Notra Trulock, a top intelligence officer at the Energy Department, appeared before the panel. In a dry, monotone drawl, he told the secret meeting that over the years, Beijing had stolen some of America’s most sensitive nuclear-weapons secrets from the nation’s nuclear labs. As Trulock spoke, committee members began to stiffen in their chairs. Christopher Cox, the committee’s chairman, looked at his colleagues “and their eyes bugged out,” remembers one participant. For the committee, bad news never sounded so good. The investigation, one aide remarked, “was treading water.” Trulock’s revelations gave it “new life.”
Last week, after long delays, the committee went public with its findings. The Cox report isn’t a timid document. In a strident tone, it concludes that Chinese spies have stolen design elements of “every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal.” The report also alleges a vast Chinese spy network working in the United States, operating through some 3,000 front companies. It is especially critical of Loral Space Systems and Hughes Electronics, accusing the U.S. satellite makers of giving China critical information that helped improve its rocket systems. (Both companies deny wrongdoing.) Republicans on Capitol Hill claimed to be outraged by the revelations–and demanded further investigations and tough new laws banning technology exports to China.
In reality, few of the details in the report came as a surprise to lawmakers. Much of the document had been leaked to the press weeks earlier. But last week’s public frenzy reached beyond Washington. U.S. relations with Beijing, already at a 20-year low after errant NATO bombs struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, slumped further. China can’t complain too loudly about the allegations, however. There is no doubt that Beijing has been adept at pilfering U.S. nuclear secrets. Federal investigators say the Chinese were helped by two decades of presidents who were willing to ignore warning signs in order to foster more open relations with Beijing. Even so, CIA and FBI officials are not as certain as the Cox Committee about how Beijing did it. The Feds have yet to solve any of the major spy cases currently under investigation, and investigators say the Cox report claims to have gotten to the bottom of cases that are far from solved. “They put out a very damning report,” says one top FBI official. “But it seems they’ve jumped to conclusions that aren’t supported by all the facts.”
The Feds have every reason to be frustrated. In recent years, U.S. counterintelligence officials have struggled to adapt their cold-war-era spy-catching tactics to Beijing’s subtle espionage methods. China does not rely solely on old-fashioned cloak-and-dagger spies. Rather, it has taken full advantage of the desire by successive American administrations for better relations. Perfectly lawful trade deals, academic conferences, student scholarship programs–all have been used to gather snippets of seemingly innocuous information that, one day, may be useful to China’s military. One key element of Beijing’s espionage efforts: a “persons of talent” program, which attempts to cultivate the thousands of ethnic-Chinese students and scientists living in the United States and encourage them to pass along technological information. Recruiters are low-key and friendly, visiting students at home in China before they leave for the United States and throwing informal social gatherings on campus, where the operatives gently broach the subject of information transfers. Many of those recruited by the program consider themselves loyal Chinese citizens, not spies.
The Chinese effort to harvest American technology didn’t begin with Bill Clinton. More than two decades ago there were already warning signs that U.S. secrets were vulnerable to spies. The FBI believes that lax security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California allowed the Chinese to obtain early U.S. designs for a neutron bomb back in the late 1970s, when Jimmy Carter was president. The Reagan White House did little to plug the leaks on its watch. In 1984–15 years before the Cox report–the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report warning that China had obtained U.S. secrets about, among other things, “high explosives, radiochemistry, metallurgy, welding, [and] super computers…”
George Bush was just as ineffective at plugging the leaks. A former ambassador to Beijing, Bush saw himself as a trailblazer on China policy–pushing for improved relations between the two nations. The Bush White House encouraged technology transfers and cultural exchanges between the United States and China. Emblematic of the new openness was a 1989 conference on explosives held in Portland, Ore. Weapons scientists from around the world came to share their latest findings. Among the guests: explosives experts from China, and three Iraqi scientists working on Saddam Hussein’s secret efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. In March, when the Energy Department fired Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee on suspicion that he leaked nuclear secrets to the Chinese, Republicans harshly criticized the Clinton White House’s lax security policies. But investigators believe Lee passed on the information back in 1988, when Bush was president. Lee has not been charged with a crime, and maintains his innocence.
