[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 75 (Monday, May 24, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3488-H3493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  CLINTON ADMINISTRATION CREATING PERCEPTION THAT ALL IS WELL IN THE 
                                 WORLD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, we can only spin national 
security issues and concerns so long, and eventually the truth catches 
up to us. The truth is about to hit the fan this week in Washington on 
the national security concerns of this country.
  For 7 years, Mr. Speaker, we have heard the rhetoric coming from the 
White House that the world is safe, there are no problems, our security 
is intact, and therefore, we can dramatically cut the size of our 
defense forces and we can, in fact, shift that money over to other 
purposes.
  During the 7 years that that has occurred, Democrats and Republicans 
alike in this body and the other body have joined together to 
constantly remind the administration that things were not quite as good 
as they were being portrayed to the American people.
  Unfortunately, we were not as successful as we would have liked. In 
fact, Mr. Speaker, State of the Union speech after State of the Union 
speech the President would stand before the American people and would 
talk about the economy, would talk about jobs, would talk about crimes 
domestically, but no mention of national security concerns. In fact, 
Mr. Speaker, this

[[Page H3489]]

past January, as I sat through the State of the Union speech in this 
very room, I timed the President's speech. He spoke for 1 hour and 17 
minutes. The total amount of time he devoted to national security was 
90 seconds, 90 seconds to talk about the problems we have with our 
relationship with China, 90 seconds to talk about the problems that are 
resulting from the economic instability in Russia, 90 seconds to talk 
about the proliferation that has now caused Iran and Iraq and Syria and 
Libya to begin to develop medium- and eventually long-range missile 
systems, 90 seconds to talk about the sabre rattling between India and 
Pakistan, 90 seconds to talk about the problems with North Korea, both 
our nuclear development program and their testing of long-range 
missiles which the CIA acknowledges now for the first time ever can 
actually hit the mainland of the U.S.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, during those 90 seconds, all the President did 
was point up to the gallery and praise one of our young pilots.
  Mr. Speaker, support for our military is not when the commander in 
chief parades a group of soldiers down the White House lawn for a photo 
op, it is not when the commander in chief stands on the deck of an 
aircraft carrier and talks about the pride in our services while morale 
is reaching an all-time low. We have serious problems, Mr. Speaker, and 
this week, starting tomorrow, those problems are going to be made 
available for the American people to see firsthand.
  Now, as I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, we are aware that this 
administration has tried to create the perception, and with a great 
deal of success, that everything is okay in the world, all is safe, 
Russia is our new friend, China is our new friend and partner, we do 
not have to worry about the Balkans because we have got our troops 
deployed.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, what has been occurring over the past 7 years 
with strong concerns expressed by both Democrats and Republicans alike 
in this body is that we have committed our troops to too many places in 
a short period of time to be effective in modernizing for the future 
and in protecting America's vital interests around the world.
  I have used this comparison frequently, Mr. Speaker, and I want to 
use it again:
  In the time period from the end of World War II until 1991, during 
the administration of all those Presidents in between, from Harry 
Truman through Democrat and Republican administrations ending with 
George Bush, all of those commanders in chief, as they have the ability 
to under our Constitution, deployed our troops a total of 10 times, 10 
times at home and around the world. Some of those deployments were very 
serious, like Korea and Vietnam and Desert Storm.
  Since 1991, Mr. Speaker, our current commander in chief has deployed 
our troops 33 times, 33 times in 8 years versus 10 times in 40 years. 
Mr. Speaker, none of these deployments were paid for, none of them were 
budgeted for, none of these deployments had the administration asking 
the Congress to vote in support of the deployment before our troops 
were committed.
  In the case of Bosnia, it was not that this Congress is isolationist. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. The problem in this Congress 
among Democrats and Republicans was why was America putting 36,000 
troops into Bosnia when, for instance, Germany right next door, our 
friend and ally, was only committing 4,000 troops? It was a question of 
fairness. Why was America being asked in each of these 33 deployments 
to pick up an unusually large amount of the responsibility?
  In Kosovo today, when we see the nightly news of the bombing raids 
the previous night, we see U.S. and British planes conducting the bulk 
of those air strikes. By law and by NATO's mandate, the U.S. is only 
supposed to provide 22 percent of the support for NATO.

