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CNN Live At Daybreak

U.S. EP-3 Spy Plane Returns Home

Aired July 05, 2001 - 08:01   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: We turn to the Navy's EP-3E spy plane. The one grounded in China for three months is back home. The $80 million plane was flown in the belly of a Russian cargo plane from Hawaii, a refueling stop on the trip from China to Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia.

CNN national correspondent Martin Savidge is at the base in Marietta, Georgia, where the cargo plane touched down -- Marty.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol.

The wayward mission and protracted mission of the EP-3 has now finally come to an end, the last chapter being written as we speak.

In the background, you see the large An-124. That is a Russian cargo plane. And inside the hold of that aircraft -- the nose of the aircraft already opened up -- is the fuselage of the EP-3, the one that had the collision with the Chinese fighter back on April 1 of this year. The Chinese fighter went down. The pilot of that aircraft was lost.

The 24 crew members of the U.S. Navy plane, though, landed safely, thanks to the heroics, many people say, of the plane's pilot on Hainan Island. And that touched off a very sensitive issue between the Chinese government and the U.S. government. The crew was detained for several days, eventually were released. So then the aircraft had to be negotiated.

And the agreement that was reached there finally was that it would not be allowed to be flown off the island, but instead packed up, put into boxes, crated up, cut up, and loaded on board the Russian transport plane and flown here to this air reserve base just north of Atlanta where the reconstruction project will begin.

Now, CNN has learned that before any of the repair work begins, over the next several says, members of the NSA -- the National Security Agency -- will be going over all of that aircraft, not trying to figure out what was returned, but trying to determine what may had been left behind in China, specifically sensitive information that might have been gleaned by the Chinese government by and from that surveillance aircraft in the form of data.

The aircraft has not had power restored to it. And only when the power is restored will they review the computer systems to know what the Chinese may have learned, if anything at all. The repair progress is expected to go on for several months at a cost of several million dollars -- Carol.

LIN: All right, thank you very much, Martin Savidge, at Dobbins Air Reserve Base.

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