March 17, 1999
Commentary
Blame Clinton, Not China
For the Lapse at Los Alamos
By James R. Lilley, a former CIA station chief and ambassador to China.
"Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found by calculation. It must be obtained by people, people who know the conditions of the enemy."
--Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
The Chinese, who wrote the book on spying 2,500 years ago, are now
denying any involvement in the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos
National Laboratory by a Chinese-American scientist named Lee Wen Ho.
Given the overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence--so far available
only in the press--their denials ring false. The question that remains is where
we go from here.
We do not yet know whether Mr. Lee was recruited, controlled,
blackmailed or bribed by Chinese intelligence, or if he approached them
voluntarily. What we do know is that the Chinese Ministry of State Security
and Chinese military intelligence have a long record of preying on
Chinese-Americans to obtain U.S. high technology. Much of the information
is collected openly, through personal exchanges, scientific papers and
legitimate scientific symposia. But data on advanced nuclear weapons
technology, long-range missile reliability and accuracy, electronic warfare,
submarine nuclear propulsion and underwater missile shots must be
gathered by more clandestine means.
When the Communists took over China in 1949, Chinese scientists and
engineers trained in the West were lured homeward, where they were
instrumental in building the country's first atomic bomb in 1964. After
U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations resumed in the 1970s, the Chinese
engaged in a massive effort to obtain U.S. technology. For instance:
In 1987, Chinese United Nations personnel employed
Chinese-American businessmen in New Jersey to obtain TOW2
antitank missiles, F-14 fighter plane blueprints, and air-to-air missile
information. These were to be smuggled out as refrigerator parts.
Four of the businessmen were arrested, and one of the diplomats
was forced to flee the U.S.
In 1992, Ben Wu, an agent of the Ministry of State Security
stationed in Norfolk, Va., tried to smuggle second-generation night
vision equipment to China. He is currently in a Pennsylvania jail.
In 1985, Larry Wu Tai-chin, an employee of the Central Intelligence
Agency, was arrested after working 41 years for Chinese
intelligence. Mr. Wu was caught by a brilliant CIA penetration
operation of the MSS.
If this is discouraging, the Clinton administration's handling of the latest
scandal is even more so. The president claimed that he "moved quickly and
decisively" when he learned of the security breach. Yet it took 11/2 years
for the Energy Department to act on the FBI's recommendation to reinstate
background checks for visitors to Los Alamos, and Mr. Lee retained his
security clearance for over a year after he became the prime suspect.
Administration officials also withheld information from Congress for fear that
the disclosure could adversely affect its policy toward China.
Indeed, the administration seems to view this case more in terms of its
political fallout than its significance to national security. Vice President Al
Gore, for instance, noted that the main security breach at Los Alamos took
place during the Reagan years, as if the former president were somehow to
blame for spying of which he was not aware. Mr. Clinton's supporters are
now trying desperately to gut the 700-page congressional report on illegal
technology transfers and Chinese espionage in much the same way they
bottled up the report on Chinese illegal campaign funding.
Espionage when exposed, however, should not derail our relationship with
China. This is not a case of constructive engagement vs. containment and
isolation, as the Clinton administration caricatures it. Constructive
engagement is not a Clinton invention--it was Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger who first conceived the policy and Presidents Ford, Carter,
Reagan and Bush who practiced it. Certainly, the case should not affect
Chinese entry into the World Trade Organization or Premier Zhu Rongji's
trip here next week. But it should affect how we give Chinese access to our
technology and how we manage a growing military relationship.
In this respect, my own experience is instructive. In 1973 I became the first
declared American intelligence officer in Communist China. Out of this
beginning came the installation of intelligence sites in Northeast China aimed
at monitoring Soviet weapons of mass destruction. Though the Chinese
threatened to close the sites down when our relations became strained, they
never did. The mutual benefits were too great.
The administration must now clean up its act, first by admitting its mistakes
rather than spinning the facts and covering up the evidence. Access to the
White House by shady characters, illegal campaign contributions, dilution of
controls over technology exports, lax security at key weapons institutions,
sloppy investigations of serious espionage cases, and Mr. Clinton's
penchant for coverup and deceit have all contributed to the present mess.
Whether this administration has the internal resources to clean up its act
remains an open question.
What is certain, however, is that the Chinese will continue to try to acquire
our technology, and espionage will be one of their means to do so. And we
will continue to spy on them. We cannot change this any more than we can
change China's human rights performance by hectoring them into doing so.
Our goal is to improve our own security system, not to try to alter the basic
nature of the Chinese.
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