White House spinners spent last week eagerly pushing the litany of security failings in previous administrations. But law-enforcement sources say the problems didn’t improve when Clinton took office. The president vigorously pursued commercial exchanges with China, giving the Commerce Department authority to approve transfers of satellites and other sensitive technologies. Hazel O’Leary, Clinton’s first Energy secretary, also promoted a policy of openness. According to Energy officials, managers were given the impression that scientific exchanges were to take priority over security precautions. Scores of foreign scientists continued to visit the labs, despite repeated warnings about dangerously lax security. O’Leary eliminated the colored badges lab employees wore that indicated their level of security clearance. The system had made it easy for security officials to know who was allowed in sensitive areas. “She was quite insistent that color not be used as a discriminator of people,” says one Los Alamos official. O’Leary ordered everyone to wear the same color badge, with security clearances marked in small lettering.
The influx of foreign visitors to the labs alarmed FBI Director Louis Freeh and other senior FBI officials, who raised their concerns with the Energy Department in 1997. But the FBI says its warnings were brushed aside. Currently there are about 400 nationals from “sensitive” countries working at Los Alamos, 100 from China. Seventeen foreign nationals work in the highly sensitive nuclear-weapons division–including scientists from Chi-na, India, Russia and Israel. Lab officials insist none of them has access to classified mate-rial. Even so, NEWSWEEK has learned that last year Los Alamos expelled an Indian scientist when it was discovered he had ties to India’s nuclear-bomb program.
The White House began paying serious attention to the security problems early last year–and in the weeks since the alleged Los Alamos nuclear leaks became public, the Energy Department has worked frantically to clean up the mess. Bill Richardson, Clinton’s new Energy secretary, ordered an investigation of the labs’ security and temporarily shut down the classified computers, the source of some of the most sensitive leaks. He also reinstated the color-coded badges.
Federal investigators are trying to determine what the Chinese actually stole over the years. So far, they have more questions than answers. Especially puzzling are the motives of the source who tipped them off about many of the alleged nuclear-weapons leaks. According to intelligence officials, in 1995 a Chinese “walk-in” approached the CIA unannounced and handed over pounds of secret Chinese documents. Among the papers: a one-page report containing information on W-88 and several other advanced nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal. CIA analysts eventually concluded that the messenger was “controlled and directed” by Beijing’s intelligence services. But that conclusion only raised more questions. Why would China voluntarily reveal its espionage triumphs to the United States? Some intelligence officers speculated it was part of an elaborate disinformation campaign to make the United States believe Beijing knew more than it really did, or that the walk-in accidentally slipped the document into the pile.
The CIA hasn’t found evidence that the Chinese have incorporated any U.S. technology into their own nuclear arsenal. Beijing still lags far behind the United States in nuclear-weapons design. According to CIA sources, the country has just 14 nuclear missiles that could reach the United States, and they are not even fully assembled. “It would take them two to six days to put warheads on the missiles,” says one official. “We have 250 aimed at them, and they know it.”
Yet neither America’s nuclear superiority nor Richardson’s efforts to plug the leaks at the labs may be enough to stop the barrage of criticism from Capitol Hill. Last week Republicans urged Attorney General Janet Reno and national-security adviser Sandy Berger to resign (box). Republicans are demanding new laws banning technology exports to China and a crackdown on visiting scientists. And that’s just for starters. Last week no fewer than 10 congressional committees announced plans to hold still more hearings on the mess. Not quite the kind of openness the White House–or Beijing–had in mind.
title: “The Chinese Puzzle” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Yolanda Pitman”
Two days later Kim did just that. North Korea’s delegate to three-way talks in the Chinese capital, a mid-level diplomat –named Ri Gun, told Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly over a meal that his country had developed atom bombs, which it may test, use in battle or even export. China, flummoxed by Pyongyang’s bad table manners, encouraged both sides to keep talking. But the American delegation packed up and left a day early on the ground that there was nothing more to say.
