-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- White House Nukes Will China's Nuclear Arsenal Mushroom? 20 Missiles Can Reach the US; 300 Japan, India, or Russia Buried deep in the mountains 150 miles east of Xian, where the Chinese built a terra cotta army to protect the remains of the Emperors, lies a far smaller but lethal force: a half dozen or so intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. The missiles near the town of Luoning are hardly sophisticated by modern standards. The Pentagon believes each is equipped with a single warhead, large but not very accurate, intended for busting cities. They are mounted atop liquid-fuel rockets that take a full hour of preparation to launch. In total, China is believed to possess roughly 20 missiles that can reach American shores, and perhaps 300 nuclear weapons that, aboard medium-range missiles or bombers, could hit Japan, India or Russia. It is a bare-bones arsenal compared with the thousands of warheads still maintained by the United States and Russia. But the question in Washington this week is whether China's nuclear fleet will stay that way 10 or 20 years into the future or become a far more potent arsenal that could rekindle the kind of fears that shaped the Cold War. The suspicion that China stole the design of America's most advanced miniaturized warhead -- the W-88 -- from the Los Alamos National Laboratory more than 10 years ago has prompted anger in Washington, especially in Congress. On Sunday President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, defended the administration's investigation into the loss, but added, "There's no question that they've benefited from this." The Chinese again vehemently denied the accusations. Despite continuing evidence of Chinese espionage abroad, most experts doubt that China intends to fundamentally change its largely defensive nuclear strategy or that it will try to alter the imbalance of weapons with the United States. But many experts outside the U.S. government -- including some who have talked at length with Chinese leaders and military officials -- say Beijing is clearly seeking to modernize its nuclear forces, with a 10-year plan to make them more accurate, easier to launch and far less vulnerable to attack than they are today. And it is hoping to use high technology to offset its outmoded conventional forces. What China seeks, they say, is an arsenal large enough to give them global status and deter the potential for nuclear blackmail, but small enough to avoid the Soviet Union's mistake -- a military force so expensive that it sped the bankruptcy of the nation. But China's modernization certainly could accelerate its ability to threaten its neighbors, and it could be sped up if China feels increasingly insecure. "With or without the W-88 warheads, China today is able to threaten the United States," William J. Perry, the former defense secretary, said last week in Washington, just after returning from a visit to China where he spent time with military leaders and China's president, Jiang Zemin. "You have to anticipate that ability will improve in coming years. They will evolve into a more global force. The challenge is how do we manage that?" Western experts are not certain whether China, as part of its force improvements, intends to place multiple warheads atop its new missiles, as the United States and the Soviet Union did long ago. The W-88 technology could speed that transition. "Even if they eventually put six or ten warheads on their ICBM's, we will still have an overwhelming advantage," said Bates Gill, a specialist on the Chinese military at the Brookings Institution. "But if it is achieved, it could complicate our calculations in the years ahead." Judging from the public statements of Chinese officials, what is most likely to provoke an expansion of their nuclear forces is a decision by the United States to deploy antimissile defenses around the American mainland and around Japan, Taiwan or South Korea. China's objections to the proposed missile shields have become more vociferous in recent months, including during Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to Beijing a week ago. In a January speech in Washington, China's senior arms control official, Sha Zukang, warned in so many words that if it erects a missile defense, the United States would force China to further upgrade its intercontinental nuclear forces. "If a country, in addition to its offensive power, seeks to develop advanced theater missile defense or even national missile defense," Sha said, then "other countries will be forced to develop more advanced offensive missiles." "This will give rise to a new arms race," he said. Progress Was Rapid After the 1950's As early as 1946, a year after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and in the midst of the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, Mao professed to be unimpressed by America's new nuclear arsenal. He reportedly called the United States a "paper tiger" that could not stand up to China in a "people's war." A decade later, after America threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Korean War and after several confrontations over Taiwan that revealed the magnitude of China's disadvantage, Mao's tone changed. "In today's world," he said in 1956, "if we don't want to be bullied by others, we should have the atomic bomb by all means." China's progress in developing nuclear weapons was rapid. In the 1950s the Soviets helped the Chinese establish nuclear production installations. In 1964, after Beijing's split with Moscow, China exploded its first atomic bomb. In 1966 it first tested a nuclear-tipped missile, and in 1967 it tested its first thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb. But from