[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 56 (Thursday, May 7, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3000-H3004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BETRAYAL OF AMERICANS BY AMERICANS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise again to discuss one of
the most disturbing issues with which I have had to deal since being
elected to Congress 10 years ago. The facts are still being uncovered,
but it appears now that America has been betrayed, betrayed by several
large, high-technology corporations and by the Clinton administration.
I do not use the word ``betrayal'' lightly. When Bill Clinton was
elected President of the United States 5 years ago, we could confront
wrongdoing on the part of the Red Chinese with little direct threat to
the United States. This, unfortunately, is no longer true. In the
future, should we confront the Communist Chinese over an act of
aggression, perhaps against our friends in the Philippines, for
example, where the Communist Chinese are trying to occupy some of the
Spratly Islands by force, and the Filipinos have no ability to defend
themselves, but in the future when the Communist Chinese commit these
acts of aggression, they will have the capability of launching a
missile from the mainland of China and landing a nuclear weapon in the
United States. This puts every man, woman and child in our country in
jeopardy.
How is it that the Communist Chinese have improved their missile
capability? You better sit down, Mr. and Mrs. America, because it
appears that several large American high-tech corporations, in
collusion with the Clinton administration, provided technology to the
Communist Chinese that perfected their nuclear weapons delivery
systems, and you can read that, ``missiles.'' American technology is
being used to upgrade the capability of the Communist Chinese to launch
a nuclear strike against the United States. It takes the wind right out
of your lungs, does it not, just to think about it? If this is true, it
is the worst technological betrayal of the American people since the
Rosenbergs. This is nothing less than a catastrophe for the security of
our Nation and the safety of our people.
So if it did happen, which there seems to be evidence that it did,
how did such a thing happen? First and foremost, pushed by corporate
leaders eager for profit and liberal foreign policy polls, America has
been walking down a dangerous and counterproductive road with the
Communist Chinese for a decade. Yes, reasonable people can disagree.
Even I was optimistic before Tiananmen Square. I was optimistic that
China would evolve out of its Communist dictatorship and perhaps evolve
into a freer society, perhaps even a democracy. And, in the late 1980s,
when there were clear signs of an evolution in the right direction, a
policy of goodwill, sincerity, and on building the Chinese economy
through trade made sense, even if it meant at the time that the trade
between us was a little bit unequal; and was unequal, certainly.
But all that changed, Mr. Speaker, on June 4, 1989. What happened in
Tiananmen Square was not just a massacre of several thousand unarmed
Chinese students, it was an internal declaration of war against
democracy and human rights and all of those decent people in China who
advocate more humane and democratic government.
All those who claim that doing business with China will make that
country a more open and free society have been proven wrong. That
trend, which we saw in the 1980s, was reversed. That trend for the last
10 years has been in the opposite direction, even as massive
investments have been made in these last 10 years since Tiananmen
Square in China.
Ten years ago there was a reform movement in China. There was hope
for an evolution in Tibet; there was the growth of Christianity. Today,
all the reformers have fled or are in jail or are dead. Christians,
Tibetan Buddhists, Muslims, all of the religious believers alike, are
being persecuted with increased and renewed intensity.
Even as the Chinese regime shoots its prisoners and sells their body
organs in order to make money from this gruesome task, during these
last 10 years, the investment in China from the United States has
accelerated, even as we continue to go in the wrong direction, totally
disproving this theory that all we have to do is trade with these
people.
It is the idea that if we just trade more with Hitler and interact
with him socially, we are going to make Hitler into a nice, fuzzy, warm
liberal instead of a Nazi. That, of course, was stupid. Hitler and
Germany at that time, as well as Italy, were economically advanced
countries. The same with Japan, an economically advanced country, yet
they had vicious dictatorships in the 1930s. Our businessmen traded
with these people. They did their best to establish economic ties with
these people. Yet the Japanese militarists, the Nazis and the Fascists,
they just drove their tanks right over the hopes and dreams of all of
these people who were wishful thinkers.
China today is the worst abuser of human rights on this planet. It
maintains a 30 to 40 percent tariff on all U.S. imports, while at the
same time the Chinese consumer products are flooded into our market
with a 3 or 4 percent tariff. So here we have a country that is the
worst human rights abuser in the world today, a dictatorship, a country
that is belligerent towards the West and has been giving technological
secrets to the Iranians and other terrorist states, yet we have given
this country the right to import with a flood of imports into the
United States of America consumer goods at only 3 or 4 percent tariffs,
while their tariffs are 30 or 40 percent at times on American goods.
