[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 60 (Thursday, April 29, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2539-H2543]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Burton) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, my committee, the Committee on 
Government Reform and Oversight, of which I am chairman over the past 
2\1/2\ years, has been investigating illegal campaign contributions 
that came in from a variety of countries around the world. Came in from 
South America, from Taiwan, from communist China, from Macao, from 
Indonesia, from Egypt, and on and on, and these illegal campaign 
contributions came in to the Clinton/Gore Reelection Committee and to 
the Democrat National Committee.
  During the past 2\1/2\ years we have been trying, day and night, to 
get to the bottom of this. We have tried to get people to come forward 
and testify, we tried to get cooperation from the Justice Department, 
the White House, but we have been very, very unsuccessful because there 
seems to have been a stone wall erected by the White House and the 
Justice Department and other agencies to keep us from getting to the 
bottom of this.
  We have had 121 people, 121 people take the Fifth Amendment or flee 
the country. That is unparalleled in American history, and I have been 
here on the floor a number of times talking about this because I think 
it is unbelievable that foreign governments

[[Page H2540]]

should be able to influence our elections and even elect a President. 
Millions of dollars have come in illegally into the Clinton/Gore 
campaign and to the Democrat National Committee, and much of that money 
has been returned because of our investigation.
  Now today I rise on a different subject, but it may be related, and 
that is why it is so troubling to me. The Chinese communists, through 
people in their government, the head of their military intelligence and 
the head of their Chinese aerospace industry gave a man named Johnny 
Chung $300,000 to give, at least in large part, to the Clinton 
Reelection Committee, and they were not doing it in my opinion for Mr. 
Clinton's good looks. They obviously had some kind of an agenda. The 
head of the Chinese military intelligence and the head of the Chinese 
aerospace industry giving campaign contributions to a candidate for 
President in this country would lead almost anyone to say there is 
something amiss here, there is something wrong, and it should be 
thoroughly investigated.
  Mr. Speaker, we just recently found out that at Los Alamos, one of 
our nuclear research facilities, that they had a man there named Wen Ho 
Lee who had been there for a long time who is believed to have been 
involved in espionage.

