Nice to see the news is starting to be reported on a more even keel. Loral never did give anything away, and from an access standpoint, the US intelligence community gained far more than the Chinese ever did.
The momentum has shifted. It will still take some time but Loral is headed higher in the court of public opinion and as its perception improves so will its stock price.
Jeff Vayda
washingtonpost.com
Experts Cite U.S. Intelligence Gains From China
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 11, 1999; Page A2
When China tested its new DF-31 mobile missile last month, CIA and
Pentagon experts already knew a great deal about the rocket and its
proposed warhead, thanks in part to the same exchanges of nuclear
scientists and Chinese launches of U.S.-built satellites that have come under
recent sharp congressional criticism.
While a furor has arisen over Chinese spying on the United States, the
federal government has been silent about the other side of the coin--what
U.S. intelligence agencies have learned during visits by Chinese scientists to
U.S. weapons laboratories and trips by U.S. scientists to China's nuclear
research facilities.
"We got more out of those Chinese visits than they got," said Richard Kerr,
a former deputy director of the CIA who served this year on an intelligence
community panel that reviewed allegations of Chinese espionage at
America's nuclear labs.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the United States knew little about China's
nuclear weapons and missiles. Years of exchanges involving hundreds of
scientists from both countries have gradually filled in some of the blanks,
according to Kerr and other experts.
One key document illustrates both sides of the intelligence coin. In 1995, a
Chinese intelligence officer ostensibly seeking to become a U.S. agent gave
the CIA a Chinese military paper that contained classified data on the
W-88, America's newest nuclear warhead, as well as publicly available
information on five other U.S. nuclear warheads. Known as the "walk-in"
document, it was interpreted by Notra Trulock, then chief of intelligence at
the Energy Department, as confirmation that China had stolen U.S. nuclear
secrets.
But the "walk-in" document also contained valuable intelligence about
China's own nuclear arsenal, a fact that has not been previously disclosed.
The information included details of the DF-31, China's first solid-fueled,
truck-mounted missile, which has an expected range of 5,000 miles, enough
to reach Hawaii and Alaska.
It "described the internal configuration and dimensions of their road-mobile
ICBM," said one government official with access to the document. "It had
lots of precise details" on Beijing's existing weapons and planning for future
ones, including the Chinese military's desire to develop a warhead similar to
the W-88 by the year 2002, the official said.
"It talked about their own limits on ability to miniaturize" warheads,
questioned why the proposed DF-31 warhead "is longer and heavier" than
the W-88, and provided the dimensions of key components, the official said.
On the whole, he added, "It contained more details [on Chinese weaponry]
than on the W-88."
When the CIA later concluded that the person who delivered the document
was still working for Beijing, the agency warned government officials that
the source of the document "was controlled" and, therefore, suspect. The
CIA has been working to corroborate the information, realizing that some
may be inaccurate. "We know something about their designs, but not the
kind of detail in the document," one CIA official said.
Kerr said the data should be analyzed carefully, adding that the CIA must
ask itself, "Why would they tell us that?" When feeding material to an
opposition intelligence agency to establish a double agent's credentials--as
the Chinese may have been doing in this case--Kerr said his rule while at
the CIA was never to provide anything "unique and specific."
The launching of U.S.-built satellites on Chinese missiles also has been
advantageous to both sides.
After the failure of a Chinese Long March missile in 1996, China provided
an accident report to Loral Space & Communications, the satellite
manufacturer. Loral and some of its officials face a grand jury investigation
for allegedly responding with sensitive information that may have helped
China to improve its rockets. But CIA and Pentagon analysts also studied
the accident report, which detailed not only how the rocket functioned but
also how China monitors launches.
It was "certainly useful information," said one intelligence official, adding
that it "confirmed a lot of what we had suspected."
The Chinese accident report included a complete description of the
telemetry, the electronic signals that allow measurement of the performance
of a rocket. "That's a level of detail that is important," said one former
intelligence official, because knowing all the channels and sensors used by
the Chinese "let's us see how good our own monitoring system is."
Previously, U.S. intelligence gathering was based on external listening and
imaging devices. But as China and other countries increasingly encrypt their
signals and use reduced power transmissions that are harder to intercept
during test shots, "monitoring has become a black art," he said.
China's use of U.S.-made satellites also has important benefits for U.S.
intelligence agencies, the former official said.
Following allegations that the rocket launches might help Beijing to improve
its ballistic missiles, Congress put the satellites on a controlled munitions list.
But China's use of U.S.-made equipment provides the United States with a
lot of technical data about Chinese communications.
"It's an advantage for eavesdropping," said a former intelligence officer,
noting that China is not allowed to open up the U.S.-made satellites to see
what is inside them prior to a launch.
Kerr said the scientific exchange programs should continue, although he
said that there has been no formal "net assessment" of the intelligence gains
and losses. The Energy Department is planning to undertake such an
analysis.
Kerr also said the "feedback system" in which U.S. scientists reported on
their conversations with Chinese counterparts has been uneven. Often, "our
scientists considered it tiresome, inconvenient, and a chore," Kerr said,
adding that the data improved only after U.S. delegations began to include
scientists with intelligence training. The Energy Department has formalized
the foreign contact reporting, a step that some scientists dislike but that
guarantees even more information for intelligence analysts.
One retired U.S. scientist recently recalled being engaged by Chinese hosts
in the early 1980s in a discussion of neutron weapons, which emit more
radiation than normal thermonuclear devices. "They went into great detail
about their program," he said, adding that he reported the conversation when
he returned home.
Another scientist recalled a Chinese counterpart talking in the mid-1980s
about the search for new, smaller warheads. "Everyone was discussing
boosting the power of smaller amounts of nuclear material," he said.
A once-classified, 1984 study by the Defense Intelligence Agency of
Chinese nuclear weapons systems reflects such information from scientists.
The report, released by the National Security Archive, also predicted 15
years ago that Chinese weapons programs would benefit from "overt
contact with U.S. scientists" as well as from "covert acquisition of U.S.
technology."
¸ 1999 The Washington Post Company |
