| Blackie Sherrod: Espionage more confusing than it used to be 04/12/2001 By Blackie Sherrod The problem is embarrassing to admit, but we of the Great Unwashed just don't comprehend modern spycraft. They keep changing the dang perimeters.
It was simple enough when Mata Hari, played by Greta Garbo, batted her eyes at the handsome Yank lieutenant, played by Ramon Navarro, until he revealed the number of troops in his regiment. We can understand that, especially when the mademoiselle let the sucker sip champagne out of her slipper, which, we were told, was the size of a bedpan.
Spying was much simpler, dating back to when Moses sent a dozen secret agents into Canaan to scout the Promised Land. After 40 days, they came back with reports of milk and honey and tough guys.
At any rate, the hoi polloi stayed fairly well up on espionage during the Great Hate, with the enemy intercepting and solving our coded wireless messages and vice versa. We could dig it.
Then, in the European war aftermath, when our cagey lads from Langley matched wits with the cagey folks from the KGB, we understood the drama. Remember, there was that trick umbrella with which a Russian assassin jabbed Georgi Markov as he waited for a London bus, injecting him with ricin, which, as any fool knows, is a poison made of castor oil seeds. Believe me, we knew something about castor oil.
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But when the spy stuff moved upstairs, it lost us commonfolk. Star Wars took over.
Forty years ago, when an American aviator, Francis Gary Powers, was shot down by the Russkies, he was flying something called a U2, which was way high taking pictures of whatever mischief the Soviets were up to. Dwight Eisenhower denied such doings, a declaration that fell rather flat when the Russians produced the pilot, who had somehow survived. A big summit conference was axed, and Ike, somewhat red of countenance, finally canceled all U2 operations. (The Yanks eventually got Mr. Powers back by trading a captured Soviet spy for him.)
That U2 adventure was when we commoners realized the spy business had outgrown our comprehension.
Subsequently, the highdomes came up with these unmanned spy satellites that circled the earth 100 miles up, sending back detailed photos. Our guys predicted the Russian famine by zooming in on brown spots in Ukrainian wheat fields. They discovered poppy fields in Colombia and gold deposits in Brazil. It was like standing on the City Hall roof, looking south and getting the right time from a policeman's wristwatch in Waco. That's a little hard to grasp by those of us who can't find a sock in the dryer.
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Therefore, it's difficult for us clods to understand this spy plane awkwardness. Supposedly, the U.S. "surveillance" plane was in "international airspace" when an "accident" occurred between a Chinese fighter plane and the Navy craft, resulting in the latter making an emergency landing on Chinese soil and creating a sticky situation indeed.
Now then, we thought the satellites were the spymasters, but here comes word that some spying is best done by common aircraft. And that our aviators have been eavesdropping on China, Russia and North Korea since the early days of the Cold War and that, in fact, several U.S. planes and lives have been silently lost, unbeknownst to CNN and headline writers.
This "international airspace," we are told, is sort of a Kings-X area where planes of all nationalities can fly at will, spying on each other to their little hearts' content, and nobody shoots.
Now, if Chinese fighter planes don't play by the rules, if they have a history of buzzing the big fat U.S. spycraft, we don't understand why something wasn't done about it before. And if the U.S. plane carried all this highly secret, valuable equipment, why would it be up there lumbering along by itself, subject to torment by Chinese hot pilots?
Surely, there is a logical, sophisticated answer to these technical conundrums, but it is far beyond our plebeian understanding. By the way, Mata Hari's real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. Bet you didn't know that.
Blackie Sherrod is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.
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