Former defense secretary William Cohen, we appreciate your time and your insight into this. Thank you very much.

COHEN: Thank you, Bobbie. BATTISTA: And joining us now is Bob Dornan, a former congressman from California. He's spent eight years on the Intelligence Committee and flew reconnaissance missions for the U.S. military. He's currently a nationally syndicated radio talk show host now out of Washington.

Bob, good to see.

BOB DORNAN, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Good to see you.

BATTISTA: Also with us, radio talk show host Victoria Jones from WMAL in Washington.

VICTORIA JONES, WMAL RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Hi.

BATTISTA: Victoria, good to see you.

JONES: Good to see you.

BATTISTA: Bob, let me start with you, Bob. Did you have any problems with the way this was handled or resolved?

DORNAN: Well, it sounds like nitpicking, but I would have taken out the word "very." "Sorry" stands alone, it's strong enough. And to say "very" -- and on your screens on the earlier reports, it had two "verys" separated by a comma. That seemed excessive. But today was just the right timing for the administration, because I have it in my feet newspaper headlines that started to use on the front page the word "hostages" today. I started a day ago. My friend, Chairman Henry Hyde, Saturday. Magazines that went to print last week started saying "hostages." This was not a moment too soon. And the men will be back for -- at least by holy Saturday. What a difference a year makes. Little, wonderful Elian Gonzalez snatched from his relatives a year ago in the dark of night holy Saturday morning. This will be a very happy Saturday morning.

But was anybody sold out? I pray not. I don't think George Bush would do what John F. Kennedy did and make secret deals about Taiwan. But just playing out in the theater is "13 Days" that teaches us that the Kennedy brothers gave Castro assurance he would never be invaded -- assassinations weren't included -- and that we would take our missiles out of not only Turkey, but our IRBM Jupiters out of Italy. So there was a lot of sneaky kept from the American people negotiating in the so-called glorious end to the Cuban missile crisis. I pray there were no secret deals on this.

BATTISTA: Victoria, do you have a problem with "very sorry," or do you see this as more of a compromise and a way for both sides to save face?

JONES: Well, I'm going to stay focused on what's happening now. I'm not going back to Elian and I'm certainly not going back to Cuba. I think there's no problem with "very sorry." Look, we are very sorry that this happened. We are very sorry that our plane crashed. We are very sorry this guy died. We are very sorry that these crew members have been held. And we are very sorry that everybody has been put through this. We would like this to be over. "Very sorry" is fine. They can spin it in China however they like and they will, and they would whatever we said. We know what it means and sensible leaders around the world know perfectly well what it means.

BATTISTA: Let me get Betty in here quickly, because I know she has to go, about this spinning and again the semantics.

LIU: Well, there's certainly a degree of spinning on this. I think that in my opinion -- I think from opinion of a lot of people, that "very sorry, sorry," there's probably not a whole lot of difference in that. What it is is it's the main thing to focus on that's basically one step short of a full apology that the U.S. refused to do and still refuses to and stood its ground.

BATTISTA: All right, I've got to take a quick break here. And we'll continue in a moment. As we do, some e-mails that have come in. Julio in Miami says, "The public is gullible. The letter was composed by both sides so that both sides could save face." Gary in Memphis say, "When we are in the middle of the road like this in our foreign policy, we're only setting ourselves up to get run over."

Betty Liu, thank you very much for joining us today.

LIU: Thank you.

BATTISTA: Appreciate you being with us.

And we will take a break here and continue in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: Kmart received thousands of calls and e-mails from customers urging the store to stop stocking so many items from China. The company warned Chinese diplomats that it would seek new suppliers unless the crew was released promptly. One-fifth of all Chinese exports go to the United States and one percent of China's gross domestic product comes from its sales to Wal-Mart.

BATTISTA: All right, we're back. Let's get a little audience reaction.

Andrew, you've been monitoring the chat room. What's the sentiment in there?

ANDREW: The general consensus is that there was no actual apology. With respect to the verys, the very versus just sorry, a nonissue. The fact that we were sorry about losing a pilot is tragic, we should be sorry. The fact that we were sorry about invading Chinese airspace, we should have been allowed to land.

