MI5 and GCHQ are tracking a wall of silence from Beijing after a private jet slammed into a government communications tower on the outskirts of the capital. Sources confirm the aircraft, a Gulfstream registered to a shell company in the Cayman Islands, was not on any flight plan. The crash occurred at 22:43 local time, Thursday.
No emergency calls were made. No distress signal. The pilot, identified as a former PLA Air Force colonel, was killed instantly.
The tower, a relay hub for encrypted state communications, suffered catastrophic damage. Chinese state media has not released a single photograph. No official statement has been issued beyond a terse confirmation from the Civil Aviation Administration that an 'incident' is under investigation.
Western intelligence agencies are treating this as a possible act of sabotage or a cover-up in progress. Diplomatic sources in London say the silence is louder than any broadcast. 'They are hiding something,' one source told me.
'The question is what and from whom.' The crash site has been sealed off by armed troops. No foreign journalists have been granted access.
Satellite imagery obtained by this newsroom shows a blast radius far larger than a routine fuel explosion. The tower was built in 2019, part of a new generation of digital surveillance nodes. Its destruction cripples a significant portion of China's electronic eavesdropping capabilities in the region.
The company that owned the jet, Jade Horizon Ltd, has no known assets, no website, no phone number. Its registered address in George Town is a mailbox. I have a copy of the registration document.
It was signed by a lawyer who declined to comment when I rang. 'Client confidentiality,' he said, and hung up. The Ministry of State Security has not responded to requests for information.
The British ambassador to Beijing was summoned to the Foreign Ministry yesterday morning. No details of the meeting have been released. This is a story that is not meant to be told.
But I am telling it anyway. The paper trail is thin. The bodies are real.
I will keep digging.
