[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 122 (Friday, September 17, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H8378-H8383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H8378]]
                             SPECIAL ORDERS

                                 ______
                                 

 TECHNOLOGY AND WEAPONS TRANSFERS TO CHINA AND THE SITUATION IN PANAMA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to speak on an issue 
which I have, indeed, spoken about before, but I have some startling 
new information for the American people.
  It is no surprise to anyone that I am deeply concerned about 
America's relationship with Communist China. In this body, we have 
votes on the trading status with Communist China, and this 
administration is operating under policy guidelines that deal with 
Communist China in a certain way.
  In fact, the United States Congress, the House of Representatives, 
and the Senate have voted for normal trade relations, or what used to 
be called most-favored-nation status for China, and a majority of 
Members of this body on my side of the aisle have voted to treat 
Communist China in terms of our trade relations as we do normal trade 
relations with other societies; that, of course, with a large number of 
people on the other side supporting most-favored-nation status, normal 
trade relations as well.
  The Clinton administration has gone beyond this. Perhaps those of us 
in this House believe that trading relations with another country, even 
a dictatorship like that on the mainland of China, will in some way 
help that society evolve into a more peaceful, more benevolent, more 
democratic situation.
  I consider that to be wishful thinking. I disagree with that concept. 
I personally believe in free trade between free people, and it is 
better to give dictatorships and people who live under dictatorships 
the incentive to reform and the incentive to move towards democracy, 
rather than giving them the fruits of a positive trade relationship 
with this, the strongest economy in the world.
  I would treat Communist China differently than I would treat the 
government of Belgium or Italy or other democratic societies in trying 
to determine what our trade policy should be.
  Again, this is based on wishful thinking. However, it is beyond my 
realm and my ability to understand how this administration has been 
able to move forward with its policies toward Communist China over 
these last 6 years.
  The President of the United States has insisted time and again that 
Communist China be considered a strategic partner of the United States. 
Those are the words that this administration has insisted upon, 
Communist China a strategic partner of the United States.
  A few moments ago we pledged our allegiance to the flag of the United 
States of America. Our flag, as I noted before we said the pledge, 
stands for freedom and justice. How can a country which is based not on 
some ethnic background, as our country has no ethnicity that we are 
supposedly protecting, as in other countries, their national identity 
stems from that, from an ethnic or racial homogeny among the people, 
but we have no religious belief that binds all of our people together. 
In fact, we have every race and every ethnic group from every part of 
the world, people who have come here to America; and we have every 
religion in America.
  What binds Americans together is our love of liberty and our love of 
justice and our love of freedom. That is the foundation, that is the 
basis of our country. How can we, if we believe that to be true, 
consider the world's worst human rights abuser as our strategic 
partner?
  Yes, having a trading relationship with a dictatorship such as China 
is wishful thinking. It is also exploitation on the part of various 
business interests in the United States, business interests that, I 
might add, could care less about the working people in our country, 
often closing up factories here in order to set up factories in China, 
in order to sell the products that were made in China back here in the 
United States because we have such a low tariff on Chinese goods, 
although the Chinese tariff on our goods is very high.
  But if we stand for freedom and justice, how can we have not just a 
trading relationship but a strategic partnership with Communist China?
  It is my contention, Mr. Speaker, that this nonsense, this almost 
surrealistic policy on the part of the Clinton administration, has 
already yielded a horrible bounty of threats and jeopardy to the United 
States of America.
  Let me make this very clear. The Clinton policy of treating Communist 
China as a friend, as a benevolent country, as a strategic partner, has 
resulted in putting the United States in grave danger.
  There are two things that I will talk about today. First, I have 
spoken about this before, and it is well known in the public, although 
it is being denied through the liberal media over and over and over 
again now, and that is, the weapons and technology of mass destruction 
that Communist China has managed to obtain because of our lax policies 
towards the Communist China regime; and number two, I would like to 
speak today about dramatic information that I have uncovered in Panama.
  During a recent trip to Panama, I spent time investigating the 
situation, spoke to people who were in hiding, who were afraid for 
their lives, spoke to others who were firsthand observers of corruption 
and firsthand observers of a strategic maneuver on the part of the 
Chinese that is moving forward and putting the United States in great 
danger.
  So I will be speaking first about the technology and missiles that 
have found their way and been upgraded, the Chinese missiles that have 
been upgraded with American technology; and then I would like to talk a 
little bit about what I discovered in Panama.
  It is most disturbing to me, Mr. Chairman, that after 2 years we 
still have press reports from the likes of Bob Scheerer of the Los 
Angeles Times. And why the Los Angeles Times feels that it has to 
always tout the far left line, I do not know. I do not understand that. 
I do not understand how a major newspaper in the United States can 
continually take the side of those left-wing regimes, and downplay any 
threat to the United States that these left-wing regimes around the 
world pose to the United States of America.
  But now, Mr. Scheerer in the L.A. Times and others in the media and 
this administration, through an orchestrated maneuvering, is trying to 
suggest that there was no validity to the Cox report and that the 
Chinese really have not, through underhanded means, obtained 
information that permits them to develop weapons of mass destruction 
that threaten millions of Americans.
  This I assert today is a truism. Over the last 7 years, the Communist 
Chinese have been able to obtain and start putting into their weapons 
systems technology that cost the American people, the American 
taxpayer, billions of dollars to develop.
  The Communist Chinese have been able to use American technology to 
leapfrog ahead by decades, farther ahead than what they would be if it 
was not for the fact that they had American technology at their 
disposal, which permits them to build weapons of mass destruction that 
threaten every American city, that threaten tens of millions of 
Americans with nuclear incineration. They have atomic weapons that are 
based on American technology, and they obtained them from the United 
States in some way.
  Mr. Speaker, I would say today that the American people need to pay 
attention. I would alert the American people that something is wrong 
with the taxpayer dollars that they have spent by the billions which 
are now being put in the hands of people like those who are in charge 
of the regime in Beijing, the Communist Chinese regime.
  There is something wrong when those billions of dollars that we spent 
during the Cold War now find their way, the technology that was 
developed finds its way to a power like Communist China. And no amount 
of words, it is hard to even describe the process of the mangling of 
the language and word games that is being played by this administration 
in order to call China our strategic partner; to call Communist China, 
the world's worst human rights abuser, our strategic partner.

