[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 15659-15661]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   LETTER TO NASA CLARIFYING CONGRESSIONAL RESTRICTIONS ON BILATERAL 
                          RELATIONS WITH CHINA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 10, 2013

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit a letter I sent to NASA Administrator 
Charles Bolden on Tuesday clarifying the statutory restrictions on 
bilateral cooperation with China, which were misrepresented by NASA 
Ames Research Center staff and reported in a recent article in the 
Guardian newspaper. I expect NASA to immediately correct the record on 
its policies and await a response from Administrator Bolden.
  In the letter, I also raised the rationale for congressional 
restrictions on additional collaboration with the Chinese government, 
including its abhorrent record on human rights abuses and its continued 
cyberattacks, espionage campaigns and development of space weapons to 
use against the U.S.
  I also challenged Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Geoff Marcy, who made 
public comments disparaging statutory and NASA policies, to advocate 
for the 2010 Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident who has 
been jailed by Beijing since 2009, saying ``It's an ethical breach that 
is unacceptable. You have to draw the line.''
  Will Dr. Marcy similarly ``draw the line'' regarding China's 
deplorable human rights record and join the Nobel Committee in speaking 
out for Liu Xiaobo? The Nobel Committee took the unprecedented step of 
holding Liu Xiaobo's ceremony with an empty chair on stage because he 
and his wife were not allowed to leave China to receive the award. 
Whether Dr. Marcy receives the award or not--and I hope he does--he and 
the other Nobel nominees should speak out for Liu Xiaobo. This will be 
a real test for the science community.

                                    Congress of the United States,


                                     House of Representatives,

                                                  October 8, 2013.
     Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr.,
     NASA,
     Washington DC.
       Dear Administrator Bolden: Earlier this year, I invited you 
     to meet with an impressive group of Chinese human rights 
     activists in my office. I appreciated your willingness to sit 
     with them and hear their stories. As you witnessed, to a 
     person, each loved their country and were rightly proud of 
     their heritage. But all sought fundamental change. They 
     longed to live in a land where they could worship freely, 
     speak openly and enjoy the basic protections of a 
     constitution grounded in rule of law.
       Their quarrel--and mine--is with the thin layer of 
     leadership at the helm of the Chinese communist party that 
     rules by fear and oppression. China's repression knows no 
     boundaries: the government has been a major arms supplier and 
     source of economic strength to the regime in Khartoum, Sudan, 
     headed by an internationally indicted war criminal and 
     architect of the genocide in Darfur. The Chinese people know 
     that such leadership is destined for the ash heap of history, 
     and they long for the U.S. government, to find common cause 
     with the Chinese people not with those who persecute them.
       Few in Congress have done more to advocate for the Chinese 
     people than me.
       As co-chairman of the House's bipartisan Human Rights 
     Commission, I have worked closely with many victims of 
     repression. I have spent hours with countless Chinese 
     dissidents ranging from legal advocate Chen Guangcheng, who 
     escaped from house arrest seeking asylum in the U.S. embassy, 
     to Uyghur Muslim activist Rebiya Kadeer, herself a political 
     dissident, to house church pastor and advocate Bob Fu, to 
     former laogai prisoner Harry Wu. I have traveled to China to 
     meet with human rights and religious freedom activists 
     oppressed by Beijing. In 1997, I slipped into Tibet with a 
     trekking group to meet with Buddhist monks and nuns living 
     under the repressive watch of Chinese security agents. They 
     showed me forbidden pictures of the Dalai Lama. In 2008, I 
     returned to China the week before the start of the Olympics 
     to meet with a group of activists and pastors--all but one 
     was arrested on their way to the meeting.
       The Chinese people are good people who yearn for freedom 
     and the same universal human rights that we in the West 
     enjoy, including freedom of speech and religion. In contrast, 
     the Chinese government is fundamentally corrupt and 
     systematically abuses the basic human rights of its own 
     people. We only need to ask the Catholic bishop under house 
     arrest, the house church pastor languishing in prison, the 
     Tibetan monk willing to set himself aflame in desperation at 
     the abuses suffered by his people to know this is true.
       Consider that at the same time that the 2010 Nobel Prize 
     recipient Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident, was jailed, the 
     2009 Nobel Prize winner, President Obama, was hosting a state 
     dinner for Chinese premier Hu Jintao. No such welcome was 
     afforded to the Dalai Lama during his first visit to 
     Washington during Obama's presidency. Much like Solzhenitsyn 
     before him the Dalai Lama was denied an audience with the 
     president because the White House didn't want to there to be 
     any impact on the president's trip to Beijing the next month.
       These events, coupled with former Secretary of State 
     Hillary Clinton's comments during an early visit to Asia, in 
     which she famously said that U.S. concern with human rights 
     issues in China ``can't interfere with the global economic 
     crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security 
     crisis,'' have sadly set the tone for this administration. 
     Too often, the Obama Administration has willfully turned a 
     blind eye towards human rights abuses as well as systemic 
     Internet censorship, crackdowns on free speech and protestors 
     and prolific theft of intellectual property all in the name 
     of currying favor with the Chinese government.
       In light of these realities, I have supported efforts to 
     limit new collaboration with China until we see improvements 
     in its human rights record, as well as a reduction in its 
     well documented cyberattacks and espionage efforts against 
     the U.S. My record on this has been clear and well 
     publicized, especially with regard to language I have 
     included in legislation affecting NASA and other agencies. 
     However, I was concerned to read an October 4 article in The 
     Guardian that reported on poor guidance about these policies 
     with regard to restrictions on Chinese nationals attending a 
     conference next month at NASA Ames Research Center. 
     Unfortunately, the article is riddled with inaccuracies, as 
     is, it appears, the guidance provided by NASA Ames staff to 
     the attendees.

