Ramsey,
Thanks for linking the article. I am copying it below in case it gets pulled from the ABC site at some point. I can hardly believe that Mr. Cox's crew got such simple facts of history wrong. Such a nice looking young man, too, and obviously sooooo righteous.
Errors Mar Cox Report
Mistakes Can Undermine Conclusions
(A.Shepherd/ABCNEWS.com)
By James Oberg
Special to ABCNEWS.com
The Cox report on Chinese nuclear spying inundates readers
with detail — about history, missiles, payloads and so on — all
to buttress claims of widespread Chinese espionage against
America's strategic weapons programs.
Trouble is, many of those details about space technology are simply wrong.
While the evidence for the illicit transfer of American aerospace
technology is broad and persuasive, such critical conclusions depend on details.
How credible is the Cox report?
Since the report's release, experts and hard-core amateurs around the
world have taken a close look. The result: dismay and concern over the large number of factual errors.
“Evidently,” says one expert, “the committee never had its final report edited by real experts.”
Aside from the factual errors is a bigger question: Are these erroneous
facts the basis for the report's conclusion? Or are they just window
dressing to make the report seem more credible? Either we must consider
the conclusions questionable or be told the true basis for the report's conclusions. Mistakes range from substantial misrepresentation of Chinese
aerospace technology, to minor mistakes in dates and hardware
designations. Other errors span from long-ago events to future plans.
For example, we know that China is preparing to launch astronauts
into space in the next year or so. The Cox report states that these
astronauts “will use Soyuz capsules purchased during Yeltsin's visit” to
Beijing in 1996. This is dead wrong. The Chinese are building their own
manned spacecraft, with some systems such as the escape tower,
spacesuits, docking mechanisms purchased from Russia.
It's largely a home-grown spacecraft.
Flubbing History
There are also historical errors.
The report spends several pages on the career of rocket scientist Qian
Xuesen (once spelled Tsien Hsue-Shen), who worked in the U.S. rocket
program in the 1940s. After he expressed sympathy for the new Chinese
regime in the early 1950s, his security clearances were cancelled. He left
for China in 1955, where he headed up the Chinese rocket and space
effort for the next several decades.
The report alleges he tried to bring “classified documents” with him,
including secrets of the Titan missile program he had been working on, which the Chinese later copied.
But Qian Xuesen's story is much less criminal than the report suggests.
Space historians laugh at the allegation he “copied” the Titan missile
for China. “The contract for the Titan was not even let until October
1955,” noted space historian Matthew Bille, citing the Encyclopedia
Astronautica, the authoritative Internet space history reference. “(That
was) over five years after Tsien's security clearance was revoked, on 6 June 1950.”
Dubious Allegation
Fred Durant, former deputy director of the Smithsonian's National Air &
Space Museum in Washington, knew Qian personally. He says the
“classified documents” that Qian allegedly tried to steal were papers Qian
himself had written before his security clearance was suspended.
A Chinese engineer named Chen Lan, who lives in Singapore and
runs a highly-respected Web site on the Chinese space program, has also
criticized the Cox report. “These low-level errors should have been
avoided if they did the work a little more seriously,” he posted recently.
Chen Lan reported that flight statistics and payload capabilities were
often in error.
One “fact” about the U.S. Delta 3925 payload (in pounds) gets
attributed to Encyclopedia Astronautica, which cites it in kilograms. But it
differs by 60 percent, which makes one wonder if the report's authors
know how to convert kilograms to pounds.
Blatant Boo-Boos
Jens Lerch, a German amateur space historian, also posted criticisms on
the Internet. “I've easily found a few more blatant mistakes,” he wrote.
Lerch listed half a dozen cases in which missile and spacecraft
designations were erroneous. He concludes, “It's quite disturbing that
such a report contains dozens of factual errors, which are easy to spot by
amateurs.”
Some mistakes are unimportant to the report's conclusions, but reveal
that the authors didn't have any deep understanding of the historical and
technical issues they wrote about. Chen Lan pointed out that the report
gave 1971 as the date of the first Chinese satellite launch (it was 1970),
and 1963 as the date of the “Great Leap Forward” campaign (it was
1958). The report refers to the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1987 (it was
1986).
This kind of nit-picking has often been dismissed as “fly specking,”
making minor marks on an overall report. Still, if so many other “facts”
turn out to be erroneous, the question must arise as to how these errors
may have affected the report's conclusions. |
