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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (45549)	5/4/1999 12:02:00 PM
From: halfscot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

More grist for the mill: Clinton administration; more evidence of incompetence Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 5/4/99 JOHN R. STARR ADG Remember last year when our boy Bill Clinton was shutting off questions about Monica Lewinsky by declaring that he needed to get back to doing the job he had been hired to do? Clinton sounded sincere. He convinced up to 67 percent of Americans that not only was he minding the store, he was doing a damn fine job. Lately we learn that he and his administration were AWOL when it came to protecting important secrets. What's worse, it appears that when he found out that the Chinese and other countries had virtual open doors to those secrets, he and the administration didn't do anything about it until word about breaches in national security leaked to the public. Months later, we know little about what happened and who was responsible. You can bet Clinton will find some way of avoiding blame, even though it happened on his watch, while the Democratic Party was accepting in his name a ton of money from China and other foreign interests. Meanwhile, he let the situation in Kosovo deteriorate past the point where it could be settled by negotiations. It may be a coincidence, but just when the spy talk was heating up, Clinton decided that the world could no longer live with atrocities in Kosovo. Bill Clinton's war forced the spy story off front pages. Monica became a faint, distant memory. Things may have been even worse than they appeared. Thanks to The New York Times, we learned over the weekend that last November the Clinton administration received a secret report which warned that China posed "an acute intelligence threat" to nuclear laboratories and that computer systems at the labs were being constantly penetrated by outsiders. According to the Times, the report says that the Energy Department recorded 324 attacks on its unclassified computer systems between October 1997 and June 1998. There were instances when outsiders gained "complete access and total control to create, view and modify or execute any and all information stored on the system." The computer invasion involved more than a dozen countries. China is singled out as the most serious threat. The report says: "China represents an acute intelligence threat to the Department of Energy (which handles development of nuclear weapons). It conducts a 'full court press' consisting of massive numbers of collectors of all kinds in the United States, in China and elsewhere abroad. "China is an advanced nuclear power, yet its nuclear stockpile is deteriorating. As such, China has specifically targeted DOE for the collection of technical intelligence related to the design of nuclear weapons. "This effort has been very successful, and Beijing's exploitation of U.S. national laboratories has substantially aided its nuclear weapons program." More than a half-dozen congressional committees are examining both evidence of Chinese spying and security failures at Los Alamos and other weapons labs, the Times reported. "The secret November report, some officials believe, is the latest sign that the Clinton administration and investigators moved too slowly and repeated missed opportunities to address the problems." So what have we here? Treason? Not likely. Another example of the incompetence of the Clinton administration? Quite likely. Meanwhile, as reports of civilian casualties from bombing in Yugoslavia come in, the appetite of some NATO allies for bloodshed is diminishing, even if Clinton's is not. Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic has sent several signals that he may be ready to talk. The most recent is the release of three POWs, who had been held by the Serbs for a month. That's not enough to open a dialogue, Clinton said, and the bombing continues. NATO is getting more callous about reporting civilian casualties in Yugoslavia. Asked about a recent hit on a bus, which was crossing a bridge, NATO's spokesman snapped, "The bridge, not the bus, was the target." I still think the bombing should stop when the daily toll of bombing casualties in Yugoslavia matches or exceeds the number of atrocity victims in Kosovo. Clinton rejected a proposal by Jesse Jackson for one night's cessation in the bombing in recognition of release of the prisoners, which probably would not have taken place if Jackson had not gone to Belgrade. Clinton didn't want Jackson to go. Jackson's success is an embarrassment to the administration, demonstrating that no matter how many times you kiss him, you cannot depend on Jackson to operate in your best interest.