here are some of those papers he should be reading:
washingtonpost.com
usatoday.com
nytimes.com
IC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON -- A secret encoded circuit board containing
sensitive technology was missing from the wreckage of an
American satellite aboard a Chinese rocket that exploded in 1996, and
American officials said Tuesday they suspected that Chinese authorities
took the board.
The disclosure of the missing circuit board, which tells an orbiting satellite
which way to point to receive and transmit signals to and from Earth, was
made Tuesday at an unusual joint hearing of two House committees,
National Security and International Relations.
If China did steal the circuit board, it would be a violation of a technology
safeguards agreement that Beijing and Washington last amended in 1993,
to prevent the transfer of sensitive American military technology.
In raising that possibility, the news disclosure opened a new front in
Congress' inquiry into whether sensitive space technology was transferred
to China by American aerospace corporations using Chinese rockets to
launch their satellites.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said the missing circuit board would be a main
focus of a special select committee the House created last week to
investigate the wide-ranging China accusations. The control box
containing the circuit board was recovered at the crash site, he said, "but
the card is gone. We better call the Chinese on this issue. That is a very
serious concern."
On Feb. 15, 1996, American military monitors had watched the Chinese
rocket launch from a command post in southern China as it streaked
toward space carrying a $200 million American communications satellite.
But 22 seconds after liftoff, the Long March rocket exploded, showering
debris, burning fuel and chaos on a nearby Chinese village, where by
American accounts as many as 200 civilians were killed.
For five hours, American officials said, Chinese authorities barred them
from the crash site, saying it was for their own safety. When the
Americans finally reached the area and opened the battered but intact
control box of the satellite, a supersecret encoded circuit board was
missing.
Now congressional investigators are asking whether there could be any
explanation for the missing technology other than that the Chinese took it.
At Tuesday's hearing, Weldon quoted a statement he said was given to
him by the National Security Agency that warned: "If the encryption
board were reversed-engineered, the knowledge gained could be used to
strengthen adversaries' knowledge" of the devices the United States uses
to safeguard its communications systems.
A senior Defense Department official said on Tuesday night that he was
not aware that the government had demanded that the Chinese account
for the missing encoded card. "We're not 100 percent sure they filched
this encryption card," the official said. "It may have just fallen out, but we
have to assume they do have it."
At the hearing, Congress also disclosed that the Justice Department has
begun an investigation of a second failed China missile launch that also
involved an American satellite. This second inquiry is centered on the
possible sharing of sensitive information with the Chinese without
American government supervision.
The new revelation also adds a new dynamic to an ongoing Justice
Department inquiry into the matter. Federal investigators are trying to
determine if the two satellite-makers, Loral Space & Communications
and Hughes Electronics, divulged sensitive technology to Chinese rocket
scientists during an analysis of the failed launch.
The State Department oversees exports of the encoded boards as
militarily sensitive technology. But when the same components are
embedded in a satellite, the whole unit falls under the export controls of
the Commerce Department. A government auditor told a Senate inquiry
earlier this month that the Commerce rules are looser than the State rules.
Government officials insist that American satellites launched on Chinese
rockets are protected with armed, 24-hour American guards. But the
Commerce rules provide little protection against sensitive technology
being released in accidents like the February 1996 explosion.
William Reinsch, an undersecretary of commerce for export
administration, told a House hearing last Thursday that there "there would
not have been any effect on national security" if Chinese engineers illegally
obtained the encoded device.
But the Defense Department said in a statement it provided to Weldon
that the "loss of the chips" would actually have a "minimal impact" -- not
no impact at all -- on national security.
In addition, according to Weldon, the National Security Agency, the
government's code makers and code breakers, said that it had changed
the encoded algorithms in satellite circuit boards after the failed February,
1996, launch.
"If there was only 'minimal impact' to national security, why did the NSA
change the algorithms?" Weldon asked Tuesday's witnesses from the
State, Defense and Commerce departments, which included Reinsch.
Tuesday's hearing also provided new details into the Justice Department's
investigation of the role of American satellite makers in helping China's
troubled rocket program.
One year before the 1996 accident, a Chinese rocket containing a
Hughes satellite failed, and Hughes did a study of that failure. The
Commerce Department permitted Hughes to provide the study to the
Chinese after the company assured the department that its review was
done "independently" of the Chinese and the department determined that
the review complied with the license, according to testimony by Reinsch.
Reinsch said the Justice Department had recently requested all its
documents on the 1995 accident. Bert Brandenburg, a Justice
Department spokesman, said the department's review of the 1995 study
was part of their investigation into the 1996 study by Loral and Hughes.
Marcy J.K. Tiffany, general counsel for Hughes, said company
employees had held meetings with the Chinese to obtain data for the
1995 study and that the Commerce Department had reviewed the scope
of those meetings to assure they would be in compliance with the license.
Reinsch told the panel that the Hughes study would not help China's
missile program because it only involved the integration of the Hughes
satellite with the Chinese rocket.
But Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y. and chairman of the House
International Relations Committee, questioned why the Commerce
Department didn't seek advice from other agencies before allowing
Hughes to share the report with China.
"You quietly authorized a United States company to share information
regarding a Chinese launch failure in 1995 without sharing that decision
with any other agency," he said.
Reinsch replied, "This was a judgment we made on our own."
Rep. Tillie K. Fowler, R-Fla., questioned why a Pentagon agency didn't
seek additional expertise on another technology sale to China, which
congressional and industry officials said involved Hughes.
Ms. Fowler asked Pentagon officials about why they approved the 1996
sale of encrypted ground station terminals to a Chinese military company,
China Electronics Systems Engineering Corp.
The terminals, called Vsats, are the heart of a closed telecommunication
network in which the users, typically businesses, transmit data via satellite.
The communications can be coded through separate equipment.
Ms. Fowler wondered why officials from the Defense Intelligence
Agency, who are supposed to be consulted on such technology transfers,
were apparently not consulted.
David Tarbel, the head of the Defense Technology Security
Administration, the Pentagon agency responsible for reviewing technology
transfers, said he would reply later to the inquiry. Tarbel did not return a
reporter's phone call.
Ms. Tiffany, the Hughes lawyer, said "we comply with all American laws
and restrictions in our overseas sales and those laws do not prohibit the
sale of Vsats to the Chinese military." |