Who negotiated that treaty? Who was watching out for our interests?
The Communist Chinese continue to enjoy a $40 to $50 billion trade
surplus with us because of this unfair trade relationship. No wonder,
when we permit that to keep an unfair trade relationship, to keep a
situation where they can charge us tariffs on our goods and they get to
flood theirs in here and they make $50 billion a year, no wonder they
do not take us seriously when our leaders talk about human rights.
They must know that when Bill Clinton, as President of the United
States, is talking about human rights, he is only doing it for domestic
consumption, because if he really meant it, he would do something that
would threaten this $50 billion trade surplus that they have.
And what are they doing with their trade surplus? They are building
weapons. They are building ships and missiles and military weapons that
will someday threaten the United States, and in fact, their missiles
already threaten the United States.
President Clinton, reversing an election commitment to oppose Most
Favored Nation status for China has
[[Page H3001]]
strenuously pushed Most Favored Nation status for China every year,
even though supposedly, we are concerned about human rights and the
human rights situation like in Tibet and elsewhere continues to
decline.
Well, what does MFN really mean, by the way, if there are a lot of
free traders in this country who believe that if one is against Most
Favored Nation status for China, that means one is against any trade
with China? Well, that is just not the truth. That is not what Most
Favored Nation status is about. People are perfectly free to trade with
a country that does not have Most Favored Nation status. In fact, one
is free to do so, but one has to do so at one's own risk.
What Most Favored Nation status means is that the taxpayers of this
country will guarantee investments made in Communist China and in other
countries like Vietnam where we just gave them Most Favored Nation
status through the Export-Import Bank or the World Bank or OPIC or many
of these other institutions that were set up to utilize American
taxpayers' dollars, the IMF and others, so that investments could be
made in these brutal dictatorships to build factories there, and they
would be guaranteed or they would be subsidized in some way by American
tax dollars. That is what goes on when we are talking about Most
Favored Nation status.
Mr. Speaker, this, in itself, is a betrayal of the American people,
using our tax dollars to set up companies overseas that will put our
own people out of work. Because those companies then produce products
with slave labor, and they are brought into the United States, and they
put out of work the same people who pay the taxes to secure the
investment made overseas. That is an economic betrayal of our people.
Now, this result that our country is in jeopardy today from nuclear
weapons is also a result of the blurring of the distinctions that
permitted us to have this sort of crazy, unfair trading relationship
with a dictatorship. And with us providing taxpayer guarantees for
people who want to invest in dictatorships, there has been a blurring
in our country of the distinction between what is a free country and
what is a dictatorship.
Every time we turn around, when we try to condemn Adolf Hitler or
Joseph Stalin, we have these people, and I might say they are modern-
day people who are equivalent of the Hitlers and Stalins, we have
people who say, yes, but you have race problems in the United States;
or how about this or this or that unjustice that exists in this or that
democratic country?
{time} 1830
As if there is no difference between democratic countries and
dictatorships. Well, there is a difference and we have our faults. But
we are trying to do our best to correct them and we have made major
strides in correcting our imperfections. But America at its most
imperfect was better than any of these dictatorships and our President,
of course, has blurred the distinction between right and wrong.
What is morality? What is right and wrong? What is giving your word?
These things today with the scandal going on in the White House, and I
will not go into any of that because what I am talking about tonight is
far worse than that, but the distinctions of right and wrong have been
blurred; of truth and honesty on one side, of lies and dishonesty on
the other. There is a difference.
When people talked about character, that is what we talked about. At
the same time, when someone gives their word and pledges they are
against Most Favored Nations status for China and asks for a vote and
then reverses himself immediately after the election, this creates
something in people's mind that says even the President of the United
States when giving his word it means nothing. At the same time that we
have had these moral distinctions blurred we have been barraged in our
country with talk about a global economy.
