[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 25, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3600-H3602]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           CHINESE ESPIONAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tancredo). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) is 
recognized until midnight.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Hayworth), and also invite the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) to 
join us. He is welcome to do so.
  Mr. Speaker, the biggest and the scariest espionage in the history of 
our country has taken place, and many of the details were revealed 
today in the Cox report. Now, the Cox report was a bipartisan 
congressional investigation, and it raised many pertinent questions.
  The Communist Chinese now have in their possession our top nuclear 
secrets. They have cut in half, certainly more than half, the years of 
research that it took the United States to construct such weapons. They 
stole this information. They saved many, many years and they saved 
millions, if not billions, of dollars.
  And while this has gone on under a lot of different administrations 
and over a long period of time, it is obviously clear that the Clinton 
administration, the National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, knew about 
this at least in April of 1996. He briefed the President of the United 
States in July of 1997, again in November of 1998, and since January of 
1999, the White House has been sitting on the completed Cox report.
  And yet only in March of this year did they take steps to fire one 
potential suspected spy, Wen Ho Lee. Only then. And, actually, he is 
not arrested at this point. He is still only on administrative leave, I 
think. I do not know exactly what the term is.
  But the two questions here are: How big is this thing; how much 
information do they have on our nuclear weapons in China? And why did 
the administration react the way it did?
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, our colleague from Florida amply pointed out just one 
threat to our national security. Mr. Speaker, I would go further in the 
realm of Chinese espionage to say to this House and to the American 
people that we face a clear and present danger.
  Mr. Speaker, the report released today, available on the Internet, 
and I am sure many responsible publications across the United States 
will carry it in detail tomorrow, outlines a traumatic, devastating 
loss to this Nation in terms of national security, and that is why I 
describe it as a clear and present danger.
  My colleague from Georgia pointed out the fact that this bipartisan 
report was drafted and really completed in January of this year, and 
only now, some 5, almost 6 months later, has this report at long last 
been released to the American people.
  It has been a strength of our society that once we as a people 
recognize a threat, we deal with that threat in a responsible manner. 
And yet, Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to do so at this juncture in our 
history because of what has been called, in common parlance, ``spin''; 
what some used to call in the past ``smoke and mirrors.'' And while my 
colleague pointed out that espionage is nothing new, that different 
countries observe and conduct surveillance on one another, the fact is 
that the disturbing information is something that this House and this 
Nation must deal with and should deal with immediately.

                              {time}  2340

  A point that should be addressed is the inevitable spin echoes from 
sympathetic pundits and indeed from the spin machine at the other end 
of Pennsylvania Avenue that, oh, this has happened before and previous 
Presidents are to blame.
  Let me offer this simple analogy: Mr. Speaker, suppose you 
contemplate a vacation and you take reasonable precautions in your 
house. You will lock your doors. You lock your windows. If you have an 
alarm device, you activate it. And yet thieves are aware that you have 
left your home. They disable the alarm system. They gain entrance to 
your home. And they begin to take your property. Your belongings.
  Now, that is one thing. But contrast it. If someone is sitting at 
home in the easy chair and these same thieves pull up and the person in 
the home says, ``Well, come on in. And you might want to look in this 
area. And by the way, let me offer to show you where my wife keeps her 
jewelry. And here are our stocks and bonds. And let me help you take 
these and load up your van. And listen, we will just keep this between 
us because it would be very embarrassing to me if I allowed this 
information to get out, if I chose to stop this. So I will take minimum 
action to stop what has gone on.'' That analogy, however imperfect, 
essentially sums up what has transpired.
  It is important to note, as my colleague from Georgia capably points 
out, that, sadly, our national security advisor, with the 
responsibility that that title in fact describes, has aided our 
national insecurity, compounding that, the curious actions of the 
Justice Department and our current attorney general.
  My colleague from Georgia mentioned Wen Ho Lee, the suspected spy at 
one of our national labs, still not arrested. And indeed the Justice 
Department asked for wiretap authority when there was a preponderance 
of evidence and more than reasonable suspicion that it should be 
checked.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, actually it was the 
FBI that asked the Justice Department.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for correcting the 
record. I misspoke. The FBI asked the Justice Department for the 
ability to wiretap this individual because of the threat to our 
national security. And in all the wiretaps issued following our 
constitutional procedures, this particular wiretap was denied. This 
special surveillance was denied.
  Couple that with the curious case of a Chinese arms merchant suddenly 
gaining clearance for the import into this country of 100,000 weapons 
to be used on the streets of our inner cities where again the agency in 
charge looked the other way. Couple that with the disturbing reality of 
the fact that the communist Chinese through their business operations 
controlled by their so-called People's Liberation Army actually 
contributed to the Clinton-Gore effort in 1996 and, sadly, to the 
Democratic National Committee in that same year, and we have a 
compelling devastating case that should cause concern for every 
American.
  Before I yield back to my friend from Georgia, just so we can clear 
this up, this is not a matter of partisanship. It is a question of 
patriotism. Because we confront a clear and present danger, we must 
avoid the temptation of engaging in personalities and instead deal with 
policies and change those policies.
  But regrettably, to this date, this administration has been more 
interested in spin and preening and posturing and offering the clever 
retort or the by now familiar rejoinder that ``everyone does it.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am here to tell my colleagues again that not everyone 
does it, but sadly all too many people within this administration have 
not fulfilled their responsibilities to the citizens of this country to 
maintain vigilance and to take actions against those who would steal 
our secrets.
  Mr. Speaker, it is worth noting that the findings are chilling. In 
the overview, just to repeat from the Cox summary, China has stolen 
design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear 
weapons. The Select Committee on Intelligence, the bipartisan 
committee, judges that China's next generation of thermonuclear weapons 
currently under development will exploit elements of stolen U.S. design 
information and China's penetration of our national weapons 
laboratories spans at least the past several decades and almost 
certainly continues today.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if I can reclaim my time, I want to stop 
at that point for a minute. Because what is interesting is we hear 
these incessant defenders of this administration, regardless of what 
the administration does, they are automatically with them but forget 
the facts. They keep saying, well, it still does not matter because 
China has x number of nuclear warheads and America has x-number-plus 
nuclear warheads.