the beginning, China insisted that its strategy was far different from that of the two superpowers. China pledged that it would never be the first in a fight to go nuclear, and said it supported total global nuclear disarmament. It was good propaganda, but it also fit China's limited capabilities. At the same time Beijing was slowly continuing to invest in its nuclear fleet, and in 1983 Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, said, "We must have what others have, and anyone who wants to destroy us will be subject to retaliation." A variety of missiles -- named the Dong Feng, or East Wind -- were developed and deployed over the 1970s and 1980s. Many of those were later sold to other nations, starting a decade of tensions with Washington over proliferation. Bomb tests, initially above ground and then below, accelerated into the 1990s, including tests on smaller-size warheads. Intelligence gathered from one of these last tests, conducted just before China signed the treaty that bans underground testing in 1996, led the American agencies to suspect that China had obtained the W-88, and started the search for a spy at Los Alamos. 'Minimum Deterrent' Deemed Sufficient Since the early 1980s, with the introduction of a new generation of long-range ballistic missiles, China's nuclear weapons have been capable of reaching the continental United States. China has deployed five to seven of its longest-range missiles, called the DF-5, that can hit virtually any part of the United States. An additional dozen or so missiles, the DF-4, can reach the West Coast. Neither is a precision weapon, but precision is not the goal. In contrast to the strategy used by the Soviet Union and the United States, the key to China's nuclear doctrine has been what Western experts call a minimum deterrent -- the ability, after a major attack by a nuclear adversary, to launch at least one or two missiles that could destroy a major city. China's hope was that it had enough nuclear weapons so that in a confrontation with either the old Soviet Union or with the United States, neither country could rattle the nuclear saber. "The Chinese realized that the whole approach taken by the Soviets and the United States was an extraordinary waste of money," said Joseph Nye, the dean of the Kennedy School of government at Harvard and a former senior Defense Department and intelligence official. "Their view is that as long as they have a few invulnerable weapons, they have all they need." Paul Godwin, a leading expert on Chinese nuclear forces who recently left the National War College, puts it simply: "This is not an offensive force." But the Chinese clearly worry that their force is increasingly vulnerable. The missiles are still in fixed sites, and because they use liquid fuel that must be stored outside the rocket, it takes an hour or more to fire a missile. Moreover, China has only one nuclear-equipped submarine, with 12 missiles that have a range of 1,100 miles. But the sub's seaworthiness has long been doubted by intelligence experts, and it does not threaten the American mainland. The bulk of China's nuclear arsenal is composed of medium-range and short-range missiles, deployed in fixed silos in sites around the Chinese countryside, that could reach most corners of Asia. By comparison, the United States now has about 7,000 nuclear warheads deployed atop land- and submarine-based missiles, as well as weapons carried by bombers. China has been developing a new generation of long-range missiles, called the DF-41, which will be mobile and powered by solid fuel -- eliminating the two major vulnerabilities of the older models. Western experts expect the conversion to take place by 2010. The big question is whether China also plans to multiply its power by placing multiple warheads atop its missiles -- something made easier with small warheads like the miniaturized W-88 design, although most experts believe that the Chinese were also developing and testing their own small warheads in the early 1990s. "The assumption is that they have been pursuing this for some time," said Jonathan Pollack, a military expert at the Rand Corporation in California. "But I don't believe that American intelligence services believe they have an operational capability," he added, referring to the ability to field weapons bearing multiple warheads. That is at the heart of Washington's concerns about China's search for Western technology. The primary reason the Clinton administration blocked the sale of a Hughes Electronics communications satellite to a Chinese-run consortium last month was the fear that China, as it learned how to place the satellite in precise orbit, would also learn techniques that could aid it in the tricky business of accurately releasing warheads from a missile. Talk of Expanding Nuclear Forces In Chinese military journals, some theorists have discussed expanding China's nuclear capabilities to deter their rivals' more powerful conventional weapons, giving China the option to launch "warning strikes" in a severe crisis or to overwhelm new, Western-designed missile defenses. "All this suggests that China's decision makers may be increasingly uncertain about the credibility and reliability of their past minimum deterrence and believe a more well-rounded and reliable nuclear war-fighting capability has military value," Michael D. Swaine and Alastair Iain Johnston, two leading China scholars, wrote in a study published this month by the Council on Foreign Relations. Other experts warn that there is no evidence that China's leaders have decided to follow this new route. Whether China decides on a major expansion of forces could depend on the growing push in the United States, Japan and perhaps Taiwan to develop a "theater missile defense." The