We are not just talking about our economy anymore and the well-being
of our people, we are talking about a global economy, about a new world
order, and about multinational corporations. Not companies, not
American companies anymore. Not what is good for the American people,
not policies aimed at building our standard of living, but instead the
idea that we have got to go out and work for a global economy. We have
got to have a system of stability around the world with economic
interchange that the net result is the United States ends up propping
up dictators and ends up creating stability for people who live under
tyranny, which to them means keeping their tyrants in power and
establishing trade relationships that provide those tyrants with
weapons and the means to oppress their own people.
All of this has blurred, all of these things have blurred the concept
of patriotism and loyalty and truth and justice and all of those things
that America is supposed to stand for. But, of course, that is old
fashioned and to stand for things, they say there is a single standard
instead of a subjective standard, that is passe. Well, there are
consequences to the blurring of morality. There are consequences to
telling people there is no right and wrong and anyone can make an
agreement and break it. There is a consequence when the level of
patriotism in our society declines.
This is what has happened when American businessmen, some very high-
tech businessmen, have gone overseas and made decisions that put not
only our economic well-being at risk, not only selling out the economic
well-being of the American working people who they tax in order to get
a guarantee to build their factory in Vietnam or some other
dictatorship in China. But some businessmen now we find are making
decisions that are putting all of us at risk in order to bolster a
business relationship with a communist dictatorship.
This story, it is a sad story, and here we are in a different world
in which every man, woman, and child may well be in greater risk of
nuclear annihilation because American technology was taken by an
American citizen and given to the communist Chinese regime.
This story started a few years ago which several American aerospace
companies pushed to have permission to launch their satellites on
foreign rockets. This happened while I was a Member of Congress, and
the arguments these companies made were legitimate arguments. They said
that there were not enough launchers in the United States. Furthermore,
if their satellites could be sold, some countries would demand that
their satellites be launched on other rockets, cheaper rockets than
could be afforded in the United States.
Well, knowing the different rockets and missiles that were available
around the world, I agreed with that strategy, because our satellite
industry is just as important as our missile industry in southern
California. It is part of our aerospace industry. And satellite
producers, they hire many, many thousands of people, just as rocket
builders do. And so we could not jeopardize our satellite industry,
which is in the forefront of technological development, could not
sacrifice them because our rocket people were being left behind
somewhat. And in fact in the years since then, I might add as chairman
of the Subcommittee on Space, I have moved to ensure, and we had a
pretty wide coalition behind this, to make sure that America's space
delivery systems will outcompete any in the world and we are well on
our way to developing new space transportation systems that will leave
the old systems and our competitors overseas in the dust. But that is a
few years down the road. But even then I might add when our systems are
better, we will still be in jeopardy from a missile launched from China
at the United States.
Mr. Speaker, later, after the satellite manufacturers were able to
receive the permission to launch on foreign launchers, they went to
what is called the Long March Rocket in China when they wanted to
launch in China. The Long March Rocket is the mainstay of the Chinese
rocket industry. Unfortunately, the Long March Rocket blew up often.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to just ask for one moment. I have been
struck with some hay fever or a cold in the last two days and it seems
to be getting to my throat so I will try to get through this text.
The Long March Rocket was being looked at by the satellite
manufacturers of the United States as a way to put
[[Page H3002]]
up their satellites, but this Long March Rocket blew up; three out of
four Long March Rockets ended up blowing up. In fact it blew up more
than it went up, as we like to say. And the insurance cost on putting a
satellite that costs tens of millions of dollars on a Long March Rocket
became prohibitive because the satellite makers could see that the
chances of it blowing up were rather high.
By the way, those of us in Congress who approved of the idea of
launching on foreign rockets understood this when that approval was
given. There was never a hint anywhere along the line or in any
legislation or by anyone that an American company had a right to
transfer technology to the Chinese in order to improve the Long March
Rocket. No one had suggested that. Everyone knew that was crossing the
line. Yet American satellite manufacturers were faced with that
dilemma. If they did not use the Long March, they would have to use the
American rockets. The Chinese government supposedly did not want the
American rockets and there were not enough American rockets around
supposedly. But in my district they make the Delta rocket system. The
only thing we are really talking about here is that if the Long March
could not be used because it was too unreliable, it meant the cost of a
launch would go up because there were more launches bidding for fewer
missiles.
