U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon-R of the Cox Committee addresses the U.S. Congress on June 7th, 1999 with this most disturbing proof of treason and immediate danger of nuclear attack!
Note from the Castle Master: All American's should know this. Chinese agents have visited the White House hundreds of times in the eight years of the Clinton administration. While the economy has been good, we have been betrayed! This report is just a very small part of the treachery. If you want to see a couple hours of proof on video, including government documentation, please contact me. This is more important than Social Security, Medicare, etc. AMERICA HAS NO DEFENSE AGAINST NUCLEAR MISSILES!
I rise tonight to talk to our colleagues about what I think is certainly one of the gravest issues to face this Nation in the 13 years that I have had the honor of serving in this body.
In Congress, Mr. Speaker, I have taken great pride in working with Members of the other side on national security issues, and I have been the first to acknowledge that many of the struggles that we have won in this body against the White House involving national security were won only because we had the support of strong leadership on the Democratic side as well as the Republican side. I give those comments today, Mr. Speaker, because I want to focus on what is happening with the debate surrounding the Cox Commission, of which I was a member, and the resultant information that has been put forward to the American people about a matter that needs to be thoroughly investigated.
Mr. Speaker, it is my contention that when the administration got a preliminary view of the Cox Committee report in early January, in fact we gave it to the administration sometime around January 2nd or 3rd, they got a chance to see a document that nine of us, Democrats and Republicans, had worked on together for 7 months in a very nonpartisan way. We did not care where problems had occurred; in which administrations they were in. If we saw evidence of our security being harmed or potentially harmed, we laid the facts basically where they were. We did not attempt to spin them or distort them or attempt to have them be other than what they in fact were. We did that because we wanted to have the integrity of our report kept intact once it was completed. No member of the Cox Committee released any information to the media. We swore to ourselves that we would not in fact jeopardize our findings.
We gave it to the White House the first week of January and we asked for a very quick response to assist us in making that report available in a declassified version so the American people and our colleagues could read it and talk about it. As we all know, that took 5 months. But what gave me the first indication that this report was going to be spun politically was about a month later, in February. In fact it was February the 1st. Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser to the White House, issued a statement, of which I have a copy, to select members of the Washington media, responding to the 38 recommendations in our Cox Committee report that were still classified. Without asking any member of the Cox Commission, Sandy Berger released the White House's spin in response to those recommendations.
Two days after he released that spin, I had the occasion of asking the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, in a closed National Security Committee hearing in front of 40 Members from both parties if he agreed, as the head of the CIA, with our findings that our security had been harmed. Now, Mr. Speaker, this was 2 days after Sandy Berger released public information about our still classified report. George Tenet said, "Congressman, we at the CIA haven't finished reading the document yet." Which meant, Mr. Speaker, that the White House, before the CIA had even completed reading our report, was spinning it publicly to try to deflect attention away from the White House and any responsibility of this administration. That is not what the nine members of the Cox Committee did and that is not the approach we used. We did not spin anything. Yet that was my first inclination that this White House was not going to deal in an honorable way with the findings and the conclusions that we drew from our extensive research into the results of the transfer of technology both legally and illegally to China.
Mr. Speaker, that spin continues today. Since the report was released some 2 weeks ago, the administration has sent Bill Richardson, a friend of mine with whom I served in this body, out on a road show traveling around the country convincing the American people that the only issue in the Cox report is Chinese espionage, the stealing of our W-88 nuclear warhead design technology. And the reason why the White House has wanted to spin the Cox Commission report in this way is because they can point to this stuff having occurred before the Clinton administration took office. So what Richardson has been saying publicly, on national TV shows, on the talk shows on Sunday mornings, is, "Look, when this administration in 1995 found out that China had stolen some of our designs, prior to us coming into office, we took aggressive steps to stop it. These problems didn't happen under the Clinton administration. They happened under previous administrations.”
