World

Powell Silent On China Spy Allegations

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 19, 2002 / 9:41 AM EST / CBS

The discovery of spying devices embedded in Chinese President Jiang Zemin's U.S.-made jetliner has not derailed President Bush's planned trip to China next month, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

Powell, asked to comment on reports that some 27 listening devices were discovered last autumn on the Boeing 767, said he has not had discussions with Chinese counterparts and declined further comment on the "so-called matter."

"We simply don't comment on these sorts of matters. In my discussions with Chinese leaders, this has never been raised," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."

"So we're looking forward to that trip, and I don't expect anything to derail that trip," he said, referring to next month's planned summit between Bush and Jiang in Beijing.

The Washington Post Saturday reported that listening devices, apparently embedded while the plane was being refitted in the United States, were found in the presidential bathroom and the headboard of the presidential bed, among other places.

China Offers Olive Branch

In a gesture to improve relations with Washington, China has released Tibetan music scholar Ngawang Choephel who had taught in the United States and was serving an 18-year prison term on spying charges, a human rights activist said Monday.

Choephel, 34, was freed Sunday on medical parole and put aboard a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit, said John Kamm, head of the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation.

Choephel is a former Fulbright scholar who taught at Middlebury College in Vermont. He disappeared in 1995 after returning to his native Tibet to videotape traditional music and dance. China announced more than a year later that he had been sentenced to 18 years in prison on spying charges.

The Washington Post report said Chinese officials blamed U.S. intelligence agencies for the bugs. It said the incident would be raised during U.S. President George W. Bush's Feb. 21 summit with Jiang in Beijing.

Separately, London's Financial Times reported the tiny, satellite-operated devices were detected by Chinese officials after the plane emitted a strange static whine during test flights in China in September, shortly after it was delivered.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" program, said he had no knowledge of spying devices on the Chinese plane.

Asked if he hought the controversy would cause problems for U.S.-China relations, Rumsfeld replied: "I doubt it. We have two big countries and lots of interests in common and I suspect that life goes on."

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said he had no information on the incident, but said it was "foolish" if intelligence agents indeed embedded permanent listening devices on the airplane.

"We run into trouble when we do that and it seems to me that it is not wise for us to do that unless they are an enemy, now that's different. Then you take certain risks you might otherwise (not) take," he said on CBS's Face the Nation.

But U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican, took a more calculated view of the apparently foiled spy attempt, advocating a "cost-benefit analysis on all of these things."

"We've got to do some kind of aggressive things, and, frankly, our intelligence community I think has not suffered from being overly aggressive the last several years, just the contrary," he said.