Well, instead of letting the cost go up, what it appears is that at
least one, if not more, U.S. aerospace firms, instead of going to the
United States and hiring American aerospace workers to do the job and
to provide the rockets, these American companies passed on to the
communist Chinese the know-how and the technology they needed to
perfect their Long March Rocket.
Let us make this very clear. The alternative was using rockets that
were produced in the United States, it would cost more money because
American aerospace workers have a better product. They work harder.
They are more equipped and they have got a better product. But yet
instead of choosing the better product built by American workers at a
higher price, these several companies, or maybe even just one company,
but Americans, it appears may have chosen to perfect the Long March
Chinese rocket rather than going with the Americans.
Thus, by making the Long March a more reliable space transportation
system, these Americans at the same time were making the Chinese more
capable of launching and delivering a nuclear weapon to the United
States. The Long March Rocket has a history of misfires, explosions and
unreliability. Today it is all different. Today there is an
advertisement being run by the Chinese in Space News saying use the
Long March Rocket and bragging about its reliability. That did not just
happen. It was not a gift of the Tooth Fairy that permitted the Chinese
to perfect the Long March. They did not just think of it because a ray
of wisdom just shown down into their heads from above.
The Chinese engineers and rocket builders were not struck with some
brilliance that they did not have before. What likely happened was an
American, probably an American from a large American aerospace company,
helped them upgrade their missile even though that left the people of
the United States vulnerable to an attack by a communist Chinese
nuclear weapon.
I cannot think of anything more despicable. I cannot think of
anything in my 10 years in this office, or even before when I was a
journalist, that matches this. I cannot believe that an American would
dream of doing such a thing. But we have to live with that now because
the Chinese rockets now, there is a new generation coming out and we
can guess whether or not they are equipped with this same new
technology that was transmitted to the Long March. We do not know, but
we are going to get what really went on, who made this transfer, we are
going to get to the bottom of it.
Hughes Electronics denies that it transferred any technology to the
communist Chinese, even though Hughes Electronics is involved with
launching satellites over China and was involved with one satellite
that blew up on top of a rocket. So Hughes Electronics totally denies
this and we have to give them the benefit of the doubt until we find
out otherwise.
Loral Space, however, it appears that they may well have been deeply
engaged in this situation. Loral may have, because Loral makes
satellites and was involved in this satellite launch in China that blew
up, Loral engineers may have just rolled up their sleeves and just
looked at it and said to themselves, well, this is an engineering
project and looked at it as just an engineering project to help the
Chinese and not even thinking about the national security interests of
the United States. I hope that no one at Loral thought of the national
security interest of the United States when this was done. Because if
they did, if it even crossed their mind that the people of the United
States might be put in jeopardy, what they were saying to themselves
was, to hell with the people of the United States, I do not care if
every man, woman and child is in greater danger because of what I am
doing. We are going to make sure this project is successful and we are
going to make our profit on this Chinese satellite missile deal.
So I hope they did not think that way. I hope it never crossed their
mind. I hope they just coldly and calculatedly went forward on an
engineering project.
Of course, and we can be happy for this, this did not escape the
attention of American watchdogs when they noticed that the Chinese were
being given new technology that enhanced their capability to deliver
nuclear weapons. I mean, after all, we have got some Americans whose
job it is to see that this does not happen in our government.
Well, this is where the story gets really ugly. It even gets worse if
we think it could get worse. It appears that an investigation into this
illegal transfer was thwarted when permission was granted by the
President, that is President Bill Clinton, to export some of the
technology in question. Again, we have got to confirm this. We have got
to see whether or not that is actually the case. But it appears in
short, that our President may have knocked the legs out from under an
investigation of this high tech betrayal by an action that, in effect,
was retroactively permitting the transfer of this technology by saying
that it no longer is illegal to transfer the technology.
{time} 1845
Again, this has to be confirmed. We need to know if this can be
verified or not. Whether it is verified or not or whether Motorola or
Loral or any other company transferred this technology, we are going to
have to find that out, too. This is something that calls out for
clarification.
This President may have made it impossible for our people to
intervene to prevent the Chinese in the future, prevent them from acts
of aggression without risking our entire population. What are we
talking about now? The risk to our population.
A Chinese missile system before that was antiquated and blew up on
the launch pad equipped with American technology, equipped with
American guidance systems, control technology, staged separation
technology, and even perhaps MIRV technology.
