'We seem to be conducting something we cannot control very well . . . If planes were flying 20 to 50 miles from our shores, we would be very likely to shoot them down if they came in closer, whether through error or not.'
THE ABOVE QUOTE was made in a secret White House meeting reviewing the apparent shooting down of an American spy plane by Chinese fighters over the East China Sea that killed all 16 crewmen. United States President Dwight Eisenhower was the speaker. The year was 1956.
Mr Eisenhower's comment surfaced in a commentary this week by James Bamford, an expert on America's ultra-secret National Security Agency, the electronic-surveillance institution at the heart of the US intelligence establishment. Mr Bamford questioned the need for 'frequent, provocative, costly and often redundant' patrols, such the EP-3E flight that collided with a Chinese F-8 jet fighter off Hainan Island last Sunday, in an age of powerful land-based listening posts and satellites.
'The purpose of intelligence is to reduce tensions and the possibilities of war, not raise them,' Mr Bamford wrote.
His article was one of the few in America questioning the basis of the US actions at the heart of an accident that has thrown fresh doubts on the wider Sino-US relationship as the new Republican administration of President George W. Bush settles into power.
Instead, conventional opinion across the US, from academics and analysts, the media and administration officials, has focused largely on China - its expanding but poorly trained military; its bullying use of American crewmen as bargaining chips; its shrill demands for an apology.