[[Page H3601]]

  But they miss the whole point. This is not about our number of 
nuclear warheads versus their numbers. It is about the technology. And 
we have now given China the know-how to catch up should they choose to. 
And they also have these so-called legacy codes, which are the ones 
that actually predict what a nuclear explosion will do; and that seems 
to be the reason why they signed a nuclear test ban treaty because they 
had stolen information and the know-how from America. They did not have 
to test their weapons anymore.
  My colleague went quickly, though, on the subject of Wen Ho Lee. Wen 
Ho Lee, the suspected spy at Los Alamos Lab, the weapons lab, when the 
FBI suspected him of spying, they went to the Justice Department to get 
a wiretap and they were turned down, which my colleague has pointed 
out.
  What was not pointed out was there was 700 wiretaps that year and all 
but two were approved by the same Justice Department. So you have to 
ask yourself, was this Justice Department purposely protecting an 
international spy? We know this was the Justice Department who turned 
down a special prosecutor of the Chinese money scandal, even though the 
FBI recommended one.
  But let us say, I want to give the Justice Department the benefit of 
the doubt and say, okay, out of the two that they turned down, 700 were 
approved, two were turned down, and one of them had to be the biggest 
spy in the history of the United States of America. Okay, you did it 
nobly. Well, then is it just plain old incompetence? How did you miss 
that one? What was it more that the FBI could have said?
  And maybe it is not just the Justice Department's fault. Maybe it is 
the FBI did not describe the situation well enough to the Justice 
Department. I worry about what other decisions are being made or have 
been made along the way.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I would point out and I would challenge my 
former colleagues in television at the various networks and the 24-hour 
cable news services to show the American people the videotapes of the 
communist Chinese business people in the Oval Office with the President 
of the United States now knowing in the fullness of time that those 
same communist Chinese business people contributed massive amounts of 
cash to a reelection effort.
  There is a disturbing tendency in this country to succumb to the cult 
of celebrity. And if one has a clever enough rejoinder or simply 
returns to the school yard taunt that everybody does it and it is 
unfair to criticize one party or one administration for their actions, 
to do so is to willingly be blinded to what is staring us in the face.
  Mr. Speaker, I made the comment to some of my constituents over the 
weekend that Washington today is wrapped up in what is an Alan Drury 
novel come to life. It is so mind boggling, it is so far afield to ever 
think that an administration would out of incompetence or blissful 
ignorance or for political advantage allow the transfer of technology, 
allow espionage from a foreign power to jeopardize the security of the 
United States of America.