Mr. Speaker, it was in 1993 and 1994, when Hazel O'Leary was appointed to be the Secretary of Energy by President Bill Clinton, that she overturned the color-coded ID system used in our Department of Energy labs because she thought it was discriminatory. It was based upon the color of the chain and the ID that you wore around your neck, only allowing one access to certain parts of our laboratories. It was the way that we kept people from illegally accessing information that they did not have the proper clearance for. So what happened, Mr. Speaker, was that the Clinton administration did away with that identification process which made it almost impossible for the lab directors and others to know whether or not a person was in a correct area of a lab, gathering information and data that they should not have had.
Now, Mr. Speaker, if that was a good decision, which maybe the President would say was the case, why then did this administration 2 weeks ago move to reinstate the policy that Hazel O'Leary did away with? If the color-coded ID system was not necessary, why did they all of a sudden 2 weeks ago tell the labs, "You're now going to put back into place a color-coded ID system” at a tremendous cost to taxpayers. That was under this administration, Mr. Speaker.
It was this administration and Hazel O'Leary who decided to put a hold on FBI background checks in at least two of our labs; checks which had been the norm under previous administrations, before people could gain access to our labs, had to be done so that we could determine whether or not those people were spies or whether or not they were appropriately entitled to have access to classified information. This allowed scores of people to get access to our labs, not just Chinese or Asian nationals but a whole host of people who were not being required to have FBI background checks.
Number three, Mr. Speaker. It was in the 1993-1994 time frame when an employee of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, who had retired, was accused of releasing sensitive and classified information in a public setting. The Oakland office of the Department of Energy did an investigation of that employee and they accused him of violating the requirements of security at our labs. What did they do? They penalized that retiree by removing the access he had to classified information even as a retiree. They took the appropriate steps. What did Hazel O'Leary do, Mr. Speaker? When that removal of that retiree's classified status was undertaken and when he appealed it, all the way up to the Secretary's office, Secretary O'Leary overruled the Oakland office of the Department of Energy and reinstated the employee's classification status. Every employee in every laboratory in America saw the signal being sent by this administration, `We don't need color-coded IDs, we don't need to have FBI background checks, and when employees give out classified information, we're not going to consider that a major issue.'
One more point, Mr. Speaker. And you do not hear Bill Richardson talking about these facts, but I am offering to debate him here tonight, anytime, anyplace. Mr. Richardson says that when this administration found out, in 1995, that the Chinese had stolen the designs to our most sophisticated warheads, the W-88 and the W-87, that they immediately took action; they began a process of closing in on the security, and he said that began in 1995.
Mr. Speaker, I want to call particular attention to my colleagues and to the American people this two-page spread that was in the July 31st, 1995 issue of U.S. News and World Report entitled `Shockwave' documenting the annihilation and destruction that would be caused by a nuclear attack or a nuclear bomb going off. In this document, Mr. Speaker, is an illustration of the W-87 warhead. Mr. Speaker, in 1995, this was classified. Mr. Speaker, this administration, in 1995, leaked this document to U.S. News and World Report, giving the entire populace of the world, through U.S. News and World Report, access to the design of the W-87 nuclear warhead, the same year that Bill Richardson is saying they were putting the clamps on the control of our technology.
But it does not stop there, Mr. Speaker. Because when this occurred, the Department of Energy began an internal investigation as to who would have leaked this design of this W-87 nuclear warhead; who would have given this information out to a national magazine. Mr. Speaker, I have the name of the person that was conducting that investigation, and I have been told that he was told to stop the investigation because they knew where it was going to lead to; that it was Hazel O'Leary herself who gave U.S. News and World Report the actual diagram of the W-87 nuclear warhead in 1995. Yet Secretary Richardson, on the Sunday morning news shows, is saying, `We have taken the steps to close these gaps.'
Mr. Speaker, I am today asking for a full investigation as to whether or not the Department of Energy did such an internal investigation and I want to know whether or not the individual who was overseeing this was told by his superiors not to pursue finding out who leaked this information in 1995. And, Mr. Speaker, if this administration was so intent on controlling access to these kinds of secrets, then they would surely be able to give us the answers to the questions I am posing tonight. Who did the investigation, and who did they find out leaked this particular diagram to U.S. News and World Report in 1995? It was not the Reagan administration, Mr. Speaker, and it was not the Bush administration. It was this administration.
