April 1, 2001, the Hainan Island incident occurred when a mid-air collision between a United States Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft and a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) J-8II interceptor fighter jet resulted in an international dispute between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China.
The EP-3 was operating about 70 miles (110 km) from the PRC island province of Hainan, and about 100 miles (160 km) from the Chinese military installation in the Paracel Islands, when it was intercepted by two J-8 fighters. A collision between the EP-3 and one of the J-8s caused the death of a PRC pilot, and the EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan. The 24 crew members were detained and interrogated by the Chinese authorities until a statement was delivered by United States government regarding the incident. The exact phrasing of this document was intentionally ambiguous and allowed both countries to save face while defusing a potentially volatile situation between militarily strong regional states.
Source: NSA.gov
Station HYPO 
1 April 2023 at 18:29
Communications from the White House on matters of such urgency have evolved since this pre 9/11 incident.
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1 April 2023 at 21:17
More details in an extract published in Business Insider:
Bamford, James: “Mistakes by the US’s top spies allowed China to turn a deadly mid-air collision into an intelligence coup”
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-ep3-spy-plane-collision-mistakes-chinese-intel-coup-2023-3
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2 April 2023 at 12:41
One of the reasons I have so much respect for career military people is that there are times where our government places our service members in dangerous situations. And, keeping in mind the story about USS LIBERTY I read immediately before reading this article, our Government does not always appear to stand behind our service members. (I’m not talking about Pearl Harbor with this, I’m talking about matters such as the attack on LIBERTY and the Red Chinese forcing down the EP-3E Aries II aircraft.)
If nothing else, I suspect the Red Chinese—no apology for calling them this—did their best to get every aspect of intelligence they could out of the equipment they found on that aircraft.
I’m no admirer of the Red Chinese Government. I’ll admit this here and forever.
Andy McKane
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2 April 2023 at 18:52
Consider the reality of the Department of State overruling the Department of Defense in public statements on the USS Liberty ‘incident’. The record of this is on record by a free press. Everyone knows the truth. It happened with knowledge aforethought.
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