                              {time}  1015

  This has resulted in several things. Number one, this body had to act 
on its

[[Page H8379]]

own to force the Clinton administration to discontinue military 
exchange programs with the Communist Chinese regime.
  Let us make this very clear. Communist China is the world's worst 
human rights abuser. It is a Communist dictatorship. Their leadership 
still claims to their own Communist congresses in Beijing that the 
United States is the enemy and that they will destroy us. But yet we 
have had a policy in the last 5 years of military exchanges in which we 
are teaching them our military secrets and we permit their top military 
brass to observe our troops and how they act and the game plans that we 
use during our warfare, our potential warfare with any adversary.
  At the same time, we have been taking these military exchange 
programs, and what have we been doing? We have been teaching the 
Communist Chinese how to run a logistics system, how to supply troops 
in the field, how to transport troops. This we are doing with the 
military of the world's worst human rights abuser, a country that 
threatens our own national security.
  What sense does that make? The people of Tibet are still suffering 
under a genocidal policy by the Communist regime in Beijing. There are 
Muslims in the far reaches of western China who are also suffering a 
genocidal attack. Believers in God, Christians, who refuse to register 
with the government are being brutally suppressed, thrown into 
concentration camps, they call it the laogai system of prisons. Now we 
hear that a Buddhist sect made up of middle-aged and senior citizens of 
China who practice nothing more than kind of a breathing exercise, an 
exercise program in the morning that helps the soul as well as the 
body, even this little Buddhist religious sect is now coming under 
severe repression.
  This is not a normal regime. This is not like Belgium or the 
Netherlands or even Mexico, which is struggling to try to have free 
elections. There are no free elections, there are no parties, there is 
no freedom in China. But yet we are training the military in China on 
how to be more effective.
  And what will that military do? It will either be used to repress 
their own people and participate in destroying the culture and the 
people of Tibet or these other repressed minorities in China, or it 
will be used in aggression against their neighbors. Already Burma has 
become nothing more than a fiefdom for China. We see in the Spratly 
Islands the Communist Chinese trying to bully their neighbors and grab 
these islands so that they can control the Malacca Straits where so 
much of the world's commerce goes through that one little strait there 
in South Asia. They may use that military training that we are 
providing them in that type of activity. Or they may use the military 
training that we are providing them to kill Americans.
  This is insanity. It is an insane policy to call this type of regime 
our strategic partner. And it is threatening the lives and the well-
being of millions of Americans. Every time we turn around, we are 
finding out that our country is more in jeopardy because of conscious 
decisions on the part of the Clinton administration to treat Communist 
China as a benevolent power.
  This is not only insanity, this is a crime against the American 
people, especially against the youth of our country. The American 
people who are trying to raise their family sacrificed, America 
sacrificed during the Cold War. America sacrificed in order to make a 
more peaceful world and to protect the cause of human freedom. And yet 
now with the Cold War over, we are finding that our young people, our 
children, are going to be in as great a danger 10 years from now as 
they were at the height of the Cold War. Why is that? Because we have a 
policy that makes no sense, that is contrary to our interests in 
dealing with a regime on the mainland of China that hates everything 
that the United States stands for.
  Let me make this clear about the regime that controls the mainland of 
China. These are gangsters, these are people who hate the United States 
of America because they believe that we are the only power that stands 
in their way of their destiny. Just as Japan during the 1920s believed 
that it was the destiny of Japan to control all of Asia and into the 
Pacific Basin, the Japanese knew that the United States was the only 
power that stood in their way, that we were the only ones that could 
stop them from their destiny, these militaristic gangsters who ran 
Japan at the time. That same attitude now is what we find in Beijing.
  When we let their scientists go to our laboratories, when we train 
their military, they do not say, Oh, the United States of America must 
be our friends. Otherwise they would not be so open. They are not 
saying that. They are saying, The United States of America is weak. 
They are saying that the people of the United States of America are 
permitting weapons technology to come into our possession and we hate 
them. That must mean the Americans are cowards.

