China Gives Rumsfeld Secret Papers On Friend's Mystery Death

When communist Chinese jets shot down an American surveillance aircraft 50 years ago, the Beijing government did not care that the co-pilot was a close friend of a young US naval officer called Donald Rumsfeld.

But now China cares so much that when it sent its most senior military officer to the United States for a visit this week, Gen Guo Boxiong handed over previously classified papers on the incident to Defence Secretary Rumsfeld.

An American official said the documents had yet to be translated, but appeared to contain the Chinese air force account of the shooting down of an American Mercator electronic surveillance aircraft in international airspace off Taiwan in August 1956.

China has acknowledged that its MiGs shot down the plane, but has denied claims that it saved and then secretly held some survivors. The papers are thought to confirm the official Chinese account.

Only four bodies were ever found from the 16-man crew. Lt Deane's was not among them and there have been questions about what really happened that night.

Suspicions deepened in 1992 when a previously classified US intelligence report was discovered saying that two Americans, one of them matching the lieutenant's description, had been moved from a hospital to the house of a Chinese government official. The document's discovery fuelled a private campaign by Lt Deane's widow, Dr Beverly Deane Shaver, to discover what had happened to her husband of three months.

She travelled to China and was told that details of her husband's shooting down were considered "highly classified".

Mr Rumsfeld first raised the issue with China when he was chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, 32 years ago.

In response, Deng Xiaoping told Mr Ford that there was "no information" on what had happened to Lt Deane. Over the years, China repeatedly denied that the men had been taken alive.

Eventually, Mrs Shaver and Mr Rumsfeld went public. "I remember the sorrow of losing him," Mr Rumsfeld said at the time.

It is uncertain what effect Lt Deane's death had on Mr Rumsfeld's strategic thinking. The US has been extremely suspicious about China during Mr Rumsfeld's tenure.

He has questioned China's huge arms build-up and has initiated a substantial reinforcement of US forces in the Pacific.

There sure was a lot going on back then

Russia:

# A Yak-9 damaged and forced to land a USAF B-29 Aug. 29, 1945;

# A USAF B-26 was attacked and destroyed by an unnamed Soviet plane in April 1950;

# A USAF F-51 was attacked and shot down in April 1950;

# Four Soviet La-11s shot down a Navy PB4Y April 8, 1950;

# A USAF P-38 was shot down April 24, 1950;

# A USAF U-2 spy plane was shot down by an SA-2 SAM May 1, 1960;

# A USAF B-24 was shot down May 5, 1950;

# A USAF RB-29 was shot down by a MiG-15 Dec. 26, 1950;

# A Navy P2V Neptune was shot down Nov. 6, 1951 by an La-11 aircraft;

# A Navy PB4Y Catalina was shot down Feb. 16, 1952;

# A U.S. DC-3 electronics surveillance aircraft was shot down by a MiG-15 near Latvia July 13, 1952;

# A USAF RB-50 was shot down over the Sea of Japan by a MiG-15 July 29, 1953;

# A USAF RB-47 was shot down by a MiG-15 near Kamchatka April 18, 1956;

# A USAF RB-47 was shot down near Kamchatka (Armenia) by a MiG-17P July 27, 1958;

# A USAF C-130 Hercules was shot down near Yerevan Sept. 2, 1958;

# A USAF RB-47H was shot down over the Barents Sea July 1, 1960;

# Soviet aircraft forced to land a Boeing 707 of Seaboard World Airways on Iturul Island, Kurile Islands; it was carrying US troops and entertainers to Vietnam on June 30, 1968;

# A USAF U-8 was shot down over the USSR Oct. 21, 1970;

# A Soviet pilot flying an Su-15 shot down KAL Flight 007 near Sakahil Island Sept. 1, 1983.

China:

# A USAF B-29 was shot down at the mouth of the Yangtze River Sept. 20, 1952 [Korea War];

# A Navy F-4U was shot down at Qianlidao in Qingdao March 6, 1953 [Korean War];

# A Navy PBM-5A was shot down at Qianlidao in Qingdao Nov. 7, 1953;

# A USAF F-86 was shot down at Dagushan in Liaoning May 10, 1955;

# A Navy P4M-1Q Mercator was shot down 32 miles off the coast of China (Shengsi Island near Wenchow) on Aug. 22, 1956;

# One U.S. drone shot down at Weizhou Island in Guangxi Nov. 15, 1964;

# One U.S. drone shot down at Nanning in Guangxi Jan. 2, 1965;

# Shot down one U.S. drone at Wanning in Hainan Island, March 24; 1965;

# Other drones shot down March 31, 1965; April 3, 1965; April 18, 1965; Aug. 21, 1965;

# A USAF F-104C shot down at Haikou near Hainan Island Sept. 20, 1965;

# A USAF RA-3D shot down at Pingxiang in Guangxi Oct. 5, 1965;

# A Navy KA-3B was shot down over China;

# A USAF RA-3D shot down at Leizhou Peninsula April 12, 1966;

# A Navy F-4B was shot down at Dongxing in Guangxi April 14, 1967;

# A Navy F-4C was shot down at Hainan Island June 26, 1967;

# Two Navy A-6As were shot down at Ningming in Guangxi Aug. 21, 1967;

# A Navy A-1H was shot down at Wanning in Hainan Island Feb. 14, 1968.

In other incidents:

