Published in Washington, D.C.. . . . Vol. 15, No. 4 -- Febuary 1, 1999 . . . . www.insightmag.com
Did the President Sell Out to China?
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By Timothy W. Maier
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Rep. Chris Cox has wrapped up the Chinagate probe in the House. While much of the documentation remains cloaked, this much is known: National security was compromised.
s the trial of the century begins the most serious charge against President William Jefferson Clinton may never see the light of day. But in hushed corridors on Capitol Hill the word "treason" is being muttered, and senators privately are wondering if they dare ask the question: Did Clinton sell out the United States for campaign cash, thereby arming Beijing with nuclear weapons capable of striking Los Angeles?
. . . . The evidence to prove such a charge on the Senate floor may never be heard because the answer may have been buried deep within a classified report prepared by Chairman Chris Cox's House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. There is no timetable to declassify the savvy Californian's carefully drafted report, and no one on Capitol Hill is pushing for a quick declassification, according to Brent Baylor, spokesman for the committee.
. . . . Has the crime of the century been knocked off the radar because the press can't break the details of that report? Could be, say concerned observers. Unlike other congressional investigations, the Cox committee has prided itself on keeping the lid on the Chinagate probe and preventing leaks to reporters. The committee accomplished this, according to Insight's sources, by carefully screening those assigned to write the report. Committee members -- five Republicans and four Democrats -- then scrupulously shunned publicity by ignoring reporters' questions and requests for details. While there has been criticism from some California defense employees who desperately want to tell investigators about security lapses involving Loral Space & Communications Ltd. and Hughes Electronics Corp., it is not clear whether their testimonies were needed, given the large numbers of interviews that were conducted.
. . . . Meanwhile, the committee's 700-page top-secret report has moved quietly through the hands of carefully selected congressmen and awaits declassification by Clinton himself -- "like having the fox watch the chickens," says a defense employee who was interviewed for hours by Cox's investigators. Of course, Congress can act on its own to release the conclusions of the report should Clinton decide not to declassify the supporting documents.
. . . . While proofs have been withheld the public has been alarmed by snatches of shocking details that appear to make the Monica Lewinsky scandal look tame in comparison. The fragmentary data released by Cox in a carefully prepared statement, perhaps to prove his committee was deadly serious, has set off alarms among security specialists. "The PRC's targeting of sensitive U.S. military technology is not limited to missiles and satellites but covers other military technologies," Cox warned. "Sensitive U.S. military technology has been the subject of serious PRC acquisition efforts over the last two decades and continues today."
. . . . Pursuing the story, the origins of which have been carefully developed in these pages, Insight has been interviewing some of those who provided evidence to the Cox committee. These sources say evidence, including financial records and rocket photography, show the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, acquired highly sophisticated platforms for delivering nuclear weapons on American cities by pursuing dual-use-technology contracts with U.S. businesses too eager for profits regardless of the cost to U.S. national security.
. . . . White House supporters defend Clinton's trade favors to the PRC as good economic policy and argue that Presidents Bush and Reagan tolerated similar cooperation -- albeit the reasons to help Beijing in those days had to do with instigating Cold War discomforts for the Soviet Union along the Sino-Soviet border. The Chinese military buildup, in the meantime, has accelerated sharply on Clinton's watch and for the first time has opened the way for a possible nuclear attack by the PLA on the American mainland.
. . . . As Insight has reported, the Chinese not only targeted Clinton but found vulnerability in a White House at once concerned with filling a depleted campaign war chest and contemptuous of national-security concerns. Clinton's administration facilitated China profiteering by international business leaders close to his campaigns by removing intelligence experts from the table during negotiation of international contracts, dismantling the Coordination Committee for Multilateral Export Controls -- an international arrangement that had regulated exports of military technology -- and transferring authority to license satellite exports from security sections at the State Department to the go-go contract seekers at the Commerce Department, traditionally a campaign-money conduit.
. . . . "China is obtaining capability to blanket the U.S. with missiles," an intelligence source familiar with the Cox committee's work tells Insight. "Their willingness to strike is already demonstrated by missile overflights of Taiwan. We might have been confident that the Soviet Union would not shoot at the U.S., but we can't say the same about China."
. . . . The committee findings are nothing new to intelligence experts Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II, authors of the New York Times best-seller The Year of the Rat. Their book -- some of it based on Insight's series of investigative reports -- explains how the "Clinton administration acted recklessly, allowing the wrong people to gain access to our most important political and economic secrets."
. . . . Timperlake points to convicted felon Johnny Chung and to Charlie Trie, who faces trial for similar illegal Clinton fund-raising among friends of China, as proof that the Clinton administration engaged in bribery to fill a depleted campaign war chest by making it easier for the Chinese to obtain U.S. military technology. "Clinton moved the doomsday clock close to midnight," says former congressional staffer Timperlake. "He has brought us back to duck and cover. The Cold War is coming back."