  That is what is going on. We are laying the foundation for a bitter 
future for our young people, because 10 years from now when the 
Communist Chinese have taken the technology that they have stolen from 
us and obtained through our openness with them, they will be put into 
weapons systems that will threaten the lives of our young people when 
they reach adulthood.
  And sometime and someday in the future we will send an aircraft 
carrier into the Pacific and thousands of American lives will be lost 
if we get into a confrontation because the Chinese will have the 
technology to sink our aircraft carriers and murder our military 
personnel. And when we look back, we will find that that technology was 
developed by the American taxpayers during the Cold War and offered on 
a plate to the Communist Chinese.
  This is a sinful policy. It is sinful because it ignores the 
fundamental values of our country and it is sinful because we the 
Government, and we are the Government, the United States of America, we 
the people, we are supposed to be watching out for the people's 
interest, especially the interest of future generations of Americans.
  This acknowledgment of the type of technological disaster that we are 
in right now started 2 years ago. As chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Space and Aeronautics, which is my primary responsibility here in the 
House of Representatives, I went to a meeting of aerospace workers to 
find out what projects they are working on and to get a firsthand look 
and feel for our aerospace industry in the United States.
  During that meeting, one of the employees of the aerospace industry 
that I was talking to was talking about the project that he had just 
been involved in; he had just come back from China. He was saying, 
Congressman, those Chinese rockets, they do not even work. They do not 
have right-stage separation technology. We are trying to put our 
satellites up with those rockets and they will not work and they can 
only carry one payload. They can only carry one satellite. So I have 
spent the last year over there helping them try and correct these 
problems.
  I could not believe what I was hearing. Finally when he was done, I 
said, Let me get this straight. Your company has used this technology 
that we paid for, that the taxpayers paid for, you are using that 
technology and your expertise and your company, every means that your 
company has, to improve the capability and the reliability of the 
rocket systems over in China?
  He says, Why, yes. Their stage separation, he repeated that, they do 
not have the exploding bolts, the stage separation that they need and 
they blow up right after it takes off.
  I looked at that aerospace worker and I said, You know, I think it is 
a good thing when Communist Chinese rockets blow up. And all of a 
sudden he said, Oh, you are thinking about the national security 
implications.
  And I said, Yes. Yes, I am. I am thinking about that. It is something 
we should think about.
  He said, Do not worry. We have a waiver from the White House.
  Well, that made me feel real good about that. I spent the next 6 
months, Mr. Speaker, researching this issue. I went to the major 
aerospace firms and talked to them. I went to the subcontractors. I 
went to the aerospace employees, and I researched this issue myself 
before I made a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  What I found was a verification that our companies, some of our major 
corporations, were over in China providing them with the technology 
they needed to make sure their rockets did not explode when the stages 
separated, to

[[Page H8380]]

make sure that the rockets in China could carry more than one payload. 
When we are talking about payloads, we are not just talking about a 
peaceful satellite here. If you can carry more than one satellite, you 
can carry more than one warhead. More than one warhead means if they 
send a missile to the United States that does not explode because the 
stage separation now works with American technology, that it can carry 
two atomic bombs, or three, or four, and wipe out tens of millions of 
people in the United States rather than just a million people.
  This was not a secret to this administration that this was going on. 
In fact, when alarm bells went off, this administration put their thumb 
right on top of those civil servants throughout the administration who 
were supposed to be watching out for our security. We found that 
especially to be true in how this administration has been running our 
national laboratories.
  For those who do not understand, we have laboratories where we have 
developed these weapons of mass destruction that can either be used to 
protect freedom and preserve the peace or if that technology gets into 
the hands of monsters like Hitler or the militaristic Japanese or the 
Communist Chinese regime in Beijing, those weapons would threaten 
humankind.