# A U.S. military helicopter was shot down over the Korean DMZ May 17, 1963;

# A U-2C lent to Taiwan by the U.S. was shot down over mainland China Nov. 1, 1963;

# A USAF T-39 was shot down over East Germany Jan. 24, 1964;

# A USAF RB-66 was shot down over East Germany March 10, 1964;

# On July 7, 1964, and Jan. 10, 1964, a pair of Taiwanese U-2Cs -- one each incident -- were shot down over China;

# On April 27, 1965, a USAF ERB-47H was damaged by North Korean MiG-17s. It made an emergency landing at Yokota AB, with two engines out;

# A USAF EC-121M was shot down over or near North Korea April 15, 1969;

# An Army OH-23 helicopter was shot down over the Korean DMZ Aug. 17, 1969;

# A USAF CH-47 was shot down over the Korean DMZ June 14, 1977;

# On April 24, 1992, Peruvian Su-22s attacked a USAF C-130.

Documentation shows that only one -- Air Force Maj. Gary Powers' U-2 -- was shot down while actually traversing a competitor nation on a spy mission. Most other recorded shoot-downs occurred in border areas or just inside border areas, at most.

http://www.nwamorningnews.com/pdfarchive/2006/MAY/07/5-7-06%20B003.pdf
MIA Pilot Rumsfeld’s Friend

WASHINGTON — In August 1956 a newlywed Navy pilot, Lt. James B. Deane Jr., was shot out of the sky on a nighttime spy flight off the coast of China. Nearly half a century later, a famous friend found himself in Beijing with a chance to quietly press Chinese leaders for more cooperation in resolving Deane’s fate.

The friend was Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary known for hardline views on communist China. He and Deane were fellow Navy fliers and became buddies while stationed together in Florida in 1954 and 1955.

Rumsfeld’s personal connection to the Deane case is a coincidence of history not publicly reported until now.

The chief focus of Rumsfeld’s visit to Beijing last October was his concern about China’s military buildup. Privately, he also made a point of urging Chinese officials to look further into the Deane episode. Like other efforts he made on behalf of Deane’s widow before becoming defense secretary, his urging yielded no new answers.

The Cold War case has been clouded in mystery and secrecy since the Martin P4M-1Q Mercator in which Deane and 15 other men were flying was shot down over the East China Sea shortly after midnight Aug. 23, 1956. Rumsfeld raised it while also seeking more Chinese openness on all cases of missing U.S. servicemen.

“I remember the good times with him and remember the sorrow of losing him,” he said of his friend in an interview with The Associated Press.

China has acknowledged that its jet fighters attacked the Mercator as it scooped up electronic intelligence on military radars and other sensitive Chinese systems. But China repeatedly has denied knowing Deane’s fate.

The remains of four crew members were recovered — two by the crew of a U.S. search vessel and two by China, which returned the bodies through British authorities in Shanghai. The other 12 were never found.

Adding to the mystery were unconfirmed U.S. intelligence reports, in the months after the plane was shot down, that Deane and perhaps one other may have survived the crash and been taken to a Chinese hospital.

A March 4, 1957, report by the 6004th Air Intelligence Service Squadron said two survivors of the Mercator attack had been moved in late November to the residence of a Chinese government official. Identifying information for one “appears to fit the description of Lieutenant (junior grade) James Brayton Deane, Jr.,” said the report, which was declassified in 1993.

The Rumsfeld-Deane link is the only known instance of a secretary of defense, whose official duties include overseeing U.S. government efforts to account for missing-in-action servicemen, having a personal link to an MIA involving China.

It is a coincidence that Rumsfeld has kept out of the public spotlight in deference to Deane’s widow,Dr. Beverly Deane Shaver, who until now had pursued the matter strictly in private.

Now Shaver is going public, eager to express her gratitude for Rumsfeld’s support and correct what she believes has been a false U.S. government characterization
of her first husband’s fate.

“He was declared missing, when I’m 99.9 percent certain he
was not. He was alive,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in suburban Phoenix.

“It almost makes a person’s life a lie, and that really bothered me.”

Deane was 24 years old.

A year after the plane was shot down, the Navy told Shaver that Deane was presumed dead, based on an absence of evidence that he was alive. Shaver, however,
now feels she has seen enough evidence — including declassified intelligence reports — to conclude that he likely survived the attack, if not a subsequent
detention.

She and Deane were married May 19, 1956, and were living
near Iwakuni Naval Air Station in Japan when her world suddenly collapsed. She recalls a Navy chaplain arriving at their home unannounced the morning of Aug. 23. And she recalls thinking then of the words her husband had often used to calm her fears for his safety.

“You don’t have to worry about me flying,” he would say.
“You only have to worry when you see a chaplain at the door.”

Over the years, Rumsfeld avoided speaking publicly in detail about Deane, although he mentioned his name in a speech
five years ago. That occasion was a ceremony
honoring the crew members of a Navy EP-3E Aries surveillance plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet in April 2001
near Hainan Island. Though that crew survived and was released from Chinese custody after being held for 11 days, the incident offered haunting parallels to the Deane case.

Both involved an electronic surveillance mission gone awry
and both touched Rumsfeld — the first in a deeply personal
way.

Deane’s link to Rumsfeld had its roots in Grand Rapids,
Mich., Deane’s hometown. A high school friend of Deane’s,
Jon Parrish, went on to Princeton, where he met and became
friends with Rumsfeld. Deane attended Cornell.

All three were enrolled in their universities’ Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps programs and after graduating in June 1954 they wound up together in Pensacola, Fla., where freshly minted officers take flight training.

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