. . . . Certainly Cox's report will not shock Insight readers who have followed the series of Chinagate stories that appeared here first. For two years Insight not only was first but often alone in pressing this story with a series of articles based on interviews with Russian and U.S. intelligence experts, court records and intelligence data. These experts and documents made clear that the PLA had targeted supersecret encryption, satellite and rocket technologies that, once obtained, could threaten U.S. cities, provide access to the most sensitive U.S. military secrets and wreck American intelligence-gathering worldwide (see "Why Red China Targeted the Clinton White House," May 26, 1997).
. . . . Rep. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican since elected to the Senate, put Insight's May 12, 1997, story, "U.S. Is Financing China's War Plan," into the Congressional Record during the 1997 "most favored nation" debate. That story outlined Beijing's military "power-projection" plan. Its mission, Insight was told by intelligence experts, is to expand China's military hegemony to dominate trade in the South China Sea by wresting away the supposedly oil-rich Spratly Islands from the Philippines and reclaiming Taiwan by force. In fact, two years ago this magazine first reported the PLA had set up command posts on uninhabited islands near the Philippines. This month, California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher confirmed to the Washington Times that he personally witnessed the PLA building military facilities on islands in the South China Sea about 800 miles from the Philippines. Target: the Spratlys.
. . . . Most alarming to many concerned about the rise of Chinese militarism, the Insight story revealed for the first time that the PLA has been subsidizing its plan for military expansion through the U.S. bond market by borrowing money from American pension funds, insurance companies and securities. Some of it may never be paid back.
. . . . The U.S. Market Securities Act of 1997 would have put some safeguards against this type of action into the Securities Exchange Commission, or SEC. It would have compelled the SEC every 90 days to submit the names of all foreign government-controlled entities entering or seeking to enter the U.S. debt-equity markets and to send these reported names to the Senate Banking and Intelligence committees so Congress could make further inquiry. The proposal was bottled up in the Senate Banking Committee last year, but stands to be resurrected in light of the Cox committee's findings. It also is expected that the licensing authority for satellite exports will be moved back into the State Department.
. . . . These may be two of the 38 recommendations made by the committee in its classified report, according to intelligence sources interviewed by Cox's investigators.
. . . . Other Insight stories, including "PLA Means Business" (March 24, 1997); "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" (March 23, 1998); "Rockets' Red Scare" (June 15, 1998); and "Air Force One: We Have a Problem" (Aug. 3, 1998), triggered House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon of New York to demand a damage report from the FBI and request a General Accounting Office probe of White House security clearances, which revealed serious shortcomings.
. . . . But while Solomon's people waited for that FBI assessment, Cox's committee delivered its 700-page top-secret report to the House speaker and minority leader in early January. Cox's report left the four Democrats and five Republicans uncharacteristically silent and in unanimous agreement about all the findings, including the most devastating -- that U.S. national security was harmed.
. . . . Cox said the committee's report proves both Hughes Electronics and Loral Space & Communications damaged national security by passing sensitive rocket information enabling Beijing to build missiles capable of striking American cities with pinpoint accuracy -- a charge both companies vigorously deny. But Cox assured reporters that "it became clear that far more was involved in U.S. technology transfer to the PRC than just isolated cases." Apparently deeply shocked, Cox would not elaborate.
. . . . The committee had met 34 times and enlisted the help of professional investigators, including C. Dean McGrath Jr., former deputy staff director and deputy assistant to the president; Rick Cinquegrana, former deputy inspector general of the CIA; Dan Silver, former general counsel of the CIA and of the National Security Agency; Lewis Libby, former deputy undersecretary of policy at the Department of Defense; Nicholas Rostow, former legal adviser to the National Security Council; Michael Sheehy, minority staff director, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and Michael Davidson, former counsel to the Senate. Their undisputed findings were devoid of the political partisanship that has plagued the House and Senate during the impeachment crisis.
. . . . The investigators held 22 hearings, heard more than 200 hours of testimony from 75 different witnesses and conducted more than 700 hours of interviews and gathered more than 150 depositions, issued 21 subpoenas and, with Justice Department approval, conferred use immunity upon four unidentified witnesses.
. . . . According to sources familiar with the Cox probe, investigators zeroed in on questions concerning Wah Lim, the Chinese-born former Loral scientist who was handpicked by Beijing to work on a satellite project and the subject of a Justice probe. Under Lim's supervision, a Loral aide faxed a sensitive rocket-accident analysis report to Beijing without proper State Department approval, which triggered an Insight investigation and a Justice Department probe (see "Rockets' Red Scare").
. . . . Meanwhile, some of those who were interviewed by Cox's committee wonder if any senator will raise the China missile issue during Clinton's trial. "If this Cox stuff comes out," says an intelligence source familiar with the committee report, "there is going to be new uncertainty for Democratic senators because, if they allow Clinton to walk, they will be saying it's okay that he damaged national security by improving China's accuracy and range of ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] that now are targeted against American cities."
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All the Insight articles on high-technology transfers to China are available at www.insightmag.com.
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