  Because China has to be told that they are our strategic partner, we 
had a policy of letting these scientists from the People's Republic of 
China do their experiments in our laboratories, in our weapons 
laboratories. Over and over again, we have found during this 
investigation, we have found that those people who sounded the alarm, 
career civil servants, civil service people, were repressed by this 
administration, were told to shut up or get out.
  We have had hearings on this and documented this over and over again. 
Now, what has this resulted in? What are we talking about here? We are 
talking about missile technology, and we are talking about technology 
that has permitted them to build weapons that can kill millions of 
Americans, probably the size of that little desk down there, that 
little table right there, put into a Chinese rocket that can kill 
millions of Americans, or millions of Tibetans or millions of Japanese 
or millions of South Koreans.
  That technology has been taken, obtained from the United States, from 
our scientists and now is in the hands of a regime that is in the 
middle of committing genocide in Tibet, repressing their own people and 
involved in a great military expansion, a country that is being 
provided by our own policies with 50 to $60 billion of hard currency 
surplus because we are permitting them the trade status of a 
benevolent, friendly country.
  We will pay dearly for this nonsense. Our young people will face a 
threat that they should not have to face because of this indefensible, 
totally indefensible policy. But it is worse. Mr. Speaker, after my 
investigation into the original charges about the use of technology to 
upgrade and to perfect Communist Chinese rockets, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Cox) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) were 
made the heads of a select committee; and they conducted their own 
investigation with people with much more expertise than I have.
  Specialists went in and confirmed this horrible, horrible transfer of 
technology to the Communist Chinese. And now the Clinton administration 
and the news media is trying to get the American people to relax, 
forget about it, pretend it does not exist. In fact, Robert Scheerer of 
the L.A. Times is trying to claim it never happened. Yes, the Communist 
Chinese just simply found the plans for the W-88 warhead, atomic 
warhead. They found those plans under their pillow one night because 
the tooth fairy must have left it there.

                              {time}  1030

  I am sure that is what must have happened. It was either the tooth 
fairy or it was a policy by this administration that ended up with a 
transfer of that technology. The American people can decide which one 
of those scenarios actually happened.
  By the way, this is not the first time such things have happened. 
There have been transfers of technology in the past. There are reports 
that in the 1930s, Howard Hughes designed a fighter aircraft that was a 
superior fighter aircraft for its day and that our Government did not 
follow through on his offer to produce these fighter aircraft.
  The story is that the Japanese got a hold of the blueprints for that 
and Howard Hughes was the one who actually designed the Japanese Zero, 
which resulted in the death of so many Americans during World War II. I 
do not know if that is true. I have heard that report over and over 
again. It may not be true, but we do know that Hughes Electronics 
certainly is one of the companies that has been involved in 
transferring rocket technology to the Communist Chinese in order to 
perfect their rocket systems.
  Also, some people do not know that during the post-war period after 
World War II, the English decided to prove to Josef Stalin that they 
were his friends and so the English shipped to Joe Stalin, this bloody 
dictator in Russia, they shipped to him a complete Rolls Royce jet 
engine which at that time was the utmost, that was the ultimate in all 
weapons technology, a jet engine for an airplane.
  Know what? That did not make Josef Stalin any more benevolent. It did 
not make Josef Stalin more inclined to trust the West and become more 
democratic and open. No. Josef Stalin used that jet engine, that Rolls 
Royce jet engine, not to build passenger planes that could help tie 
Russia with the rest of the world. Josef Stalin used that Rolls Royce 
engine, which was copied, every little bit of it, and mass produced in 
Russia. He used it in the MiG fighters that shot down American planes 
in Korea.
  Josef Stalin launched a war in Korea and used the technology that the 
English had given him to produce airplanes that we could not shoot 
down, and thousands of American lives were lost because of it. The 
British just thought that they were trying to do something that would 
prove that they were friendly.
  When will the free people of the world understand that when dealing 
with a gangster or a bully or a dictator, we must do so from strength 
or that dictator will perceive a weakness?
  The Communist Chinese regime is no more benevolent, no more peaceful 
today. In fact, there are signs that it has become worse in these last 
10 years.
  With all due respect to my colleagues in this body that vote for Most 
Favored Nation status over and over again, I think the Communist 
Chinese would have to bomb the capitol of the United States before they 
would quit voting to provide this very lucrative trade status to the 
Communist Chinese regime; and the Chinese continue, as I say, their 
aggressive action.
  About 6 months ago, I flew over the Spratly Islands. It took me 2 
years to get to the Spratly Islands because our State Department did 
not want me to see what was going on there.
  What was going on there? The Chinese communists are taking the 
islands. These islands are just about 100 miles off the Philippines. 
Yet they are 800 miles off the coast of China, and the Chinese 
communists are building fortifications.
  When I finally got out to the Spratly Islands, I was in an old C-130, 
an old propeller-driven airplane that the Philippine Air Force provided 
me; and as soon as we got through the clouds, there were three Chinese 
war ships right there in the lagoon of, which is one of the Spratly 
Islands.
  Not only were there three Chinese war ships, but the Chinese 
construction workers were feverishly trying to complete a fortification 
on those islands. We could see their welding torches. Even as our plane 
dipped down to take a low pass over those islands, we could see the 
torches at work, and they were building their fortifications.
  This is very similar, very similar, to the situation in the 1920s and 
1930s when the Japanese fortified the Pacific Islands, and in this case 
the Chinese are trying to grab these islands from the Philippines, a 
democratic country with very little military, trying to grab these 
islands in order to what? In order to bracket the water passages 
between the mainland of China and the Spratly Islands, which will then 
give them a strangle hold on 50 percent of the commerce of Asia, a 
strangle hold and also a grip on America's ability to defend Asia.
  Something else is going on right now, and this is where I would like 
to lead in

