I have to say, from what I've read of past communist atrocities, I'd hardly call not enough sleep justification for the title on this article. It's interesting to note that it also confirms that all the sensitive equipment was NOT destroyed.

Spy plane crew was tortured by China, says pilot By David Wastell in Washington and Damien McElroy in Beijing

THE pilot of the American spyplane that crash-landed in China revealed yesterday that he and his crew were subjected to sleep deprivation and other torture methods. Lt Shane Osborn: 'I'm here to tell you we did it right. No apology is necessary on our part'

Speaking publicly for the first time about the collision that forced down his EP-3 spyplane, Lt Shane Osborn gave a dramatic account of their 11-day ordeal and told of how he thought they were going to die. "My first thought was this guy has just killed us," he said as he spoke of the mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter aircraft over the South China Sea. "I remember looking up and seeing water. I also saw another plane smoking toward the earth with flames coming out of it."

Lt Osborn also recounted how the aircrew's Chinese captors had used sleep deprivation techniques as part of the "unpleasant" interrogation process after they had landed. He said: "The only unpleasant part was the interrogations and the lack of sleep."

His first interrogation was for four-and-a-half hours, starting in the middle of the night. "I hadn't been to bed in about 30 hours at that point. From then on, it was lack of sleep, different wake-up calls at all times. I had to try to steal some sleep when I could."

Speaking at a press conference at a naval base in Hawaii before being flown, with his 23 colleagues, to be reunited with family members at their home base in Washington state, Lt Osborn confirmed much of the account of the collision already provided by the Pentagon.

He said: "I'm here to tell you we did it right. No apology is necessary on our part." However, Pentagon officials admitted yesterday that the crew had failed to destroy all the secrets on board before being overrun by troops of the People's Liberation Army.

The crew completed only the "major portion" of its lengthy destruction checklist, according to Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary. This suggests that some sensitive intelligence material from the downed EP-3 may now be in Chinese hands. Mr Rumsfeld's disclosure, which came after extensive debriefing of the crew, has raised the stakes for President George W. Bush in the next stage of the diplomatic confrontation with China over the aircraft, the return of which is being urgently sought by Washington.

American intelligence officers now need to examine the secret equipment remaining on the aircraft to complete their assessment of the information lost to China, officials said. Beijing angrily rejected American accounts blaming a Chinese fighter pilot for the collision. Zhang Qiyue, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Washington had "ignored the facts and called black, white". She said: "Responsibility is completely on the American side." China called off the search for the missing pilot yesterday.

Mr Bush has instructed members of a Pentagon-led delegation visiting Beijing on Wednesday to take a tough line over the return of the plane and over America's demand that Chinese pilots keep a safer distance in future. Flights are expected to resume within the next few days.

Mr Bush is now under sharp pressure from conservative Republicans to show that the carefully couched "very sorry" letter last week does not mean that he can be pushed around by Beijing. Despite relief at the safe return of the aircrew and plaudits for Mr Bush's handling of the affair, some conservatives fear that Mr Bush may have sent the wrong signals to Beijing.

Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "One wonders what the world will conclude from his prudence. Some may conclude that he is patient and cool-tempered. Some may conclude that he can be rolled." In Beijing, there was equal uncertainty over the way in which the incident has been handled, with many interpreting the return of the aircrew as yet another occasion when the West exerted its muscle and China toed the line.

Yang Dazhou, a researcher at the United States Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said: "I don't think the letter that the Chinese government accepted is an apology. This is the sort of thing you say if you spill some water on someone's skirt. It cannot be an apology for an air crash that knocks a Chinese fighter out of the sky." For his part, President Bush now faces pressure from Congress, and from some within his administration, to approve the sale of a significant package of weapons to Taiwan, a decision that he is due to take by the end of next week.

-- meg davis (meg9999@al.com), April 15, 2001