Timeline of treachery

Sea Power, Aug 1999 by Prina, L Edgar

Chinese warships-such as the guided-missile destroyers Zhuhai (left) and Harbin (right), shown here at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, Calif.-visited several US. naval bases in 1997. Such exchanges and other military contacts have been sharply curtailed, mostly because of the PRC espionage activities brought to light in the Cox Report, but also, in part, because of the errant bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. China also has canceled previously scheduled visits to Hong Kong by US. military aircraft.

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher who is quoted by modern military historians almost as frequently as is Karl von Clausewitz, wrote that by spying on a potential foe a ruler can prevail without going to war.

The shocking report recently released by a House Select Committee detailing China's theft of some of America's most vital nuclear weapons secrets strongly suggests that the Communist dictators in Beijing believe their honored ancestor had it right. They, of course, deny having carried out any such spying, and have even accused the United States of racism in making such accusations.

The 900-page report by the panel of five Republicans and four Democrats was unanimous and blunt. As Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), the committee's chairman, put it: "The report is not inferences. It is not suspicions or things that we cannot prove. It is, rather, the facts, and I think it is vitally important for us today to emphasize that ... [it] is a fact-based report."

Just what did the Chinese steal and when did they steal it? And when did the Clinton administration know about it-and when did it take action?

According to what is now called the "Cox Report," the People's Republic of China (PRC)-also known as Mainland China or Communist China-stole highly classified information on every currently deployed U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).

The warheads "for which the PRC stole classified information," the report says, include the W-56 Minuteman II ICBM, the W-62 Minuteman III ICBM, the W-70 Lance short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), the W-76 Trident C-4 SLBM, the W-78 Minuteman III Mark 12-A ICBM, the W-87 Peacekeeper ICBM, and the W-88 Trident D-5 SLBM.

The Strange Story Of the Walk-In Mole

The W-88, America's most sophisticated strategic nuclear warhead, is deployed on the Trident D-5 missile carried by the Navy's 18 Trident nuclear-powered fleet ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). The United States learned about the theft, which occurred between 1984 and 1992, in 1995 in a most unusual way. Here is the story, as told by the Cox panel:

"In 1995, a [Chinese] `walk-in' approached the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) outside the PRC and provided an official PRC document stamped 'secret' that contained information on the W-88 ... as well as technical information concerning other nuclear warheads.

"The CIA later determined that the `walk-in' was directed by the PRC intelligence services. Nonetheless, the CIA and other [U.S.] intelligence community [agencies] ... that reviewed the document concluded that it contained U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information. The `walk-in' document recognized that the U.S. nuclear warheads represented the state-of-the-art against which PRC thermonuclear warheads should be measured."

[Note: The Encyclopedia of Espionage (Random House) defines a "walk-in" as "a potential agent or mole who literally walks into an embassy or intelligence agency without prior contact or recruitment and offers to conduct espionage." The CIA can only speculate as to why the Chinese mole walked in.]

Also of special interest to the U.S. Navy, the report notes that Peter Lee, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Taiwan, admitted to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) that he passed classified research into the detection of submerged submarines to Chinese weapons scientists. "This research, if successfully completed, could enable the PRC to threaten previously invulnerable U.S. nuclear submarines," the report asserts.

Lee was working for TRW Inc., a contractor for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, at the time of the illegal transfer of the secret research data. The data had been developed as part of the joint U.S./U.K. "radar ocean imaging" project, which has important ASW (antisubmarine warfare) applications.

"Lee described for the PRC weapons scientists the physics of microwave scattering from ocean waves," the Cox Report says. "Lee specifically stated that the purpose of the research was antisubmarine warfare.

"At one point in his presentation, Lee displayed an image of a surface ship wake, which he had brought with him from the United States. He also drew a graph and explained the underlying physics of his work and its application. He told the PRC scientists where to filter data within the graph to enhance the ability to locate the ocean wake of a vessel."

Twenty Years-And Continuing

The Cox committee found that the Chinese penetration of U.S. national nuclear weapons laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Sandia) began at least as early as the late 1970s (during the Carter administration) and said that significant secrets are known to have been stolen "as recently as the mid-1990s." The thefts "almost certainly continue to the present," the report also says.