-Caveat Lector-
They [the Founding Fathers] were intent upon establishing a Christian
commonwealth in accordance with the principle of self-government.
They were an inspired body of men.
It has been said that God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain
into the wilderness ....
Who can fail to see in it the hand of destiny? Who can doubt that it has
been guided by a Divine Providence.
-- Calvin Coolidge
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Published in Washington, D.C. 5am -- May 18, 1999 www.washtimes.com
Clinton failed to punish nuclear proliferation
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By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times,
details the motives and dangers of the Clinton administration's national
defense policies in a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration
Undermined American Security" (Regnery Publishing Inc.), which is excerpted
below.
larm bells went off at the headquarters of the supersecret National Security
Agency on a cold December day in 1995.
NSA, located inside an Army base at Fort Meade, Md., is the U.S.
intelligence community's ears around the world. It picks up millions of
communications, from coded military radio transmissions to cellular-phone
conversations by international weapons dealers.
This time, NSA listeners got the immediate attention of Vice Adm. J.
Michael McConnell, who, as the agency's director, was the nation's premier
electronic spymaster. The intercept that crossed his desk revealed that a
year earlier, in December 1994, China completed a $70,000 deal to sell
Pakistan 5,000 custom-made "ring magnets" produced by an arm of the Chinese
government's China National Nuclear Corp.
The intelligence report noted that the devices -- ring-shaped,
high-technology magnetic bearings -- are key components in making fuel for
nuclear weapons. The technology transfer remained secret until this reporter
broke the story on the front page of The Washington Times on Feb. 5, 1996.
But the Clinton White House made sure the State Department did not
conclude China violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or impose
legally required economic sanctions.
The administration's policy was that sanctions against China should be
avoided. It would be bad for the international business that Commerce
Secretary Ronald H. Brown was trying to drum up.
"The lengths this administration went to to ignore great dangers to
U.S. national security in the name of promoting business were
unprecedented," said a former military officer who worked in the White House
and declined to be named.
And on May 29, 1998 -- about 2 and a half years after U.S. intelligence
flagged the China deal with Pakistan -- the ground shook in a remote region
of southwestern Pakistan as that nation conducted an underground nuclear
test. It was the beginning of a new arms race in Southwest Asia.
Back in December 1995, NSA immediately had sent a top-secret cable
under Adm. McConnell's title to the head of the CIA's Non-Proliferation
Center and to senior officials at the Pentagon, White House and State
Department, notifying them of China's shipment of ring magnets to Pakistan.
The intelligence report created a furor within the Clinton
administration over whether China had helped Pakistan make fuel for its
nuclear-weapons arsenal, estimated at 10 to 15 unassembled nuclear devices.
At the State Department, Robert Einhorn, deputy assistant secretary for
political-military affairs, quickly recognized the problem. He had been
assigned the task of looking into the application of complex laws enacted by
Congress to put teeth into policies designed to halt the spread of weapons
of mass destruction.
Made of a special alloy called samarium-cobalt, ring magnets must be
precision-manufactured to withstand the high speeds of gas centrifuges that
are part of the process for making nuclear-bomb fuel. China is the world
leader in producing the components.
The sale triggered a provision of law on business loans requiring the
secretary of state to notify the Export-Import Bank when any nation is
caught helping another nation develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Einhorn called
the bank and told officials the intelligence reports meant that, under the
1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, the bank could be required to
hold up all new loan guarantees for projects sought by American businesses
in China.
But the Commerce Department, headed by Mr. Brown, former Democratic
National Committee chairman, soon was leading the charge to block economic
sanctions against Beijing and Islamabad.
The Clinton administration ignored the violations.
'Chinese not forthcoming'
The United States had imposed sanctions against China in 1993 for
selling M-11 missile components but lifted them the next year at the urging
of Mr. Brown and C. Michael Armstrong, chairman of Los Angeles-based
satellite maker Hughes Electronics.
Mr. Armstrong had written a terse letter to President Clinton on Oct.
29, 1993, first highlighting how he had done what the president requested by
supporting his economic and trade policies and calls for looser export
controls.
"I am respectfully requesting your involvement to resolve the China
sanctions," Mr. Armstrong wrote, noting that he had spoken to a Chinese
official who informed him Beijing was "positive" about the idea.
But when then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the Chinese
that the United States needed to see "some sign of movement" by China on
curbing weapons proliferation, a National Security Council memorandum
reported, "The Chinese were not forthcoming."
The memo said Mr. Armstrong and Hughes Electronics "lobbied
aggressively" to be allowed to sell satellites to China.
In 1995, the president named Mr. Armstrong to the influential Export
Council, where he worked hard against trade controls designed to protect
national security. The council produced a lengthy paper arguing against
imposing sanctions on foreign trading partners that engaged in illicit
weapons sales.
Bernard L. Schwartz, chairman of Loral Space & Communications Ltd.,
also lobbied hard to ease restrictions on satellite sales to China. Mr.
Schwartz denied that his large donations to the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) were meant to influence Mr. Clinton's policies on satellite
exports.
A Senate investigation into illegal foreign political payments could
not make a direct connection between them and Mr. Clinton's conciliatory
policies toward China.
Both the White House and the Chinese government deny that Chinese cash
influenced policies. But a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee report in
1998 concluded: "It is clear that illegal foreign contributions were made to
the DNC and that these contributions were facilitated by individuals with
extensive ties to the PRC [People's Republic of China]. It is also clear
that well before the 1996 elections, officials at the highest levels of the
Chinese government approved of efforts to increase the PRC's involvement in
the U.S. political process."
'No information'
Two years before the ring-magnets deal, in March 1992, China signed
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 1970 agreement recognized five
nations -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and
China -- as the only nuclear powers and sought to prevent others from
becoming nuclear powers.
The treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995 in what the Clinton
administration hailed as a major arms-control victory. The treaty forbids
signatories from providing components of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear
states.
The State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs was in a
quandary. China had failed its first test as a signatory. Selling ring
magnets to Pakistan undermined years of work to keep such states from
building nuclear bombs.
In January 1996, the State Department quietly approached China National
Nuclear Corp. about the sale it learned of in December. The Chinese said
there was "no information" about it.
They lied. And the State Department and the White House's National
Security Council knew it. The intelligence was solid: NSA had the intercept
detailing the transfer.
To this day, the Chinese and Pakistani governments deny the sale. But
for $70,000, China gave a major boost to Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program.
"The United States does have concerns about possible nuclear-related
transfers between China and Pakistan," State Department spokesman Glyn
Davies said the day The Washington Times broke the story, refusing to
comment directly on the transaction.
He said the matter had been raised at senior levels of the Chinese and
Pakistani governments. But the exact "concerns" and how they were raised did
not become public. They were secret, and the Clinton administration was not
pressured to explain, either by Congress or the news media.
Ten days later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang denied
the sale took place.
"China, a responsible state, has never transferred equipment or
technology for producing nuclear weapons to any other country, nor will
China do so in the future," he told reporters in Beijing.
He warned that U.S. economic sanctions against China would cause
"serious harm" to relations. "China hopes the U.S. side will not use rumors
as the basis for making decisions," he said.
Keeping it quiet
Rumors? The rumors were hard intelligence reports, most classified at
the top-secret level and above. The CIA, however, did produce an
unclassified report to Congress covering the period from July to December
1996.
"During the last half of 1996, China was the most significant supplier
of weapons of mass-destruction goods and technology to foreign countries,"
the report said. "The Chinese provided a tremendous variety of assistance to
both Iran's and Pakistan's ballistic-missile programs. China also was the
primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan and a
key supplier to Iran during this reporting period."
In a move aimed at keeping the ring-magnets dispute quiet, Mr.
Christopher wrote to the Export-Import Bank later in February 1996, asking
it to defer loan approvals for American businessmen operating in China.
The cutoff would have been worth about $10 billion in new loans if it
had been kept in place. But the measure lasted only 30 days and did not
affect already-approved loans.
The bank began considering new loans after the 30 days lapsed, without
waiting for an official go-ahead from State. The president considered
waiving the 30-day sanctions, but backed off after Congress protested.
Several U.S. corporations, including Boeing and Honeywell, lobbied
against sanctions. To many in the business community, nuclear-weapons
transfers should not be allowed to disrupt the flow of trade.
National security interests, Mr. Brown asserted, should not be a higher
priority than trade. "I happened to think the best chance for us to have an
impact in those other areas is through being engaged with China," he said.
Mr. Christopher broached the ring-magnets sale in his April 19 meeting
with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, a hard-line communist and
vehement critic of the United States. Mr. Qian lied: China had not violated
the treaty, and therefore had no reason to commit itself to refraining from
such exports.
The Christopher-Qian meeting revealed the administration's plan: If
China would just pledge not to transfer more nuclear-weapons technology, the
United States would agree not to impose the sanctions required by law.
After months of secret U.S.-Chinese talks, State Department spokesman
Nicholas Burns issued a carefully worded statement May 10, 1996, saying the
secretary of state had cleared China of any culpability.
"Of particular significance, the Chinese assured us that China will not
provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities, and the Chinese will
now confirm this in a public statement," Mr. Burns said.
Unsafeguarded facilities are nuclear plants and support facilities that
are not subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency,
which monitors nuclear facilities around the world under the treaty.
"In addition," Mr. Burns declared, "senior Chinese officials have
informed us that the government of China was unaware of any transfers of
ring magnets by a Chinese entity, and they have confirmed our understanding
that China's policy of not assisting unsafeguarded nuclear programs will
preclude future transfers of ring magnets to unsafeguarded facilities."
There was "not a sufficient basis" to impose sanctions as required by
the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994.
'Looking the other way'
China's public announcement of the accord said only that "China will
not provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities." The Clinton
administration claimed this was a "significant public commitment."
The Chinese response was reported by the Xinhua news agency, the
Communist government's official organ.
"As a state party to the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons, China strictly observes its obligations under the treaty, and is
against the proliferation of nuclear weapons," Xinhua quoted an unnamed
Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. "China pursues the policy of not
endorsing, encouraging, or engaging in the proliferation of nuclear weapons
or assisting other countries in developing such weapons."
No mention was made of ring magnets, and no promises were offered on
future sales.
The Chinese "assurance" fell short of the written guarantee sought by
U.S. officials.
The limitations of the U.S.-China understanding were highlighted by the
fact that the U.S. statement was issued not in Warren Christopher's name,
but that of his spokesman.
The failure to sanction Beijing undermined the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and encouraged China and other nations to disregard
their obligations under it, said Rep. Floyd D. Spence, South Carolina
Republican and chairman of the House National Security Committee.
"It is a further example of the administration looking the other way
when the Chinese openly violated international law," Mr. Spence said.
But it was a lawmaker from Mr. Clinton's own party who had some of the
strongest words.
"It is outrageous that the administration has now freed the
Export-Import Bank to use taxpayer funds for loans to assist the China
National Nuclear Corp. -- the very company that sold the ring magnets to
Pakistan," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.
"When all is said and done," she added, "the Chinese proliferated
nuclear-weapons technology and got away with it, and Pakistan received
essential nuclear-weapons technology and was rewarded."
http://www.washtimes.com/investiga/gertz3.html
Bard
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