BATTISTA: Jake's on the phone from Massachusetts. He disagrees.

Jake, you think that we got sold out?

CALLER: Yeah, I do. Basically, I think we shouldn't be surprised with this kind of behavior with China. One example is just look at Tibet and the treatment of their own minorities. That's one issue. The second is the upcoming votes with the weaponry to Taiwan, that's another issue. I mean, four years ago, they lobbed missile over one end of Taiwan. We should not be surprised that they got what they wanted. We've been kowtowing to them for about the last 10 years.

BATTISTA: Bob, Victoria, what -- let me ask you, Bob, what do you think was going on behind the scenes here? What sort of deal making might have been in the works?

DORNAN: Well, first of all, this administration is really more adult and mature the last 8 years of horror. They do look at China as a competitor. Now the Chinese ambassador sent a letter to all 535 congressmen and senators begging them not to use this as a rationale to oppose China getting the Olympics. I've been against China getting the Olympics in 2008 because of their human rights abuses. They've got two dozen Americans in prison. They beat to death and torture to death Falun Gong, an exercise cult in China.

I was educated in high school by Jesuit priests who had their colleagues murdered and tortured to death. Bishops have rotted in jail, Protestant and Catholic for 25, 30 years. This is the regime that has murdered in cold blood more human beings than Hitler and Mussolini put together, and more than, say, all of Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh and all of the Asian dictators put together. This is the regime that only 12 years ago this summer, chewed up with their tanks 3,000 murdered students, and Clinton walked on the red blood carpet on Tiananmen Square, where that massacre had taken place, reviewing the troops, all of them over 6 feet tall, who had been the very murderers under this very administration of students who built our Statue Of Liberty, and were seeking democracy.

We've got to have our guard up at a minimum. They are a competitor, certainly not what the corrupt Clinton people called a strategic partner.

JONES: They certainly are a competitor, but one of the things we have to bear in mind here is that money speaks, and money speaks for this administration. This wasn't about human rights, if this was about human rights then we would -- and I agree with Bob -- they shouldn't get the Olympics in 2008 and they shouldn't get into the WTO until they do something about their human rights, but they will get into the WTO probably, and we will support them in that because we want to continue to do business there, and they want our business, and this president is the president of big corporations and that's what this is all about, and that's one of the reasons why it worked out. We didn't want to lose money, neither did they.

DORNAN: I have no disagreement with that.

JONES: And this is really sick and corrupt on both sides. This has nothing to do with human rights. That little five-year-old boy who was held for 30 days in so-called "kindergarten" without his mother, who was going to be on trial for espionage, that's a human rights violation. We are not objecting to that, but we are objecting to 24 adults being held. Why don't we object to a five-year-old being held? We're pretty selective about this kind of thing.

DORNAN: Bobbie, in this moment of terrific agreement, I was with that little boy, Andrew Xue, last night. I had his father on my show, talkradionetwork.com, for a half hour this morning. That father has not met with any person in the State Department.

Dick Cheney lives right down the street, in the vice presidential mansion, from American University, where Gao Zhan, the wife who's being held captive, was a research professor at American University. The airplane, I think, is important. It is our property, but I would insert this woman who was accused with espionage after our airplane was forced down. So the Chinese have hit her with horrible spy charges which is a false lie, to try and use a bargaining chip against holding our crew. So we've got a lot of human rights work ahead of us.

JONES: And we have completely ignored her. I mean, we don't care, really, what happens. Now we might start caring now, because now it is being brought out and we need to look good, but the bottom line is that we really don't care very much. She's not a U.S. citizen yet. And so maybe she will have to stay there.

The administration, in this case, postured too loudly too fast as did theirs, and we both boxed ourselves into corners. And it is extraordinary, to me, that two countries, ours with, supposedly, the world's leader, and theirs with a 5,000-year-old culture, weren't able to come together with diplomatic words for eleven days.

And there's another aspect to this besides the culture clash. There's a male-female clash on this. Women have largely no problem with saying, "We are sorry, we are very sorry, let's get over it, let's move on." There was heck of a lot of testosterone going on here, saying, "We will not apologize." Why? Did they think that something was going to be cut off if they did?

