Transcript
Jets, Lies and Videotape
April 21, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Since the collision of the US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet early this month, talks between the two nations over who is wrong have come to nothing. This week the battle for hearts and minds was waged with video. The Pentagon lodged the first salvo. A video of an encounter three months ago between US and Chinese aircraft near the China coast.
MAN: How far are we?
MAN: 1 zero 1's right there [...?...]-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN: Oh! Whoa!! [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MAN: He's going right in front of us! [...?...] same altitude - all right! Whoa, we got thumped!
MAN: Felt that one.
WOMAN: We got thumped.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The latest Time Magazine called the video "chilling." The Chinese jet was "hotdogging" and "harassing" the American aircraft observes Time, "flying on the very edge of controllability." The Pentagon said it was the same jet, maybe even the same pilot who vanished over the Chinese sea in the recent collision. Last week on NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert showed the film to one of the US crewmen recently returned from China. TIM RUSSERT: But that's the same exact aircraft that harassed y-- in va-- ultimately rammed into you, correct? LIEUTENANT HONECK: I don't think it's the same aircraft, and I'm not sure whether the same person was flying it. That's not information that I have.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Lieutenant Honeck was off the script. He said he didn't think it was the same plane. Rick MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, says the media should exercise the same caution as Lieutenant Honeck. After all, he says, this Bush administration includes many of the same officials who marshalled the media during Desert Storm. During the Gulf War, when the American public became concerned by pictures of scud missiles fired by Iraq into Israel, General Norman Schwarzkopf showed a reassuring video of scud-launchers blown up by American precision bombs. Later it turned out they were not scud launchers. They were--?
RICK MacARTHUR: Trucks. Nothing more than trucks. That was strictly public relations, and when I think about that, I'm reminded that what we're dealing with here in the new Bush administration is top-shelf public relations talent. You're not talking about amateurs here. These people know how to change the subject. If the subject is scuds hitting Israel and people are hysterical -- we'll blow up some mobile scud launchers. If the issue is American or perceived American recklessness towards China by spying on them in the first place, then the Chinese pilot becomes reckless and here's the video to back it up.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Never under-estimate the power of video says MacArthur.
RICK MacARTHUR:You can't contradict pictures! That proves it! Case closed! And a--an alarming number of newspaper reporters, television reporters and then the American public will walk away from it saying yeah! Well the Chinese have been doing this for months! They're reckless! And that becomes a kind of a, a mantra -- a public relations mantra.
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN: I think they've done a brilliant job in steering the issue to why one plane collided with another plane.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Edward Jay Epstein is author of Deception: The Invisible War between the KGB and the CIA, and News from Nowhere.
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN: They treat it as if there's an auto accident on the New Jersey Turnpike, and who - what -which driver was at fault as opposed to the issue which they're trying to evade, and that is the issue of what this plane's mission was and what kind of information it gathers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:This week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took pains to tell the media that the Navy's EP3 Aries II now held by the Chinese is a surveillance plane, not a spy plane. But the distinction appears to be academic. Edward Jay Epstein.
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN: The primary mission of the EP3 Aries is electronic warfare! That's what it was built for -- to gather together signals intelligence, keep a library of it. In terms of how it builds its library. The library is all the radar frequencies and microwave frequencies that can be used against our planes or ships.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so when this plane is flying around, what exactly is it trying to do?
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN: It's trying to provoke and light up the radar of a potential enemy.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: He says the Pentagon video has diverted the news media to a safer area of inquiry.
EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN:You've made the question a question of who caused the traffic accident as opposed to the other question of are such accidents inevitable if you're flying on a mission whose purpose it is to evoke radar responses and, and defense responses.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And there's another question we should be asking, says Rick MacArthur, is American technical competence really as infallible as the Pentagon tells us it is?
RICK MacARTHUR: All of our bombs hit their targets. We don't use dumb bombs. We only use smart bombs. Other countries are reckless. Other pilots are reckless. Our pilots don't make mistakes. That's a manipulation of public opinion that is a real subversion of the democratic process and to the extent that the media go along with it and report it straight, without much skepticism, is, is bad for the country!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:MacArthur says the press and the public should be on their guard. After all, the 1997 movie Wag the Dog does suggest that in some areas, at least, American technical prowess is genuinely unimpeachable--: ROBERT DeNIRO'S CHARACTER: You watched the Gulf War. What do you see day after day? The one smart bomb falling down a chimney. The truth? I was in the building when we shot that shot. We shot it in a studio Falls Church, Virginia one-tenth scale model of a building.
MAN: Is that true? ROBERT DeNIRO'S CHARACTER: How do we know? You take my point?
MAN: Yes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The collision off the China coast may have unfolded precisely as the Pentagon says, but how do we know? This week a dissenting view of the event came, not surprisingly, from China. It released a video intended to demonstrate that pilots of American spy planes are reckless, and it offered an animated re-enactment of this month's accident to show America at fault. The Pentagon dismissed the Chinese video as unconvincing and the animation as a cartoon. But just to be on the safe side, it promptly released one of its own with much higher production values including convincing little clouds apparently unavailable to the Chinese.