[[Page 15660]]

       According to the article: ``Chinese applicants were told 
     they could not attend the conference in an email sent by Mark 
     Messersmith, a Kepler project specialist at Nasa Ames. 
     `Unfortunately . . . federal legislation passed last March 
     forbids us from hosting any citizens of the People's Republic 
     of China at a conference held at facilities of the National 
     Aeronautics and Space Administration. Regarding those who are 
     already working at other institutions in the US, due to 
     security issues resulting from recent Congressional actions, 
     they are under the same constraints' according to the email, 
     seen by the Guardian.''
       As you know, the congressional provision--which has been in 
     place since early 2011--primarily restricts bilateral, not 
     multilateral, meetings and activities with the Communist 
     Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies. It places no 
     restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese 
     nationals unless those nationals are acting as official 
     representatives of the Chinese government. As such, the email 
     from NASA Ames mischaracterizes the law and is inaccurate.
       I believe what Mr. Messersmith may have been referring to 
     was a temporary restriction on Chinese nationals that you put 
     in place earlier this year after serious security protocol 
     flaws were brought to your attention by some in Congress, 
     including me, specifically regarding violations at Ames and 
     Langley Research Center. You indicated at the time that 
     security policies for foreign nationals for particular 
     countries of concern would be reevaluated and new 
     accreditations would not be approved until the security 
     process was vetted. However, any restriction against Chinese 
     nationals on NASA centers is entirely an agency policy and 
     not covered under the statutory restriction. Furthermore, it 
     was my understanding that NASA's temporary restrictions had 
     been lifted after a review of security protocols for foreign 
     nationals at all NASA centers.
       As you know, NASA's inspector general recently produced a 
     report documenting the serious failures in the security 
     process that led to violations involving a Chinese national 
     at NASA's Langley Research Center. I hope a copy of this 
     report will soon be made public. For these reasons, I 
     supported NASA's policies that were put in place earlier this 
     year to ensure that these security flaws had been dealt with. 
     I continue to support every effort you deem appropriate to 
     ensure that NASA centers are fully compliant with laws and 
     regulations governing security.
       However, it is clear the NASA Ames guidance provided to 
     conference attendees was inaccurate and not reflective of the 
     statutory restrictions enacted by Congress. NASA headquarters 
     needs to send updated guidance to both the conference 
     attendees and to the press to correct this misconception.
       That said, I was struck by comments from individuals quoted 
     in the Guardian article who indicated their intent to boycott 
     this conference. How many of these same people are all too 
     willing to participate in science conferences in China that 
     are hosted and paid for by the autocratic Chinese government, 
     with its clear and undisputed record of abuses and 
     censorship? Which begs the question, where then was their 
     righteous outrage?
       According to the article, ``Geoff Marcy, an astronomy 
     professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has 
     been tipped to win a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on 
     exoplanets, or planets outside the solar system, called the 
     ban `completely shameful and unethical.' In an email sent to 
     the conference organizers, Marcy said: `In good conscience, I 
     cannot attend a meeting that discriminates in this way. The 
     meeting is about planets located trillions of miles away, 
     with no national security implications,' he wrote. `It is 
     completely unethical for the United States of America to 
     exclude certain countries from pure science research,' Marcy 
     told the Guardian. `It's an ethical breach that is 
     unacceptable. You have to draw the line.'''
       Again, while the conference guidance provided by Ames was 
     inaccurate, I hope Dr. Marcy will draw a similar line when it 
     comes to cooperation with Chinese government funded agencies 
     and programs due to their systemic human rights abuses. In 
     fact, as a Nobel nominee himself, has he publicly advocated 
     for the 2010 Nobel Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo who to this day 
     languishes in Chinese detention?
       In the powerful words of the Nobel Committee which 
     asserted, in awarding the prize to Liu, that ``there is a 
     close connection between human rights and peace . . .'' The 
     Committee continued, ``The campaign to establish universal 
     human rights also in China is being waged by many Chinese, 
     both in China itself and abroad. Through the severe 
     punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost 
     symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in 
     China.'' Will the international science community stand with 
     those who are struggling for human rights in China? Will they 
     take a similarly public stand against the ``shameful'' and 
     ``unethical'' activities of the Chinese government which our 
     own State Department characterizes as an ``authoritarian 
     state'' which routinely engages in ``repression and 
