Scientist: Clinton Administration Gave China Top Nuclear Secrets
Christopher Ruddy
March 11, 1999
A scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has
provided information that seriously contradicts Clinton
administration claims that nuclear secrets obtained by China were
solely the result of espionage during the late 1980's.
In the wake of allegations that the Clinton administration has been
slow to investigate the theft of nuclear secrets by China, Vice
President Al Gore has sought to deflect criticism on to the
Reagan and Bush administrations.
"This happened in the previous administration, and the law
enforcement agencies have pressed it, and pursued it aggressively
with our full support," Gore told CNN.
A nuclear weapons scientist, who has sought anonymity "to keep
my position and keep supporting my family," has informed
NewsMax.com that the Clinton administration has, in fact,
aggressively sought to provide China with some of the nation's
most closely guarded nuclear weapons technology.
"It seems like every day there are more and more Chinese at
Livermore," he stated. The scientist said the administration had
facilitated the transfer of laser technology employed in the
process of making nuclear weapons-grade plutonium.
"Early in the 1980's a process was developed at Lawrence
Livermore for producing weapons-grade plutonium," the scientist
explained, revealing for the first time details of a U.S. government
project then considered the government's most important.
Plutonium is a critical ingredient in a nuclear warhead, but for
military applications, plutonium must be processed to change the
isotope to weapons-grade. Weapons-grade plutonium is critical
for developing nuclear weapons that are both highly reliable and
produce a predictable yield when exploded.
The New York Times reported last week that U.S. intelligence
officials had evidence China had made significant advances in it
nuclear weapons program. Specifically, China had designed and
tested miniaturized nuclear warheads. Federal authorities have
suspected the technology for the specialized weapons was the
result of espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the sister
facility to Lawrence Livermore.
Chinese success in developing such nuclear weapons, as well as
large strategic warheads, while increasing their stockpile of
approximately 500 warheads, has been dependent on China's
ability to process plutonium.
For decades, creating weapons-grade plutonium was an
expensive and time-consuming process. A huge plutonium
processing plant at Hanford, Washington completed this task for
U.S. defense needs.
According to the Livermore source, in the 1980's, at the height of
the Cold War, the U.S. government had a "prime interest" to
create a more efficient process to "separate or enrich fissile
materials to enriched weapons-grade" plutonium.
The development of this plutonium process paralleled
Livermore's development of a laser technology to process
uranium, needed for civilian nuclear power plants. This
technology to process uranium, called AVLIS or the Atomic
Vapor Laser Isotope Separation -- was turned over in 1995 to the
United States Enrichment Corporation, a private company that
uses the technology for the benefit of nuclear power plants.
The plutonium project was, however, at the heart of Livermore's
mission to develop America's strategic arsenal.
"This was the highest funded project and the most secret project
the government had. So secret in fact, a special security
compound known as the 'super block' was created within the
processing area, simply known as Building 332."
The "super block" -- a series of buildings housing nuclear
weapons design and development programs -- is one of the
nation's most highly guarded complexes, with rings of barbed
wire fence, and a complement of specially trained federal guards
who have access to automatic weapons and an armored
personnel carrier on premises. Deadly force is authorized against
intruders.
The Livermore scientist states that within the secure compound, a
special building was constructed for the development of this "new
highly secret process" for plutonium.
During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the compound's
already intense security was beefed up because of the "global
implications if this technology ever leaked out."
Such technology could not only allow Third World countries like
Iraq and Iran to overcome the significant obstacles in processing
plutonium, it would allow existing nuclear club members like
China to cheaply and quickly build a large nuclear stockpile.
Ominously, the scientist stated that all persons who worked on
the project "were warned of the world wide political instability
that would occur if a foreign power was to get this secret."
This concern for security for the weapons enriching laser
process, however, quickly faded during the Clinton
administration.
During the Clinton administration's first year, China began making
overtures to gain access to Livermore's weapons-grade enriching
process.
For years the work at Livermore had been a prime target for
Chinese espionage. In 1988, the FBI's Chief of
Counterintelligence, Harry Godfrey III, told the Los Angeles
Times that China was "the most active foreign power" seeking
America's military secrets. Godfrey said Livermore National
Laboratory was among China's main targets.
Concerns about China's intentions diminished after Clinton's
inauguration, and China began more formal steps to gain access
to Livermore.
China's efforts culminated with a delegation of Chinese scientists
who visited Livermore in the winter of 1994, and another visit by
Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary at about the same
time.
O'Leary's Department and the University of California jointly
administer Livermore, with the DOE in charge of ensuring control
over nuclear secrets.
"O'Leary's meeting was held in the California Room in Building
111. She arrived very late that day because of the flu or suspected
food poisoning while in Silicon Valley that morning."
After the meeting, the scientist recalled several Livermore
scientists in a heated debate over whether "this type of
information [relating to weapons enriching laser process] should
be considered for technology transfer" to China.
The deal with China for the technology transfer was
consummated, the scientist said, sometime later that year after
O'Leary's visit, when top DOE officials, Department of
Commerce officials representing Ron Brown, White House
representatives and Chinese government officials met in a guarded
room at the Pleasanton Hilton nearby to Livermore.
O'Leary, now in private business, did not respond to a call for
comment.
Lawrence Livermore officials voiced skepticism about the
scientist's claims.
Jeff Garberson, senior manager for external relations for
Livermore, said that to the best of his knowledge he was unaware
of any process developed at the laboratory using lasers in the
plutonium process or for that matter any transfer of nuclear
secrets to the Chinese.
He said Chinese contact at Livermore has been "small." In recent
years, he said the lab had stepped up non-proliferation programs
with Russian scientists, and Chinese scientists had expressed
interest in joining that program.
He had no information about a secret meeting at the Pleasanton
Hilton relating to these matters.
Garberson said that the rules at Livermore "remain by law: no
transfer of classified technology to Russia and China" is
permitted, and said he was familiar enough with programs there to
know that no technologies had been reclassified to allow for
Commerce Department officials to sell the technology abroad.
The Clinton administration had reset long-standing policies
relating to technology transfers. By March of 1994, the
administration had abolished the COCOM system that had
safeguarded technology transfers from Western countries to East
Bloc or communist nations.
Later the White House took the key decision-making powers over
technology transfers from the State and Defense Departments and
gave them to the Commerce Department.
These changes greatly expedited sales of U.S. technology,
including supercomputers once prohibited for sale to communist
countries and useful in developing nuclear weapons.
Another oft cited example of the administration's method of
reclassifying military secrets surfaced in a 1998 New York Times
report by Jeff Gerth. Gerth revealed that in 1996, Loral, an
American aerospace company, had, without a license, provided
China with ballistic missile technology that enabled China to
improve its rocket guidance systems.
When the Justice Department began a grand jury probe of this
apparent illegal transfer, President Clinton quickly reclassified the
technology and approved its transfer, effectively undermining the
Justice Department's case against Loral.
Edward Teller, former director of Lawrence Livermore
laboratory, told NewsMax.com that while he regards the
allegations surrounding technology transfers to China as serious,
he said he was less concerned about espionage, and more
concerned with the Clinton administration's failure to fund new
weapons development programs during the past six years.
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