BATTISTA: You are opening a real can of worms now.

(CROSSTALK)

DORNAN: Women are suppressed in China more that anywhere in the world. We've got to...

BATTISTA: She is right about that though. I've got to take a quick break here. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on the phone in Oklahoma, hang on. We will be back in just a second.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: "Each time an EP-3 flies the crew rehearses destroying classified material. High power magnets can be used to erase computer material. Sensitive documents can be shredded and placed in special containers and blown up with grenades. The crew can also use hatchets and hammers to smash equipment or throw it out over the water in weighted bags."

E-mails here to TALKBACK LIVE from Gary, "Don't you just love diplomatic speak. U.S.A. stands for Unlimited Semantics Available.

Charissa (ph) -- and a view from outside the country -- Charissa in Toronto, Ontario says, "Had Bush not been belligerent and bullying in his immediate comments after the plane landed in China without permission, the U.S.A. would not have to say sorry now."

Kimmer (ph) on the phone from Oklahoma has been hanging. Go ahead, Kimmer.

CALLER: Hi, Bobbie.

BATTISTA: Hi.

CALLER: First of all, I'm sorry that anybody got killed. Second of all, I think the people of the United States need to send a message to the Chinese that we don't need our people held for 11 days, and how we can hurt you is to stop buying their products until at least the end of year. This way, it wouldn't be our government doing anything to them, it would actually the people sending a message that we don't think our people should be held.

BATTISTA: How likely do you think that it to happen though?

CALLER: Well, I think the people of United States have gotten behind each other many of times -- a lot of times. The Oklahoma City bombing, it wouldn't take much, and just for us to, you know, do it half a year would hurt them and hit them in the pocket. That's where they need to be hit.

BATTISTA: Bob, are you encouraging listeners to do that kind of thing.

DORNAN: Yes, I have been doing that, and even though I'm Irish and I know where the word "boycott" came from -- Captain Boycott -- it's just, it's not very effective, but I will tell you, I'm an eternal optimist about learning process. They claim that the Chinese citizens, with a controlled media, are learning that we have reconnaissance surveillance flights, and thank you "Washington Post" today for dropping the word spy. It's not a spy plane. It's a legal reconnaissance surveillance aircraft, and soon as they can, China will have them off our coast as Russia does frequently.

What I'm glad to see is the education process in the United States. This has really brought up the awareness level of the danger to Taiwan, the $100 billion of trade with this country -- Disney, Kmart, Wal-Mart -- all of our Christmases are 90 percent Chinese products, and in a country that uses slave labor, harvests the organs of prisoners that shouldn't even get a jail sentence, lot alone capital punishment.

BATTISTA: Not to mention those Army berets.

DORNAN: Forced abortion, forced sterilization.

Everybody is learning about this -- this grip that China is getting on our economy. BATTISTA: Well, they could start with those Army berets, I suppose.

DORNAN: Cancel that. Absolutely.

BATTISTA: Let me go to -- you know what? Let me go to -- let me go to Mike quickly in the audience, because you're former military, right, Mike?

MIKE: Current.

BATTISTA: Current. OK, go.

MIKE: I think that obviously -- my comment is kind of simple. The first sorry I think is very appropriate. There's loss of life and everybody is -- everybody regrets that, it came to that at all. But I don't see what we did wrong to have the second sorry, where we apologize for landing in their airspace on their land, because I mean, the plane was going to go down. And it just seems common sense to let them land and prevent further loss of life. I don't understand what the second sorry was for.

JONES: Well, we're not actually saying sorry for landing. We're just saying that we're sorry we didn't have verbal clearance. But hey, our plane was in trouble and we had to go down.

If you read that paragraph, it's a very carefully worded sorry. We're really not saying sorry at all in that paragraph.

DORNAN: Yes, because guess what? We did ask permission. We sent out a legal international mayday. I've done that twice ejecting from aircraft.

We said mayday. They deliberately remained silent. And now communist-controlled papers out of Hong Kong are saying that maybe two other fighters scrambled and that three of them escorted our airplane in under force. I hope not. But they wouldn't respond on an open channel and say, you're crippled, OK, come on in.