                              {time}  1945

  So Members of Congress rightfully ask the question, where are the 
other NATO allies? Why is not Europe playing a larger role in these 
kinds of operations?
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, that was the reason why we passed the 
supplemental bill several weeks ago and just last week approved the 
defense authorization bill, calling for increases in funding to 
partially replace the funds that were siphoned off to pay for these 33 
deployments, none of which were budgeted for.
  When the President would commit our troops to, say, Bosnia or to 
Haiti, we would then have to find the money in our defense budget, 
taking it from other programs or from quality of life issues for the 
troops to pay the costs of these operations. The comptroller of the 
Pentagon estimates that that cost us $19 billion over the past 7 years. 
In fact, Bosnia alone has already cost us close to $10 billion. At a 
time where we have been convinced that the world is safe, partially 
because our troops are today at this time deployed all over the world, 
we have decimated our ability to prepare for the future in our 
military.
  Some other things have occurred, Mr. Speaker, and I want to talk 
about them briefly.
  First of all, this President, working along with Tony Blair from 
Great Britain, decided it was in the best interest of the U.S. and 
Britain, along with our NATO allies. And make no mistake about it, the 
bulk of NATO is decided by our President and Tony Blair, NATO really is 
dependent upon the leadership of the U.S. and Britain. I do not think 
Luxembourg would have much of a chance in stopping America from doing 
anything it wanted in terms of NATO. The decision to go into Kosovo was 
one that required the debate and the consent of this body, but that was 
not to be.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, hindsight always being 20/20 we can now look 
back, as I have, and talk to some of our analysts in the intelligence 
operation, which I have. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I have learned that 
every CIA Balkan analyst in the CIA, every one of them, unanimously, 
agree that an aerial attack on Serbia and Kosovo would not stop ethnic 
cleansing.
  The CIA, for all of its faults, and I was as troubled by the bombing 
of the Chinese Embassy as anyone, but the CIA's analysts who are the 
experts on the Balkans told this administration that the bombing that 
we eventually got involved in would cause a massive problem of 
refugees. The CIA Balkan analysts told the administration that bombing 
would not work, would not stop the ethnic cleansing.
  All of this was done prior to the administration's decision. In fact, 
there were documents internally within the intelligence community, 
submitted to the administration, outlining the CIA's concern that if 
the bombing took place it would cause a humanitarian catastrophe, and 
that is exactly what has happened. It is far worse than just the 
humanitarian catastrophe.
  In fact, many of those analysts said that we actually contributed to 
the refugee crisis because when we bombed, it obviously caused the 
observers who were in the former Yugoslavia to leave that country, 
which then gave Milosevic a free hand to continue at a much higher 
level the ethnic cleansing and the significant attacks on innocent 
people.
  So in effect, Mr. Speaker, what the intelligence community was saying 
to us as a Nation, prior to a decision to conduct the aerial campaign, 
was that if we went ahead, we would cause the situation to become much 
worse. That is exactly what has occurred.
  We are now into our 60-something day of consecutive bombing and many 
in this body, having seen the fact that we do not have the dollars to 
put forward to pay for the Kosovo deployment, which is now in excess of 
probably $2 billion, are now wondering what our strategy is to stop the 
bombing, what is our strategy to end the crisis. Since many of our 
colleagues, including myself, do not feel that we have a legitimate 
strategy to end the conflict, we wonder what the strategy is to win the 
conflict, because we are controlling what our military can and cannot 
do in Kosovo, in Serbia.
  We are limiting the strikes. We never committed to a ground force. So 
the question we have to ask is, if we do not have a strategy to end the 
conflict, and if we do not have a strategy to win the conflict, what is 
our strategy? For many of us, there is no strategy, Mr. Speaker. It is 
just a continuing massive amount of aerial attacks that in many cases 
are harming innocent civilians.