                              {time}  1545

  I am very concerned about some of the statements that have come out 
of the administration with respect to China's thefts of these U.S. 
nuclear secrets. Again and again we have seen administration officials 
all the way up to the President make misleading statements about what 
they knew and when they knew it. Let me provide you with some examples.
  One good example is on March 19, 1999, President Clinton was asked by 
a reporter, ``Can you assure the American people that under your watch, 
no valuable secrets were lost?''
  The President responded, ``Can I tell you there has been no espionage 
at the lab since I have been President? I can tell you that no one,''--
listen to this--``I can tell you that no one has reported to me that 
they suspect such a thing has occurred.'' So the President was saying 
he was totally uninformed. He did not know anything about it.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, the President's response about his knowledge of 
Chinese spying is not only troubling and disingenuous, it is just hard 
to believe. The Clinton administration, his administration, knew about 
the full extent of Chinese spying at Los Alamos and Livermore and other 
laboratories as far back as 1996, over 3 years ago.
  Then the National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, head of the NSC, 
was briefed about the Chinese spying by the Energy Department's chief 
of intelligence, a Mr. Notra Trulock. Berger was told that China had 
stolen W-88 nuclear warhead designs and neutron bomb technology. He was 
told that a spy might still be passing secrets to China at Los Alamos, 
our nuclear research facility. He was even told that the theft of 
neutron bomb data occurred in 1995 under the President's 
administration.
  Let me just tell you that the W-88 warhead is a miniaturized nuclear 
warhead that can be put on one missile. You can put 10 of these nuclear 
warheads on one missile so that with one missile you can hit 10 
American cities and kill 50 to 60 million American citizens. We have no 
defense for that right now.
  The neutron bomb technology would allow a neutron bomb to be launched 
on a missile to the United States, and, if it exploded over a major 
city, it would kill everybody in the city, but the infrastructure would 
not be damaged, so it would be something an enemy would like to do, 
protect the infrastructure, the roads, the buildings, and so forth, but 
kill all the people in it.
  At the end of the briefing that Mr. Berger, the head of the National 
Security Council, received, Trulock referred to a recent intelligence 
report. In the report a Chinese source, a Chinese spy that spies for 
us, a Chinese source said that officials inside, inside, China's 
intelligence service, were boasting about how they had just stolen U.S. 
nuclear secrets, and how those secrets allowed them to improve their 
neutron bomb technology.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, again in July of 1997, a year before his meeting 
with President Jiang of Communist China and 21 months before his 
meeting with Prime Minister Shu of China, Sandy Berger received a 
second detailed briefing about China's spying, and soon after told the 
President about the weaknesses at the laboratories at Los Alamos and 
Livermore, and about the Chinese spying. This was in 1997.
  Now, remember, the President just a few weeks ago said that no one 
had informed him. Yet Sandy Berger, the head of the NSC, did tell him 
for sure 2 years ago in 1997. Why would the President misspeak? Why 
would he mislead the American people? I do not know.
  Mr. Speaker, in August of 1997, Gary Samore, the senior National 
Security Council official assigned to the China spy case, received a 
briefing from Mr. Notra Trulock, who is the head of intelligence 
security over at the Department of Energy, and immediately after the 
briefing about this spying, he went to the CIA director and asked the 
CIA director to seek an alternative analysis about how the Chinese had 
developed these small nuclear warheads.
  So after he had been told they stole this nuclear technology and that 
spying was going on, he went to the CIA and said, ``Can't you give us a 
different way they got this technology?''
  Why would he do that? Why, when presented with such overwhelming 
evidence of Chinese espionage, did Gary Samore seek to downplay the 
significance of the information, asking the CIA to come up with another 
explanation, other than espionage, about China's advances? We had 
already gotten some of this information from our intelligence sources 
over in China.
  Mr. Speaker, in May of 1998, Notra Trulock, the Energy Department's 
director of intelligence, was demoted; he was demoted after he brought 
this information out, to acting deputy director of Intelligence, after 
he made a third report to the Energy Department's Inspector General 
about a steady pattern, a steady pattern of suppression of 
counterintelligence issues. They did not like what he was saying, so 
they demoted the guy.
  I want to go back just a minute to this briefing that took place 
about the neutron bomb. The Chinese intelligence source that we have 
also said that Chinese agents solved a 1988 design problem by coming 
back to the United States after they had already been involved in 
espionage in 1995 to steal more secrets. Trulock's April 1996 briefing 
to Sandy Berger could not have been more detailed and it could not have 
been more alarming. So the head of the NSC, the man who reports to the 
President about security issues, was completely informed about this in 
1996, in April.
  When Paul Redmund, the CIA's chief spy hunter was given a similar 
briefing from Trulock a few months earlier, he said that China spying, 
now, get this, China spying was far more damaging to the U.S. national 
security than Aldrich Ames, who is now serving a prison term for 
spying, and it would turn out to be as bad as the Rosenbergs, who were 
put to death because they gave Communist Russia, the Soviet Union, 
secrets back after World War II.
  Mr. Speaker, is it really, really likely that Sandy Berger, the head 
of the NSC, after hearing such a detailed and alarming picture of 
Chinese espionage, would not tell the President about it? Yet the 
President just a few weeks ago said no one brought it to his attention, 
and this was 3 years ago. If you were the President or if I was the 
President and our head of National Security did not tell us this, you 
would fire him. You would have him hung out to dry, because this a 
national tragedy, a national security issue. Yet the President said he 
did not know about it just a few weeks ago.
  According to the White House, Berger first briefed the President 
about Chinese spying in July of 1997. So why did the President say he 
had not been informed about it? He did so after he received a second 
briefing from Notra Trulock, which, according to Berger, was much more 
specific than the first.
  In addition, according to NSC spokesman David Levy, Berger ``did not 
detail each and every allegation.''
  Why would he not detail each and every allegation? We are talking 
about spying at one of our foremost nuclear research laboratories and 
about technology that could endanger every man,

[[Page H2541]]

woman and child in the country. Mr. Levy gave this explanation, after 
being asked if Berger had told the President about the neutron bomb 
data that was stolen in 1995.

