Cox Report Underscores Abiding Nuclear Dangers, Should Caution Against Efforts that Would Exacerbate Them

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s release of the declassified version of the 900-page report,
unanimously adopted last December by a select House committee chaired by Rep. Chris Cox
(R-CA), should be a wake-up call for America. It lays bare — in the most
comprehensive manner
performed by any agency of the government to date — the magnitude of the menace posed
by China’s efforts to buy, divert or steal the fruits of U.S. military and civilian
inventiveness.

Highlights of the Cox Report include the following (emphasis added throughout):

• “The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has stolen design information on the
  United
  States’ most advanced thermonuclear weapons….The stolen information includes
  classified information on seven U.S. thermonuclear warheads, including every currently
  deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal.”

“The Select Committee judges that the PRC will exploit elements of the stolen design
information on the PRC’s next generation of thermonuclear weapons. The PRC plans
to supplement its silo-based CSS-4 ICBMs targeted on U.S. cities with mobile
ICBMs, which are more survivable because they are more difficult to find than
silo-based missiles.” 1

• Despite repeated PRC thefts of the most sophisticated U.S. nuclear weapons technology,
  security at our national nuclear weapons laboratories does not meet even minimal
  standards….the Select Committee has concluded that the successful penetration of our
  National Laboratories by the PRC began as early as the late 1970s; the PRC had penetrated
  the Laboratories throughout the 1980s and 1990s; and our Laboratories almost certainly
  remain penetrated by the PRC today.“

“Counterintelligence programs at the national weapons laboratories today fail to meet
even minimal standards….Security at the national weapons laboratories will not be
satisfactory until at least sometime in the year 2000.” 2

• “The PRC has stolen or otherwise illegally obtained U.S. missile and space
  technology
  that improves the PRC’s military and intelligence capabilities. The PRC has stolen
  U.S.
  missile technology and exploited it for the PRC’s own ballistic missile applications. The PRC
  has proliferated such military technology to a number of other countries, including regimes
  hostile to the United States.”

“In light of the PRC’s aggressive espionage campaign against U.S. technology,
it
would be surprising if the PRC has not exploited security lapses that have
occurred in connection with launches of U.S. satellites in the PRC.“

• “United States and international export control policies and practices have
  facilitated
  the PRC’s efforts to obtain militarily useful technology. Recent changes in
  international
  and domestic export control regimes have reduced the ability to control transfers of militarily
  useful technology.”

In addition to the nuclear weapons and missile-related technologies acquired by
Communist China, the Select Committee found that an array of other American
hardware and know-how directly relevant to the PRC’s military build-up — including
jet engines, supercomputers and machine tools — were legally or illegally obtained by
Beijing. 3

Based upon its grim assessments, the Cox Committee made thirty-eight
recommendations.
These include areas where additional damage assessments are needed; steps that should be taken
to prevent further damage from being done in the areas addressed in this report and ways in
which technologies critical to U.S. security can be better safeguarded in the future. (In its
inimitable fashion, the Clinton Administration has sent confusing signals as to whether it will
implement all of these recommendations — saying initially that only “some” would be adopted
and the President adopting a more vague formulation in his speech on this subject today.)
Suffice it to say, nothing but full implementation of all thirty-eight recommendations
will
do, given the Administration’s sorry performance in this area to date.

This is especially true when China’s behavior is considered in the proper, strategic context.
The
PRC’s efforts to penetrate the U.S. political system, to steal its nuclear secrets and vacuum-clean
America’s technology base are emblematic of the Chinese government’s view of the United
States as an inevitable adversary. Indeed, as the Pentagon reported to the House National
Security Committee earlier this year, China sees this country as the only real impediment to its
ambitions to dominate East Asia and the Western Pacific and, in turn, to be a major player in
world affairs — if not the next global superpower. In this context, the “Great Leap Forward” now
being undertaken by the PRC’s nuclear force modernization program — greatly facilitated by its
acquisition of U.S. high technology and nuclear secrets — is especially ominous.

