Attribution

As recently as Tuesday, in a televised infomercial for right-wing Judicial Watch,
the charge resurfaced that the Clinton administration's role in Chinese nuclear
espionage had not been investigated fully.

This time, the claim came from onetime-leftist journalist Christopher Hitchens as he
chewed over old "Clinton scandals" with Judicial Watch leader Larry Klayman.
According to the Judicial Watch infomercial, the culprits who curtailed this investigation
were Clinton sympathizers in the press.

Beyond helping Judicial Watch raise money, this recurring China allegation has become
something of a touchstone for many conservatives -- as well as other Americans
-- who believe that the Clinton administration somehow traded nuclear secrets to
China for campaign donations in 1996 -- and got away with it.

Indeed, many American voters may have gone to the polls last November with concerns
that Al Gore's 1996 visit to a Buddhist temple in California had some connection to the
alleged loss of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos. Bush supporters certainly did all they
could to leave that impression.

But as we have pointed out before, these allegations were based on
bogus history and false logic. Indeed, the evidence always has
pointed in a very different direction: that the alleged Chinese theft
of secrets for building the miniaturized W-88 nuclear warhead
occurred during the mid-1980s, under the watch of Ronald Reagan and
George H.W. Bush.

The key facts were these: A purported Chinese defector walked into
U.S. government offices in Taiwan in 1995 and handed over Chinese
documents indicating that Chinese intelligence apparently had stolen
the secrets of the W-88 warhead "sometime between 1984 and 1992." The
Chinese then tested their miniaturized warhead in 1992 while the
elder Bush was still president. Indeed, the suspicious trips that
made Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee an espionage suspect occurred
between 1986-88, while Reagan was president.

Yet, these salient facts have never been highlighted in the national
news media, which seemed to have become addicted to "Clinton
scandals" by the time the possible W-88 espionage was revealed to the
public in 1999.

New Corroboration

Somewhat correcting that media failure this month was a long
retrospective on the Wen Ho Lee case by The New York Times, a
newspaper whose early imprecise reporting had helped drive the
"Chinagate" media stampede.

Over two days – Feb. 4 and 5 – the Times laid out the detailed
chronology of events and confirmed that the suspected loss of the
nuclear secrets dated back to the Reagan-Bush administration and to
its cozy strategic relationship with communist China.

The Times noted that limited exchanges between the two countries'
nuclear scientists began after President Jimmy Carter officially
recognized China in 1978. But those meetings grew far more expansive
and less controlled during the 1980s.

"With the Reagan administration eager to isolate the Soviet Union,
hundreds of scientists traveled between the United States and China,
and the cooperation expanded to the development of torpedoes,
artillery shells and jet fighters," the Times reported. "The
exchanges were spying opportunities as well."

Oliver North's Gambit

The full story of the Republican-Chinese collaboration was even worse
than the Times described. As we reported last September, Ronald
Reagan's White House had decided to share sensitive national security
secrets with the Chinese communists by 1984.

That year, Ronald Reagan's White House turned to the Chinese because
the U.S. Congress had banned U.S. military assistance to the
Nicaraguan contra rebels. Despite that ban, the White House was
determined to secure surface-to-air missiles that the contras could
use to shoot down Soviet-made attack helicopters that had become an
effective weapon in the Nicaraguan government's arsenal.

Some of the private U.S. operatives working with White House aide
Oliver North had  settled on China as a source for SA-7 missiles. In
testimony at his 1989 Iran-contra trial, North called the securing of
these weapons a "very sensitive delivery."

For the Chinese missile deal in 1984, North said he received help
from the CIA in arranging false end-user certificates from the right-
wing government of Guatemala. North testified that he "had made
arrangements with the Guatemalan government, using the people [CIA]
director [William] Casey had given me."

But China was opposed to the Guatemalan government, which was then
engaged in a scorched-earth war against its own leftist guerrillas.
China balked at selling missiles to the Guatemalan military.