Mr. Speaker, the comments of Bill Richardson around the country are hollow, they are shallow, and they are nothing more than political rhetoric being spun to deflect attention away from one of the most grave issues that has confronted this Nation in this century, that is, the overall loss of our technology, in many cases where we relaxed standards to allow people to take information or where we lowered the thresholds to give people information. Today we have the Secretary telling us that our labs are secure. I can tell you right now, Mr. Speaker, there are no controls on e-mails that are being sent out of our labs at this very moment. They will tell you they have a software system that looks for keywords, that if an e-mail is sent to Beijing or some other city and a keyword is in that e-mail, it raises a flag and that person then will be investigated. Raising a flag after the e-mail leaves the laboratory does us no good, Mr. Speaker.
So for Richardson to say that secure measures are in place today is wrong; it is factually wrong, it is not correct and he needs to be honest with the American people.
Secondarily, Mr. Speaker, we have just learned that later on this year China will be testing the newest version of their long-range ICBM missile with a range of 13,000 kilometers that can be launched from a submarine that has the potential for a MIRV or a multiple reentry capability. This rocket, this long-range ICBM, the JL-2, is beyond anything they have had in the past, and it is almost a replica of the trident class ICBMs that we have used in this Nation.
We did not think China would have this capability until several years down the road. We now have word they will test that missile, that ICBM, this year.
Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious issue. The American people need to understand what is happening to their country. They need to understand the blame game cannot stop by firing lower level employees who are only following directions. The blame game cannot stop by saying it was Industry’s fault. Industry was only abiding by the rules set by this government, and they cannot blame Chinese or Asian Americans, many of whom are some of our finest citizens. It was this government and this administration that failed the American people, and the American people need to see that information.
With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, the following two charts are now available on my web site nationally:
The first chart, Mr. Speaker, for the first time ever, gives the complete linkage between those agencies and entities of the Peoples Liberation Army and the Central Military Commission of the PLA which are all indicated by the red boxes, and you cannot read them, our colleagues cannot read them, but you can get this off of our web site, and I have offered to give copies of this chart in a smaller form to every Member of Congress regardless of party.
The red boxes indicate Chinese arms of the PLA. The green boxes, Mr. Speaker, which are again too small to read, are the financing entities that were established to finance the acquisition of technologies for the arms of the PLA and the Central Military Commission. They would identify the technology, and the green financing entities would then finance the purchase of that.
How would they finance the purchase of it? Through the blue boxes or the front companies. Literally hundreds of front companies were established in this country, in Hong Kong, in Macao, all over the world, whose sole purpose it was, was to acquire western and American technology.
Mr. Speaker, in this chart our colleagues and the American people can read for themselves who all of these players are and who all of these characters and all these organizations are, but there is something new here, Mr. Speaker:
For the first time that I am aware of each of these boxes are interconnected with solid and dotted lines. The solid lines indicate direct working relationships between financing entities, PLA organizations and Chinese front companies. The dotted lines indicate working relationships.
I am asking now to enter in the Record, Mr. Speaker, a document I entitled Sources and References:
Mr. Speaker, this 4-page document gives 28 specific unclassified documents or 26 unclassified documents that are studied on this chart that provide all the linkages so the American people can read how all of these link together for the first time ever, and I encourage everyone of our colleagues and every person across this country to turn on the web site, get access to this, and then get access to these unclassified documents, and I would say to our colleagues, `If you can't locate them, I have a master copy of each of these documents in my office. In fact I have several master copies. I will give you copies of whatever one of these documents you can't find.'
Now, as extensive as this is, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you this is only scratching the surface. In one of our House hearings one of our colleagues asked the FBI, when they were doing the investigation of these linkages, how much of what they know is now available in public form with all the reports, all the investigations; how much of what the FBI and the CIA knows is available to the public? This was the answer:
Less than 1 percent.
So, as broad as this is, as documented as this is, we only know publicly less than 1 percent of what the FBI and the CIA know about the linkages between PLA front organizations, front companies and financing mechanisms, and the bottom line question has to be asked, Mr. Speaker:
What made this happen? What was the grease that caused these transactions to take place? What caused these controls to be lowered? What caused these accesses to take place?