     coercion'' and resorts to ``extralegal measures such as 
     enforced disappearance, `soft detention,' and strict house 
     arrest, including house arrest of family members, to prevent 
     the public voicing of independent opinions''?
       Given the attention raised in the Guardian article about 
     the statutory restrictions on bilateral relations with the 
     Chinese government, it is worth recalling why the Congress 
     has deemed it appropriate to put these provisions in statute 
     since 2011. In addition to the myriad human rights and 
     religious freedom abuses described above, there are serious 
     concerns about widespread espionage against the U.S., 
     including NASA, as well as recent developments in China's 
     space warfare program.
       Over the last year, there has been much discussion about 
     the unprecedented espionage campaign run by the People's 
     Liberation Army (PLA) against the U.S. government--including 
     NASA--and industry. The director of National Security Agency 
     recently described Chinese espionage of U.S. technology as 
     ``the greatest transfer of wealth in history.''
       Other senior U.S. military and intelligence officials have 
     become increasingly vocal about their concerns about the 
     scope of Chinese espionage and cyberattacks. Defense 
     Intelligence Agency chief General Ron Burgess testified last 
     year that ``China has used its intelligence services to 
     gather information via a significant network of agents and 
     contacts using a variety of methods . . . In recent years, 
     multiple cases of economic espionage and theft of dual-use 
     and military technology have uncovered pervasive Chinese 
     collection efforts.''
       The evidence of prolific Chinese cyperattacks and espionage 
     have become increasingly clear with the release of the 
     Mandiant report in February as well as the newspapers that 
     have come forward to report targeted attacks from China based 
     on reporting critical of the Chinese government. Then, in 
     April, Verizon released its annual cyber report which found 
     that ``96 percent of recorded, state-affiliated attacks 
     targeting business' trade secrets and other intellectual 
     property in 2012 could be traced to Chinese hackers.'' These 
     are just the latest reports in a series of official documents 
     that have built a damning case against Chinese cyber 
     espionage against the U.S. government and industry.
       In late 2011, the Office of the National 
     Counterintelligence Executive released a report for foreign 
     spies in the U.S. Not surprisingly, much of the report 
     focused on China's espionage operations. According to the 
     report, Chinese espionage efforts ``combine collection of 
     open source information, [human intelligence], signals 
     intelligence, and cyber operations'' to ``develop a 
     competitive edge over the United States.'' The report also 
     explicitly notes that China views itself as a ``strategic 
     competitor'' of the U.S. and is one of the ``most aggressive 
     collectors of U.S. economic information and technology.''
       It is particularly notable that the president's strategy on 
     mitigating the theft of U.S. intellectual property 
     specifically singled out core technologies that NASA 
     develops, including ``unmanned aerial vehicles, and other 
     aerospace/aeronautic technologies'' and ``civilian and dual-
     use technologies in sectors likely to experience fast 
     growth'' as information of the greatest interest to Chinese 
     espionage.
       In response to the public attention to the Chinese 
     espionage threat, earlier this year the White House released 
     a white paper detailing its strategy to mitigate the theft of 
     trade secrets. Notably, of the 19 trade secret espionage 
     cases that have been brought under this administration, 16 of 
     the 19 cases involved Chinese nationals spying for Chinese 
     institutions. That's 85 percent of all DOJ espionage cases 
     that have involved Chinese espionage.
       At the same time, the PLA--which runs China's space 
     program--is developing space weapons to use against U.S. 
     satellites. According to a recent article from respected 
     national security reporter Bill Gertz, ``China last week 
     conducted a test of a maneuvering satellite that captured 
     another satellite in space during what Pentagon officials say 
     was a significant step forward for Beijing's space warfare 
     program. The satellite capture took place last week and 
     involved one of three small satellites fitted with a 
     mechanical arm that were launched July 20 as part of a covert 
     anti-satellite weapons development program, said U.S. 
     officials familiar with reports of the test.''
       The article continued: ``The official said the satellites 
     are part of China's `Star Wars' space weapon program that has 
     been largely ignored by the Obama administration over 
     concerns that pressing China to explain its space weapons 
     program would upset U.S.-China relations. The ASAT program is 
     a `real concern for U.S. national defense,' the official 
     said.''
       There is good reason Congress is concerned about providing 
     the Communist Chinese government with additional 
     opportunities to work with the U.S. on space given their 
     continued cyberattacks, espionage campaigns and development 
     of space weapons to use against the U.S.
       Returning to Ames, the misrepresentation of NASA policy 
     quoted in the Guardian article is the latest in a series of 
     questionable actions taken by the Ames center leadership that 
     have resulted in criminal investigations