system is ostensibly designed to protect American bases in Asia from North Korea. But China views the system as a threat to its own forces. It particularly condemns talk of extending the defense to Taiwan, because it would blunt China's ability to intimidate the island, overtly tie American forces to the defense of Taiwan and encourage the island's pro-independence movement. No one knows whether China's threats to respond to a theater missile defense system are a bluff. But last week, China's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, issued his strongest warning yet. Any effort to include Taiwan in the system, he said, "would amount to an encroachment on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity." The New York Times, March 15, 1999 Internet Kooks Scaife Stalker Commits Suicide "A 9mm, a bottle of whiskey, and me" Last month, Steve Kangas of Las Vegas bought a 9mm pistol, a bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey and a bus ticket to Pittsburgh. It would be a one-way trip. Almost immediately after arriving on Feb. 8, Kangas went to One Oxford Centre. He walked around inside the towering office complex for a time, then hid out in a public restroom on the 39th floor. Nine hours later, drunk to the point of incoherence, Kangas shot and killed himself in the restroom - on the same floor as the offices of Richard M. Scaife, the publisher of the Tribune-Review and a nationally known backer of conservative causes. The location was no accident. Kangas, 37, was obsessed with Scaife's politics; apparently he traveled to Pittsburgh to confront, and possibly to kill, the man he believed to be evil incarnate. And he came close to completing whatever bizarre mission he was on. Scaife was in his office for much of the afternoon, but he never ran into Kangas. Late that night, Kangas turned the gun on himself moments after a maintenance worker found him semi-conscious in the men's room, according to a police report. He was carrying a box of ammunition when he died. The pistol was brand new; he had obtained a permit for it shortly before leaving Nevada. The Allegheny County Coroner's Office ruled the death a suicide. Six days before he died, Kangas posted a message with an Internet discussion group blaming Scaife for all of President Clinton's legal troubles. "Clinton is, in my mind, a moderate Republican, and it is only the insanity of Richard Mellon Scaife that is causing them to go after this man," Kangas wrote. Scaife has been a frequent target of the left during Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of Clinton. The White House, other Democrats and some liberal media have accused Scaife of being the financial force behind what Hillary Clinton called the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to remove Clinton from office. Unfortunately, Kangas bought into it all. On his World Wide Web site, which he titled "Liberalism Resurgent," Kangas wrote that Scaife and other wealthy conservatives are the "overclass," and he accused Scaife of having connections to the Central Intelligence Agency. He called the conservative movement "a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest one percent into the stratosphere. "The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA," Kangas wrote. Scaife wasn't the only target of Kangas' scorn. His writings were also critical of The Washington Post and its publisher, Katharine Graham, former editor Ben Bradlee and Deputy Managing Editor Bob Woodward. Even the Knights of Malta and various foundations not linked to Scaife came under attack. Kangas also considered Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, part of the CIA-directed conspiracy. Kangas was himself a former intelligence agent, according to his Web site. A Russian linguist, he served in the U.S. Army in Berlin during the 1980s electronically intercepting and translating communication traffic of East bloc military units. "Journalism is the perfect cover for CIA agents," he wrote in one of many lengthy diatribes against the right. He believed that the news media provided the perfect cover to "write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed." He included Scaife in that group, he wrote, because Scaife's father, Alan, served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. The OSS was the forerunner of the CIA. Kangas' writings conveyed a sense of frustration. He tried unsuccessfully to raise money over the Internet in a one-man crusade called "Help Fight the Right." He was once a conservative himself. Kangas wrote that his political transformation began while he was in the Army. He honed his new liberal views in Santa Cruz, Calif., coffeehouses while earning a degree in Russian studies at the University of California. Kangas' family and friends say they knew he was troubled but had no clue that he might be homicidal or suicidal. "I was deeply concerned that he was in serious mischief," said Roger Langheet, his stepfather. "There was no reason for him to be in Pittsburgh," said his mother, Janet Langheet, who holds a doctoral degree in religious studies and lives in Michigan. "He knows no one in Pittsburgh. This was quite a surprise to us." Kangas' father, Robert Esh of South Carolina, said his son was raised in a religious, conservative Republican family before the parents divorced. He said Kangas has an uncle who is active in Republican Party politics in Illinois. That, he added, was the extent of the family's political activism. Esh doesn't know what drew his son to Pittsburgh, a city he apparently had never been in before. Kangas told his sister, Sharise Esh, that he had to collect money from two people. He didn't say who they were or where they lived, according to Robert Esh. In retracing Kangas' movements on Feb. 8, police