[[Page H8381]]

to my talk on Panama. The Communist Chinese regime is also involved in 
a strategic maneuver. Here is our strategic partner involved in 
a strategic maneuver. One would think if they were our strategic 
partner that maneuver would be something that we would like, because 
they are our partners, are they not? No, they are involved in a 
strategic maneuver to strangle the United States of America, and it is 
very clear that they have targeted areas in which the United States is 
most vulnerable. The Panama Canal happens to be one of those areas.

  Let me make clear, Panama is where the two major oceans of the world 
come together, the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. It is where the two 
great continents of the Western Hemisphere come together, the Northern 
Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. This is one of the choke points 
of the world, this, and the Suez Canal and the Straits of Gibralter; 
this and the Molucca Straits near the Spratly Islands.
  What do we find? What do we find? We find that the United States of 
America has removed all of its military personnel from Panama.
  I was down, as I say, in Panama a very short time ago, a month ago; 
and I was shocked to see ghost towns in what had been only a short time 
ago American military bases. Panama, of course, has no military of 
their own. They have no military, and they have always relied on the 
United States military to protect the canal against any type of 
aggression.
  So when I traveled to Panama, and having been there many times in the 
past and seen many American military persons there to protect Panama 
and protect our national security interests and protect the canal, I 
was shocked when I saw they were gone. They are all gone. It is like 
this hall of Congress now. I am the only Member standing here. When one 
goes down to Panama where there used to be tens of thousands of 
American troops, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Army, they were always 
there; they are gone, and there is no Panamanian military force to take 
up the slack.
  Now, what does that mean to us? Well, that means to us that there is 
a vulnerability there. There are two vulnerabilities: number one, there 
is a war going on next door in Colombia and already the narco 
terrorists, who are allied with Fidel Castro and the people who hate 
the United States, already those guerrillas have infiltrated into the 
Panamanian military. There is nothing standing between them and the 
Panama Canal. That alone should cause alarm bells to go off because the 
Panama Canal is vulnerable to sabotage. I will not go into detail, but 
it is incredibly vulnerable to sabotage.
  What concerns me more is the overwhelming evidence of a Chinese 
presence and even domination of Panama in the Panama Canal, something 
that is in the process of happening. That, to me, was even more 
frightening because I know that we can blink our eyes and this 
magnificent achievement of the United States, a canal between the two 
oceans, something that we rely on in times of international emergency 
so we can send our ships from one ocean to the other and take off days, 
actually a week, of travel around the Horn in South America, that that 
Panama Canal now is totally vulnerable and is slowly coming under the 
domination of the Communist Chinese.
  Now, let me say what I mean. There is a company called Hutchison 
Whampoa, run by a man named Li Ka-Shing. He is part of the clique, he 
is part of Beijing's inner circle, he is a front man, and his company 
is a front for the Chinese Government. The Chinese Government, in fact, 
owns over 30 percent outright of his company.
  This company is tied, not closely but tied totally within the small 
circle of elite of the Beijing regime. This company now has won the 
contract which provides them control of all of the port facilities on 
both ends of the canal.
  Now, to be fair about it, there are some other new port facilities 
further away that are being built but on both ends of the canal, 
directly outside of the canal. Those port facilities are now under 
control of this Communist Chinese front company.
  Now, how did that happen, and what does that mean? When I went to 
Panama, the first thing I did was try to go down to those areas that 
are now under lease arrangement. By the way, it is not a 10-year lease, 
not a 25-year lease. The lease is giving them up to 50 years of control 
of these strategic positions on both sides of the canal. By the way, 
the lease agreement also gives them concessions on certain ways of how 
the Panama Canal will be run, the piloting of the ships, et cetera.
  They are also in negotiations and are trying to, and I am not sure if 
this is part of the lease or not, to get control of one of the air 
bases in Panama, the Howard Air Base, as well as some of the other 
military facilities that we left behind.
  Now, how did that happen? What has gone wrong here? What is 
happening? How can a country that is considered to be belligerent, and 
many people are trying to have a realistic policy, considered to be 
belligerent and hostile to the United States, end up with a commanding 
position in the Panama Canal and a position to dominate this strategic 
waterway? How did that happen? Where was our intelligence? Where was 
the NSA? Who were they listening to? Where was the CIA?
  I think the CIA and the NSA probably did their job. The trouble is 
that they are reporting to the Clinton administration; and everywhere 
in the world where we look, where America's national security has been 
put in jeopardy by the Communist Chinese, the fingerprints of the 
Clinton administration are all over the crime scene. The people who are 
supposed to be protecting our interests are not protecting our national 
security interests.
  So I went down and I met with the ambassador, the ambassador to 
Panama from the United States. I asked the ambassador, I said, Mr. 
Ambassador, how did they get this contract? I said, In fact, I have 
even heard that there might have been some bribery involved here.