  Apparently the White House wants us to believe that Berger only told 
the President about the W-88 design theft which happened before 1992, 
which was done under his watch, and left out the theft of the neutron 
bomb data and China's recent spying at Los Alamos.
  Are we to believe that 3 years after the President's national 
security adviser received his first briefing about this wave of 
espionage that happened under the President's watch, that he would not 
have told the President about it? And, after that, how can you believe 
anything the administration says?
  Why does the President, despite all the evidence to the contrary, 
continue to accept every Chinese denial, not only of spying, but also 
of illegally funneling money to the Clinton-Gore reelection committee?
  We know that the President was briefed about China's spying in July 
of 1997. Why then, while in China in 1998, with President Jiang, did he 
quickly accept President Jiang's denial that China had illegally 
funneled money to the Clinton-Gore reelection committee? He already 
knew about the spying. He already had Chinese nationals coming in and 
out of the White House on a regular basis. Johnny Chung was bringing 
them in, Charlie Trie was bringing them in, John Huang, Mark Middleton, 
and on and on and on. They were running in and out like they were on a 
railroad train. Yet he said he believed President Jiang when President 
Jiang said they were not illegally funneling money into the Clinton-
Gore reelection committee. We know for a fact that that was going on.
  How could the President say, I do believe him, that he did not order, 
authorize or approve such a thing, the illegal contributions, and that 
he could find no evidence that anybody in governmental authority had 
done that?
  The head of the Chinese military intelligence was running money 
through Johnny Chung. The head of the Chinese aerospace industry, who 
benefitted from the technology transfer I am talking about, was 
involved. They were very high up. In fact, the head of the Chinese 
National Aeronautics Agency over there, the aerospace industry, her 
father was the head of the Chinese Liberation Army, the People's 
Liberation Army. He was right in the Politburo, right next to the 
President of the country.
  For them to say the head of the country was not involved is just 
ludicrous, because if you do not keep the head of the government 
involved in a Communist society, you are either put away for good or 
you are killed.
  Mr. Speaker, again in April of this year, how could the President 
listen to Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji deny that Chinese had any 
involvement in spying and respond by saying, and this is what the 
President said, ``China is a big country with a big government, and I 
can only say that America is a big country with a big government, and 
occasionally things happen in this government that I do not know 
about.''
  He was implying the Chinese did not know, the head of the Chinese 
Government, did not know they were stealing through espionage nuclear 
technology from Los Alamos and Livermore. That is just insane. I do not 
think anybody could believe that.
  Mr. Speaker, our leadership cannot continually be blind and accept 
each and every denial that comes out of China. Newsweek recently 
reported that a team of U.S. nuclear weapons experts in America 
practically fainted when the CIA showed them the data that China had 
obtained. These are the guys that know what these weapons can do. They 
practically fainted when they found out that technology had been taken 
by espionage to the Communist Chinese.
  What did this data show? It showed that Chinese scientist also 
routinely used phrases, descriptions and concepts that came straight 
out of Los Alamos and Livermore labs. The Chinese penetration, they 
said, is total, one official close to the investigation said. They are 
deep, deep into the labs' black programs. Those are the top, top secret 
programs involving our country and our security.
  Now, today, because of these things that happened, the head of the 
Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Shelby, started investigating it. 
Mr. Shelby said that he had known there was an ongoing investigation 
and that it confirmed his worst fears. He said we have got to get to 
the bottom of this. He is working on it right now.
  One of the people, a senior analyst and nuclear weapons expert at the 
Natural Resources Defense Council, said, ``It is staggering. I am still 
in shock here.''


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin). The gentleman should 
please refrain from quoting Members of the other body.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I will do that. I will mention the other body 
generically, Mr. Speaker.
  ``It is staggering,'' he said. ``I am still in shock here,'' a senior 
analyst and nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense 
Council said. He said, ``If someone had access to Lee's,'' that is the 
fellow who was involved in the espionage, allegedly involved, 
``unclassified computer, this could be all over the world.''
  What he was talking about, this was this Mr. Wen Ho Lee, took this 
top secret information and he transferred it from a top secret computer 
into a non-top secret computer, where all you had to do was put in a 
password and you could get every one of our nuclear secrets that he had 
available to him.
  This has been going on for some time. Norris's colleague, physicist 
Matthew G. McKenzie said that ``unauthorized access to those programs, 
so-called legacy codes, used to simulate warhead detonation, would 
represent an unprecedented act of espionage in his scope. Get this. The 
espionage in the Manhattan Project, that was right after we discovered 
the nuclear bomb that ended World War II, the espionage in the 
Manhattan Project would pale, would pale, in comparison.''
  This is so much more damaging. We are focusing everything right now 
in the media almost on Kosovo, and our heart goes out to the people who 
are suffering over there. But this espionage endangers every man, woman 
and child in this country if we ever go to war with Communist China. 
And they have made threats in the Taiwan Straits. They have made overt 
threats about we would not go into Taiwan to protect them because we 
value Los Angeles more than we do Taiwan, which was an implied threat. 
So you do not know what might happen. They are a Communist 
dictatorship. Yet they got all this, and we keep working with them and 
dealing with them as if nothing happened.
  Asked whether Clinton stands by his statement that he made last month 
that there was no evidence indicating Chinese espionage on his watch, 
David Levy, a National Security Council spokesman, said, 
``Administration officials are investigating a number of recent 
allegations and are under no illusion that China and other nations 
continue to acquire secrets. This does not come as news to this 
administration,'' he said.
  Does not come as news? The President said just a few weeks ago that 
he had not been informed about it, even though the national security 
adviser, the head of National Security in this country, found out about 
it in 1996.
  Why? Why was this money coming into America from Chinese Communist 
sources into the campaign? Why did this technology transfer take place, 
this espionage? Why did that take place? And why did the President say 
he did not know about it?
  The transfers took place from 1983 to 1995 when Los Alamos began 
installing a new mechanism that would have made such transfers more 
difficult. It looks like he was moving quickly, Mr. Lee, in the last 
few months, to get it transferred before the new system came in. They 
were coming up with a new system.
  When the FBI finally searched Lee's computer last month, following 
his dismissal on March 8, the official said they found he had made an 
effort to erase what he had been doing as far as classified information 
was concerned.