[[Page H3490]]

  Now, let me add further, Mr. Speaker, if we have to look at the 
situation in the former Yugoslavia and see what we have done, we can 
look certainly at three different things. We have now rallied all of 
the people in Serbia, many of whom were against Milosevic, many of whom 
are ready to try to remove him forcefully, we have managed to rally all 
of them in support of Milosevic as their hero.
  We have managed to help cause an extensive increase in the refugee 
crisis, to the extent now that we have almost 1 million men and women 
and children in outlying regions around Kosovo, with no decent housing 
and no decent food and no timetable to return them to their country.
  We have done something else, Mr. Speaker. We have managed to do what 
one colleague of mine from the Russian Duma told me the Soviet 
communist party could not accomplish in 70 years, after expending 
billions of dollars, to convince the Russian people that America was 
evil, that we really were designed as a nation to hurt innocent people. 
He said Russians are now convinced, after some 55 days of bombing, 
which it was when he was here, that this country really is evil. So we 
have managed to do in 55 days what the Soviet communist party could not 
accomplish in Russia in 70 years.
  Mr. Speaker, we are doing ourselves long-term harm in our 
relationship with Russia. First of all, after starting the aerial 
campaign, we did not engage Russia. Now the administration would have 
us believe otherwise. There was no direct contact with Russia after 
Rambouillet until, in fact, a group of Russian pro-western 
parliamentarians contacted us in the Congress and said: You do not 
understand what you are doing. You are driving our party out of power. 
We who support strong relations with America, we who want to help you 
solve the proliferation problem in our country, we who want to get rid 
of the communists and the ultranationalists are being driven out 
because your policies in the Balkans are causing the Russian people to 
identify with the communists and the ultranationalists.
  When the elections are held this year, if you continue this policy, 
you are going to drive Russia back into a Cold War era like we saw in 
the Soviet days.
  Our policies in the Balkans are very much of a concern to me, not 
just because of the crisis being created with the Serbs and with the 
Kosovars and the refugees, but also because of the long-term 
implications in our relationship with Russia.
  Now, make no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker. Like all of our 
colleagues in this body, I abhor what Milosevic has done. He is a thug. 
He is a war criminal, and after this is over we need to proceed in 
convening a war crimes tribunal.

  Our policies, Mr. Speaker, have not succeeded either. We need to have 
this administration understand that continuing a mistake is worse than 
trying to find an honorable solution. We have that opportunity.
  As I said on this floor several times, 11 Members of this body, 5 
Democrats and 6 Republicans, attempted to find common ground with 
members of the Russian Duma 2 weeks ago in Vienna. We found that common 
ground. In fact, the agreement that we reached became the basis for the 
G-8 accord that came out 5 days later, which the U.S. was a signatory 
of.
  That agreement calls for a negotiated settlement along the lines of 
the five key NATO principles that our President has said are most 
important for us. Now is the time for us to use the leverage that we 
have and our NATO partners have and Russia has to convince Milosevic 
that he must come to the table on our terms.
  I am not convinced our administration is still at this very moment 
doing enough to engage the Russians in applying the appropriate 
pressure to Milosevic.
  Mr. Speaker, the agreement that we reached in Vienna we brought back 
to Washington, we faxed to the 19 parliaments of all the NATO countries 
