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Breaking News

EP-3 Crew Successfully Completed Destruction of Sensitive Material

Aired April 04, 2001 - 08:50   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, 10 minutes to the hour, this just in. We've got some brand new information breaking out of the Pentagon right now on what exactly that Navy spy plane crew was able to destroy on that plane before it had to make an emergency landing in China.

CNN's Patty Davis standing by with that. Patty, what did you learn?

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, a senior Pentagon official tells CNN, quote, "that the crew successfully executed its destruction plan." Now there are no details as to what the crew -- you know, what equipment exactly that the crew did destroy, but apparently did complete what it was supposed to do before it landed, and also perhaps on the ground before the Chinese actually boarded the plane and forced the crew off.

Now, the crew did have a plan that it was to execute. It had about 15 to 20 minutes as it came down after that midair bump to do all it had to do. You know, there are electronic ways you can destroy the equipment. You can also do it by axes, hammers, acid. There are various ways that they could have destroyed the equipment. The senior Pentagon official says that the crew did successfully execute the plan.

Now, there could still be valuable equipment on board this plan that the Chinese do have access to, but nowhere near as valuable as it could have been if the crew had not been able to do that plan and get rid of that equipment.

LIN: Patty, we were just looking at a picture of the spy plane on the Tarmac there in Hainan. There are parts missing. So, given the information that you just told us, how worried are they, if at all, about these missing parts, including the nose cone?

DAVIS: Well, there's certainly some sense of relief here knowing that the crew was able to destroy much of the valuable information, the very sensitive, sophisticated intelligence-gathering information, the equipment that the U.S. uses to collect data from China. So, pretty much a sense of relief here at the Pentagon over that.

But they still very much want this plane back, and they're going to be pushing for that in the days ahead, as well as the crew -- Carol.

LIN: All right, thank you very much. Patty Davis reporting live with some fresh information out of the Pentagon. It is still not determined whether those parts are missing because they were damaged or because the Chinese were, in fact, dismantling the plane and trying to get at more technology.

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