                              {time}  1045

  He says, oh, we do not know if there is any corruption involved in 
this. I said, what do your intelligence reports say? He said, what 
intelligence reports? I said, what does the NSA say when they are 
listening in on the conversations involved with the people involved in 
these negotiations? Well, I do not know, I have not seen those reports, 
if there are any.
  What does your station chief, the head of the CIA there, what does he 
say? I have not seen any report by him. This is the most important 
thing that has happened in the past 10 years in Panama, and the 
ambassador has not bothered to read the intelligence reports of how 
that contract came into being.
  So I said, well, Mr. Ambassador, this is really an important thing. 
Do you not think you ought to check up on it? And he says, oh, I guess 
maybe I should. Well, come to find out that there are certain people 
who work for the government whose job is not to see any evil, not to go 
looking for those reports.
  Our ambassador to Panama happens to have been who? It happens to have 
been the man who was the chairman of President Clinton's reelection 
campaign in Florida the last time around. I am not saying that he has 
done anything corrupt or wrong, I am just saying that he has not looked 
at these intelligence reports, and he is a political appointee who is 
highly politically involved with the President's personal political 
ambitions. Somebody is not watching out for the national security 
interests of the United States.
  So I went out after meeting the ambassador. By the way, the CIA 
station chief was conveniently not available when I was in Panama, 
conveniently not available. So I went out to try to find things on my 
own. I am sorry to report today to my colleagues and to whoever is 
listening or reading the Congressional Record on this speech that I was 
able to find out information that has indicated to me that the lease 
arrangement, the contract arrangement with this Communist Chinese front 
company was obtained through bribery of high-level Panamanian 
officials.
  I talked to people who were directly involved with the negotiations, 
directly involved with the bidding process, and I was told, and these 
people are afraid to say so publicly, but they told me privately that 
there were bribes in the millions of dollars that were paid to the 
former president of

[[Page H8382]]