and we asked them to apply pressure to their governments, not to cave 
into Milosevic, not to hand him a victory but to say now is the time to 
use our leverage to get this crisis done at the negotiating table, 
which I am firmly convinced can occur.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, we introduced a resolution in support of our 
framework agreement in the Congress 2 weeks ago, and held a 
congressional hearing in the Committee on International Relations last 
week on that resolution. The Duma, following our lead, did the same, 
and on Friday of last week the State Duma of the Russian Federation 
passed that document as a formal document on the floor of the State 
Duma.
  We are now asking our leadership to work with us to accomplish a 
similar task, not because we are trying to embarrass the administration 
but because we understand the urgency of solving this crisis before any 
more lives are lost, before any more ethnic cleansing is done, before 
any more Americans are placed in harm's way. Now is the time for this 
administration to stand up and do what is right, and that is to bring 
Milosevic to the table and to do it directly, and to use the Russian 
leverage, which is considerable, in having Milosevic agree to the terms 
that we laid out with our NATO friends. This disaster is having a 
terrible effect on our long-term relationship with Russia.
  Mr. Speaker, we were supposed to have on Thursday of this week the 
Russian parliamentarians come back to Washington for a public press 
announcement in support of the work that we are doing. Because of the 
press of business and the fact that we will break for the Memorial Day 
recess this week, they will be coming back the first full week in June.
  Something else will happen tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. Two things of 
significant importance to all of our colleagues, which I hope our 
colleagues will convey to every constituent all across America. The 
first is, between 4:00 and 6:30 we will host probably one of the most 
investigative reporters on security issues in this city at a book 
signing ceremony in EF-100 of the U.S. Capitol building. Bill Gertz, 
who writes for the Washington Times, will be here to unveil to Members 
of Congress and our staffs his book entitled ``Betrayal.''
  Every Member of Congress should read this book. In fact, it has hit 
the bestseller list in just the first week it was on the stands. Why is 
this book so important, Mr. Speaker? Because it details, in depth, an 
analysis of this spin on defense concerns in this country over the past 
7 years.
  In one chapter in this book Mr. Gertz goes into great detail to talk 
about an incident involving a Canadian and a U.S. military officer that 
were flying in a helicopter out in the Seattle area, when a Russian 
ship that was supposedly spying, pointed and fired a laser weapon at 
that helicopter. The laser beam hit our American officer in the eye and 
did permanent eye damage to him.
  That incident, Mr. Speaker, if one reads the Gertz book, was covered 
up for 30 days. To this day, our government has never acknowledged that 
that Navy officer was hit deliberately by a Russian laser generator on 
a Russian vessel. We did not do the proper investigation. We did not 
hold the Russians accountable.
  Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, I am someone who spends a lot of 
time working on improving relations with Russia, but with Russia we 
have to understand one very basic tenet that Ronald Reagan knew very 
well. We must deal with the Russians from a position of strength, 
consistency and candor. When we are not candid with the Russians, when 
we do not call them when they violate treaties, when we do not ask them 
about things like Yamantau Mountain in the Urals where they are 
spending billions of dollars on a huge underground complex that we just 
do not know the purpose of, the Russians lose respect for us.

