Clinton Legacy Watch # 38: China and the ‘Three P’s’ — Reckless Policies, Practices and Personnel Spell Trouble

(Washington, D.C.): When it comes to the present controversy over China’s theft of the
design
for United States’ most modern and lethal nuclear weapon, the Trident II missile’s W-88
warhead, American security policy-makers would be well advised to heed the injunction not to
lose sight of the forest for the trees.

To be sure, the strategic implications arising from the “tree” — one (or more) acts of
espionage at
Los Alamos National Laboratory that may, thanks to the Clinton Administration’s feckless
response to counter-intelligence alarms, have continued up to the present — are extremely serious.
But the larger problem lies with the China “forest,” namely the “Three P’s”: Clinton
policies, practices and personnel that will, if uncorrected, give rise to a far more ominous
problem for this country emanating from the People’s Republic of China in the 21^st
Century.

Shortsighted Policies

Ever since it came to office (on a platform that correctly castigated the Bush Administration
for
coddling China’s Communist dictators), the Clinton Administration has pursued a policy it calls
“engagement” but that is indistinguishable from the discredited precepts of appeasement. At the
very least, engagement has taken place on Beijing’s terms including in such matters as:

• ignoring or downplaying the significance of Chinese trafficking in weapons of mass
  destruction and other dangerous materiel;

• enabling the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to improve the reliability, accuracy
  and
  lethality of its missile force targeted at the U.S.;

• helping China penetrate: this country (notably,
  through four personal interventions by the
  President on behalf of COSCO, the Chinese merchant marine, in its bid for the U.S. Navy
  facility at Long Beach, California); its capital markets (through unscrutinized
  bond and
  equities offerings); its economy (through inequitable trade arrangements that
  would be
  exacerbated by China’s admission to the World Trade Organization under present
  circumstances); and even its political system (through the solicitation and use
  by the Clinton-Gore campaign of funds provided by Chinese intelligence and PLA operatives);
  and

• discouraging U.S. allies in Asia from expressing alarm, let alone resisting, China’s
  expansionist impulses in the region.

Reckless Practices

The W-88 episode has put into sharp relief the Clinton Administration’s appalling, systematic
disregard of the most basic of security procedures. Unfortunately, the failure to attend to
background checks, communications security and physical control over information is not
confined to the Nation’s nuclear laboratories. It has also been evident at the Clinton
White
House itself, as Gary Aldrich, an FBI agent formerly assigned there, has documented.

Beyond the spectacle of permanent employees operating in the presidential compound for
over a
year with temporary badges because of problems with their security clearances and Chinese
intelligence officers like Lieutenant Colonel Liu Chaoying being given repeated access to the
President, there are myriad other instances of seriously deficient security practices — many of
direct relevance to China. Among these are:

• the automatic, wholesale declassification of sensitive materials, including
  nuclear weapons-related data;

• a Customs sting operation blown by an as-yet-unidentified Clinton official
  before it netted a
  Chinese “princeling” — a member of the privileged class of offspring of Communist leaders —
  caught in the act of shipping automatic weapons and possibly surface-to-air missiles to
  purported American gangs and drug lords;

• withholding from Congress information it is entitled to have about the
  PRC’s malevolent
  intelligence and proliferation activities; and

• military-to-military exchanges that promise greatly to accelerate the
  PLA’s “Great Leap
  Forward” into an armed force capable of challenging U.S. forces and military interests in the region.

Problematic Personnel

The Clinton Administration has compounded the problems created by its policies and security
practices by entrusting high public office to a number of individuals whose judgment, associations
and/or personal conduct raise serious questions about their ability to safeguard U.S. interests.
Among those sharing this dubious distinction are:

• Mr. Clinton’s first Energy Secretary, Hazel O’Leary, whose unabashed
  commitment to
  “denuclearization” contributed to the decline of the U.S. deterrent and abetted foreign efforts
  to gain access to U.S. nuclear secrets, at the labs and elsewhere;

• John Huang, a man with connections to Chinese intelligence who was
  made a senior
  Commerce Department official and whose previous employers — the Indonesia-based Chinese
  expats, the Riadys — provided what amounted to a “safe house” office, which may have been
  used by Huang to supply them with U.S. classified information;

• Rose Gottemoeller, who President Clinton would like to make the
  Assistant Secretary of
  Energy for National Security and Nonproliferation — an individual who favors dealerting U.S.
  nuclear forces and abolishing nuclear weapons and who has had direct responsibility over the
  past year-and-a-half for overseeing physical and information security at the Department’s
  facilities; and

• William Perry, Mr. Clinton’s second Secretary of Defense who is
  currently serving as his
  special envoy for Asia. Numerous investigative reports (particularly powerful ones have been
  published by Kenneth Timmerman in the American Spectator, and Bruce Gilley in the
  Far East
  Economic Review in January 1996) have revealed that Dr. Perry has had long and troubling
  ties to China, including during his service in the Pentagon’s top job, which have contributed to
  the transfer of militarily relevant telecommunications technology to the PLA.

The Bottom Line

The Senate investigation scheduled to begin with hearings on 17 March will have its work cut
out
for it getting past the smoke-and-mirrors being employed by Secretary O’Leary’s successor, Bill
Richardson, and NSC Advisor Samuel Berger to obscure the facts concerning the W-88 scandal.
Unless the congressional inquiries address the “Three P’s,” however, the full magnitude of the
problem will not be understood — and the necessary corrective actions will remain unrealized.