Abstract
What a difference eight years make. On November 22, 1990, the New York Times published an article headlined, “Chinese Atom-Arms Spying in U.S. Reported.” It began, “Chinese intelligence agents succeeded in stealing nuclear-weapons secrets from the government's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1980s, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation later conducted a long espionage inquiry into the theft, American intelligence experts said today.”
The story had in fact been reported a day earlier by the San Jose Mercury News. Five paragraphs down, the Times noted the Mercury News had reported “that data stolen from Livermore had been used by the Chinese to construct a nuclear device, identified in some published accounts as an experimental neutron bomb, which the Chinese detonated in September 1988.”
What was the fallout from this article? Publicly, there was none. The story was not picked up by other major media outlets, there were no calls for congressional investigations or the firing of high-level officials, and it faded away. It was resurrected this March in the wake of the latest scandal du jour, the alleged theft by China of the design of the W88 warhead carried aboard U.S. Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Why didn't the 1990 story generate the same sort of media firestorm, charges of cover-ups, calls for resignations, and angst about the China threat? Was it because the story ran on Thanksgiving (and on page five rather than page one)? Was it because the ultra-competitive, ratings-conscious news media we have today was not yet fully developed? Was it because George Bush, unlike Bill Clinton, was considered credible and did not face a sustained movement determined to drive him from office? Or was it because the massive military buildup in the Persian Gull, which began three months earlier in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, preoccupied the minds of journalists and elected officials alike? Interestingly, Brent Scowcroft, President Bush's national security adviser at the time, told the Washington Post's Walter Pincus in mid-March that security at the labs “was not an issue” during his tenure, and that “he was surprised to hear that stories were published about the alleged Chinese stealing of secrets about the neutron warhead.” (Pincus confirmed that Scowcroft was surprised both by the allegations and the fact they were reported in 1990.)
Fast-forward to late 1998. On December 31, the Times ran another article, this time on page one, by Jeff Gerth and Eric Schmitt. Headlined “House Panel Says Chinese Obtained U.S. Arms Secrets,” the article described the results of a seven-month-long investigation by a select House committee chaired by California Republican Christopher Cox. The subcommittee investigated charges that China had bolstered its satellite-launching capabilities through tlie acquisition of sensitive U.S. technologies, charges first reported by the Times last May.
Although the article asserted (in the sixth paragraph) the discovery of “a pattern by the Chinese of stealing nuclear-weapons design technology from American nuclear laboratories,” no details were provided. The Washington Post followed with a page-three article by John Mintz the next day, the lead paragraph of which stated that the House report “focuses in part on allegations that Beijing developed the neutron bomb in the late 1980s after Chinese spies stole technology from a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory.”
Despite the prominence of these articles, little notice was taken because of the long New Year's holiday weekend. The Wall Street Journal weighed in on January 7 with a few new details apparently leaked from the Cox committee's report, including the allegation that China had obtained “secret design information” on the W88 warhead and that the FBI was conducting an investigation into the matter. Journal reporter Carla Anne Robbins noted that “China hasn't developed a weapons system using the W88 information, and officials say it still faces very high design hurdles.”
Compared with the often sensational coverage that was to follow, Robbins also carefully qualified the allegations: “There is considerable debate about how much information was passed to Beijing. It appears, however, that China didn't get any equipment, blueprints, or advanced designs. Instead, officials believe, China was given general, but still highly secret, information about the warhead's weight, size, and explosive power, and its state-of-the-art internal configuration, which allowed designers to minimize size and weight without losing power.”
The story first broke on December 31. But it didn't really take off until February 17, a few days after the impeachment trial ended.
Although the Journal article propelled the story forward a notch, the looming impeachment trial of President Clinton continued to dominate the news. On February 17, a few days after the trial concluded, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post weighed in. Pincus revealed that the trigger for the investigation into the W88 diversion was a top-secret Chinese nuclear weapons program document showing warhead designs “uncomfortably similar” to the W88. (The 1988 document was handed over to the CIA by a defector in June 1995, according to a subsequent Post report.) An FBI investigation, code-named “Kindred Spirit,” was begun, focusing on persons with access to W88 information in the 1980s and, in particular, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the W88 was designed.