MIRV technology. Do you know what MIRV technology is? MIRV technology
is a rocket that has gone into space, and our aerospace companies may
have said we can get it into space, but it cannot spit out a satellite.
So we are going to give them an MIRV technology that, once the rocket
is in space, it can spit out the satellite.
MIRV technology. It is exactly the same technology that permits a
rocket to go into space and spit out a nuclear warhead; not just one
nuclear warhead, but multiple nuclear warheads.
This is technology built in the United States of America for our
protection and to deter war for the Soviet during the Cold War, that
may have been given to the Communist Chinese to facilitate the
launching of satellites for profit by that company; and, in the end, we
find out that it has given them the ability not just to launch the
missile to the United States, but launch a missile carrying multiple
warheads. We need to know this.
One engineer described it to me. He said, Congressman, the Chinese
missiles were going up, this launch was going up, and it would explode.
It would explode because they did not
[[Page H3003]]
have the stage separation technology they needed.
I looked at him, and I said, you mean it would go up and just explode
before it goes into space? He said, that is right. And I looked at him
and said, Red Chinese rockets exploding is a good thing. We like that.
We like Communist rockets to explode before they get to their target.
But I guess it is something that just no one had thought of in these
companies, or whoever was giving this technology.
Now, this is the same administration, I might add, that thwarted the
investigation into this or may have thwarted it; we will see about
that. This is the same administration that thwarts our efforts right
now to build a missile defense shield so that the United States can
shoot down a missile that is launched at our country.
The Republicans and I do not want to be political here about it,
because there are some Democrats that support an SDI missile shield as
well, but Republicans have been trying to do this. This is Reagan's
vision: Let us not build more missiles that carry rockets, that carry
nuclear weapons.
Let us build a system instead, use the money that will build the
system that will protect us against incoming rockets and incoming
nuclear weapons. That makes all the sense in the world. Let us buy a
shield rather than buy a sword. Now it is even more so that we even
have a greater chance; it took a little longer than Ronald Reagan
thought to build this thing, but we now have the capability.
If the Chinese would launch a rocket towards us, we would then have a
way of stopping that rocket. Today, because this administration has put
its thumb on missile defense time and time again, we do not have the
ability to protect ourselves should the Chinese launch a rocket toward
the United States.
To put this in perspective, there was a conflict about a year and a
half ago in the Taiwan Straits, and the Red Chinese were shooting
short-range rockets in the area of Taiwan. We took several carrier
battle groups down there.
A noted Chinese general commented, well, the American people are
someday going to have to decide between Taiwan and Los Angeles. His
meaning was clear. That statement was never repudiated by the Chinese
Government. They could launch one rocket to the United States and blow
up Los Angeles, kill millions of people.
We do not have the ability to stop that now because the President
will not let us build an adequate missile shield. Do you know what we
would have to do? We would be faced with a choice of either retaliating
and murdering, through a nuclear attack, millions of Chinese, most of
whom love, probably love the United States and think of us as a good
country, because their Chinese leadership is a dictatorship and holds
them in a grip of tyranny. We would end up having to kill, we are going
to wipe out Shanghai and all those millions of people because Los
Angeles was bombed? That would be our option? That is a terrible
option.
Number one, the Chinese should not have the capability of hitting us
with nuclear weapons. But number two, we should have a shield so that
we can defend ourselves so we are not faced with that choice. Yet, the
same administration that thwarts our investigation into the Communist
Chinese, perfection of Communist Chinese rockets, now prevents us from
building a system to protect ourselves against missiles.
We are going to face this situation, and this issue will grow and
will do nothing but grow until we get these questions answered. But it
should not escape the attention of the American people that President
Clinton will be visiting Communist China, will be visiting Communist
China at the end of June.
What has just been announced by the White House? What have they just
announced that the President is going to bring to China and offer to
the Communist Chinese dictatorship? He is going to offer them a new
package of space cooperation.
Well, my colleagues, I am the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space
in this body. It is my job to oversee American space policy. There is
nothing that the United States will benefit from by establishing a
cooperative relationship with China over space. They have nothing to
share with us.
I believe that this is nothing more than an attempt by this
administration to hide the fact that there has been even more
technological transfers to the Communist Chinese that we do not even
know about now. Why else are we going to China to cooperate with them
in space? Space missiles, missiles launched that will launch
satellites, can launch nuclear weapons to the United States.
