Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: donss who wrote (3284)	5/21/1998 2:38:00 PM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 10852

Well, I'm not short, but I AM hungry to buy more, CHEAP CHEAP, CHEAP. Perhaps that's the functional equivalent. Let's see. What Rumors can I spread? Well, the estimable Matt Drudge is currently letting it be known that there is much whispering in DC about a whole new news cycle on China/Loral to be unleashed by that NY Times reporter soon. Don't know more. Check it out yourself. Doug

To: donss who wrote (3284)	5/21/1998 8:18:00 PM
From: donss	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

CIA Says Satellite Launchers, Missiles Nearly Identical [From the WSJ IE] WASHINGTON (AP)--Amid persistent questions about whether U.S. firms provided missile technology to China, a Senate panel released CIA information Thursday underscoring similarities between Chinese satellite launchers and long-range nuclear missiles. Staging mechanisms, guidance systems, re-entry vehicles, and rocket motors all involve identical or similar technology, the CIA said in a rare public disclosure of intelligence that it supplies to congressional committees. What emerged Thursday were releasable portions of a broader, classified briefing the CIA gave Senate investigators on Chinese missile and space launch capability last week. Weeks earlier, the CIA provided top officials with a classified assessment saying that 13 of China's intercontinental ballistic missiles are targeted at U.S. cities. Congressional Republicans are opening investigations into concerns that a satellite export approved by President Clinton this year for a company headed by a major Democratic donor may have aided China's missile programs. Administration critics say the similarity between satellite launch vehicles and ICBMs increases the chances that Clinton's export decisions may have led to the disclosure of valuable military technology. The administration counterattacked on multiple fronts. "No controlled information relative to ballistic missiles or warhead delivery technology has been authorized to be made available to Chinese authorities," said State Department spokesman James Rubin. "The whole underlying suggestion that somehow we want to transfer technology to the Chinese ... is simply fatuous." Investigations of the export license deal are under way both on Capitol Hill and at the Justice Department. The Justice probe focuses whether U.S. trade policy may have been affected by campaign fund raising. In Hong Kong Thursday, Liu Chaoying, the aerospace executive at the center of an alleged Chinese plot to influence the Clinton administration's foreign policy, denied a charge by a Democratic fund-raiser that she donated $300,000 to the Democratic Party. Liu is the daughter of retired Gen. Liu Huaqing, once China's most politically influential military officer. Republicans seeking a link between political donations and Clinton's national security and export decisions, have called on the president to postpone his trip to China next month. The White House reacted Thursday to a vote in the House to block future U.S. satellite exports to China and to prohibit Clinton from reaching new agreements while in China on sharing space technology. White House spokesman Mike McCurry called the House votes of Wednesday a "knee-jerk reaction to headlines rather than a thoughtful assessment of foreign policy." He also said the votes represented "a stunning repudiation" of policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations. A CIA chart released Thursday by the Senate Governmental Affairs international security subcommittee, which is investigating the issue, indicated that only one aspect of a rocket - the payload - differs substantially between civilian satellite launchers and nuclear weapons-tipped missiles. In other respects they are identical or similar: -Re-entry vehicles would operate similarly whether the object was a commercial capsule carrying such things as photographs and data or a nuclear weapon. -Payload separation from the rocket would involve similar procedures for a satellite or nuclear weapons. -Inertial guidance and control systems would use "similar hardware with tailored software." -Staging mechanisms, rocket propellants, air frame and motor cases, insulation and liners, engines or rocket motors, and thrust vector controls would be the same. -Exhaust nozzles are "similar and usually identical." "It is important to understand how foreign countries can apply information and technology gained from launching U.S. satellites to their own ICBM and satellite programs, and whether the administration's current policy is sufficient to prevent this," said Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the subcommittee's chairman. Additional CIA briefing papers not made public by Senate investigators but obtained Thursday by The Associated Press point to other differences between ICBMs and satellite launchers. ICBMs must be more rugged and more easily maintained because they are designed to sit in silos for long periods, according to the CIA material. "Instruments such as gyros and accelerometers adequate for a (satellite) space-launch vehicle might not be good enough for an ICBM," the CIA briefing paper stated. In addition, a satellite launcher "does not necessarily have to control satellite release to as tight a tolerance" as an ICBM. In 1996, Loral Space & Communications Ltd. (LOR) and Hughes Electronics (GMH) hired a government-owned Chinese rocket manufacturer to launch a commercial satellite into space. Under U.S. export laws, the satellite itself would not be handled by the Chinese. But when the rocket exploded, the Pentagon says, Loral and Hughes provided China with an accident assessment that contained valuable missile-related information. Republicans want to know why, with a Justice Department probe still pending, Clinton this February approved another satellite export by Loral, and whether the generous Democratic donations by Loral board chairman Bernard Schwartz had anything to do with the decision. The administration and Loral both deny any such allegation. Witnesses at Thursday's hearing supported the CIA's conclusions about the similarity of ICBMs and satellite launchers. "The essential elements of an ICBM are the same with the exception of the payload," said William Graham, former deputy administrator of NASA and science adviser to Presidents Reagan and Bush. "Put another way, if you have a space-launch vehicle, you also have an ICBM." But John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, said it was naive to think China gained much from U.S. firms. China has had missiles that could reach the U.S. since 1981, and newly acquired information would make only a marginal difference, he said.