                              {time}  2000

  That is the problem this administration has with Russia. We were so 
concerned with not embarrassing Boris Yeltsin that we forgot over the 
past seven years that Russia had to be held accountable for those 
things it did that were in violation of arms control regimes, that were 
things that destabilized our relationship, and we are now paying the 
price for those policies.
  A second chapter in Mr. Gertz's book deals with a letter that, up 
until this book, has been classified. The letter was sent and signed by 
President Bill Clinton to President Boris Yeltsin. Mr. Speaker, every 
one of our colleagues needs to read this letter because in the

[[Page H3491]]

letter our President tells Yeltsin, ``Don't worry. Our policies will 
help you in your reelection effort.''
  We were so concerned about not doing anything to expose Russian 
problems for what they were that we even went to the length of ignoring 
reality. When the Russians transferred technology to Iran for the 
SHAHAB-3 missile, we ignored it. When we caught the Russians 
transferring accelerometers and gyroscopes to Iraq, we ignored it. We 
were afraid to do anything to expose violations because we did not want 
to embarrass President Yeltsin.
  We are now paying the price for those policies, Mr. Speaker, and our 
national security has been harmed because of the absolutely 
overwhelming proliferation that has gone out from Russia to every 
destabilized country in the world, technology being used for missile 
proliferation, weapons of mass destruction, because we did not want to 
hold the Russians accountable for violations and for their lack of 
tight controls in terms of technology that could be used abroad. We are 
now paying the price for those policies, and Russia is a much more 
destabilized nation.
  And now, because of the Kosovo conflict, we are backing Russia into a 
corner, and the pro-western leaders in Russia are saying we are going 
to hand Russia over to the Communists and the ultranationalists if we 
do not get our policy back together again.
  The Gertz book documents these stories, Mr. Speaker, and I would 
encourage our colleagues to stop by EF-100 tomorrow between 4 o'clock 
and 6:30 to meet Bill Gertz personally and get a copy of his book and 
to read for themselves the hard evidence.
  In fact, I saw an article last week that the FBI may be considering 
actually pressing charges against Gertz for some of the revelations 
that he has exposed. It is an absolute shame and outrage when, in 
America, we have to have a reporter for a newspaper expose to us 
information that Members of Congress and the public should have a 
legitimate right to understand and know.
  It reminds me of that famous national intelligence estimate that this 
administration spun out four years ago when the President said we have 
no need to worry about any long-range missiles hitting America for at 
least 15 years, when the CIA publicly put that document out and the 
President used that document to veto our defense bill. Three years 
later, after tremendous pressure from many of us in this room from both 
sides of the aisle, the CIA has now publicly reversed itself and has 
acknowledged that North Korea has a long-range ICBM today. That is the 
kind of spin that this administration has placed on national security 
issues for seven years, but now it is about to unfold.
  Also tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, at 10:30 in the morning the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Cox) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) 
and nine members in total of the Cox committee, the Select Committee to 
look at technology transfer from the U.S. to China, which I was honored 
to be a member of, will issue our public statement.
  For five months, Mr. Speaker, we have tried to get the administration 
to declassify the Select Committee's report, and for five months we 
have been stonewalled. Nine Members of Congress, five Republicans and 
four Democrats, very honorable people, met behind closed doors all 
during the breaks, all during the holidays from July through January 1 
and 2 of this year.
  Behind closed doors we interfaced with the FBI, the CIA, the Defense 
Intelligence Agency. We held hearings, we called witnesses in, and we 
said nothing on the record. In a bipartisan way we developed a document 
that resulted in 32 specific recommendations of how to deal with the 
tremendous amount of technology transfer that has occurred to the 
People's Republic of China. We looked at cases where there was 
espionage involved. We looked at cases where companies went too far and 
perhaps violated U.S. laws, and we looked at cases where our government 
relaxed our technology controls to allow Chinese companies to buy 
technologies that should not have been on the marketplace.
  All of that information was summarized and by the first week of 
January of this year, our report was complete. With its 32 
recommendations, all of which were classified, and with the volumes of 
data we had assembled, we sent the report to the administration and we 
asked the administration to look at our recommendations, to come back 
to us and begin a dialogue of how to protect our Nation's security.
  What did the administration do? Mr. Speaker, as they have done for 
seven years, they spun America's national security. Instead of dealing 
with it up front, putting the report on the table, they leaked stories 
out.
  One story that was leaked to the Wall Street Journal by the 
administration dealt with the Chinese acquiring our W-88 missile 
technology, or our nuclear warhead technology, not missile technology. 
And the reason why that was leaked is because that leakage occurred 
during a Republican administration.
  Now, I can tell my colleagues that the members of the Select 
Committee, both Democrats and Republicans, were not looking at what 
administration was responsible for security breaches. We did not care 
whether it was Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, whomever. Our job was to 
do the right thing for America.
  But what did the administration do? They tried to spin it: ``We will 
leak the story about the W-88 because of the press feeds on that, and 
they will think that is what the China Select Committee looked at, and 
that was done during a Republican administration,'' and as the 
administration tried to say, ``Well, we corrected those problems.'' 
That was their initial spin.
  Then they went to the business community and they said, ``You have to 
understand what the Select Committee is doing. They are about ready to 
come out with a report that is going to lay all the blame at the feet 
of American industry,'' and that was not the case and is not the case, 
Mr. Speaker. In fact, I am going to publicly say tomorrow, as I am 
saying tonight, that while there were some cases where American 
companies went too far, and there are criminal investigations of at 
least two of those companies under way right now, the bulk of the time 
American companies have done the right thing. They have wanted to abide 
by the law.
  Now, the law has been changing. The regulations have changed. But it 
was not for us to blame only industry.
  Mr. Speaker, the administration would also have some believe, through 
its spin efforts, that it is all the fault of China, and China is this 
bad country that has been able to use espionage to get access 
to technology that they should never have gotten access to. And in some 
cases, that is the story. We are currently seeing that with the story 
on our laboratories.

