-Caveat Lector-

> Wednesday, July 21, 1999
>
>
> Pacific Prospect
> Cox Report Was 'an Exercise in Amateur-Hour Paranoia'
> <Picture>The House report on Chinese spying drew sinister
> implications out of tenuous reasoning. By TOM PLATE
>
>
> <Picture><Picture><Picture><Picture>
>
>
>
> ADVERTISEMENT
> <Picture>
> <Picture: NextCard Internet Visa - Apply Now>
> <Picture>
> <Picture: AutoSource>
> <Picture: T>he deep chill that draped over U.S.-China relations
> after the May release of the House select committee report on
> Chinese espionage was hardly the report's fault. The bilateral,
> as they call the relationship in Washington, is inherently tense,
> fragile and unpredictable.      The NATO bombing of the Chinese
> embassy in Belgrade didn't exactly warm relations or calm nerves.
> Nor did this month's in-your-face declaration by Taiwan President
> Lee Teng-hui that Taiwan was abruptly abandoning its 50-year
> policy of accepting the idea of "one China," although it may have
> jarred Washington and Beijing again into accepting the need not
> to let tensions get out of hand. But at the same time, China-U.S.
> negotiations over Beijing's admission to the World Trade
> Organization are in disrepair. So are Sino-U.S. talks designed to
> settle the touchy issue of compensation over the NATO bombing.
> Pointedly, U.S. warships are still barred by Beijing from docking
> in Hong Kong.      But if the Cox report, as the House spying
> probe is known, can hardly be blamed for all this, the report
> itself looks today to be something far less helpful in
> understanding America's true security problems than it did in
> May. More and more experts are coming to agree with Warren
> Rudman, chairman of the president's foreign intelligence advisory
> board, which reviewed security lapses at U.S. labs. He sees the
> Cox report as an exercise in amateur-hour paranoia: "Possible
> damage has been minted as probable disaster," said the former New
> Hampshire Republican senator. "Workaday delay and bureaucratic
> confusion have been cast as diabolical conspiracy."      One
> internationally respected West Coast scholar who also takes this
> view is Jonathan Pollack, Rand's senior East Asia expert. Going
> beyond Rudman, he believes the report plays with fire. Today, at
> Rand's headquarters in Santa Monica, Pollack will, in a public
> briefing, denounce the report.      Pollack's condemnation is no
> mere academic exercise. He is no anti-Republican pinko, and Rand,
> which for years existed on Pentagon largess, is no
> Beijing-by-the-Santa-Monica-Bay. Pollack is angry because he
> believes the issue of Chinese spying deserved a far more
> probative and prudent assessment than it got from the bipartisan
> panel chaired by Christopher Cox, a conservative Orange County
> congressman.      "The report was an unbelievable rush to
> judgment," says Pollack, summing up weeks of painstaking
> analysis. "I find myself bemused by it all--and deeply
> disturbed." Pollack views the Cox work as drawing too many
> sinister implications out of tenuous reasoning and even thinner
> evidence: "It is particularly weak on the nuclear espionage
> issue, the most important one. Who did what to whom is very
> unclear in its spotty narrative. There are too many unhedged
> judgments, too many unexplained statements. As a serious
> document, it simply does not cohere. One has to conclude that the
> committee knew the answers it wanted before it started out. If it
> were a PhD thesis at Rand, I'd flunk it."      Pollack, worried
> about the report's fall-out effect on public opinion about people
> in the U.S. of Chinese ancestry, harks back to the World War II
> anti-Japanese hysteria in America, especially virulent in
> California. Could something as vile as this surface in the heat
> of a new cold war with China? The Cox report, he fears, can be
> read to raise questions about all Chinese Americans: "Do we
> really want to believe the worst--that they could all be spies? .
> . . Is the implication that my Chinese graduate student or a
> Chinese visitor can be a spy? There is a fine line between
> prudence and paranoia."      It's hard to believe that any sane
> American can really buy into such red-under-every-bed rubbish. Is
> the nation prepared to assume that the 80,000 Chinese who visit
> the U.S. each year must perforce be viewed as spy suspects--that,
> in the report's unblushing language, all Chinese Americans are
> potential "sleeper agents, who can be used at any time but may
> not be tasked for a decade or more?"      When Cox's committee
> released its report, the hope was that it would establish a new
> high watermark in political probity. After all, the issue was
> theoretically grave, and Cox himself is no intellectual
> lightweight. But today the spy report seems to have done little
> aside from seconding the Rudman view that the nation's nuclear
> labs tend to leak like a sieve and must be leak-proofed. Indeed,
> the Cox report has added nothing, except to raise anew the
> question of whether Washington is capable of producing anything
> that can rise above partisan politics, above racial or ethnic
> stereotypes, above narrow parochial views of the world.
>      Because of the relentlessly suspicious picture it offers of
> China, the Chinese are understandably angry about the Cox report.
> But because of the insecure and deeply paranoid sense it implies
> about America, the American people have their own good reasons to
> be upset about the report, too. * * *      Times contributing
> editor Tom Plate's columns run Wednesdays. He teaches at UCLA.
> E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved


A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said
it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your
own reason and your common sense." --Buddha
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
                                       German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing!  These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically  by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om

Reply via email to