Compounding the Damage

It would be a mistake to focus exclusively on the damaging details of the Cox report while
overlooking the larger question of China’s intentions. Likewise, it would be an error of the first
order to ignore policies that threaten greatly to exacerbate the damage done by Chinese
espionage and other harmful initiatives. These include:

• The Clinton Administration’s decision to base America’s deterrent in the future on
  nuclear weapons that have been remanufactured to extend their service life, but never
  tested to ensure that the updated devices work properly. As the Center for Security
  Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., notes in a column that appears in today’s
  Washington Times (see the attached):

Modern thermonuclear weapons are among the most complex and temperamental of
machines. Our decades of experience with these devices tells us that replacing aging parts — to
say nothing of more substantial updating of components in a weapon like the MX missile’s W-87
warhead — introduces changes whose effect on performance cannot be reliably predicted by even
the most sophisticated of computer simulations. We have tried to do without testing in the past
and routinely discovered problems, even catastrophic ones, only after the weapons were
subjected to underground tests.

• In today’s Washington Post, anti-nuclear activist Michael
  Krepon issues the latest call for the
  United States unilaterally to cut its strategic nuclear arsenal and to de-alert the forces it
  retains. This position — which has been publicly embraced by one of the senior Department
  of Energy officials deeply implicated in the Chinagate scandal, Assistant Secretary for
  Nonproliferation and National Security Rose Gottemoeller 4 — ignores the fact that there
  is no obvious connection between the stated reason for such a step to be taken (i.e., the danger
  of an unauthorized or accidental Russian nuclear weapons launch), and the proposed
  “solution” to the problem (i.e., neutering the U.S. deterrent). 5 Needless to say, the latter step
  is all the more unwise in light of the emerging nuclear threat posed, thanks in part to the
  seepage of U.S. technology and know-how, by China.

• The danger of Russian nuclear mishaps and a growing menace from China — to say nothing
  of
  the increasingly worrisome missile/weapon of mass destruction capabilities of such rogue
  states as Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Libya and Syria — obviously argues not only for
  maintaining a credible, reliable and effective U.S. deterrent, but also demands that the
  United States at last field a defense against ballistic missile attack.

While President Clinton is expected this week to sign the Missile Defense Act
of
1999 — legislation that makes it the policy of the United States to deploy effective
national missile defenses as soon as technologically possible, it remains to be seen
whether any practical steps are taken, by Congress and/or by the President, to ensure
that this policy is actually implemented. 6

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy commends Rep. Cox, the recipient of its prestigious “Keeper
of
the Flame” Award in 1997, for his extraordinary leadership in documenting and making available
to the American people an urgently needed wake-up call about China. It now falls to him, his
colleagues in the Congress and in the executive branch — and to all of us who share his profound
commitment to a secure and free United States — to ensure that the appropriate lessons are drawn
— and that policies sure to compound our present, dangerous posture are eschewed.

1 See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
China Threatens Taiwan — and the United States:
Will ‘A Missile A Day’ Keep the U.S. Away? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_09″>No. 96-D 9, 26 January 1996).

2 See Clinton Legacy Watch # 41: Security
Meltdown at D.O.E. (No. 99-D 48, 26 April 1999).

3 See Broadening the Lens: Peter Leitner’s
Revelations on ’60 Minutes,’ Capitol Hill Indict
Clinton Technology Insecurity (No. 98-D
101, 6 June 1998).

4 See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Giving ‘Clinton’s Legacy’ New Meaning: The
Buck Stops at the President’s Desk on the ‘Legacy’ Code, Other D.O.E. Scandals
(No. 99-D
52, 29 April 1999), Clinton Legacy Watch # 38: China and the ‘Three P’s’ —
Reckless
Policies, Practices and Personnel Spell Trouble (No.
99-D 33, 15 March 1999) and Senate
Given Another Opportunity to Reject Clinton’s Policy of Denuclearization: the Gottemoeller
Nomination (No. 98-D 166, 19 September
1998).

5 Unfortunately, the Senate Armed Services Committee has taken a
step in this direction —
albeit for budgetary reasons — with its decision as part of the Fiscal Year 2000 defense
authorization bill to remove the ballistic missile capabilities of four Trident submarines. See
S.O.S. — Save Our Submarines: Latest Revelation About Chinese Espionage
Underscores
Need to Retain Full Trident Force (No. 99-D 58, 13
May 1999).

6 As the Center noted in Over to You, Mr. President:
Congress Enacts Policy to Defend
America; If Clinton Doesn’t Veto, Will Hill Implement? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_61″>No. 99-D 61, 21 May 1999), the only
practical way to go about achieving the sort of near-term, effective, limited anti-missile system
called for in the Missile Defense Act is by rapidly modifying the Navy’s existing fleet of AEGIS
cruisers and destroyers so as to enable them to provide wide-area defense for the American
people, as well as our forces and allies overseas.