Everybody Didn't Do It: Clinton Administration is in a Class by Itself on Damaging Security ......

Center for Security Policy ^ | 1999-06-11 | staff

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Everybody Didn't Do It: Clinton Administration is in a Class by Itself on Damaging Security Practices

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(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton Administration's damage-limitation strategy in response to revelations about its failure to safeguard U.S. nuclear secrets from Chinese espionage -- namely, that other presidencies have had such problems, too -- has begun to unravel as scrutiny of the relevant facts has intensified. In particular, a succession of former officials and independent analysts have now established that the current administration departed from past practice significantly, notably by turning a blind eye to Chinese efforts to penetrate the U.S. government and economy and by punishing government employees who have sought to protect American interests.¹

The latter aspect was powerfully underscored in an op.ed. article which appeared in yesterday's edition of the Wall Street Journal (see the attached). It was authored by a former Reagan Administration official, Michael Ledeen, who is currently a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Ledeen describes how President Reagan's administration expected -- and elicited -- enormous help in preventing the flow of high-technology to Communist regimes "from professional civil servants, particularly in the military." He added that: "It would have been unthinkable for those experts to have been silenced or coerced into lying about matters that directly affected national security. Yet, this has happened repeatedly during the Clinton years, as some recently uncovered documents show." (Emphasis added.)

Enter Jonathan Fox

As Mr. Ledeen notes, a case in point is that of Jonathan Fox, an attorney specializing in arms control on the staff of what was, until recently, called the Defense Special Weapons Agency. ²

Mr. Fox ran afoul of the Clinton party line when he wrote a memorandum opposing the President's certification that China was no longer proliferating nuclear weapons technology. According to Mr. Ledeen, "Mr. Fox's memo argued against the agreement on these grounds:

• "It 'presents real and substantial risk to the common defense and security of both the United States and allied countries.'

• "It 'can result in a significant increase of the risk of nuclear weapons technology proliferation.'

• "'The environment surrounding these exchange measures cannot guarantee timely warning of willful diversion of otherwise confidential information to non-nuclear states for nuclear weapons development.'

• "There was no guarantee that the nuclear information would be limited to non-military applications in China itself."

Such a presidential certification that effectively found that none of these to be the case was required by law before the United States could embark upon commercial nuclear cooperation with the PRC. ³

Political appointees in Mr. Fox's chain of command gave him the option of changing his memo or losing his job. In the end, the memo was rewritten to suit the Administration's needs for an undeserved Pentagon seal-of-approval. It was not signed in that form by Jonathan Fox, however.

As Mr. Ledeen points out, this is not an isolated case:

"Mr. Fox is not the only weapons expert in the government to have been instructed to lie or remain silent about the true consequences of sending military technology to China. Notra Trulock and his colleagues were told by their superiors at the Department of Energy that they should stop annoying people with accounts of Chinese espionage at Los Alamos. Similarly, professionals in the Pentagon such as Michael Maloof and Peter Leitner ⁴

were told to keep quiet about the approval of high-tech licenses that would strengthen Chinese military power. Both of them spoke out; others remain silent.

"But even when the professionals stick by their principles, their superiors have chosen to substitute facts with politically expedient disinformation. On at least two occasions, military experts who argued against high-tech exports to China later discovered that their recommendations had been altered in the Pentagon's computerized data base."

The Actual Record

"Disinformation" also describes efforts by Clinton Administration officials -- notably, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson -- to suggest that the real problems with security took place on the watches of previous Presidents. In fact, as Investor's Business Daily reported on 9 June 1999:

"The declassified version of the House [Cox Committee] report identifies 11 cases of Chinese espionage since the late 1970s. Eight took place during President Clinton's years in office. Two of the three prior cases were first learned in 1995 and 1997. In other words, the vast majority of the leaks over the past 20 years have sprung on Clinton's watch and nearly all the old leaks have shown up then. That's not all.

"The House report doesn't disclose the full extent of Chinese espionage in the Clinton years. Citing 'national security' reasons, the White House censured nearly 375 pages, including several recent cases. At least 24 times, the declassified version of the report states: 'The Clinton administration has determined further information cannot be made public.' Left out are details about Chinese espionage that took place in the 'mid-1990s' or 'late 1990s.'

"'Some of the most significant thefts occurred in the last four years,'said Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., who headed the House panel."

The Bottom Line

Conscientious government officials like Messrs. Fox, Maloof and Leitner, who were properly lauded by Mr. Ledeen and others he did not mention by name (notably, Ed McCallum, a retired lieutenant colonel in Army special operations who, in his capacity as DOE's Director of Safeguards and Security, has been warning for years about the Clinton Administration's malign neglect of basic security procedures at the Department of Energy ⁵ ) have a critical role to play in a real, and urgently needed, national damage-limitation strategy. Congress must ensure that they are given political protection against further retribution by the Clinton Administration.

