Report accuses China of stealing U.S. nuclear secrets
Last Updated: Friday, November 10, 2000 | 11:52 PM ET CBC News
Report accuses China of stealing U.S. nuclear secrets - World - CBC News
A Congressional report says China is capable of making sophisticated nuclear weapons thanks to 20 years of stealing U.S. weapons technology secrets.
But the 700-page report, released Tuesday, does not say how much information China has, who stole it, or how quickly China could put it to use.
According to the report, China stole U.S. secrets on the seven major warheads in the current American arsenal as well as the neutron bomb. The thefts date to the late-1970s and likely continue still.
The report describes Chinese spying as pervasive, systemic and dangerous. Without saying how it was done, the report says China penetrated top secret nuclear labs at Los Alamos, New Mexico and two other sites with devastating results.
The report -- which represents a consensus view of Republicans and Democrats on the committee -- accuses current and previous administrations of lax security at America's nuclear research labs. And it says the U.S. has known about the extent of China's espionage since 1995.
For its part, China is dismissing the report, saying it was issued with ulterior motives -- aimed at sullying Sino-U.S. relations.
Those relations were already badly strained by the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade earlier this month. Now they could get worse.
Already some members of Congress are calling for a ban on hi-tech exports to China. Some Republican presidential candidates are also saying the U.S. should no longer treat China as a strategic partner but as a potential nuclear enemy.
BREACH AT LOS ALAMOS: A special report.; China Stole Nuclear Secrets For Bombs, U.S. Aides Say
BREACH AT LOS ALAMOS - A special report. - China Stole Nuclear Secrets For Bombs, U.S. Aides Say - NYTimes.com
By JAMES RISEN and JEFF GERTH
Published: March 6, 1999
WASHINGTON, March 5— Working with nuclear secrets stolen from an American Government laboratory, China has made a leap in the development of nuclear weapons: the miniaturization of its bombs, according to Administration officials.
Until recently, China's nuclear weapons designs were a generation behind those of the United States, largely because Beijing was unable to produce small warheads that could be launched from a single missile at multiple targets and form the backbone of a modern nuclear force.
But by the mid-1990's, China had built and tested such small bombs, a breakthrough that officials say was accelerated by the theft of American nuclear secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The espionage is believed to have occurred in the mid-1980's, officials said. But it was not detected until 1995, when Americans analyzing Chinese nuclear test results found similarities to America's most advanced miniature warhead, the W-88.
By the next year, Government investigators had identified a suspect, an American scientist at Los Alamos laboratory, where the atomic bomb was developed. The investigators also concluded that Beijing was continuing to steal secrets from the Government's major nuclear weapons laboratories, which had been increasingly opened to foreign visitors since the end of the cold war.
The White House was told of the full extent of China's spying in the summer of 1997, just before the first American-Chinese summit meeting in eight years -- a meeting intended to dramatize the success of President Clinton's efforts to improve relations with Beijing.
White House officials say that they took the allegations seriously; as proof of this, they cite Mr. Clinton's ordering the labs within six months to improve security.
But some American officials assert that the White House sought to minimize the espionage issue for policy reasons.
''This conflicted with their China policy,'' said an American official, who like many others in this article spoke on condition of anonymity. ''It undercut the Administration's efforts to have a strategic partnership with the Chinese.''
The White House denies the assertions. ''The idea that we tried to cover up or downplay these allegations to limit the damage to U.S.-Chinese relations is absolutely wrong,'' said Gary Samore, the senior National Security Council official who handled the issue.
Yet a reconstruction by The New York Times reveals that throughout the Government, the response to the nuclear theft was plagued by delays, inaction and skepticism -- even though senior intelligence officials regarded it as one of the most damaging spy cases in recent history.
Initially the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not aggressively pursue the criminal investigation of lab theft, American officials said. Now, nearly three years later, no arrests have been made.
Only in the last several weeks, after prodding from Congress and the Secretary of Energy, have Government officials administered lie-detector tests to the main suspect, a Los Alamos computer scientist who is Chinese-American. The suspect failed a test in February, according to senior Administration officials.
At the Energy Department, officials waited more than a year to act on the F.B.I.'s 1997 recommendations to improve security at the weapons laboratories and restrict the suspect's access to classified information, officials said.
The department's chief of intelligence, who raised the first alarm about the case in 1995, was ordered last year by senior officials not to tell Congress about his findings because critics might use them to attack the Administration's China policies, officials said.
And at the White House, senior aides to Mr. Clinton fostered a skeptical view of the evidence of Chinese espionage and its significance.
White House officials, for example, said they determined on learning of it that the Chinese spying would have no bearing on the Administration's dealings with China, which included the increased exports of satellites and other militarily useful items. They continued to advocate looser controls over sales of supercomputers and other equipment, even as intelligence analysts documented the scope of China's espionage.
But after learning that Mr. Samore had insisted that this case had no implications for China policy, the President's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, acknowledged tonight that the case was clearly relevant.
''We already knew that China was a country that ought not to get sensitive technology,'' said Mr. Berger. ''This reinforced that.''
Mr. Samore, the Security Council official, did not accept the Energy Department's conclusion that China's nuclear advances stemmed largely from the theft of American secrets.
In 1997, as Mr. Clinton prepared to meet with President Jiang Zemin of China, Mr. Samore asked the Central Intelligence Agency for a quick alternative analysis of the issue. The agency found that China had stolen secrets from Los Alamos but differed with the Energy Department over the significance of the spying.
The Whistle-Blower
An Energy Official As Secret Witness
In personal terms, the handling of this case is very much the story of the Energy Department intelligence official who first raised questions about the Los Alamos case, Notra Trulock.
Unfortunately you Chinese overestimate your importance and underestimate your vulnerability.
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