  But, Mr. Speaker, how can we blame a country like China for buying 
technology if we as a Nation voluntarily allow that technology to be 
sold abroad? That is what has occurred over the past seven years. We 
allowed technology to be sold abroad that up until this administration 
was very tightly controlled and regulated, and was checked by a series 
of efforts within the intelligence community and the defense and State 
Department establishments to make sure that that technology would not 
enhance the capability militarily of a potential or current adversary. 
So blaming China alone is not going to be acceptable.
  No, Mr. Speaker, the reason why, as we will see tomorrow, we have had 
such problems with our technology has, in my opinion, largely been the 
direct result of this government, our own government. We have sent the 
mixed signals. We have lowered the threshold. We have removed the 
whistleblowers. We have stopped people from doing their job. The 
question of why that occurred is something that needs to be explored. 
Our Select Committee did not look at that, but the problem of the 
technology being transferred is real.
  For five months, Mr. Speaker, we have tried. Every one of the nine 
members of the Select Committee has tried to get this document out for 
the public to see. My comment was repeatedly, look, let us not have any 
more spin, just release the document and let the American people and 
the Members draw their own conclusions. It has taken us five months to 
make that happen. Tomorrow, that report will be released.
  I can remember back to February 1, Mr. Speaker, and this is probably 
the best example I can give of the attempt

[[Page H3492]]

to spin this that I can think of. February 1, Sandy Berger, head of the 
National Security Council, issues a public response to selected media 
personnel in this city of the response of the administration to the 32 
classified recommendations that we made in the Cox committee.
  So in January we make our recommendations and we issue the report and 
it is all classified. Without discussing their actions at all with any 
member of the Cox committee, on February 1 Sandy Berger releases in a 
public format the White House's response to those 32 recommendations.
  Now, if that was not bad enough, Mr. Speaker, two days later we have 
a Committee on National Security brief that is open to Members only. 
The brief is being given to us by the Director of Central Intelligence, 
George Tenet. When he is finished his brief about emerging threats and 
we get to the question and answer session, I ask the DCI, the Director 
of Central Intelligence, a question.
  I said, ``Mr. Tenet, you know that the China Select Committee one 
month ago issued its report, because we gave you a copy. You are the 
intelligence leader for our country. In that report we made 32 
recommendations for changes, but we also reached a very simple 
unanimous conclusion, and that conclusion, Mr. Tenet, you know is that 
America's national security has been harmed in a significant way by 
technology transfers to China.'' I asked Mr. Tenet, ``Do you agree with 
that assessment that the nine of us reached unanimously?"
  This was his answer, Mr. Speaker, two days after Sandy Berger gave 
the media an unclassified response to our recommendations. George Tenet 
said, ``Mr. Congressman, can I get back to you? I have not finished 
reading the report yet.''
  So here was the White House on February 1 issuing to selected media 
outlets unclassified response to a report that the Director of Central 
Intelligence two days later said he had not finished reading yet.
  Mr. Speaker, that is why we have problems with our national security. 
Tomorrow, the American people get to see for themselves. They get to 
hear about the warheads and the technology that we have lost. They get 
to hear about the neutron bomb. They get to hear about technology 
involving our space launch capability. They get to hear about the 
MIRVing nuclear warhead. They get to hear about military-industrial 
technology, high-performance computers.
  They get to hear about all of these things, and in the end, the 
administration is going to try to blame someone. They are either going 
to try to find a scapegoat within the administration who they can say 
caused these problems, as they are currently trying to do in the 
Department of Energy, trying to blame the labs, when some of the labs 
were doing an adequate job but others were not; or they are going to 
try to blame someone up in the Cabinet who can be the fall guy or gal 
who takes the blame for what has occurred.
  In the end, Mr. Speaker, I am convinced that the blame for our 
security lapses, as Harry Truman said, started at the top where the 
buck stops. The administration sets the policy.
  Now, some would say, well, the President cannot know everything, and 
this is true. Some of my CIA friends have told me that this is one of 
the first Presidents since Eisenhower who never sees the CIA's morning 
briefers, never sees them. He chooses not to see the briefers who are 
coming in to advise him of security concerns. The CIA does not even 
know if the President reads the daily brief provided to him. What the 
CIA analysts that I have talked to say is that they think that what 
Clinton gets is filtered through Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger.
  Mr. Speaker, this is going to be a bad week in the history of 
America. The Kosovo crisis continues; Russia is being backed into a 
corner, to the point where they are now very antagonistic toward 
America; Bill Gertz comes out with a book called ``Betrayal'' which 
documents specific events that have occurred that have undermined our 
national security; and tomorrow, a select group involving nine Members 
of Congress, five Republicans and four Democrats, present a unanimous 
report and finding of what we found, that our national security has 
been harmed by our sale and transfer of technology to China.
  Many Members are going to use this as a platform to jump all over 
China and blame the Chinese and say they are an evil nation. I am going 
to be one, Mr. Speaker, that stands up and says, let us pause a moment.