Panama, Balladares, for the lease agreement with the Hutchison Whampoa 
company, and it was again repeated to me over and over again that 
Hutchison Whampoa did not offer the best bid for those port facilities 
on either side of the Panama Canal, yet they were awarded that lease 
agreement, and the only explanation is that millions of dollars of 
bribes were provided to high-level Panamanian officials.
  President Balladares, who was president at the time and recently 
stepped down, it is important for us to note that the Panamanian 
Constitution prevents a president of Panama from running for 
reelection. President Balladares wanted to change the Constitution so 
that he could run for reelection.
  The Chinese certainly bankrolled that campaign, and guess who was 
down there running the referendum to try to change the Panamanian 
Constitution so this man who helped give away the Panama Canal would 
have the right to run again for office? Who was down there running that 
campaign for him? James Carville, that is who. Who is he? Every time 
you turn around, the President's inner circle is involved with 
something that is undercutting America's national security.
  I am recommending to our colleagues that we pay attention to Panama. 
Up until now, the reason these things are happening is that we have 
left it to the administration, and Panama has been off of the radar 
screen of the United States of America.
  It cannot be. If we let foreign policy be the purview only of the 
government and only of the executive branch, our country will suffer, 
as it has been put in great jeopardy by our relations with Communist 
China.
  Just one other note. When I went to Panama, the head of the 
Panamanian CIA, that is their central intelligence agency, was in 
hiding. Her name was Samantha Smith. Samantha Smith was in hiding, and 
our embassy did not know where she was, they did not know what was 
happening, how to get hold of her. There was no report on Samantha 
Smith, of how we could talk to her.
  The head of the Panamanian CIA was in hiding for this reason, because 
there had been information that she had been involved in a smuggling 
ring of Communist Chinese aliens, Chinese residents of the mainland of 
China, who had paid $30,000 a head to President Balladares of Panama in 
order to go through Panama into the United States of America, hundreds 
of them.
  This woman, the head of the CIA, was the one who signed off on this 
operation. But she had signed off on it because her president had 
ordered her to sign those documents, those requests from these Chinese 
coming from the mainland.
  First of all, I want to know who these people were, who these Chinese 
were who could afford to pay $30,000 to be smuggled into the United 
States through Panama. Chinese farmers do not have that kind of money. 
I do not know if they are saboteurs, I do not know who they are, but I 
want to know who they are.
  The head of the Panamanian CIA, when she realized she was going to be 
the fall person, she was going to be blamed when this became known, 
went into hiding. Guess what our? Our embassy just could not find her. 
They had not had contact with her. But guess what, within one day, I 
found her.
  Within one day, I had a meeting with this head of their Panamanian 
intelligence. She just told me everything about how the President had 
forced her to sign these documents, ordered her, even above her 
objection; and how these Chinese would come in, these illegal Chinese 
would come in, land in Panama, and there would be a special escort 
officer that would take them on the second floor at the airport in 
Panama and take them around, and then take them where she did not know; 
and how she had protested to the President, but the president of 
Panama, Balladares, had ordered her to do so.
  This is the man who also, fascinatingly enough, provided the contract 
for Hutchison Whampoa, the Chinese front company that now controls both 
ends of the canal.
  Let me tell the Members something that I consider to be even another 
little bit of evidence that we should not miss. Supposedly, our 
government has been negotiating with the Panamanian government, the 
government of Balladares, for what? We have been negotiating to try to 
maintain some type of military presence in Panama to protect the Panama 
Canal.
  Polls indicate now that from 70 to 80 percent of the Panamanian 
people love the United States and want to see a military presence of 
the United States in Panama. We left. They told us to leave, and we 
left. Now they know we have been serious all these years, that we 
believe they have the right and freedom to control their own country. 
We are not like Russia, China. If the people do not want us, we do not 
stay there and brutalize the people in order to maintain our military 
bases. We got out. That just reconfirmed for the people of Panama, hey, 
the Americans are good people after all. They really do believe in 
democracy. We want them back.
  Although the polls showed 70 to 80 percent of the Panamanian people 
wanted us there, our State Department could not negotiate a contract 
and a deal that would permit us, an agreement that would permit us to 
have an American military presence in Panama. They could not do it.
  Something is wrong. Something is wrong here. Of course, it was 
President Balladares who was the head of that country, and of course 
our own ambassador had not read any of the intelligence reports. I do 
not guess he has read any intelligence reports on any instructions 
Balladares might have had with those negotiators, or any contact that 
he might have with the Communist Chinese.
  All I know is, we are depending on an administration to defend our 
country, to make sure our children are not put in jeopardy, and that 
administration is treating the Communist Chinese as a strategic 
partner, and we are being put in danger.
  We have to reverse this situation. It is up to the Congress of the 
United States to act, and it is up to the American people to demand 
action and to get involved in this process. If we want our children to 
be safe, we cannot do so by giving the Communist Chinese leverage on 
future generations of Americans. We will not be safe if the Communist 
Chinese have weapons based on American technology that could murder 
tens of millions of our people. That is not the kind of world we want 
to leave our children. In 10 years, that is the kind of world they are 
going to have, unless we act.
  The first step, we have to quit treating Communist China as a friend 
and be realistic. I am not saying we should go to war with them. We 
should not. But we must be tough and we must be strong, and we must 
demand a trade relationship that is mutually beneficial, and certainly 
not one that gives them $70 billion in hard currency and puts the 
American people out of work.
  I am introducing legislation today, and I have approximately 25 
cosponsors at this time. I am introducing legislation now. I ask people 
to call their Congressman to join the resolution, the Panama 
resolution, offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher). 
That is me. I am asking them to call their Members of Congress and ask 
them to join me in a resolution that does three things in Panama.
  Number one, it asks the new government that defeated the Balladares 
regime, President Moscoso, who is a woman, a wonderful person and a ray 
of hope for the United States government, that we do our best, and we 
call on President Moscoso to cancel this lease with this Chinese front 
company, cancel it, and to investigate how that lease came about. That 
is what we are asking the President of Panama to do in this resolution.
  We are asking also that the United States move forward with an 
investigation, as well as with the government of Panama, into these 
charges of corruption on how that lease was issued in the first place. 
When they cancel this lease, we are asking that they institute a new 
system that is open and fair and transparent, as they say, so there 
will be honest bidding for those port facilities in the Panama Canal. 
Also, we should investigate how that last contract happened.
  Number three, we should negotiate with this new government in Panama, 
President Moscoso, some type of arrangement where we can work together 
with Panama for the security of Panama and also the security of the 
Panama Canal.