                              {time}  1600

  Mr. Speaker, what is interesting is that the FBI a couple of years 
ago wanted to put electronic surveillance on Mr. Lee and the Justice 
Department said no. The Justice Department told the FBI two years ago 
that they did

[[Page H2542]]

not want electronic surveillance on Mr. Lee because the information was 
not current enough. We were talking about espionage of our most top 
secret nuclear weapons systems, and the Justice Department denied the 
FBI the right to put electronic surveillance on this guy.
  In addition to that, they wanted a warrant to go in and look at his 
computer and search facilities of his, and that also was denied by the 
Justice Department. Why? What in the world is wrong with this 
administration, from the White House all the way to the Justice 
Department? I do not understand it.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to come down here to the 
House floor to compliment the gentleman for what he is trying to do, to 
educate the American people and also educate some of our colleagues, in 
fact, many of our colleagues.
  Mr. Speaker, I served in the Air Force, and I was in a classified 
program dealing with top secret material, and the access we had to have 
to get into the room where we worked was coded, and the code would 
change, and we would have to punch it in. Then, when we had classified 
material on our desks, we had to account for this at the end of the 
day, and we had to account for it the next morning. There were very 
detailed procedures on how we handled it.
  What I read today in the paper, and in The New York Times yesterday, 
is very alarming, and I think the gentleman is talking about this 
scientist, Wen Ho Lee. It was reported in The New York Times on March 
24 that he was already under investigation. Now, the gentleman may have 
said this and I might have missed it.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, they started investigating him in 
1996-1997.
  Mr. STEARNS. It was reported on March 24 of this year, he was under 
investigation as a suspected spy for China to run a sensitive weapons 
program, and it is just outrageous that they would continue to take a 
person like this and put him in that responsibility. Then he was asked, 
as the gentleman knows, to hire his own special assistant. So he hired 
a special assistant.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. This was after he was under surveillance.
  Mr. STEARNS. After he was under surveillance, after he was working 
there. So he hired a researcher who was a citizen of China. 
Intelligence and law enforcement officials have confirmed this. The FBI 
has said that they wanted to put a wiretap on Mr. Lee. And so it is 
sort of flabbergasts the American people, I think, if they look at it, 
how this individual could get a top secret clearance and get access to 
so much information.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And why the Justice Department denied 
electronic surveillance on the man.
  Let me just interrupt my colleague and tell him something else that 
we recently found out, and I will be having other Special Orders going 
into other aspects of this, but the gentleman is welcome to stay so 
that we can discuss this.
  We found out under Hazel O'Leary, the previous head of the Department 
of Energy, that she relaxed, cut the budget for security, cut the 
security force to such a degree that the head of intelligence for the 
Energy Department was really alarmed. Not only that, they changed the 
cards, the cards that they used to have, one card for top secret 
people, another card for somebody else, color codes so people could not 
get into the top secret areas, she did away with those and came up with 
one card for everybody so you could not track who was going in and out 
of the top secret areas.
  This was an invitation to espionage. I cannot figure out why in the 
world they relaxed, they cut the budget for security, especially in 
view of the fact that this man was a suspect back as far as 1996. It 
does not make any sense to me.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, just to 
confirm what the gentleman is saying, throughout all our military they 
do not have that type of operations in their classified programs, they 
do not have that one-pass-fits-all, and I do not think any classified 
program of that delicate a nature should have be relaxed; in fact, they 
should have increased security.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely correct. 
However, this administration, for whatever reason, from top to bottom, 
is guilty of either just mishandling all of this or worse. I do not 
know what it is. But we need to get to the bottom of it because this 
endangers, as I said before, every man, woman and child in this 
country.
  Let me just go on with this article, because I have some things I 
would like to comment about it. When the FBI finally searched Lee's 
computer last month following his dismissal, they found that he was 
trying to erase top secret information that he had put in the computer. 
The official said that a password was needed to access the information 
even after Lee transferred it from the classified computer system, but 
all he had to do was give the password to one of his Communist friends 
and they could access every nuclear secret before him at that 
laboratory, everything that was in that computer, and this was top 
secret information that had been transferred to a non-top secret 
computer.
  The unclassified system allows investigators to determine when and 
whether the data was accessed, the official said, and initial 
indications are that the materials was accessed. So they think somebody 
did get into the computer and get this technology, at least a little 
bit.
  Who was looking at it remains unclear, the official said, since Lee 
could have given the password to anyone else in any government.
  Another high-ranking official reported no indication that the 
information was compromised. He denied a published report of evidence 
showing a password had been misused to gain access. He also denied that 
the FBI had been derelict in not searching Lee's computer at the 
beginning of the espionage investigation in 1996. At the time the FBI 
agents from the Bureau's Albuquerque field office wanted to search the 
computer but were told they needed a search warrant from the Federal 
court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The warrant was 
denied, the official said, because a lack of evidence showed that Mr. 
Lee was engaged in acts of espionage.
  If there was any doubt, why would the Justice Department not grant a 
search warrant? That would have been the prudent thing to do. They 
could have done that.
  I can tell the gentleman, the FBI would never go to the Justice 
Department without probable cause. If they think there is probable 
cause that espionage took place and they went to the Justice Department 
and that was denied, that is darn near criminal.
  Lee became a suspect in 1996 after the Energy Department and 
intelligence agencies determined that a Chinese military document that 
the CIA had obtained from some of our sources a year earlier contained 
classified data about the size and shape of the newest miniaturized 
nuclear weapon, which I was talking about, the W-88. The FBI was unable 
to gather hard evidence against him, and he has not been charged with a 
crime yet, but Lee was fired in March for security violations after the 
investigation was disclosed. The official said transferring data to an 
unclassified computer system would be or could be a crime, depending on 
the intent of the person who did it.
  As soon as FBI agents discovered Lee had transferred massive amounts 
of secret data to his unclassified computer, Richardson ordered to shut 
down, Mr. Richardson is now the head of the Energy Department, 
Richardson ordered a shutdown of the classified computers at Los 
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories.
  The problem is this: The cat is out of the bag. The secrets have been 
taken by the Chinese communists. The things that our taxpayers spent 
millions and millions and millions of dollars and hundreds and 
thousands of man-hours researching to protect the citizens of this 
country have been given away through espionage to the Chinese 
communists, endangering every man, woman and child in this country.