To: donss who wrote (3284)	5/21/1998 8:34:00 PM
From: donss	Respond to of 10852

Loral Space Head Schwartz Frequent White House Guest [Another article from the WSJ IE] WASHINGTON (AP)--In the months before his company got permission to launch a satellite from China, Loral Space & Communications Ltd. (LOR) chief Bernard L. Schwartz attended three events inside the White House with President Clinton. Schwartz says through a spokesman he never discussed anything about the waiver - now a subject of investigation - with anyone at the White House, including the president. The visits, his supporters say, are just a sign of a valued friendship between Clinton and the lifelong Democratic supporter who was one of the first corporate executives to endorse the Arkansan for president. Schwartz, 72, has contributed more than $1 million to Democratic causes since 1991. He was once described in a 1994 White House memo as "prepared to do anything he can for the administration." When Loral was trying to expand into China in 1994, Schwartz got a personal introduction from a Clinton Cabinet member to a top official of China's Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. "It's important that Mr. Schwartz has the opportunity to meet with you," the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown told the Chinese official during a trip to Beijing that occurred at about the same time Schwartz made a $100,000 contribution to the Democratic Party. Sometimes the relationship was a little too close for comfort. When Loral was in the process of buying Unisys Corp.'s (UIS) defense division in 1995, the Commerce Department's chief of staff wrote in his diary of concerns that a big donor like Schwartz might be seeking an audience with top department officials at a time when he needed to resolve a federal contract dispute involving Unisys during the deal. "Key: not to talk to Loral (Bernard Schwartz) re this," then-Commerce chief of staff William Ginsberg wrote. Schwartz's office says he never sought any such meetings, although Brown's calendar reflects a meeting between the secretary and Schwartz in March 1996. Schwartz's contacts with the Clinton administration are under a microscope now as the Justice Department and Congress is investigating how his company came to get the February waiver on China. Justice officals are looking into whether Schwartz's donations to Democrats influenced the decision. The White House and Schwartz himself deny any such connection. Schwartz once told a reporter it would be inappropriate for him - and embarrassing to Clinton - to use his political support to gain favors. When a reporter asked about his $100,000 donation near the time of the China trade mission in 1994, Schwartz scoffed at the idea that there was any connection. "I can open any door I want as chairman of a $6 billion company," he said. His supporters describe him as someone who, despite his frequent large donations, never asks for favors and rarely talks about his business when moving in Democratic circles. "I think he's an extraordinarily upstanding and ethical guy," said Harold Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff. "And he's a passionate Democrat." Loral spokesman Tom Ross says Schwartz never discussed the satellite issue with the president or his aides. Schwartz is a lifelong Democrat whose grandfather was a Tammany Hall functionary in turn-of-the-century New York. He was one of the first executives in corporate America to come out in support of Clinton. He's an enigma: a New York liberal and an accountant in an aerospace industry dominated by conservatives and engineers. During the 1970s, he argued against continuing the Vietnam War even as his company bid for federal defense contracts. Schwartz's company sold off its defense business two years ago to focus entirely on satellite business. Just two years ago, Schwartz made it onto Clinton's short list of defense secretary nominees, a job he had been considered for before as well and which ultimately went to former Republican Sen. William Cohen. At the time Clinton signed the waiver in February, Loral was under scrutiny for earlier assistance to China that U.S. officials feared improperly aided the communist country's missile program. Two of the three White House visits Schwartz made immediately prior to the Clinton waiver occurred in December _ for a holiday party and a Kennedy Center honors event, officials said. Schwartz also attended the Feb. 5 state dinner for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, just 13 days before Clinton signed the waiver. "Mr. Schwartz did attend a number of formal dinners at the White House in the months prior to the decision in February," said Ross, Loral's spokesman. "Mr. Schwartz, at none of these gatherings, ever discussed any Loral business or the satellite industry with the president or anyone else." "Mr. Schwartz, doubtlessly, talked to the president in greeting lines or elsewhere at the events, but he never had any one-on-ones," Ross said.