Everybody spies on each other. The secret is not to get caught.The secret is not to get caught.
When Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in 1960, Nikita Khrushchev got two years' worth of anti-American rhetoric out of it before Powers was swapped for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1962.
More recently, a red-faced FBI was caught digging a spy tunnel beneath the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. That, and the arrest of veteran FBI agent Robert Hannsen on suspicion of spying for Russia, led to the largest tit-for-tat expulsion of spies since the Cold War.
Agents on the ground are becoming less important, however, as technology advances. Much of our intelligence is now gathered through spy satellites and electronic eavesdropping, both by Navy ships and EP-3 aircraft. The latter are huge propeller-driven planes about the size of a Boeing 737 carrying the most sophisticated cryptological, radar and communications equipment.
Russia logged about 1,000 spy flights by the United States and other NATO countries last year. A defense ministry official quoted by the Interfax news agency said Russian radar tracked up to 60 reconnaissance flights a week in the Far East region where Moscow has its biggest military bases.
In the old Soviet days, fighter jets would routinely scramble to intercept such flights, once shooting down a South Korean jumbo jet in the belief that it was spying. Now they don't bother.
Not so the Chinese, who routinely challenge U.S. planes and ships monitoring the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. The Pentagon says such challenges have become more aggressive lately, making a collision almost inevitable.
That's what happened last weekend when an EP-3 collided with an F-8 fighter, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the crippled American plane to make an emergency landing on China's Hainan island. The 24 crew members are said to be unhurt, but the Bush administration is scrambling to prevent the Chinese from keeping the plane or even getting a good look at its top-secret innards.
That may be hard to do. China is on a military modernization drive, eager to acquire American technology by hook or by crook, and possession is nine-tenths of the law. The Chinese know we're not about to go to war over one spy plane, and they're not about to be intimidated by the presence of three U.S. destroyers hovering off Hainan.
In the words of Adm. Dennis Blair, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, "We physically cannot prevent the Chinese from boarding the plane. What protects it is the concept of sovereign immunity."
That means Washington considers the plane sovereign U.S. territory, similar to an embassy. The Chinese may not see it that way, just as the Soviets gave Gary Powers' U-2 a thorough going-over 41 years ago.
As it is, Sino-American relations have soured since Bush took office.
China does not like being labeled a "strategic competitor" of the United States, viewing it as an American policy of containment. It has reacted angrily to renewed U.S. attacks on its human-rights record, particularly its treatment of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and the detention of U.S.-based Chinese academics accused of spying.
Beijing's top priority, however, is to prevent Taiwan from acquiring four American destroyers equipped with the Navy's most advanced anti-missile radar system. President Clinton turned down Taiwan's request for the destroyers last year but Bush, due to decide on the sale later this month, is under strong domestic pressure to grant it.
A Navy study says Taiwan needs the destroyers to counter a growing number of Chinese missiles, now about 300, pointed at the island from the mainland. Members of Congress have gathered more than 80 signatures on a letter to Bush urging his approval.
Just last week, Chinese President Jiang Zemin warned that this "would be very detrimental to China-U.S. relations. The more weapons you sell, the more we will prepare ourselves in terms of our national defense."
Administration officials counter that China's behavior will determine what weapons we sell to Taiwan. If Beijing reduces its missile threat, that would be taken into account. And speedy return of the EP-3 would undoubtedly help.
Holger Jensen is international editor of the Rocky Mountain News. E-mail to hjens@aol.com .)