Senators Hear Divergent Views on China Spying

Two senior Energy Department officials who have helped expose suspected Chinese espionage at the Los Alamos nuclear weapon laboratory gave a Senate committee last week starkly different assessments of the damage to national security.

Notra Trulock, acting deputy director of intelligence, called the case among the worst in U.S. history. China’s theft of nuclear secrets, the 25-year intelligence veteran said, “is on a parallel with the Manhattan Project compromises,” referring to the Soviet spy ring that stole blueprints from Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s and helped Moscow build its first atomic bomb.

But Edward Curran, director of counterintelligence, was far less certain. “We all agree that there was a breach” of security, said Curran, who has logged 37 years with the FBI and CIA. “I think it’s yet to be determined the degree of that breach. . . . As far as I know, there is no information available that we have to say this information is in their hands.”

But it is Trulock who was the star witness for a select House committee that investigated Beijing’s efforts to acquire sensitive U.S. technology. And it is his dire assessment that is central to the long-awaited report that the nine-member panel will release Tuesday.

The “Cox committee,” named for its chairman, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), concludes that China acquired numerous U.S. nuclear warhead designs and other military secrets during the last 20 years and that China continues to maintain an aggressive spying operation, according to Cox and other members of the committee.

The unanimous, bipartisan report also asserts that China secretly controls as many as 3,000 “front companies,” especially on the West Coast and in Massachusetts, to obtain U.S. satellite and other civilian technology with potential military uses.

The front companies are often incorporated by Chinese nationals living here, the report says, and includes large corporations as well as small nonprofit groups.

The report also alleges that the Chinese government gives specific intelligence “collection requirements” to many of the thousands of students, tourists and other Chinese visitors who come to the United States each year. The committee was told that China’s “mosaic approach” is similar to building a sand castle one grain at a time.

Not everyone is likely to agree. The head of a prominent U.S.-Chinese group, who asked not to be identified, said his members were “deeply offended” by the charge during a background briefing by a member of Cox’s committee last week.

Other sections of the Cox committee report allege that Hughes Electronics Corp. and Loral Space & Electronics Ltd. violated U.S. export licensing laws and regulations when they helped China investigate why two Long March rockets carrying their satellites crashed in 1995 and 1996.

The report does not refer new information to the Justice Department, which has investigated the case for several years without bringing any charges. Spokesmen for Loral and Hughes, the nation’s largest and third-largest satellite manufacturers, said last week that company employees cooperated with Cox’s committee. Both companies have denied any wrongdoing.

One chapter also looks at how the U.S. companies hired Chinese sentries or security companies to guard U.S. satellites and other sensitive equipment. It says some were found drunk or asleep, or were allowed to take photographs. The report specifically recommends that U.S. soldiers or security guards be used to guard launches of U.S. satellites in China.

Another part of the report examines the role of U.S. and multinational companies that insure the satellites, and whether they bend the rules to aid their customers.

“Their financial incentive is to make sure these rockets don’t crash, which is in conflict with our aims not to improve China’s Long March rockets,” Cox said recently. The Long March rockets are similar to the intercontinental ballistic missiles in China’s nuclear strike force.

A key finding accuses the Clinton administration of not complying with the National Security Act, which requires regular reporting to the intelligence committees and the leadership of the House and the Senate.

But the report’s most dramatic section details China’s nuclear espionage over the last 20 years--as well as how various administrations, Democrat and Republican, have ignored the problem.

Two cases of Chinese spying at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from the 1970s and 1980s are cited, as well as the current investigation into suspected espionage at Los Alamos.

Political leaders from both parties took to the airwaves Sunday to blast the Clinton administration for responding too slowly to Trulock’s claims of Chinese espionage at Los Alamos, first made after three Los Alamos scientists approached him with their concerns in May 1995.

Criticism especially focused on why Justice Department lawyers refused an FBI request, shortly after the bureau launched an investigation in June 1996, for permission to examine the office computer of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.

A search after Lee was fired for security violations in March found he had improperly transferred millions of lines of highly classified nuclear weapons test codes and data from the lab’s secure computer system into a system potentially open to outsiders.

Lee has not been charged with any crime, and his lawyer has denied the Taiwan-born scientist broke the law. The FBI has not found evidence that anyone other than Lee gained access to the files, but it can’t rule out the possibility.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who heads the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called for Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to resign over the case. “I believe it’s time, considering her role or lack of role,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) appeared to agree. “I think it’s time for President Clinton to have a conversation with the attorney general about her ability to perform her duties, and whether it is in the national interest for her to continue.”

For his part, Trulock complained that although he briefed more than 60 members of the administration, his warnings and assessments were often met with “opposition and skepticism,” especially within the Energy Department and the nuclear labs.

“There was a predisposition not to accept the findings of our work,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trulock, a self-described “whistle-blower” who is a controversial and contentious figure, was more direct Thursday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He complained then that he and his colleagues were “labeled Cold Warriors, knuckle-draggers and even McCarthyites.”

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson continued to question Trulock’s general assessment, however. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” he said it still isn’t clear whether China stole nuclear secrets from U.S. labs in the 1990s.

He added: “To say right now that this is enormously damaging, we don’t know.”