AMY GOODMAN: On this somewhat humorous note, front page of The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon canceled an expected announcement that China would continue to make some of the black berets most Army troops are to begin wearing, this in light of what’s going on over the U.S. spy plane.

But just what is going on, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed regret over the disappearance of the Chinese pilot whose fighter jet collided with a U.S. Navy surveillance plane Sunday, and urged a dialogue about what caused the collision, but refused to apologize. U.S. officials are accusing China of examining the plane. Despite insisting they have no right to do so, China says it has every right to examine the plane, as it entered its airspace without permission. The Pentagon itself has often rejected similar appeals from other countries. For example, when a defecting Soviet pilot flew a fighter jet to Japan in 1976, American intelligence officials, despite Soviet protest, spent nine weeks taking it apart, before sending the plane back to Moscow in packing crates.

Well, we’re joined on the telephone right now by Dale Brown, who is a former Air Force captain. He flew a B-52 on spy missions. And he wrote yesterday a piece in the Los Angeles Times saying, “If tables were turned, we’d do the same.”

Can you talk about this, just what the U.S. is demanding of the Chinese, to return the crew and to return the plane unscathed?

DALE BROWN: Hi. Good morning. Absolutely. The —

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us.

DALE BROWN: Our main focus, obviously, is to get the crew back and to make sure they’re safe. The Chinese, of course, have a much different agenda. They want to keep the crew as long as possible. They have great propaganda value. They have great intelligence value. So they’re going to try to hang on to them as long as possible. The military has a much greater influence on foreign affairs in China than they do in the West. So we can expect this to be a long and very protracted situation right now. There’s been some rumors that the crew could be returned as early as tomorrow. I really don’t believe it. I think the Chinese haven’t used every avenue or exploited every possibility as far as the crew, so we can expect them to stay there for several weeks at least.

The aircraft is a different matter. The aircraft will probably never leave Hainan Island. I can’t imagine the Chinese allowing any Navy engineers or any Navy maintenance men back on the island to fix the aircraft and then fly it out. They will indeed go over that aircraft piece by piece. They’ll examine every piece of equipment, every manual, every tech order, every scrap of paper on that airplane for any intelligence value.

AMY GOODMAN: What if a super secret Chinese plane unexpectedly landed on Guam or Hawaii?

DALE BROWN: Well, we would do exactly what the Chinese are doing. Our major concern — if I was the base commander, my major concern is: What does this aircraft have on board? Is it really a spy plane? Or is it a terrorist? Is it a saboteur? So I would want — so I would isolate the aircraft, which is exactly what the Chinese have done. They’ve parked it all by itself on a parking ramp as far as possible away from the main part of the base, in case it does have some sort of a weapon on it. And I would take the crew off. I would isolate the crew, each in individual rooms, incommunicado from each other. I would even restrain them. I would place them under custody. And then I would go over the aircraft bit by bit to make sure that they’re [inaudible].

My next concern would be to the safety of the crew on board. As an American, as a Westerner, my first concern would be whether or not any member of the crew wants to defect. That could be the reason why the aircraft is there, because the flight crew decided to take the aircraft and defect to the United States. So I would isolate them, and I would interrogate each and every one of them very carefully, possibly even — not with an intelligence officer, but I would perhaps use a physician, a doctor, or a nurse, trained in intelligence procedures, to interrogate the crew and then find out whether or not anybody wants to defect.

If not, then I would leave them isolated, at least for a few days, and then slowly bring the crew back together again, but starting with matching up just perhaps two or three persons at a time, same age and same rank, so they can’t rebuild their internal chain of command, and there’s relatively less military discipline involved. And then, of course, whatever room I would have them in, I’d have them bugged, to listen in on any intelligence value, any intelligence things that they might be talking about together. Discipline eventually breaks down if you create the right situation to do it. And if you have a bunch of young men in the same room, they’ll eventually start talking, and you hope that they’ll talk about something that has intelligence value to it.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re saying you don’t want the older military men in with the younger ones, because they would educate the younger troops about how to behave in enemy custody.

DALE BROWN: At the very — yes, the very least, they would tell the younger guys to shut up. At the very most, they would educate them very, very carefully about how you deal with the enemy. And that includes dealing with any person that comes in the room, whether or not it’s a high-ranking officer or somebody cleaning up the food trays. They would educate them about their experiences, about dealing with the enemy, about dealing with intelligence officers, about reacting to pieces of paper put in front of them, of course, educating them on the basics — never sign anything, never agree to anything, never make any statements on a tape recorder. So they would reestablish military discipline very, very quickly.

And you want to avoid that. You want to control the situation as much as possible. You want to control the environment, not necessarily use — to use hardcore intelligence interrogation procedures. You certainly wouldn’t use drugs. You wouldn’t need to. But you could control their environment. You would start the questioning early in the morning, late at night, you know, different times during the day, try to disrupt their internal clocks, so they’re disorientated, at least mentally disorientated. They don’t know what time it is, tricks like that. You would perhaps try to get them to sign something, and then make them realize that they may have done something wrong, which demoralizes them, which makes them feel like, “Well, OK, I’ve done this already. So, what else can I do wrong?” You know, so that type of thing.

AMY GOODMAN: So, here you are, Dale Brown, a former Air Force captain. You flew a B-52 on spy missions. And you’re saying you wouldn’t do anything different than the Chinese are doing right now with the U.S. spy plane that went down, which, by the way, as you point out, this EP-3 spy plane now in Chinese hands is several generations more sophisticated than anything in China.

DALE BROWN: Right, absolutely. Now, the only difference between the way China will handle this and the way the West, the United States would handle this is in the disposition of the crew. I would — and the reason for that is that the government, the diplomats have much more influence in the West than they do in the East. The military controls almost every aspect of life in the East, in general, and especially in China. So, whatever the military says in this situation goes. If the military wants three months to examine the aircraft and to interrogate the crew, they’ll get it, more than likely. The West has very little influence about what happens in politics and in the military in the East. We can’t really influence what goes on in China. We have no leverage over there right now. So whatever the military wants, as far as this incident, they’ll get. And the military has great influence. And the civilian leadership in China pretty much follows the other military lead. So, that situation would be different than in the West.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Dale Brown, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Again, Dale Brown is a former Air Force captain, flew a B-52 on spy missions and is author of the forthcoming book, Warrior Class. Thanks for joining us. You are listening to Democracy Now! When we return, we’ll look at another of President Bush’s policies, saying that they will not follow the Kyoto Protocol, and we’ll look at what this means with people around the world. Stay with us.