-Caveat Lector-
"The Senate intelligence committee chairman, Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
said the attorney general and her top lieutenants should go.
"Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., agreed that ``heads should
roll.'' Somebody, he said, ``made some major mistakes here, and somebody
needs to be accountable.''
"GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., said on CNN's ``Late
Edition'' that if officials ``are [found to be negligent], they are going to
jail.''
At the top of the list of "guilty" parties, yet not mentioned here, is
Bill Clinton ...
GOP Targets Reno for China Spying
By JIM ABRAMS
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate intelligence committee chairman said Sunday
that Attorney General Janet Reno should lose her job over the Justice
Department's failure to actively pursue suspected Chinese spying in U.S.
nuclear energy labs.
Even an administration ally, Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey,
agreed Reno's job should be on the line in light of a congressional report,
due for release this week, on Chinese espionage.
A Justice Department spokesman said Reno believes she acted responsibly and
according to the Constitution.
A second Cabinet member, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose department
oversees the labs, said tighter security measures were in place at the labs
and it remained unclear what secrets were stolen.
``We cannot overdramatize conclusions that are not conclusive yet,'' he said
on ABC's ``This Week.''
A select House committee under Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., planned to
make public on Tuesday its findings on Chinese attempts to buy and steal U.S.
technology for rocket launching and nuclear programs.
The report's conclusions have filtered out in recent weeks: that over the
past two decades, China has obtained sensitive information about seven major
weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Republicans said someone must take responsibility for the slow response to a
security breach at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico that
first came to light in 1995.
The Senate intelligence committee chairman, Richard Shelby, R-Ala., pointed
to Reno, saying the attorney general and her top lieutenants should go.
``I believe it's time, considering her role, or lack of role, her trying to
defend the indefensible,'' he said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., also on CBS, agreed that ``some
heads should roll.'' Somebody, he said, ``made some major mistakes here, and
somebody needs to be accountable.''
GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., said on CNN's ``Late
Edition'' that he would press for a full investigation and if officials ``are
held accountable, they are going to go to jail.''
Torricelli, on CBS, was nearly as critical, saying Reno's failure of judgment
in the Los Alamos case were ``inexplicable.''
``I think it's time for President Clinton to have a conversation with the
attorney general about her ability to perform her duties and whether or not
it is in the national interest for her to continue,'' he said.
The lawmakers specifically pointed to the Justice Department's repeated
denials of requests by the FBI to wiretap Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee,
who is suspected of passing secrets to the Chinese.
The department said there were insufficient grounds for a court order to
monitor Wen, who was fired from the lab this March, three years after he
first came under suspicion.
Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said Reno had reviewed the decision
and fully supported it.
``The Justice Department cannot and must not authorize intrusion by the
government into the lives of its citizens when the evidence presented as in
this case fails to meet the standards established by the Constitution'' and
surveillance laws, he said.
Some Republicans have urged Reno to resign over her refusal to request
appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate alleged Chinese
contributions to Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign.
Meantime, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed dismay she was not
told of the potentially major security losses until earlier this year. ``I
was not briefed. That was wrong and I made that clear and that has been
rectified,'' she said on CBS.
Cox, on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' said Richardson has made a serious effort
to tighten security, and there had been a ``sea change'' in administration
attitudes since the middle of last year, when his committee began
investigating Chinese attempts to gain U.S. satellite and nuclear technology.
In other details from the Cox report:
Time magazine said in its latest edition that a top Defense official in 1996
warned Loral Space and Communications, which had contracted with China to
launch its satellites, not to give China any help with its problem-ridden
rocket systems without State Department permission. Loral went ahead with its
advise to China, whose rockets subsequently showed dramatic improvements.
The Orange County Register in California reported that private guards hired
by Loral and other U.S. companies to provide security for U.S. satellite
launches in China slept on the job, went to work drunk and solicited
prostitutes.
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