[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 64 (Tuesday, May 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H3372]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERS TO CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, outrage is sweeping the United States 
of America, and a justifiable outrage. The American people are finding 
out now that the technology that they paid for with their tax dollars 
to be developed during the Cold War, that some of that technology has 
been transferred to the communist Chinese in order to upgrade the 
capabilities of their nuclear weapons delivery system.
  When President Clinton became President of the United States, we had 
a chance to confront any wrongdoing or aggression or belligerency 
committed by the communist Chinese, knowing that the people of the 
United States were not at risk. Now, after 5 years, we find almost 
miraculously that the Chinese have developed the capability of hitting 
the United States with nuclear weapons.
  The outrage that I talked about, as I suggested, comes from the fact 
that we are now learning that it was American corporations, some moguls 
from the aerospace industry, who decided to take American technology 
and improve those Chinese rockets. Then we find out that this 
administration, inside the administration, the watchdogs that noticed 
that this illegal act and immoral act was taking place, that when the 
watchdogs tried to create and tried to establish an investigation and 
to prosecute those people who had transferred that missile technology, 
that their effort was undercut by no one else but the President of the 
United States.
  President Bill Clinton took the steps that were necessary to transfer 
the authority of blocking some certain transfers of technology from the 
State Department, which opposed that transfer, to the Commerce 
Department that was headed by Ron Brown which was interested in 
facilitating transfers of technology. The President also issued waivers 
and licenses that undercut those people who were preparing the 
prosecution of those people in the aerospace industry that transferred 
that technology to the communist Chinese.
  And yes, there is one other step in this story of betrayal, and that 
is the information that now is emerging that the President of the 
United States, during his reelection effort, received millions of 
dollars in contributions from those who were transferring this 
technology, in the same time period that the waivers and licenses were 
being issued by the Oval Office in order to facilitate those transfers.
  Bernard Swartz, the CEO of Lorel Corporation, the corporation that 
transferred much of this technology, is the biggest contributor to the 
President's reelection campaign, over a million dollars to the 
President's reelection or to the Democratic party. And then, of course, 
we hear about money coming from the communist Chinese themselves, 
filtering it into the President's reelection campaign, Johnny Chung 
just a few days ago admitting that the $100,000 he tried to funnel into 
the Democratic campaign came from the People's Liberation Army.
  I would ask my colleagues to pay attention to this story, because the 
People's Liberation Army, the source of those funds was not just the 
army itself, it was that part of the communist Chinese army that deals 
with missile and rocket development. A lieutenant colonel in the 
Chinese Army gave that money to Johnny Chung to funnel into the 
President's campaign.
  Yes, there is justifiable outrage. The President has a lot of 
questions to answer, as do these corporations, both on moral grounds 
and on legal grounds. The President should cancel his trip to China 
until those questions have been answered, and there should be a 
moratorium on all presidential actions concerning waivers and licenses 
and the shipping of technology to communist China until we get to the 
bottom of this.
  Every man, woman, and child in the United States now is in jeopardy 
of nuclear incineration by the communist Chinese if we ever do confront 
them in their wrongdoing, because of technology that has been 
transferred to them with the help of this President and with the profit 
of American companies making profit off technology developed by the 
taxpayers for the protection of our country.
  This is the most serious scandal that I have heard. Maybe the 
American people cannot understand what sex scandal and character has to 
do with making decisions, but this is very understandable. Our country 
has been betrayed. We need to get to the bottom of it.

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