White House Admits China’s Spying Fruitful but Says Security Now Tight

The Clinton administration conceded Sunday that the Chinese have reaped significant technological gains from the secrets they stole from the Los Alamos nuclear weapon laboratory but insisted that it now has tightened security adequately.

Appearing on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” presidential national security advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said “there’s no question that they [the Chinese] have benefited” from the espionage allegedly carried out at Los Alamos in recent years.

And Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose department oversees the U.S. nuclear weapon program, admitted that the administration has not been able to control the e-mail that scientists at Los Alamos send to their foreign counterparts--a suspected source of some leaks.

But both men asserted that the administration acted swiftly in dealing with the suspected espionage at Los Alamos. Berger dismissed as “outrageous” suggestions that it had sought to cover up the Los Alamos scandal for political reasons.

Berger’s concession that China has unquestionably benefited from the technology leaks marked the strongest admission by the administration that the damage is serious. Richardson said last week that the CIA is still assessing the effect.

The two men also defended the administration for having waited three years to fire a University of California computer scientist who it suspects may have passed classified information to the Chinese.

“When you do an investigation like this . . . you have to develop the information, you have to analyze it,” Richardson said on ABC-TV’s “This Week.” “You don’t want to tip somebody off by dismissing them. We didn’t have strong evidence to take the action that I took.”

Meanwhile, a spate of Republicans and Democrats offered sharply different suggestions for what should be done next, from appointing an independent investigative commission to firing Berger, a step Clinton already has refused to take.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on the CBS-TV program “Face the Nation” that the entire issue, including possible Chinese espionage and interference in U.S. political campaigns, should be aired before a blue-ribbon panel similar to the one that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

“It’s very serious, and it needs to be investigated,” McCain said of the allegations involving Chinese activities in the United States during the last 15 years. But he stopped short of charging that Clinton had linked policy decisions on China to campaign contributions.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said Clinton should discuss the espionage charges with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji when he visits here in April and “find out what their intentions are” in using the nuclear weapon technology.

China recently warned the United States not to develop a nuclear missile defense system and deploy it to protect Taiwan and Japan. Recent reports have suggested that the Chinese are beefing up their missile batteries near Taiwan.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said the administration still is not doing a good job of protecting military secrets from foreign espionage. He called for enhanced counterintelligence efforts to stem any leaks.

Cox, who headed a special House panel that investigated the issue, said that, as a result of the administration’s relaxation of restrictions, the United States has provided China with hundreds of high-performance computers that could be used in nuclear weapon programs.

The suspected espionage at Los Alamos is only the latest in a series of scandals that has plagued the administration over allegations that China has stolen nuclear technology from the United States.

Although much of the leakage began in the mid-1980s, during the Reagan administration, critics say the Clinton White House waited several years before acting on espionage reports that it received in 1996 and 1997.

A week ago, after newspaper articles disclosed the Los Alamos case, Richardson fired Wen Ho Lee, a UC contract worker at Los Alamos, who officials say they suspect may have leaked some secrets to the Chinese. They still have not charged him with anything, however.

A senior U.S. official told The Times last week that the FBI had been unable to build a case against Lee because of a lack of hard evidence and Lee’s refusal to cooperate with investigators even after failing polygraph tests.

On Sunday, Richardson denied any suggestion that he dismissed Lee only after he was forced to by news accounts. He asserted that he did not act earlier because he wanted to make sure that firing Lee would not compromise the investigation now underway.

Richardson’s assertion that officials had to hold their fire in the Lee case was backed up by Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the Cox committee.

Dicks said on “Meet the Press” that, unlike the spy cases of the Cold War, the FBI was unable to uncover instances of money changing hands or spies dropping off sensitive papers in secret boxes.

“These agents act differently, and it’s a much different problem and a harder problem for the FBI,” Dicks said. “That’s why our investigations have not been as successful.”

Richardson also took pains to praise Notra Trulock, the Energy Department security officer who first brought the leaks to the attention of top officials a few years ago and since has become an icon for critics of Clinton’s China policy.

But Berger insisted that Trulock’s initial warnings in 1996 were sketchy and preliminary, saying that the security officer did not disclose the full scope of the potential espionage until 1997. Berger said the administration acted quickly to correct the problem.

“At that point,” he said, “we launched our review on how the labs were handling security, we made our changes, I briefed the president, and we made the changes I believe are necessary.”