Thursday, April 5, 2001

By Tim Collie, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The spy plane at the heart of a growing diplomatic crisis with China likely shed its most precious secrets long before it ever hit the ground.

But its political value as a high-tech trophy — carrying 24 Americans — may count for much more to an emerging Asian power like China, experts say.

If everything went according to plan, intelligence analysts say, the last 15 minutes of its flight was a well-honed routine of high- and low-tech destruction.

Hard drives were obliterated. Computer tapes were erased with magnetic devices. Hard copies were burned. Equipment was smashed beyond recognition.

"They train for this before every mission — it’s very ingrained what they’re supposed to do if they go down in hostile territory," said Tim Brown, an intelligence analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a Web site devoted to national intelligence issues.

"They work very fast and with the time they had, it’s hard to imagine the Chinese got very much," Brown said. "And keep in mind, nothing is put in that plane that cannot be destroyed," he added.

The emergency landing of the EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane shed some light on one of the most important components of U.S. security: signals intelligence. Known as SIGINT, it’s the worldwide electronic snooping conducted every day against friend and foe alike.

When it works like it’s supposed to, the electronic eavesdropping done by these types of planes can quietly test the defenses of a potential enemy, monitor global hotspots like Iraq, pick up the conversations of terrorists and even detect looming commercial threats from America’s competitors.

The work is done with satellites and equipment like the EP-3E, a floating electronic platform staffed by a flight crew and 16 electronic warfare specialists. The information they gather is processed through the National Security Agency, a highly secretive body that employs 35,000 people and is roughly twice the size of the CIA.

Using an array of devices in planes like the EP-3E, NSA technicians can listen to phone conversations anywhere in China as they happen. They can zero in on voice patterns, locate radar frequencies and crack computer-based codes. Chinese linguists on board the plane — individuals trained in everything from rural slang to Chinese military jargon — may have been monitoring Chinese military phone conversations as well as radar frequencies.

"Think of it as a way of filling in the blanks of the Chinese White Pages," said Brown. "You’re locating phones, recording conversations of military officers, political leaders, picking up gossip, looking for any patterns or new numbers."

Another task of these aircraft, one that dates back to the early years of the Cold War, is to probe Chinese air defenses to gauge their reaction times.

"You’re searching for old radars, looking for new ones through their frequencies," said Jeffrey Richelson, a researcher at the National Security Archive and author of a well-regarded textbook on U.S. intelligence capability. "You’re measuring how long they take to lock onto the craft, how long they take to scramble. All of this is important for coming up with electronic countermeasures."

The planes may go up with specific missions — targeting an official’s phone call, for example — as well as simply vacuuming up any signals throughout the region. The capability is considered crucial in key conflict zones: the Iraqi no-flight zone, the Indian-Pakistani border, and Colombia.

"If they didn’t destroy the gear — and that’s a big if — what the Chinese have is easily 10 years ahead of their technology," said Paul Beaver, a military analyst with Jane’s Information Group. "The integrated circuitry alone, even if they couldn’t read the recordings, would be quite valuable.

"They’d easily be able to determine what signals we’ve picked up, maybe what signals or frequencies we don’t know about," Beaver said. "They’d know if we know everything, or if they still have some secrets left."

And even if the plane is now the equivalent of a garage sale with its destroyed gear, the trophy value of having one of the few intact U.S. spy planes ever to fall into foreign hands is important.

China is mired in deep political divisions between the military and civilian elite, some analysts say. It’s fending off a grassroots religious movement known as the Falun Gong, and recently suffered the defection of a major military officer. The value of making Washington sweat could come in handy as one faction curries favor with another.

China is also facing a new, more conservative administration in Washington that contains some hardliners convinced that it must be contained. In recent years, several conservatives have written books and essays pointing to China as a new foe in a new Cold War.

"Yes, there is talk of a new Cold War, but there are important differences," said Steven Aftergood, an expert on U.S. intelligence at the Federation of American Scientists. "China isn’t trying to export revolution. It isn’t trying to export a way of life — Communism — to the Western Hemisphere.

"What China wants is to become an Asian regional power, and that’s why it may be taking a more aggressive attitude toward these spy flights," Aftergood said.

"From the American viewpoint, this is the way we’ve always done business in Asia. From the Chinese viewpoint, this is the arrogant attitude of a superpower bent on global hegemony."

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