And I'll tell you something about that pilot. I'm sorry for the widow, Mrs. Ruan. I'm sorry for their little 5-year-old boy, and I'm sorry he didn't get in his life raft. But I'm not sorry he went down instead of our P-3, because 24 American men and women came within a few inches of him killing them all. If he were a few inches higher, he'd have ground up those propellers and he wouldn't have bailed out. But our airplane would have spun into a space shuttle-type death, hitting the water.

JONES: And that would be real crisis.

BATTISTA: You know what: Let me -- let me read you something, because I found this fascinating today. This was a letter to the editor in "The Atlanta Constitution" that was written by a gentleman who served in the Air Force for a number of years. And this is a really unusual opinion, Bob. You're former military, so I'd be interested. He wants to know where the outrage is "over the so-called 'military personnel' who have landed supersensitive technology on enemy soil to save their own skins."

He said, "The old-school U.S. Navy would have made a runway over a hole in the South China Sea about 5,000-feet deep and put her down. Some will be dead, but they understood that death is the capital province of the defense and protection of the U.S. Constitution." And he goes -- he goes on...

JONES: You know, I want to jump...

(CROSSTALK)

Oh, OK, I want to jump on that, too.

DORNAN: Go ahead. Let me answer first, because I've struggled with this in my own mind all week long and took a lot of military calls on both sides on talk radio network. Here's -- here's what I think is the fair evaluation.

JONES: That's two plugs you got in, Bob. You're doing well.

DORNAN: You bet.

JONES: You're doing well.

DORNAN: You bet, because it's in 40 states and this is great...

JONES: You keep going at it, Bob.

DORNAN: ... the way people discuss this.

JONES: They'll charge you.

DORNAN: Right. The pilot will be key. Now I hope the Pentagon doesn't suppress him when he gets back, that after he's fully briefed with intel people, that he's able to tell how close they all thought they were to dying.

Now, it's easy to say, but we've got a hardware-software problem, that once all the software was pick-axed, magnet-burned, destroyed, he's looking at hardware that American corporations, because of money -- Victoria will agree with me -- have sold more sensitive stuff to China for their space program, miniaturization of their nuclear warheads, than the old hardware on the airplane.

If all the software was destroyed in the 20 minutes when they're fighting for their lives with damaged elevators, no air speed, vibrating engines...

JONES: There's another piece, Bobbie, that I'd like to tell you about when we continue. There is another piece.

BATTISTA: Hold that thought.

JONES: I will.

BATTISTA: Hold that thought, and you'll get free rein when we come back.

The EP-3 is a signal intelligence gatherer. It collects electronic emissions from radar, airport control, weather devices, military commands, and other sources. It has a range of almost 2,400 nautical miles and can go just over 400 miles per hour. The plane is worth $36 million and costs a little over $2,000 per hour to operate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Victoria, go ahead. The microphone is yours.

JONES: Yeah, the other piece to the letter that you were just reading is -- and I've had a lot of military calls, too, saying that they should have ditched the plane, and if they were going do die, they should have sacrificed themselves for their country, which is all very fine and large, and maybe they should have.

But the reality of how we view our military today in the U.S. is we will not accept any loss of life. We wouldn't put our troops on the ground in Kosovo. We flew above and we let the Europeans go on the ground, because we could not stomach the idea of anybody dying. And we seem to have decided that the military is as career option in which death is not an option, and of course, it's an option.

And so until we get back to that, we're going to continue to have bizarre situations.

Now, I think the crew made the right -- the pilot made the right decision in landing. I see no point in them all dying with the plane. And then there's another piece also: We are learning an awful lot about China. But why the heck should we have to be learning about China and Taiwan? Why don't we already know?

And there's two reasons for that. One, because our schools stink, and secondly...

DORNAN: Amen.

JONES: ... because the news, with the exception of CNN, does not give us any overseas news because they think it's unimportant until we get a crisis. And so, of course, we're ignorant.

This is pathetic. We're in a very small world. We need to know.