Then, on March 6, the Times published a lengthy front-page article by James Risen and Jeff Gerth under the headline, “China Stole Nuclear Secrets for Bombs, U.S. Aides Say–Espionage Case at New Mexico Lab Is Said to Be Minimized by the White House.” Using details and interviews provided by Clinton administration officials (who apparently hoped to blunt the criticism expected to follow from the release of the Cox committee's findings), the article described the genesis of the case, the role of Notra Trulock, the then-director of Energy's intelligence office, in piecing it together and, most importantly (from the perspective of those critical of the Clinton administration's foreign policy in general and its China policies in particular), the apparent decision by National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and his staff to downplay the charges and delay acting on them to avoid ruffling relations with China.
Despite running on a normally slow Saturday, the story caught fire, aided no doubt by the post-impeachment news vacuum. One month later, as of this writing, it shows few signs of slowing down.
Putting it in context
By necessity and design, Chinas nuclear arsenal has always been modest (see “Nuclear Notebook,” page 79). The threat it poses to the United States is real but small: Of some 400 warheads, only about 20 are capable of reaching the United States (which has more than 8,300 operational warheads, nearly all of which could be targeted against China). China's long-range ballistic missiles number fewer than two dozen, carry a single warhead, and are liquid-fueled. All 982 U.S. ballistic missiles, including 432 aboard invulnerable Trident submarines, carry multiple warheads (MIRVS) and are solid-fueled, and thus can be launched on short notice.
A new chapter in the mushrooming story began April 21, with the release of an intelligence assessment–based largely on the still-secret Cox report–that the Chinese had stolen design data for the W-88 warhead. But even if true, it won't alter the balance of power any time soon. There is no evidence that China has manufactured, flight-tested, or deployed MlRVs. At present all it may have is the capability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead, the first step toward Mmving. But getting from there to deploying large numbers of accurate and reliable ballistic missiles is a lengthy and very expensive process. Moreover, the W88 data, by themselves, cannot be used to produce other warheads of different designs. As Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico cautioned in a March 24 speech on the Senate floor, “In many ways, China's nuclear weapons program is not capable of utilizing the W88 design.”
In any event, it takes only a few nuclear weapons–or perhaps just the capability to manufacture them–to achieve deterrence. Anything beyond that is irrelevant from a security standpoint unless one seeks a nuclear war-fighting posture, something that China has not shown any interest in. During the Cold War, the United States built 70,000 warheads and spent more than $5.5 trillion (in constant 1996 dollars) on nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs, figures that no country could or would want to match. China's estimated total annual military budget is $35 billion–about what the United States spends each year on its nuclear weapons programs alone.
Spying and politics
Congressional Republicans and those running for president apparently want to extract as much mileage (and campaign money) as possible from the scandal by contrasting their approach to that of the Clinton administration. For the first time in years foreign policy may become a serious campaign issue, even though Republicans admit they lack a coherent foreign policy plan themselves. Cop foreign policy expert Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Los Angeles Times that China is “a core grassroots issue for Republicans. When a candidate goes before a conservative audience, China is an applause line.”
Presidential aspirants Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, and Patrick Buchanan quickly condemned the Clinton administration after the March 6 Times story, with Buchanan saying that the security breach was the “most serious since the Rosenbergs went to the electric chair in 1953.” Even Sen. Richard Lugar, the normally cautious Indiana Republican, opined in the Washington Post that “the United States may now be at significantly greater risk from a Chinese ballistic missile attack,” although he did not explain why. But capabilities and intentions are not necessarily synonymous, as any student of die Cold War knows. The parallels to the infamous and ultimately discredited bomber and missile gaps of the 1950s, and their impact on U.S. politics, foreign relations, military spending, and force structure are troubling.
Some Republicans immediately demanded Sandy Berger's resignation, citing “dereliction of duty.” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby called for a moratorium on scientific exchanges with China, and warned, “This is perhaps just the tip of an iceberg.” Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma characterized the still-evolving case as a “story of espionage, conspiracy, deception, and cover-up–a story with life and death implications for millions of Americans.”
Vice President Al Gore told a CNN interviewer on March 9 that the alleged espionage occurred “during the previous administration.” Ten days later, former Vice President Dan Quayle, in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, accused the administration of “appeasement” and complained, “How dare Al Gore blame Presidents Reagan and Bush for negligence that clearly happened on his and President Clinton s watch?”
Never mind that the W88 incident did occur well before Clinton took office, that the Bush administration also sought closer relations with China, or that the General Accounting Office has been issuing highly critical reports of lax security at Energy Department laboratories and weapons facilities since the mid-1980s (see “Security?,” page 39). The Clinton administration at least deserves credit for identifying the problem and working to resolve it, including increasing Energy's counter-intelligence budget from a paltry $2 million in 1995 to more than $39 million for fiscal 2000.
