[PEN-L:7375] Cox Report

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

10/16-18/94 - SecDef Perry and Senators Inouye, Nunn, Stevens, and
Warner goes to China for three days of meetings with top government
officials and the PLA.
Perry pushed for greater transparency in China's defense spending and
military strategy. Perry also suggested that if China would agree to
halt underground nuclear testing, the US would provide nuclear
simulation technology to China to ensure the reliability of the weapons.

Chinese officials voiced concern that if the US deployed a theater
ballistic missile defense system China's limited nuclear force could be
rendered impotent.

This nuclear simulation technology  is the same "secret" that the Cox
report accused China of stealing via Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear weapons
scientist (originally from anti Communist Taiwan) at Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Over the past 25 years, the US has been tacitly providing China with
nuclear arms assistance.  The logic behind this policy was based on the
doctrine that in order for deterrence to work, all sides would have to
reach a credible level of sophistication in weapon and delivery
technology.
Just as the US pushed SLBM "secrets" on the Soviets to increase
stability, US strategic planners have been pushing for purposeful leaks
and assistance on where to find them to Chinese scientists.  In
exchange, China agreed to allow the CIA to set up monitoring station in
China target against Soviet activities.
This 25-year old policy is now dragged out as  a weapon of American
domestic politics.

Friday  May 28  1999

                   Memo reveals
                 military knew of
                 'nuclear theft' in
                     Reagan era

             ASSOCIATED PRESS in Washington
             A declassified memo shows US military
             intelligence believed as early as Ronald
             Reagan's first term as president that China was
             stealing US nuclear secrets.

             An analyst doubted that the 1984 memo ever
             reached Mr Reagan's National Security
             Council inside the White House, but said the
             information it contained would have been
             known to key officials inside the government.

             "Increased access to this technology and
             continued Chinese efforts will, in the 1980s
             and early 1990s, show up as qualitative
             warhead improvements," the Defence
             Intelligence Agency [DIA] said in the
             document, known as an estimative brief.

             "Qualitative improvements that the Chinese are
             developing for their nuclear warheads will
             depend on the benefits that Chinese are now
             deriving from both overt contact with US
             scientists and technology and the covert
             acquisition of US technology."

             A private group in Washington, the National
             Security Archive, used the Freedom of
             Information Act to obtain the four-page
             document, entitled "Nuclear Weapons Systems
             in China", from the Pentagon-run agency
             which is engaged in intelligence analysis.

             Jeffrey Richelson, who is compiling a
             15,000-page collection of declassified
             documents on Sino-US relations, said: "I think
             the document says people at DIA, and I
             presume others in the intelligence community,
             understood exactly how the Chinese were
             going to go about improving their arsenal."

             Mr Richelson doubted the memo was
             forwarded to Mr Reagan's National Security
             Council.

             "Certainly key officials in the government
             would have understood the essence of the
             observation about how the Chinese would
             have gone about improving their nuclear
             arsenal," he said.

             Documents such as the 1984 memo are
             supplying valuable ammunition to the
             Democrats, who are eager to move the blame
             for China's alleged theft of US nuclear secrets
             away from President Bill Clinton's
             administration and on to the Reagan and
             George Bush administrations.



Henry C.K. Liu