said he arrived at the Greyhound bus station Downtown, rented a locker in which he stored a bag, and got something to eat. He went to One Oxford Centre, entering the building around 2 p.m. Around 11 p.m., maintenance worker Don Adams found Kangas in the bathroom, unhurt but obviously intoxicated. Kangas was lying on his back on the floor inside the last stall. The Jack Daniel's bottle was nearly empty. Adams told police he asked Kangas if he was all right, and got an unintelligible reply. Adams went to get help from another maintenance man, Don Oberdich. When they went back in the restroom a few minutes later, they found Kangas' body seated on a commode, blood flowing from his head, his pistol on the floor nearby. The restroom, which had been accessible to anyone, is now kept locked. Scaife's lawyer, Yale Gutnick, on Saturday issued a statement on the incident: "On behalf of Mr. Scaife, who is out of town, and the Scaife foundations, we are profoundly saddened and sorry for Mr. Kangas and his family, and we offer our sincere condolences. We are pleased that no one else was injured, but this was a tragedy." Security guards told investigators they remembered seeing Kangas strolling around the building that day, carrying a backpack. He was dressed casually except for what one guard noted were expensive-looking shoes. Kangas had just $14 on him - and not much more to his name, though he wasn't always poor. In fact, Kangas had bragged to a friend that he had been earning $150,000 a year in a gambling venture. Kangas worked for P.W. Enterprises, a Las Vegas-based business that used mathematical models and computer technology to calculate the odds of winning horse races. It was Kangas' job to place the bets while others crunched the odds. Kangas also kept track of revenue, according to Peter Wagner, who started the company. After getting his degree and moving to Las Vegas, Kangas held a number of jobs, all for short periods. And all the while, he spent free time attacking conservatives and billing himself as a standard-bearer of liberalism. In February 1988, Kangas wrote to a friend, Mike Huben of Arlington, Mass., that his personal life had been precarious but had stabilized. "I've hit the big time," he wrote. "My current job pays $150,000 a year - I'm part of the damned top one percent I've been railing against all along. (Rest assured it won't change my politics.) "With the investment opportunities here, I could well become a millionaire in a few years. That is not a misprint nor is it an empty boast. Yesterday we won $102,000 at horse racing. That was a record, to be sure, but losing days are very, very rare." Huben recalls Kangas telling him how the intelligence community was behind all sorts of sinister political plots. "He had a number of conspiracy theories about the CIA being involved in neo-liberal and right-wing movements," Huben said. "He said his military experience changed his life. That's when he rejected his conservative upbringing. "I'll miss him. He was a real interesting character," Huben added. Chuck Nyren of Seattle worked with Kangas on a political Web site, suite101.com. "His death was an absolute shock to me," Nyren said. "No way I thought he was suicidal. He was an intelligent fellow who was on the ball and seemed to have a fairly good sense of humor about himself. He could make fun of himself." Another acquaintance, Columbia University Law School student Josh Gottlieb, says he can't believe Kangas set out to kill anyone. "Steve was the kind of guy who riled people with his politics, but not enough to kill them," Gottlieb said. In the final months of his life, Kangas had begun drinking heavily and showing signs of another obsession: sex. Denise Waddell of Sherman Oaks, Calif., whose husband, Tom, is a partner in P.W. Enterprises, said Kangas had gotten involved in pornography and began spending his money on strippers at the Olympic Garden strip club in Las Vegas. She said Kangas had been P.W. Enterprises' first employee, and he was rewarded with a share of the company. Months later, Kangas admitted to Wagner that he had "misspent" $30,000 in company funds. He ended up selling his 30 percent interest to Wagner for $30,000. Diana Evans of Sherman Oaks, Calif., said Kangas' drinking caused her to abandon plans to become a business partner with him in an adult Web site they planned to start called "Sunset Dreams" and another venture, "Erotique, Where the Beautiful Girls Are." "He was drinking heavily and always said he felt sick," Evans said. "I told him he was sick all the time because he was drinking all the time." Sometime last year, Kangas fell in love with a Las Vegas stripper and began spending heavily on her. He withdrew $25,000 in $5,000 increments from a checking account, then started drawing down his savings account. Meanwhile, Kangas continued to distance himself from his family. In 1992, he had changed his last name from Esh to his mother's maiden name. She hadn't seen her son in 4 years. He and his father had a falling out several years ago, although Robert Esh says they later reconciled. "Steve moved totally away from us. He would disappear from the family radar screen," Esh said. "He didn't believe in God. My daughter told me she had talked pretty candidly with Steve, and said, `The reason he hasn't called you was because you wouldn't approve of what he's doing now. He's afraid to tell you.'" In his writings, Kangas admitted he had lost his faith. "I left religion at age 12 and conservatism at age 26 to become the godless, pinko, commie lying social weasel that conservatives find at right (sic)," he wrote. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 14, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris 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
