China Spying Systematic, Extensive, Panel Concludes

China has successfully mounted a systematic espionage campaign in the United States since the 1970s that has helped it harvest U.S. nuclear weapon secrets, advanced missile and warplane guidance systems, futuristic electromagnetic weapons and other sensitive military technology, a long-awaited House investigative committee report concludes.

The report, which will be formally released today, says that China has stolen the design secrets of seven U.S. nuclear warheads, including every weapon in the current U.S. nuclear arsenal, through spying at four U.S. government weapons research laboratories and production facilities.

Beijing is expected to use elements of the U.S. designs to upgrade and expand its small and antiquated nuclear strike force, the report warns, in part by using high-performance computers that China has been allowed to purchase from U.S. companies since 1996.

The report repeatedly warns that China’s success at using legal and illegal means to obtain U.S. military and other technology poses a direct threat to the security of America, U.S. troops overseas and key allies in Asia. It adds that the possibility of a U.S. confrontation with China cannot be dismissed.

The unanimous report by the nine-member Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, which was chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), offers far more sweeping and dramatic conclusions about the success of Chinese espionage than those in an April 21 assessment by the U.S. intelligence community. That evaluation said that Chinese espionage “probably accelerated” Beijing’s future weapons development. It added that it is “more likely” that China used U.S. designs to “inform their own program rather than to replicate U.S. weapons designs.”

Using much more unequivocal language, the Cox committee concludes that thefts of U.S. weapon designs enabled Beijing to design, develop and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than otherwise would have been possible. The stolen U.S. secrets gave Beijing design information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with the United States, the report adds.

Although details of the committee’s six-month inquiry have been leaking since the beginning of the year, and some were made public long before the investigation began, a 29-page overview obtained by The Times offers the first comprehensive look at a report likely to have vast political repercussions both in Washington and Beijing.

The report’s extraordinary listing in one place of spying and other transgressions of U.S. law almost certainly will fuel demands in Congress for new restrictions on U.S. exports of technology to China, as well as a harsh reevaluation of U.S. relations with the world’s most populous nation.

That would further complicate the Clinton administration’s ties with China, which have deteriorated sharply since a U.S. warplane participating in the NATO air war against Yugoslavia mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade two weeks ago.

Guidance Systems Mentioned in Report

The Cox committee report claims for the first time that Beijing has acquired specific electronic guidance technology used in a variety of U.S. missiles and warplanes, including the Navy’s F-14 and Air Force F-15, F-16 and F-117 fighter jets.

The pilfered technology, the committee says, may be used to help China’s intercontinental, medium-range and short-range ballistic missiles, as well as its space-lift rockets, and may have been delivered to other regimes hostile to the United States.

The technology is not identified in the report for reasons of national security. But a U.S. official familiar with the Cox investigation identified it as an “accelerometer,” a device that measures acceleration. The official said that China stole the technology in 1980 and has since adapted and improved it for its own military systems.

Other assertions in the report:

* China obtained U.S. research and development work on electromagnetic weapons technology as a result of espionage. The technology ultimately could be used for space-based weapons to attack satellites and missiles, the report claims, although U.S. researchers have never produced a usable weapon from the so-called rail gun technology.

* China stole classified U.S. research in 1997 on sensitive detection techniques that, if successfully concluded, could be used to threaten U.S. submarines. A Chinese American scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has admitted providing submarine surveillance information to China that year. The scientist, Peter Lee, was not charged with delivering the material but pleaded guilty to other charges related to passing classified information.

* Hughes Electronics Corp. and Loral Space and Electronics Ltd. illegally transmitted information that helped China improve its military rockets and operations, including the design and reliability of its ballistic missiles and nose cones. Both companies have denied wrongdoing and neither has been charged.

* China has attempted to obtain sophisticated U.S. machine tools and jet engine technologies through fraud. In 1994 and 1995, it attempted to divert an export of machine tools by McDonnell Douglas to military uses.

* High-performance computers legally purchased from U.S. companies have been secretly used by Chinese military institutes and organizations involved in research and development of nuclear weapons, missiles, satellites, spacecraft, submarines, aircraft, military systems, command and control, communications and microwave and laser sensors.

Although China has not yet responded to the committee’s complete findings, officials in Beijing have repeatedly denied engaging in espionage in the United States.

The Clinton administration relaxed restrictions on high-end computer sales to China in 1996, and 600 have since been sold. But the report argues that U.S. officials have no effective way to determine whether computers sold for commercial purposes are diverted to military uses.

At a press briefing Monday, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart defended the administration’s efforts to stop Chinese theft of nuclear secrets, as well as restrictions on U.S. technology that is exported to China.

“One of the things to remember here is that we have very tight export controls on China, very tight, as tight as they can be without an embargo,” Lockhart said.

Lockhart also said that Clinton “has confidence” in Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. Several Republican leaders have called for her resignation, blaming her for the Justice Department’s failure to aggressively pursue Chinese espionage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

“I think finger-pointing is a popular spectator sport and participative sport here in Washington,” Lockhart said. “The bottom line is this is a bipartisan problem that needs a bipartisan solution. It goes back over 20 years. It doesn’t have a Democratic or Republican name on it.”

Lockhart also denied that any espionage has occurred at the weapons labs during the Clinton presidency.

“If you’re looking at this presidency, I can’t point to a case where we know something was stolen, we know who did it and we know where it went to and we know where it came from,” he said. “That’s the bottom line, as disappointing as it may be.”

Cox Panel at Odds With Administration

The Cox report suggests otherwise. It says that China stole classified thermonuclear weapons information, possibly from a national weapons lab, in the mid-1990s. Neither the lab nor the information was identified.

But the U.S. official familiar with the Cox inquiry said that it refers to a March 1996 classified report that said China had stolen new information on the neutron bomb. China is known to have stolen classified information on the enhanced radiation bomb from the Livermore lab in the late 1970s and tested it in 1988.

The FBI opened an investigation into the new allegation in July 1996, but was not able to confirm it, or identify a source who might have provided the information. The FBI investigation remains open, however.

In all, the Cox report claims that China has obtained information on seven U.S. nuclear warheads, including five still deployed. They are the W-88 and W-76, both of which are launched from Trident submarines; the W-87, which is atop the Peacekeeper MX intercontinental ballistic missile, and the W-78 and W-62, which are on Minuteman III ICBMs.

The report notes, however, that China has obtained far more advanced military equipment and technology from increased cooperation with Russia since 1992 than it has from espionage in the United States.