North Korea may now be alone as never before. By springing its nuclear program during talks China hosted, it has sucker-punched its last major ally in the world. Pyongyang’s erratic behavior is also likely to undermine moderates in other capitals. The North’s diplomatic bombshell has embarrassed South Korea’s new president, Roh Moo Hyun, who has staked his political career on bridging the inter-Korean divide through dialogue. Japanese officials are beginning to discuss bolstering their defenses in ways heretofore unthinkable. And Washington’s hawks–many of whom favor a military solution to the crisis–are emboldened by the North’s renewed belligerence. But whether the Bush administration’s hard-liners are able to raise the pressure on Pyongyang may ultimately be decided by China’s disposition toward its communist neighbor. “China has leverage it can use with North Korea,” says Lee Chung Hoon, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University. “It may now be in China’s interest to be tough on them.”
What Washington ultimately asks of Beijing will depend on the outcome of the internal war between the administration’s own hawks and doves. The latest squabbling began with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s secretive planning for last week’s talks. For more than a month, after his brief trip to China in February, Powell worked to stage a three-way session with the mercurial North Koreans and the Chinese. Powell toiled outside the usual National Security Council meetings to deal directly with the White House. Key conservatives, who oppose negotiating with the North, were clueless until it was too late and President Bush had already agreed to the talks. Many hawks, including Pentagon officials close to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, only heard about the talks from mid-level Japanese officials, NEWSWEEK has learned.
Not to be outdone, Rumsfeld struck back with two classified memos outlining the Pentagon’s more aggressive policy prescriptions. The recommendations include bleeding Kim’s regime dry by closing down his illicit trade in drugs and arms, through maritime interdiction and extra pressure on international clients such as Yemen. At their heart the Rummygrams argue for an alliance with China to force the collapse of the North Korean regime. But the administration’s diplomats put little stock in the Pentagon’s plans. “What are they smoking?” asked one exasperated State Department official. “Which alternative universe do they inhabit? This is total fantasy.”
Or is it? Last week in Beijing, Chinese officials witnessed for themselves how uncontrollable their onetime allies can be. The North Koreans’ bad behavior may be the very thing that prompts Beijing to take a sterner approach. The conventional wisdom still holds that China would oppose military action against the regime it once sacrificed several million soldiers to defend. But even the Bush administration’s hawks admit they are not ready for war any time soon, and certainly not in a U.S. presidential-election year. More important, Rumsfeld and his Pentagon colleagues may find that Beijing is amenable to using non-military means to get the North to stand down. And Chinese assistance could be the linchpin for orchestrating a more unified international front against Pyongyang.
Some American officials are now hopeful that China may no longer block U.N. sanctions against North Korea if a new resolution is brought to the Security Council. And the Pentagon has no doubt taken note of China’s greater willingness to use its leverage in recent months. In late February, China, which supplies the bulk of oil and grain imports to the North, shut an oil pipeline for three days to signal its displeasure with the North’s warlike rhetoric. “Communist countries have ways of doing things like this,” says Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at People’s University in Beijing. “You only have to do a small thing and the other side gets the message.”
For Beijing, the damage Pyongyang is doing to its strategic backyard is probably the most compelling reason to ratchet up the pressure. “If this goes badly,” says David Shambaugh, a professor of Chinese politics at George Washington University, “not only do they get a nuclear North Korea, but possibly a nuclear Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.” Chinese officials are keenly aware that Japanese policymakers have begun to shed their “nuclear allergy” in the months since Pyongyang acknowledged its uranium-based weapons program. Although personally opposed to a nuclear option, Diet member Ichita Yamamoto says, “We should start by seriously considering a capacity to attack missile bases in North Korea.”
It’s talk like that that is sure to keep Beijing on edge. Chairman Mao once described the relationship between China and North Korea as being “as close as lips and teeth.” Today, says North Korea expert Alexandre Mansourov, “bleeding lips and broken teeth” is closer to the truth.