And never mind, as columnist Jim Mann pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on March 17, that until this story broke, the pro-business Republican Congress had renewed China's most-favored-nation trading status four times, approved plans for American companies to provide civilian nuclear power technology to China, and–under the Senate leadership of Trent Lott–watered down a ban on sales of American satellites to China.
The story also broke at a fortuitous time for advocates of legislation promoting the swift deployment of ballistic missile defenses. Bills that last year failed on close votes were overwhelmingly approved by both the Senate and the House on March 17 and 18 after President Clinton and congressional Democrats reversed their long standing opposition (see “Missile Defense: It's Back,” page 26). Ironically, China may have become interested in MIRV technology in order to preserve its nuclear deterrent in the face of the Strategic Defense Initiative (sdi) in the 1980s. Based on the exaggerated claims for sdi's potential effectiveness, Chinas minuscule 1980s arsenal appeared to present little challenge to the system. But if China countered by deploying many warheads atop each missile, SDI s task would become significantly more difficult, perhaps impossible, and deterrence might be maintained.
The man in the middle
Wen Ho Lee, a 59-year-old computer scientist at Los Alamos, was fired in early March on the recommendation of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. Lee, who had been at the lab since 1978, remains an enigma. According to the Wall Street Journal, in six unclassified technical papers published between 1984 and 1988, Lee focused on how high explosives can be detonated to create shock waves capable of compressing a sphere of metal. Such studies are relevant to understanding the behavior of the “trigger” of thermonuclear weapons, the relatively small fission bomb used to ignite the much larger fusion reaction. He apparently was part of the team that designed the W88 warhead, focusing on calculations relating to implosion oi the primary.
Lee, who was born in Taiwan but is an American citizen, was fired for failing to report contact with people from “sensitive” countries, not properly securing classified materials within his office at Los Alamos, failing a second polygraph test in February (he passed his first one in December 1998, but was nevertheless transferred to another job at the lab), and for refusing to cooperate with investigators on the last of three days of questioning. Fbi and intelligence officials have been quoted in the press as saying they have too little evidence to arrest Lee for espionage. They were not even able to muster enough probable cause during the initial investigation in mid-1996 to obtain a wiretap on Lee's telephone. An unnamed official told the Times in mid-March: “The guy violated some rules and was fired for doing that. But we really don't know what his motivations were. … We really don't know enough about what he did. … There are huge unknowns at this point.” Said another: “The admissions that he made [during FBI questioning] were not things that were against the law, but against [Energy Department] regulations.”Lee's lawyer, Mark C. Holscher, calls the charges against his client “categorically false.”
In 1986 and again in 1988, Lee requested and received permission to travel to China to attend and speak at conferences related to the unclassified aspects of his work (which are relevant to a broad number of scientific and industrial applications). According to the Wall Street Journal, Lee “presented a paper discussing ‘detonation velocity’ and the hydrodynamic effects of explosives” at a 1986 conference organized by Beijing's Institute for Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics.
Two years later he presented a second paper, “about voids in metal that could interfere with a fast-moving explosion.” The Journal added that, according to a spokesman for the laboratory, both papers had been cleared by laboratory officials. The FBI reportedly suspects that Lee provided information to China on the W88 warhead during the 1988 conference. But according to Newsweek, “Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials … are not at all confident Lee passed on critical secrets to the Chinese–or even that espionage was involved at all.” Chinese officials have confirmed Lee's attendance at two scientific conferences, but they adamantly deny the charges of spying, complaining they are part of an effort by anti-China forces in the United States to sabotage U.S.-China relations.
It's the pattern that troubles some officials. Following the 1990 revelations about the loss of neutron bomb data at Lawrence Livermore, another unidentified Taiwan-born scientist working there resigned following a two-year FBI investigation, which remains open. He was never charged.
And finally–on April 8, the day China's Prime Minister Zhu Rongji met with President Clinton in Washington–the New York Times reported that in early 1996 a spy working in China for the United States told U.S. intelligence officials that officials “inside China's intelligence service … were boasting that they had just stolen secrets from the United States and used them to improve Beijing's neutron bomb.”
According to the article, China's September 1988 test of a neutron bomb was unsuccessful, leading China to attempt to acquire additional classified information to try and perfect the weapon. However, there is “no evidence that China has produced an improved neutron bomb.”
A subsequent Energy Department investigation found that Wen Ho Lee attended a classified 1992 meeting during which “solutions to the [U.S.] neutron bomb's design flaw were discussed.” The FBI also discovered that Lee had “made at least one telephone call” to the suspect in the 1980s neutron bomb case at Livermore. Despite these intriguing connections, the FBI “has not been able to establish that Lee has any connection to the neutron bomb case.”