                              {time}  1815

  We need to engage China. Has China done some things that are wrong? 
Yes. We must deal with them. Does this mean we should isolate ourselves 
from China and consider all Chinese to be bad people? Absolutely not, 
because, in the end, Mr. Speaker, I am convinced that the bulk of the 
problems that we uncovered were caused by our own government. If we are 
stupid enough to allow another nation to buy sensitive technologies, 
then we cannot blame that nation. We blame our own policies that caused 
those technologies to be allowed to be sold for the first time.
  In our testimony and in public statements that have been on the 
record, so I am not revealing any sensitive information, the first 
director of our Defense Technology Agency called DTSA, whose 
responsibility it was to monitor applications for technology sales 
abroad, and which was decimated during this administration, Steve Brian 
said that in 1996 China had zero high performance computers. None. 
These are the high end supercomputers, high performance computers in 
the 8 to 10,000 MTOPS range, very capable computers that are only used 
for very elaborate research or for weapons design. China had none.
  Only two countries were manufacturing those high performance 
computers at that time, the U.S. and Japan, and both of our countries 
had an unwritten understanding that neither would sell these high 
performance computers to those nations which were or could become 
potential adversaries of the U.S.
  We relaxed our policy on exporting high performance computers, Mr. 
Speaker, and in two years, by 1998, China had acquired over 350 high 
performance computers.
  Now, we were told the State Department would monitor where they were 
being used, but they did not do that, because China would not let our 
State Department monitor where these computers went. We know now that 
many of them are being used by organs of the People's Liberation Army. 
They are being used for weapons design, they are being used for their 
nuclear programs, and those devices came from this country.
  Mr. Speaker, China did not steal those high performance computers; 
they bought them. They bought them because we changed our policies. We 
allowed Chinese entities to acquire technologies that up until the mid-
1990s had been tightly controlled and monitored by those people who are 
watching out for our security concerns, now and in the 21st Century.
  Mr. Speaker, by Thursday of this week I expect to unveil two new 
documents, documents which I have been working on with a small group of 
people for the past four months. These two documents will not just 
focus on the China Select Committee, but will go beyond that.
  By Thursday of this week, it is my hope, if the graphic artists have 
completed the work, which I expect they will, to present two large 
charts, if you will, the visual presentation of what has happened in 
terms of technology transfer to China.
  The first chart, Mr. Speaker, which I have a rough sketch of, will 
trace every front company and operative arm of the People's Liberation 
Army that tried to acquire and did acquire technology in America, who 
the leaders were, what their ties are and were, and how they were able 
to get the approval to buy technology that is very sensitive and is 
being used by the Chinese military today, most of it with the support 
of our government.
  The second chart, Mr. Speaker, will be a depiction of a time-line, 
starting in 1993 and running through 1999. It will take every major 
technology area of concern that we have, encryption, high performance 
computers, military-industrial technology, space launch capability, 
nuclear weapons, it will take all of those technology disciplines and 
will track them through that 6 year time period, and it will list 
specific dates when actions took place in this administration to allow 
those technologies to