More important still, these patriots must be given a platform from which they can help to identify the full extent of the Clinton team's malfeasance with respect to physical, information and personnel security matters and to direct corrective actions. An ideal approach to providing such a vehicle would be the creation of a Select Committee of the Senate imbued with the same authority and access to information and resources as the counterpart Cox Committee had in the House to whose staff such individuals might be temporarily detailed. At a minimum, they should be given ample opportunities to testify before this or other relevant committees of the Congress.

¹ See the Center's Decision Briefs entitled

China's Nuclear Theft, Strategic Build-up Underscore Folly of Clinton Denuclearization, C.T.B. (No. 99-D 31, 8 March 1999) and Campaigns Clinton Legacy Watch # 41: Security Meltdown at D.O.E. (No. 99-D 48, 26 April 1999).

² See Broadening the Lens: Peter Leitner's Revelations on '60 Minutes,' Capitol Hill Indict Clinton Technology Insecurity (No. 98-D 101, 6 June 1998).

³ See the Casey Institute Perspective entitled The Big Lie: Long-term U.S. Interests Will Not Be Served By Presidential Misrepresentation Of Chinese Proliferation Acts (No. 97-C 105, 16 October 1997).

⁴ See Profile In Courage: Peter Leitner Blows The Whistle On Clinton's Dangerous Export Decontrol Policies (No. 97-P 82, 19 June 1997), Profile in Courage: Mike Maloof Speaks Truth to Power about Clinton's Dangerous Tech Transfers to China (No. 98-D 192, 30 November 1998) and 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).

⁵ See Saving Lieutenant Colonel McCallum (No. 99-D 64, 1 June 1999).

[AmeriBrit]

The deeper you dig here, the more it makes you wonder how we managed to survive after 8 years of clinton.

All those who say we were wrong about Iraq and should have left Saddam alone should read this:

The New 'Giant Sucking Sound': Clinton's Crumbling Iraq and Russia Policies [99-D 23]

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Good one....be back in a minute.....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Got it,...... and now we can relearn some forgotten history:

The New 'Giant Sucking Sound': Clinton's Crumbling Iraq and Russia Policies ~ from 1999....

[AmeriBrit]

I'm not allowed to say what's going through my head, and the more I read the higher my blood pressure's soaring, so read for yourself.


SMOKE AND MIRRORS: EVEN BY CLINTON STANDARDS, THE PRESIDENT'S MISREPRESENTATIONS ON MISSILE DEFENSE ARE SCANDALOUS
[96-D 49]

[snip]
"...We're spending $3 billion a year on a strong, sensible national missile defense program based on real threats and pragmatic responses." In fact, there is nothing strong, sensible or realistic about the missile defense plans of this Administration. To the contrary, the Clinton team seems intent on weakening promising missile defense programs currently under development.

After his recent summit with Boris Yeltsin, Mr. Clinton boasted that American and Russian negotiators would by 15 June have a deal ready that would have the effect of expanding the scope of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty by imposing limits on performance characteristics of theater missile defense systems. Such an agreement -- which would extend what amounts to a Russian veto over American missile defense programs even to theater anti-missile systems -- would almost surely preclude the development of promising missile defense systems such as the Navy's AEGIS-based Wide Area Defense program.

The truth is that the Administration has no plans at the moment to deploy any national missile defense. As for the $3 billion the President referred to, these funds will probably wind up added to the tally that Mr. Clinton and his fellow anti-SDI partisans cynically claim has been spent on missile defense with nothing to show for it -- ignoring the fact that such funds could have produced a deployed, effective missile defense if only the will to do so had been present.


"Our first priority is to defend against existing or near-term threats, like short- and medium-range missile attacks on our troops in the field or our allies. And we are, with upgraded Patriot missiles, the Navy Lower and Upper-Tier and the Army THAAD." The truth is that such theater missile defenses do not seem to be a very high priority for the Clinton Administration.

In December 1995, General Gary Luck -- the four-star commander of the 37,000 U.S. troops on the ever-more-unstable Korean peninsula -- made an urgent request for a deployment of two THAAD batteries to protect his troops from the increasing North Korean missile threat. His request was denied. What is more, the Clinton Administration has deliberately refused to comply with statutory direction contained in the Fiscal Year 1996 Defense Authorization Act to the effect that the THAAD and Upper Tier (a.k.a. Wide Area Defense) programs must be accelerated. Instead, the necessary funding has been stretched-out by several years, with an attendant delay in key development and deployment milestones. [snip]

[snip]
"President Clinton's speech to the Coast Guard Academy did at least accomplish one thing. It made clear to everyone that the United States is currently unprotected against even a single ballistic missile -- a state of affairs with which Mr. Clinton is comfortable and from which he will not depart willingly for the foreseeable future. "
[snip]

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_49

[Marine_Uncle]

Very nice post E. Thanks for the post and ping.