  My committee will continue to investigate the illegal campaign 
contributions. The Cox report which looked into this espionage should 
be made

[[Page H2543]]

public. The White House has blocked, according to the information I 
have, the White House has continued to block the Cox report from being 
made public. Much of it has been leaked to the American people through 
the media, but not all, and that information needs to be made known to 
every man, woman and child.
  Because if this administration has been derelict in its 
responsibilities and endangered every man, woman and child, it is more 
important than Kosovo. It is more important than anything. And we need 
to get to the bottom of it and those who let this happen, for whatever 
reason, campaign contributions or because they like the Chinese or 
whatever reason. They need to be held accountable and brought to 
justice.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would just 
echo what the gentleman says. If nothing else, at some point we in the 
House should have an up-or-down vote to make the Cox report public if 
the White House continues to procrastinate on this, and at that point 
the House can redact or take out the things that they think would 
compromise some of our agents, but somehow we have to get this report 
public.
  So I think the gentleman's effort here this afternoon in trying to 
say to the American people, this is important to us, this is important 
to Congress, we have to get to the bottom of this, is right on target. 
As the gentleman pointed out earlier, the Department of Energy as well 
as the administration knew all about this a long time ago. They relaxed 
the security provisions, and that in itself is terrible. The fact that 
the White House did not move quickly to put in place more secure 
operations is a sad commentary.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, one other thing. Just a few weeks 
ago the President denied he had knowledge of any of this, and yet we 
know that he was briefed by Sandy Berger as far back as 1997. I can not 
understand why he is saying that.
  This chart, which I did not get to today, but I will get to in a 
future Special Order, and I hope the gentleman from Florida will once 
again join me as I get additional information for people regarding this 
espionage.

                          ____________________