[[Page H8383]]

  These are things that we need to do. It is part of my resolution. As 
a sense of Congress, we are calling for those things. I would hope that 
all of my colleagues come back here next week and that we get a number 
of cosponsors on this, and that this moves through the system very 
rapidly.
  We need to send a message to this administration, to the people of 
Panama, and to the Communist Chinese that Congress will not permit the 
security interests of the United States to be jeopardied because of 
some fantasy by the President that we are in a strategic partnership 
with the communist regime in Beijing.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to leave people with this one thought. My 
father was a marine pilot. He was a 20-year career man, a lieutenant 
colonel. When I was a young boy we lived in Japan, and my father flew 
intelligence missions along the Chinese coast. We lived in a small 
compound outside of Iwakuni, Japan, which is a Navy base there.
  My father would fly, along with other pilots, right along the coast 
and photograph the coast of China. This is in the 1950s. He did so at 
great personal risk. In fact, my next-door neighbor, this is when I was 
10 years old, my next-door neighbor was shot down by a Communist 
Chinese plane. Thank God that that person was not shot down and 
murdered by the Communist Chinese plane, and there was not any 
question, they were not using American technology to shoot down our 
neighbors, this American pilot.
  In the future, when they shoot down American pilots, that we will 
haunt us, did we provide the technology necessary to kill those 
Americans?

                              {time}  1100

  I remember that very vividly. I remember the tears and the sorrow of 
my next-door neighbor, my playmates, and the sense of hopelessness of 
the wife who was now left with the two children, on her own, to raise 
these kids and live her life without a loving husband. I remember that 
very well.
  I also remember that when a few years later my father, he is passed 
away now, perhaps one of the great things he did for our country was 
that he helped develop the Navy way of dropping the atomic bomb. To 
make this clear, what happens is before, if you drop a bomb from a 
plane like this, a small plane cannot do it because it will blow up the 
plane. But my father developed the system that the plane goes down, a 
small jet aircraft can come down like this and loft the bomb ahead as 
the plane pulls around and heads in the opposite direction. That was a 
most important development, because after that was perfected, America's 
aircraft carriers became strategic weapons, and the formula in the Cold 
War changed dramatically in favor of the United States because we now 
could deliver nuclear weapons throughout the world. That did not just 
happen.
  My father was taken out of a hospital bed when he described that to a 
general and given command of a squadron of hotshot pilots, that they 
were going to develop that as soon as they could, perfect that system 
with all speed because it meant so much to the security of our country. 
He put his team together. During that time period, they worked and they 
pushed the limits and they pushed beyond the limits in order to perfect 
that system so that other American pilots would be safe when they 
delivered their weapons.
  My mother told me something recently. When my dad passed away about 
11 months ago, at the funeral my mother told me how during that time 
period my father was operating in total secrecy, as was his whole 
operation, and four young pilots lost their lives in developing this 
system, four young pilots who were pushing the envelope beyond what 
they could, flew too low, flew too fast, lost their lives. One of these 
young pilots who died, my mother remembers going to his home and his 
wife was there, and it was their first wedding anniversary, and they 
stood there, my mother and my father, telling this young wife, the 
candlesticks on the table, that her husband would never come home and 
they were never able to tell that wife why her husband had died. The 
mission was top secret. They could not let her know that her husband 
died developing a system that was so important to the national security 
of our country, because it was that secret.
  I do not know who that man was. I do not know the names of the people 
who died during the Cold War like that. But there were many of them. My 
next-door neighbor in Japan, these four young men, they died protecting 
our country from communism and especially from the Communist Chinese. 
We do not know their names and we owe them a great deal.
  It is up to us to keep faith with those people. We cannot let our 
country be in jeopardy after they paid so much of a price, so dear a 
price for our security. And to let some fantasy like a strategic 
partnership with the Communist Chinese put our country in jeopardy when 
so many people have sacrificed for our safety is a sin against our 
people.

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