And that gets to my second chart, Mr. Speaker, which is the time line. This chart, Mr. Speaker, for the first time that I know of gives a detailed analysis of what has happened in this country since 1993. Now, my colleagues on the other side are going to say, `Wait a minute, Curt. You picked 1993. You are being partisan because that is when Clinton took office.' That is not the case, Mr. Speaker. I picked 1993 because two things happened.
Up until 1993, Mr. Speaker, under Democrat and Republican Presidents alike, there was a process in place to control technology from Nations like America being sent abroad to what we consider to be Tier 3 nations, or nations that are not allowed or were not supposed to have very capable technology, that could come back to hurt us. This process was called COCOM. COCOM was an international organization of allied nations, the U.S. and Japan, that met on a regular basis, and they decided collectively what kind of technology would be allowed to be sold and to which countries it could be sold to.
In 1993, without pre-approval of any of the other countries, France, Great Britain, Japan or any of the other ones, this administration ended COCOM; ended it, and the doors opened up.
Now they put into place something called the Wassanar agreement, which everyone has acknowledged is a total failure; yet COCOM worked. In 1993 COCOM ended, and the floodgates opened.
Something else happened in that year, Mr. Speaker. I would like to enter in the Record at this point in time, a letter from the White House, dated September 15, 1993. Mr. Speaker, every American needs to read this letter because this letter was sent by the President of the United States. And who did he send it to? To one of his biggest contributors and one of those blocks of people who supported his candidacy; Edward McCracken, Chief Executive Officer, Silicon Graphics, Mountain View, California.
The letter outlines the administration's plans to liberalize the availability of technology to nations abroad.
So here it is, in black and white, where the President is telling the CEO of Silicon Graphics this is what we are going to do for you over the next 6 years.
Guess what, Mr. Speaker. They did it.
What were some of the highlights? Let me read from the letter. Quote: "Liberalize computer and telecommunication controls, reduce processing times, expand distribution licenses, eliminate unnecessary unilateral controls,” and it goes into detailed description.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I am a free trader, and I believe in allowing our companies to compete, but what you had in 1993 was the wholesale opening of the flood gates. At the same time Hazel O'Leary is saying we do not have to worry about the people who work in our labs, they do not need color-coded IDs, they do not need to have FBI background checks, and when they give out classified information, we are going to ignore that and not worry about it; and, oh, by the way, US News, if you want this chart of the W-87, we will give it to you, and you can run it nationwide.
Mr. Speaker, these stories need to be told across America.
This time line from 1993 to 1999 shows every decision made by this administration that allowed a new technology to flow, in this case to China. It also shows activities of China in violation of arms control regimes. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I would ask at this time to insert Chronology of Chinese Weapons Related Transfers:
Mr. Speaker, this CRS document, which I had prepared a year ago, outlines approximately 17 cases where we caught the Chinese selling technology illegally. This administration knew about it, and it is all documented here. They imposed the required sanctions twice and waived them each time. All of those or most of those transfers are documented here.
Something else is on this chart, Mr. Speaker: White House presidential visits. I could only complete it up through 1995, the number of times that key people involved in this massive scheme were able to get into the White House. My constituents cannot ever get in the White House. We cannot even get White House tour tickets, which are available for schools, because we are only allowed four a year. These are American schoolchildren.
Let me read this to you, Mr. Speaker. John Huang; he visited the White House four times in March of 1993, four times in April of 1993, two times in May, one time in June, one time in November, all in 1993. Now, my constituents cannot do that. Yet this White House opened the floodgates to welcome selected people in who were a part of this network, Mr. Speaker.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, I am asking the House Clerks Office tonight to give me the price of what it would take to put this document in the Congressional Record. I am not going to put it in tonight until I get the price. What is this document, Mr. Speaker? These are the FBI wiretap transcripts of conversations between Chung and Robert Lu, the FBI wire tapped transcripts that took place from May 6 of 1998 all the way through August of 98. In these transcripts in the words of these key players in this process, the American people, Mr. Speaker, for themselves can see what was going on and can read with their own eyes about the discussions that were taking place.
