March 11, 1999
Review & Outlook
China Buys . . .
Most Americans will not be shocked to learn that China has spies. Nor would they be shocked to discover that these spies would be especially interested in the goings-on at our Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, ground zero for sensitive nuclear-weapons research. But what should disturb all Americans is the reluctance of the White House officials to do anything even after an Energy Department intelligence official alerted them that there was a spy in their midst--a warning both the FBI and CIA directors personally passed on to then Department of Energy chief Federico Pena.
On their own the security lapses would be serious enough. According to the New York Times, which broke the story Saturday, stolen information about the U.S.'s most advanced miniature W-88 nuclear warhead from Los Alamos helped the Chinese close a generation gap in the development of its nuclear force. In particular it aided the development of small nuclear bombs that could hit multiple targets from a single missile, launched from land or submarine. But the story's context invites an even more chilling conclusion. The Clinton Administration's inaction, after all, did not occur in a vacuum. It came in the thick of a 1996 re-election effort we now know included campaign contributions from those with ties to the Chinese government, its military and even its intelligence organizations
In other words, at the same time the FBI and CIA were investigating the source of the Los Alamos leak, Vice President Al Gore was passing the hat among inexplicably wealthy Buddhist nuns, Mr. Clinton was serving coffee at the White House to PLA arms dealer Wang Jun and the Administration responded favorably to a request from a man who would be the Democratic Party's largest donor in 1996--Loral Chairman Bernard L. Schwartz--to transfer authority over licensing of satellite technology from the State to Commerce Department. Two years later Loral would be granted a Presidential waiver to export its technology to China, even though it was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for previous technology transfers.
No wonder the Administration line has been to blame the Reagan and Bush administrations, the same reason it gave for signing the technology waivers in the first place. It is true that the original theft of the W-88 technology came in the mid-1980s, and that Mr. Clinton's predecessors bear the blame for lax security precautions at the time. But George Bush and Ronald Reagan did not have the repeated warnings about a spy in their midst. Nor were they playing host to PLA coffee klatches. Nor would they have waited until the New York Times put something on the front page to fire a suspected spy for a foreign interest.
More to the point here, neither of Mr. Clinton's predecessors involved their foreign policy people in campaign politics the way this Administration has. What makes Sandy Berger's lack of action on the espionage front so scandalous is that as deputy National Security Adviser in 1996 he sat in on the weekly White House meetings about the re-election campaign. And he wasn't alone. The President himself chaired a September 13, 1995, meeting after which Johnny Huang--Lippo's man at the Commerce Department--was transferred to the Democratic National Committee.
The result was that a man suspected of having compromised national security continued at his post, and foreign scientists were allowed to visit lab facilities without background checks. Indeed, the White House began to tighten things at Los Alamos only late last year, after the arrival of Bill Richardson at Energy and after a bipartisan committee convened by Rep. Chris Cox looked into issues of Chinese espionage and technology transfer. Over at Justice, meanwhile, the Attorney General resolutely refused to follow the recommendations of either FBI director Louis Freeh or her handpicked prosecutor, Charles La Bella, to appoint an independent counsel to look into any Chinese connection to the 1996 campaign.
Doubtless we will learn more about the extent of China's espionage efforts if the the Cox committee overcomes White House objections to releasing all 700 pages of its report later this month. Sen. Richard Shelby, head of the Intelligence Committee, promises more hearings. But to get to the bottom of the issue we also need to know why Ms. Reno rejected an independent counsel, and if the campaign's money goals accounted for the Administration's reluctance to move on evidence of Chinese espionage. While we're at it, why was the DOE intelligence officer who first brought the theft of the W-88 technology to the attention of the CIA, FBI and Mr. Berger ordered not to talk to Congress about his concerns? And why was he later demoted?
The Chinese, after all, are not stupid: they got the nuclear plans they were after. Presumably a country that is able to pull off an espionage coup of this magnitude is not likely to try to channel hundreds of thousands of dollars into a U.S. Presidential campaign without some quid pro quo in mind. The real scandal may not be what the Chinese were able to steal, but what they were able to buy.
wsj.com
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