The Chinese are claiming that a Boeing 767 they use as a Presidential Plane (a la Air Force 1) turned out to be full of listening devices after it came back from the US, where it had been sent for maintenance.
Well, duh. I mean, if they didn’t find any, they’d probably blow the plane up or something, figuring that they didn’t find something even more super-secret.
I’m presuming that the spy plane that was returned to us some months back was probably similarly embedded with monitoring devices. And I presume we cleaned them out. And no comment was necessary.
Interestingly, US intelligence experts are suggesting that the ease of finding the devices indicates it was probably not US spy agencies. One suggestion is that the monitoring devices were actually put there by Chinese security, before the plane was sent to the US for refurbishment, to make sure the plane was not unduly tampered with.
Of course, all this sort of double- and triple-think is just what intelligence agencies on both sides (not to mention from still other countries) enjoy engaging in …
The suggestion that the plane was bugged “before the plane was sent to the US for refurbishment” is more than problematic.
This plane was brand new, built in Seattle by Boeing (under Chinese observation), then flown to Texas for an interiuor refit.
No “sending back”. No re-furbishment.
So are they suing the company for delivering an obviously unusable product? If it’s true, they should.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification. I obviously missed something in skimming through the articles.
Awww… those weren’t listening devices. Those were Furbies.
I believe that hiding Furbies on a plane to be sent to a foreign dignitary is forbidden by the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter, and most religious codes.