Who paid for this technology, by the way, that the President wants to
share with the Communist Chinese? Who invented it? The American people
are being betrayed when their tax dollars are being used to build
competing companies overseas. That is to say, the same truth as they
are being betrayed when we give somebody who hates us a missile or
technology for a missile that is aimed at us and armed with a nuclear
weapon.
Most people who have been following these late-night speeches know
that for 3 years, I have fought to prevent our patent laws in the
United States from being changed in a way that would open up our
country to wholesale theft. Multinational corporations during this
fight that I had, because they were trying to change our patent law,
these multinational corporations were lined up in favor of that change.
That change in the patent law would have exposed each and every one
of our new technological secrets to our economic adversaries, whether
it is the Chinese or the Japanese or whoever, even before the patent to
our inventors was issued.
After 18 months of someone that applied for a patent, his patent was
going to be exposed to the whole world, even if he had not been issued
the patent. I call it the Steal the American Technologies Act.
But do you know what? The American people rose up and we defeated
that in this House. When it came to the floor, we were able to stop the
worst provisions of that bill from becoming law, and we amended it with
the amendment of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
It went on to the Senate where it stuck in the Senate. Thank goodness
it stuck over there. I do not know how we were able to do that. As the
American people understand, it is technology that has given America the
edge over the years to preserve the peace and to establish a place
where people can prosper.
Ordinary working people can build lives of decency and clean homes
and food, and people know that. They understand that it is technology,
our technological lead that permits us, because people all over the
world work hard. But it is here with technology and freedom that the
average man can prosper and live a decent life.
In fact, there is no hope for anyone in the world, anyone who suffers
under tyranny or deprivation unless America stands tall and America is
strong. It is upon our shoulders that the future of mankind depends. We
must have strong shoulders. We must have bright minds and strong
shoulders. We must use our minds and use our strength to build a great
Nation that will be the hope of all mankind, because there is no hope
for others unless America stands tall.
But the American people, these people on whom we rely and everything,
everyone in the world relies, they have been taken for granted, and
their interests have been ignored so many times in these last 10 and 20
years.
Our economic and government elite in this country act as if they do
not have to care about the American people, because after all, we are a
prosperous people, and they are the Americans, you know; and they buy
into these arguments that we cause all the problems in the world. If we
did not exist, the Hitlers and the Stalins and the rest of the petty
dictators that still control China would be in charge of this whole
planet.
Now our economic and government elite are building a new world order,
a global economy, a perfect planet run by multinational organizations
like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, et cetera, et
cetera. These are the people who should be watching out for our
interests but, instead, are building this global vision.
For one reason or another, it does not make any sense to me, and I do
not think it makes any sense to most people. Count me as a patriot. Our
goal
[[Page H3004]]
should not be to make America like the rest of the world. Our goal
should be to stand out from the rest of the world as an example of
freedom and justice and opportunity and progress, an example that the
rest of the world would want to follow.
The last thing, like in the patent law, what do they want to do to
the patent law? They wanted to take the high American standards that
protect the average person out there when he invents something and
lower that standard to the world standard. That is what they wanted to
do.
They wanted to make lower the American standard so that our people,
our people then will see their rights diminished in order to harmonize
the rights of all mankind. That is baloney. It is baloney. We should
not be lowering our standards. We should be proud of our standards and
proud of what we have accomplished as Americans.
We should not be signing treaties and trade agreements that let a
country, a Communist country in particular, a dictatorship in
particular like China, have an unfair trade advantage which yields them
$50 billion every year because they flood their goods into our market
at a lower tariff and our goods come in at a very high tariff. Who is
watching out for our people?
It was the commitment to freedom of the American people that saved
this planet throughout this century. If people want to talk about
globalism, let them start talking about globalism and realize that the
foundation of globalism has to be a strong United States of America and
a citizenry of our country that is proud of liberty and justice and
American traditions and will fight for the right when necessary; not an
America, instead, where the American people are stooped and made to
believe that our government is secondary to some other world body.
World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, if it was not for the
Americans who stepped forward during these challenges to mankind, our
planet, as I say, would be dominated by tyrants and despots and petty
little gangsters.