If this administration has nothing to hide, they can do one very simple thing: release the entire text of the memos sent by Louis Freeh and his subordinate investigator to Janet Reno requesting that a special prosecutor be named to handle this whole situation. If there is one question we need to ask as Americans for the next year and a half, it is this one, because Louis Freeh, the head of the FBI, and his top investigator made their recommendations, and Janet Reno chose not to follow them. And they have a lot more than I have shown my colleagues; in fact, I have seen a lot more as a member of the Cox Committee that I cannot put on here because it is classified. But they seen all of this data, the other 99 percent that we cannot show.
The American people are owed an explanation as to why Janet Reno chose not to follow the advice of her chief law enforcement agent for this country. Every person in this country needs to send a card to the White House; every Member of Congress needs to ask the question why the White House will not release the FBI internal memos that Louie Freeh and his assistant sent; to ask for a fully completed investigation of this network, of this operation. Because that will tell us, Mr. Speaker, whether or not there were motives behind the transfer of technology that caused America's security harm, and that question needs to be asked by everyone in this country.
Mr. Speaker, my hope is that all of our colleagues in this body and the other body will have literally tens of thousands of letter writing campaigns, post cards to the White House and Janet Reno, asking this one simple question.
This can be very confusing, and I do not expect the American public or even our colleagues to understand every nuance of what is explained here. It is very confusing, but they can ask one question:
Why will you not release the Louis Freeh memos to Janet Reno in regard to the investigation of the connections between the PLA and the Central Military Commission, the Chinese front companies, the financing mechanisms including the donations of campaign funds to certain individuals to see whether or not there really was a tie and a connection in each of these cases?
That question needs to be answered more than any other single question that I can think of. Mr. Speaker, I would urge all of our colleagues to make that their rallying cry over the next year and a half. This is a security concern for all Americans. For what we have seen, Mr. Speaker, is a quantum leap in technological prowess by the Communist Chinese, with our know-how, with our expertise.
Indeed, I would say whatever price it might cost to include those transcripts of the FBI wiretaps in the Congressional Record, it is a small price to pay on behalf of the American people to understand the width and breadth of this scandal. `Scandal' is an overused term, we have seen so many, and yet, again, we have this remarkable, troubling, dangerous development in our national security.
Mr. Speaker, as the President of the United States stood at the podium just in front of the Speaker's Chair and in a State of the Union message bragged that no American child went to sleep a target of Russian missiles, how sad it is that now the Communist Chinese have the technology and have aimed their missiles at America, to the extent that we had the Chinese defense minister in defending a provocative action against Taiwan say, `Oh, we believe you,' meaning the United States, `value Los Angeles more than you do Taiwan.'
The bellicose nature of the threats and, more than rhetoric, the reality of the technology transfer, is inexcusable, and we, not as Republicans nor as Democrats, but as Americans, need to get to the bottom of this, because it is an outrage.
It does not only concern former Energy Secretary O'Leary; it does not only concern Attorney General Reno; it does not only concern the spin offered by our former colleague, current Energy Secretary Mr. Richardson; it goes all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
U.S. News & World Report put that document in, as shocking as that was. I wonder, Mr. Speaker, how many of the American people have seen the videotapes of the Communist Chinese leaders who contributed to the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996 in the Oval Office? People who are part of these front groups.
I would also note the outrageous and curious behavior of our so-called National Security Adviser, Mr. Sandy Berger, a former lobbyist for the Communist Chinese on trade issues. In April of 1996 we know for certain that he was informed of the Chinese penetration of our labs in Los Alamos, and apparently he did nothing.
The American people have simple questions that need to be answered. Are
we safe? Are those who took the oath of office to uphold and defend the
Constitution of the United States and thereby provide for the common
defense in fact being good stewards and good custodians of that trust? As
my colleague from Pennsylvania eloquently and substantively explains
tonight, that is a serious question for which there may be troubling
answers.
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Congressman Weldon's official web site can be found at: http://www.house.gov/curtweldon/.