DORNAN: Right. I agree with all of that, but one more important point that I think is key: What were their orders? Orders are orders. This is peacetime, not wartime. This is normal peacetime surveillance. What were their orders?

And if the crew had tried to ditch at sea -- and get this -- according to all the reports and what the Navy tells me, no P-3, the old Lockheed Electra, reworked in the military anti-sub warfare, no P- 3 has ever ditched with that big radome. And with no nose cone, was it certain death? And were they ordered to do that? Or did they have orders that if you destroyed all the software, the hardware is old enough, you can go ahead and save your crew.

I think we've got a real hero pilot here with his co-pilot displaying unbelievable airmanship to get that crippled airplane on the ground.

BATTISTA: Rob in the audience, go ahead. You've got a comment.

ROB: Yeah. First of all, I'm not at all surprised that Bob Dornan has used this as just another excuse to blast Bill Clinton, he being so partisan. The other thing that I find...

DORNAN: Why? It's his leaking of technology to China that has got in this spot.

JONES: Oh, come on. You know -- you know full well, Bob, that it was during the Clinton administration that the complaint was made to the Chinese...

BATTISTA: Look what you started, Rob.

JONES: ... about the close flying of these flights.

DORNAN: Sure, sure.

JONES: So let's be fair.

DORNAN: But Clinton...

JONES: Oh, come on.

DORNAN: Clinton, the triple draft-dodger...

JONES: Nixon opened China.

DORNAN: ... went to Tiananmen Square, Victoria.

JONES: And Bush...

(CROSSTALK)

BATTISTA: Let's leave this for another show. How about that?

DORNAN: He walked on the bloody stone of Tiananmen Square.

(CROSSTALK)

BATTISTA: Rob -- you know what? You know what? Rob didn't get to finish his comment, but go ahead, Rob.

DORNAN: Go ahead, Rob. Tell me -- tell me more about the pervert rapist. Tell me about it.

ROB: Case closed. You could see the -- the partisanship right there. JONES: Oh, yeah. And tell us -- and tell us more about the...

ROB: Anyway, I appreciate the spirited discussion, but I just want to also say that I find it very distressing that, you know, the relationship -- the relations between the United States and China can be distilled down to the syntax on a single letter when I would hope that there were, you know, there were diplomatic channels going on.

BATTISTA: I've got to take a quick break.

JONES: I think there were diplomatic channels going on. I'm glad that there are some grownups around.

DORNAN: And no secret deals, we hope.

BATTISTA: We'll be back in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Let me do this e-mail that I just got here a moments ago from Bill, who is a Chinese student I believe.

Yeah, he says: "I am a Chinese student here in the United States. I am happy to see the apology and your crew members coming back home safely. Due to our painful history that is filled with foreign invasions, we are sensitive to such spying made by foreign countries. Before we know exactly what had happened, your people have been shouting about boycotts, going against Olympics hosting. I as well as other Chinese people understand you're worried for the crew members and we all wish no one of us would get hurt. However, they are now going home, but where is our pilot? American people are human beings, then how about us? I don't understand why many of you think Chinese people are evil. We love peaceful and beautiful life as well as people all around the world. The fact that we are a communist country doesn't mean we are a bad people."

And that was from...

JONES: I think that that's absolutely true, Bobbie. I think that's absolutely true. People are people everywhere around the world. It's the leadership that we have problems with.

DORNAN: Yeah. I was plucked out of the Pacific once by a helicopter. I hope he's rescued. But he killed himself if he's not rescued.

JONES: He's already dead.

DORNAN: And now let that thoughtful person write a letter about the human rights violations.

China executes more people than all the other nations in the world put together.

JONES: We already heard that from you, Bob. Here's one of the problems, is that the China -- China has a state-controlled media so they only know a certain amount of this. We know this and they don't. And they have to stop this and we have to speak up.

DORNAN: Good!

BATTISTA: All right, Victoria Jones, Bob Dornan, thank you both very much for being with us.

DORNAN: Speak up.

BATTISTA: We've got to go. We are out of time, and we'll see you again tomorrow at 3:00 for more TALKBACK LIVE.

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