The Cold War and what permitted us to win those wars, yes, it was the
courage of our people, the faith that we had, our determination, our
belief in freedom, and it was also won, especially the Cold War, was
won by American technology and, yes, by the American aerospace worker.
We did not take the Communists on man for man. No one ever dreamed of
taking the Communists on man for man. We would have lost hands down. We
would have been unnerved. But we were technologically superior, not
only in the weapons area, but in the production of wealth.
I will never forget when I visited the Soviet Union in 1986. I worked
for Ronald Reagan in the White House. It was the first thaw during the
time when Gorbachev took power in Russia.
{time} 1900
And I went there and I could not figure out what I wanted to bring,
but I decided that I would bring a jar of peanut butter because I found
out that they do not manufacture peanut butter in the Soviet Union.
Imagine that. We were afraid of a country that could not even make
peanut butter.
At the right moment, there were a group of young people there, and I
took the jar out and I asked them if they would like to have a taste of
America; see what America really tastes like. A couple of them stuck
their fingers in. Now think about it; they had never tasted peanut
butter before. And they said, oh, peanut butter. America is wonderful.
Wonderful.
Then one came up to me after they huddled and they said, what are
those marks on the side of the peanut butter jar? I said, well, that is
the bar code. That is where the computer at the food store gives the
customer a bill that is itemized, the price of the products on the
customer's bill, and then notifies the inventory that an item has been
sold. They huddled back up and talked about it, and then the Russian
kid came up and said to me, that is why we do not trust Americans. They
are always lying. Computers at a food store? Who are you kidding?
Well, at the Russian food stores they were using abacuses. They
probably still are. And all the computers were used by the military.
All of their computers were left for the military use, and that society
was going down because they could not produce the wealth that was
necessary to sustain after modern technological society. We won the
Cold War when those people realized they were going to be left in the
dust.
Now, the aerospace workers that gave us the edge in weaponry and
built the weapon systems that deterred war, well, those people who are
still in the aerospace business making rockets to send things into
orbit are part of a very honorable profession. They are not building
rockets to drop nuclear weapons; they are building rockets to send
things into space. And for our companies just to try to bypass them and
to go over and use some sort of slave labor in China is again a
betrayal of those aerospace workers who saved us during the Cold War.
These people build the best product. They do not deserve to be taxed
and have our technology given to their adversary.
That is exactly what is going on here. This has been a betrayal,
however, that does more than put aerospace workers' jobs in jeopardy;
it puts us all in harm's way. And as I say, this is the same President
who, perhaps, has thwarted, and we are going to find out if he did or
not, this investigation into giving away of America's technology. This
is the same President that has been thwarting our efforts to build a
weapon shield.
Well, what we gave China--what we gave? What those people. Not ``we''
anymore. If they gave this away and put us in jeopardy, no American
should call them ``we'' anymore, because they put themselves outside
this family of people who believe in freedom and democracy if they have
done something like that. We will move to protect ourselves. We will
build a nuclear shield, because we can never take back this technology
that we gave to technology.
Technology and freedom are two of our mainstays, and with technology
and freedom we will live the dream of our Founding Fathers. We will
continue to be the world's greatest democracy. We will continue to live
in prosperity, and we will continue to live secure in our homes and
families from the threats of foreign tyrants.
Now, let me summarize, as I come to a close tonight, and this is
coming to the close of my hour, so I will discuss just what have we
discussed tonight.
It appears that at least one American company, perhaps more, have
transferred technology to the Communist Chinese that now permits them
to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. President Clinton may
have undercut an investigation or a prosecution into this betrayal.
The word is getting out, but the American people need to know the
facts about this and we need to know the facts about this before the
President's upcoming visit to China. The President should not stand in
Tiananmen Square and make a joke of human rights by mentioning it at
the same time that he completely ignores the massive violations of that
regime and pushes for more and more trade and more giveaways to the
Communist Chinese.
We must put the President on notice that, in his relationship with
China, first and foremost he must be consistent with our American
ideals of freedom and democracy and human rights. And even beyond that,
he must make sure that he is watching out for the safety of our people,
for the safety of the people of the United States of America.
I know all of what I have said is unnerving, and I can guarantee that
there are people in this town who are committed to setting this
situation right. I believe and am assured, and others can be assured as
well, that the patriots who love this country will prevail.
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