[[Page H3493]]

be transferred. Almost all of those actions were done voluntarily by 
our country.
  Mr. Speaker, in the end we have got to understand that we are now 
going to begin to pay the price for 7 years of gloating over our 
economy, 7 years of gloating over what was supposed to be world 
security, 7 years of pretending Russia and China were not potential 
problems, and rather than being up front and candid and transparent 
with Russia and China, we glossed over problems. We pretended things 
were not happening. We told Yeltsin we would help him get reelected. We 
did not want to offend Jiang Zemin. In doing that, we gave away 
technology that America is going to have to deal with for the next 50 
years.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans 
in this body and the other body have been together on national security 
concerns. Democrats and Republicans have worked hand-in-hand over the 
years in protecting America's security.
  This battle, Mr. Speaker, is between the White House and the 
Congress. This White House has done things that this Congress has tried 
to stop and overturn.
  Starting tomorrow and continuing through the next year and a half, 
until the presidential elections and both parties attempt to win the 
White House, the American people will have to judge as to whether or 
not our security has been harmed, how extensively it has been harmed, 
what is going to be the remedy for us to deal with these concerns that 
we have relative to technology flowing into hands that eventually could 
be used against America.
  I want to caution our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, not to rush to snap 
judgments. We should not tomorrow when the China Select Committee 
reports come out and bash all Chinese citizens, or certainly not 
Chinese-Americans. Some of our most capable leaders in this country are 
Chinese-Americans. In fact, some of my best friends are Chinese-
Americans, leaders in the academic world, the scientific world, the 
technology world. We must make sure that we let them know that they are 
solid Americans that we respect. We must not let this report come out 
and be an effort where Members of Congress come out and trash China and 
trash our relationship with those Chinese American leaders in our 
communities across this country.
  The problem in the end, Mr. Speaker, is with us. It is within our own 
government. We should not try to find any scapegoats. We should not try 
to blame industry. We should not try to just blame the Chinese. We 
should not just try to blame any one group.
  The bulk of the problems I think we will find were caused by our own 
actions, by our own decisions, to ease up on the control mechanisms, to 
make technology available for sale. This is not to say there are not 
cases of espionage, because there are, and they need to be dealt with, 
as in our laboratories and the network that the Chinese established. 
But if we are foolish enough to allow China to set up front companies 
and buy technology from us, who is wrong? The Chinese, who are abiding 
by our laws and buying technology in many cases that we sell them, or 
are we at fault for loosening our controls and allowing them to buy 
these technologies?
  The same thing is true with companies. American industry by and large 
wants to do the right thing, but if we send confusing signals, if we 
change the regulations, if we loosen up the standards, then most 
American industry should not be blamed when these very technologies are 
then sold abroad because we have allowed those practices to go on.

  As I said earlier, there are companies that deserve to be 
investigated, and two are under criminal investigation right now. But I 
would hope tomorrow and for the rest of this week as we get ready to 
celebrate the Memorial Day holiday that we as a Nation step back and 
begin to seriously consider our national security.
  It has not been a high focus for the past 7 years. We have been 
lulled into a false sense of complacency. The economy is going strong, 
people are working, inflation is low, unemployment is low, and we have 
been convinced that the world is safe. Now, all of a sudden, we wake up 
and see Russia backed into a corner, China involved in technologies 
that we never thought they should have, North Korea deploying long and 
short range missiles that now threaten not just our territories, but 
the mainland of the U.S., Iran-Iraq developing medium range systems 
with the help of Russia, India and Pakistan saber rattling with nuclear 
warheads and medium-range missiles.
  Where did they get the weapons from, Mr. Speaker? Where? We saw China 
supplying Pakistan with the M-11 missiles. We saw China supplying 
Pakistan with ring magnets. We saw China supplying Pakistan with the 
technology for the nuclear furnaces. We saw Russia supplying India with 
technology.
  Why are we surprised? All of a sudden we come with the realization, 
we have problems in the world, and we have not dealt with those 
problems in a fair, open and honest way, in spite of tremendous efforts 
by Republicans and Democrats in this body and the other body.
  It is time to end the spin, Mr. Speaker. It is time for this 
administration to end the nauseating spin, the spin doctors at the 
White House, who want to spin everything, to make it look as if they 
have no role to play, just as they did when they lost the Congressional 
elections and did not want to accept any responsibility in the White 
House. It was all the fault of those Members of Congress who were out 
of touch.
  It is about time this administration and this President understand 
that once in awhile he needs to accept the responsibility for his 
actions and the collective actions of this administration.

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