                              {time}  2350

  Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States came to this podium 
in one of his recent State of the Union messages and boasted that no 
longer were United States cities and citizens targeted by Russia. Well, 
of course, technically that was true, although the missiles could be 
reprogrammed in a matter of minutes.
  But now we face a situation where the Chinese have the technology, 
they have made a quantum leap because of the stolen information, 
because of the aforementioned legacy codes and computer models. Because 
of their ill-gotten gains in terms of hundreds of supercomputers that 
can provide the simulations of nuclear explosions, now the Chinese have 
the same technology that we have.
  Indeed in some areas, for example, the neutron bomb, often maligned 
and lampooned by late night comedians and pundits in this town as the 
weapon that kills people, but does not destroy property, the United 
States never went into production of a neutron bomb, and yet the 
Chinese are moving full tilt ahead.
  They have acquired that technology, they have expounded upon the 
technological advancements of this society and our constitutional 
Republic, and our leaders of the time decided not to pursue that 
particular weapon, but the Chinese have it. And soon they will have 
small, more accurate thermonuclear warheads.
  And make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, those warheads will be targeted at 
the United States. We say this not to inspire fear but instead, Mr. 
Speaker, to encourage the American people to check the facts available 
on the Internet.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will go back to the great ad that 
Ronald Reagan had and a philosophical question that he asked the 
American people about, ally sometimes and enemy sometimes. The evil 
empire itself, Russia. In that ad he said, ``There is a bear in the 
woods, but some Americans believe there's not a bear in the woods. 
Wouldn't it be nice to know that if there was a bear in the woods, that 
you would be protected from the bear?''
  Now we are at the situation with China, we have a lot of people 
saying, oh, no, China they're our friend, everything's fine.
  Well, let us go back. China, I hope, is our friend, but if they are 
not our friend, would it not be nice to know that in a country of 1.4 
billion people, that we, with 260 million, are at least protected 
against aggression on their part? Would it not be nice to know that 
should they choose to become an aggressive adversary, that we are 
protected? Of course it would be nice to know that. Yet, thanks to this 
espionage, we are not.
  The gentleman has pointed out, it has gone on a lot longer than the 
current administration. I hope that any previous administration that 
had knowledge of it reacted strongly. But we do know for a fact that 
when this particular spy in this particular scandal first came to light 
by the National Security Adviser in April 1996, that it was apparently 
ignored.
  We also know, and the gentleman has not pointed this out, that when 
the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Notra Trulock, at the Department 
of Energy, 3 years ago said, there's spying going on, we know that he 
was ignored and he was later demoted from his job. Let us hope that is 
coincidence, but I would have a hard time believing it.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Fact is stranger than fiction as my colleague from 
Georgia is pointing out.
  Another oddity, the aforementioned National Security Adviser, one 
Sandy Berger, when informed of the breach of security at Los Alamos 
National Laboratory by Notra Trulock, in that same month, the Vice 
President of the United States went to California for what was first 
described by his staff and by him personally, if I am not mistaken, as 
a community outreach event. Subsequently, it has been discovered that 
this was a fund-raiser where substantial amounts of foreign cash from 
China were pumped into the Clinton-Gore reelection effort.
  Mr. Speaker, it is fair to ask the American people, what price 
victory? We take an oath of office here to uphold and defend the 
Constitution of the United States. It is this same Constitution that 
says in its remarkable preamble that one of the missions of our Federal 
Government as we the people have formed this union is to provide for 
the common defense. Yet Vice President Gore in meeting the press 
offered an endless chorus of justification for contribution 
irregularities. He said, now in an infamous line, ``My legal counsel 
informs me there is no controlling legal authority.''
  How sad, how cynical, and ultimately how dangerous that those in whom 
the American people have placed their trust, in those who have taken 
the oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution, of one who 
aspires to become our Commander in Chief would so callously disregard 
the safety of our constitutional republic, the national security of 
every family, every child, every citizen of this Nation, to win 
political advantage. Or to soft-pedal, to silence because of political 
implications. The design is there.
  It is said that one of the criticisms of our society is that we have 
become cynical. Mr. Speaker, how could we not grow even more cynical 
with the revelations that have appeared, some that have come out in 
dribs and drabs with

[[Page H3602]]

the delay of the release of this report, despite the fact that there 
are national security concerns, we do have our own counterintelligence 
efforts, it appears that in this city, politics is preeminent.
  Again let me state this. I take no joy in this. It is mind-boggling, 
it is disturbing, but every American should ask themselves this 
question: Have our leaders in the administration been good custodians 
of the Constitution? Have they provided for the common defense; or, in 
boastful claims of reinventing government, claiming drawdown, a 
reduction in government employees, eviscerated our military to the tune 
of a quarter million personnel, put American lives at risk, and brought 
us to this? A question not of personal conduct in terms of 
relationships but of actions taken that jeopardize and threaten the 
security of every American. That is the juncture at which we find 
ourselves now.
  No one takes joy in this but the strength of the American people is 
in understanding once a problem has been confronted through our 
constitutional processes, through the fact that we must all stand at 
the bar of public opinion and let the public render a judgment, that we 
can rectify the problem.
  Jefferson spoke of it, that the vitality of this country would 
eventually overcome those who would follow mistaken policies, for 
whatever reason, and that is the challenge that we confront, not as 
Democrats or Republicans but as Americans, because nothing less than 
our national security and our national vitality in the next century is 
at stake. This is the stark reality that we confront.
  That is why all of us who serve in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, as 
constitutional officers to provide for the common defense, to provide 
for our national security, must have answers to these hard questions. 
And that is why, Mr. Speaker, the Attorney General of the United States 
should tender her resignation immediately, the National Security 
Adviser should tender his resignation immediately, and those who are 
elected officials will have the verdict of history decide but that 
history and history's judgment will not be a century away, it will be 
forthcoming and in short order.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me just say this. I think the gentleman from 
Arizona is absolutely right, as certainly Jefferson was, about the 
vitality of the American people and may they use that strength quickly 
and decisively on this particular scandal. But we have got to protect 
our Nation and our national security interest.
  That is one reason why this Congress is going to move ahead to make 
recommendations to get rid of the spies at Los Alamos and anywhere 
else. But one thing I want to emphasize is that this is a bipartisan 
effort. That report, the Cox report, passed unanimously from a 
bipartisan committee. This is not about getting onto the White House. 
This is about national security. I think that it is very important that 
we all keep in mind that the Democrats and Republicans on this one are 
scared to death.

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