In late 1997, Peter H. Lee (no relation to Wen Ho Lee), a physicist and laser fusion expert born in Taiwan who worked at Los Alamos and later for TRw's Space and Electronics Group in southern California, pled guilty to providing classified data on simulated nuclear detonations to Chinese scientists during a 1985 visit to China. He was sentenced to one year in a halfway house and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine and undertake 3,000 hours of community service. Compared with the case of Wen Ho Lee, Peter Lee's arrest and plea arrangement received almost no press coverage.
Science v. security
These cases and others represent the dynamic tension at the weapons laboratories, where from the beginning scientific inquiry has been tempered by strict security regulations. Science functions best in a free and open society, where ideas can be exchanged, tested, thrown out, and refined. Nuclear weapons scientists understand the need for secrecy when it comes to nuclear weapons, but they sometimes chafe against the regulations when they threaten to inhibit the scientific process or have become outdated.
Non-scientists often wrongly believe that the laboratories are bastions of classified information and that there is a “secret” to nuclear weapons that must remain locked away lest other countries acquire it. But the only true secret concerning nuclear weapons was exploded over Hiroshima on August 6,1945. Once scientists knew that such weapons could be built, it was only a matter of time before the basic physical and computational principles were understood.
There are a great many things kept secret about the U.S. nuclear weapons program, but even assuming that we could somehow prevent any information from ever leaving the confines of the laboratories, dedicated and skillful scientists will be able to design and even build a basic nuclear bomb, given enough time and money, as the clandestine efforts by South Africa and Iraq demonstrate all too well. It's worth recalling that “Little Boy,” the gun-type atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was considered so reliable that it was never tested.
Moreover, a Manhattan Project-style policy of isolation would be anathema to most scientists and would seriously complicate efforts to retain workers whose raison d'etre has undergone a sea change since the end of the Cold War. A survey of scientists, engineers, and technicians at the weapons laboratories, conducted by an independent commission appointed by Congress and coincidentally released in the midst of the uproar over Wen Ho Lee, found that nearly 42 percent of them believed their continued work on weapons was predicated on being able to do work in unclassified areas.
Excessive secrecy may also impede the detection of alleged nuclear espionage. Because nuclear weapons information is so tightly held, U.S. intelligence analysts, according to News-week, apparently didn't know what to look for when reviewing intercepted communications and other raw intelligence. Much of the information collected by programs under the auspices of the National Security Agency and other agencies was never even translated and analyzed; the sheer volume simply overwhelmed the analysts. Only now are they going back to see what they missed the first time.
Where to now?
Because of its status as the world's only remaining superpower, its strong and diverse economy and leadership in many technological fields, and not least because it is an open and democratic society, the United States has been and will continue to be a target for espionage. Whether or not the case against Wen Ho Lee is ever proven, more can and should be done to ensure that classified and sensitive military information and technologies do not leak out. But we should recognize that we will never be able to completely wall ourselves off from the rest of the world.
The reaction in some quarters to this scandal has been disturbing. Lee's wife Sylvia, who like Lee was born in Taiwan but is a U.S. citizen, was reported to be under suspicion as well for attending events for Chinese scientists at Los Alamos and for being invited to a scientific conference in China. An editorial in the Bangor (Maine) Daily News asked why “many foreign scientists, Chinese and otherwise, have the keys to some of the most top-secret rooms at Los Alamos.” (Because “America does not produce enough scientists,” it responded.)
While no one in the current scandal has yet called publicly for the expulsion of or restrictions on Chinese or Chinese-American scientists working in the United States, that is the unmistakable logical extension of the statements of those in Congress and elsewhere who criticize the Clinton administration's laxity and call for tighter security. Shelby and others have called for a moratorium on foreign visitors to the labs. “If you've got someone hemorrhaging, the first thing you stop is the blood, and then you see what's in the wound,” said Shelby recently. “We haven't stopped the hemorrhaging at our labs.” It is hard to imagine that Chinese-American graduate students and scientists will not face increased scrutiny as they go about their work. How manv will lose their clearances or encounter professional difficulties because of their ethnicity?
Whatever the final outcome of this case, Americans must guard against turning the national laboratories–and the country–into a fortress against threats both real and imagined. They must avoid, in Henry Kissinger's words, a “nostalgia for confrontation.” Warns former Defense Secretary William Perry, “If we treat China as an enemy it will surely become one.” If that happens, American society and science will be the big losers.