[[Page 15661]]

     of export violations and inspector general reviews of 
     illegitimate contracts issued by the center. I believe the 
     center has become a rat's nest of inappropriate and possibly 
     illegal activities that appear to have occurred with the 
     concurrence of the center's leadership.
       In one troubling example, last month, The Wall Street 
     Journal reported on a Space Act Agreement between Ames and 
     Google's executives to use taxpayer-subsidized airplane fuel 
     intended for military aircraft for personal travel by 
     Google's leadership. A dubious scientific data collection 
     scheme appears to have been developed as an excuse for this 
     preferential treatment for these executives.
       According to the article, ``The main jets in the fleet--a 
     Boeing 767, Boeing 757 and four Gulfstream V's--have departed 
     from Moffett a total of 710 times since 2007, FAA records 
     show. The most frequent destinations were Los Angeles and New 
     York, but the planes also flew 20 times to the Caribbean 
     island of Tortola; 17 to Hawaii; 16 to Nantucket, Mass.; and 
     15 to Tahiti.'' It would be difficult for anyone to make the 
     case that these taxpayer-subsidized trips provided any 
     credible scientific value to NASA.
       The article continued: ``In total, [the Google aircraft 
     holding company] has bought 2.3 million gallons of jet fuel 
     since early 2009, according to Pentagon records viewed by The 
     Wall Street Journal, paying an average $3.19 per gallon. `I 
     don't see how in the hell anybody can buy it that cheap,' 
     said Fred Fitts, president of the Corporate Aircraft 
     Association, a nonprofit that negotiates discounted jet-fuel 
     prices for 1,600 corporate flight departments at airports 
     around the U.S. Mr. Fitts provided figures showing that CAA 
     members paid an average of $4.35 a gallon across the U.S. 
     over that period.''
       Although the article noted that this arrangement was 
     recently terminated, the fact that Ames leadership approved 
     this sweetheart deal for the Google executives and allowed it 
     to continue for six years knowing that there was no serious 
     scientific merit is unacceptable.
       In addition to this troubling relationship, I also have 
     been outspoken about my concerns that a number of Ames staff 
     were investigated for a number of years by the Federal Bureau 
     of Investigation (FBI), the NASA Office of the Inspector 
     General and other law enforcement agencies relating to the 
     alleged illegal transfer of ITAR-controlled technology by 
     individuals at the NASA Ames Research Center. It is my 
     understanding that this illegal technology transfer may have 
     involved classified Defense Department weapons system 
     technology to foreign countries.
       According to whistleblowers that contacted Congress, large 
     numbers of foreign nationals were invited to work at NASA 
     Ames over the last six years and that federal information and 
     physical security safeguards may not have been used or may 
     have explicitly been ignored on multiple occasions. 
     Additionally, my colleagues and I were informed that Ames 
     staff may have traveled to foreign conferences and 
     disseminated information about ITAR-controlled technologies 
     in public forums, with Chinese and other foreign officials 
     present.
       In correspondence that I have seen, the FBI believed it had 
     a solid case that was ready for prosecution and referred it 
     to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. 
     However, after a series of unexplained delays and the removal 
     of at least one assistant U.S. attorney working the case, the 
     charges ran up against the statute of limitations, and the 
     first charge expired on December 15, 2012. The case was 
     ultimately declined by the Justice Department for reasons 
     that have never been explained to the Congress or federal law 
     enforcement. I believe these inexplicable delays and ultimate 
     declination was a product of politicization within the 
     Justice Department, and I have included language in the FY 
     2014 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill further 
     addressing this matter.
       Nonetheless, it appears that federal law enforcement felt 
     there was a solid case against certain Ames staff members 
     involving export violations. Yet there has been no 
     accountability at Ames for these alleged criminal violations. 
     This is inexcusable.
       Again, I hope you quickly correct the record and take 
     appropriate action to inform the conference participants of 
     NASA's actual policy regarding foreign visitors. I look 
     forward to your prompt response.
       Best wishes.
           Sincerely,
                                                    Frank R. Wolf,
     Member of Congress.

                          ____________________