To resolve this problem, the White House dispatched North to a
clandestine meeting with a Chinese military official. The idea was to
bring the Chinese communists in on what was then one of the most
sensitive secrets of the U.S. government: the missiles were not going
to Guatemala, but rather into a clandestine pipeline arranged by the
White House to funnel military supplies to the contras in defiance of
U.S. law.

This was a secret so sensitive that not even the U.S. Congress could
be informed, but it was to be shared with communist China.

In fall 1984, North enlisted Gaston J. Sigur, the NSC's expert on
East Asia, to make the arrangements for a meeting with a communist
Chinese representative, according to Sigur's testimony at North's
1989 trial. "I arranged a luncheon and brought together Colonel North
and this individual from the Chinese embassy" responsible for
military affairs, Sigur testified.

"At lunch, they sat and they discussed the situation in Central
America," Sigur said. "Colonel North raised the issue of the need for
weaponry by the contras, and the possibility of a Chinese sale of
weapons, either to the contras or, as I recall, I think it was more
to countries in the region but clear for the use of the contras."

North described the same meeting in his autobiography, Under Fire. To
avoid coming under suspicion of being a Chinese spy, North said he
first told the FBI that the meeting had been sanctioned by national
security adviser Robert C. McFarlane. Then, North went ahead with the
meeting to gain the help of communist China.

"Back in Washington, I met with a Chinese military officer assigned
to their embassy to encourage their cooperation," North wrote. "We
enjoyed a fine lunch at the exclusive Cosmos Club in downtown
Washington."

North said, in part, the Chinese communists saw the collaboration as a way to develop
"better relations with the United States." Possession of this knowledge – one of the
Reagan administration's most politically dangerous secrets – also put Beijing in position
to leverage U.S. policy in the future.

It was in this climate of cooperation that other secrets, including how to make miniaturized
hydrogen bombs, allegedly reached communist China.

Enter Wen Ho Lee

Wen Ho Lee first came to the FBI's attention in 1982 when he called another scientist
who was under investigation for espionage, according to the Times chronology.
But Lee's contacts with China -- along with trips there by other U.S. nuclear scientists
-- increased in the mid-1980s as relations warmed between Washington and Beijing.

In March 1985, Lee was seen talking with Chinese scientists during a scientific conference
in Hilton Head, S.C. The next year, with approval of Los Alamos, Lee and another scientist
attended a conference in Beijing. In 1988, Wen Ho Lee attended another conference in Beijing.

"On Sept. 25, 1992, a nuclear blast shook China's western desert," the Times wrote.
"From spies and electronic surveillance, American intelligence officials determined that the test
was a breakthrough in China's long quest to match American technology for smaller,
more sophisticated hydrogen bombs."

In September 1992, George H.W. Bush was still president. By that point, the barn door
had been left open for years and the horses apparently were long gone.

In the early years of the Clinton administration, U.S. intelligence experts began to appreciate
the potential magnitude of the Chinese espionage. They came to believe that the Chinese nuclear
breakthrough was most likely achieved through purloined U.S. secrets.

"It's like they were driving a Model T and went around the corner and suddenly had a Corvette,"
said Robert M. Hanson, a Los Alamos intelligence analyst, in early 1995, the Times reported.

A Scandal 'Fix'

The W-88 story, however, did not break until 1999, in the weeks after President Clinton's
impeachment and Senate trial. It came at a time when the Republicans and the national news
media seemed hungry for another "Clinton scandal" fix. To get one, they brushed aside the
timing of the lost secrets.

The espionage story often was paired with allegations of suspicious Chinese money going into
Democratic coffers in 1996 and with images of Vice President Al Gore visiting a Buddhist
temple in California that same year. The picture of Asian-looking monks and Al Gore became
the enduring image of "Chinagate."

Virtually never noted was the logical impossibility of Democrats selling secrets to China in 1996
when China apparently had obtained those secrets almost a decade earlier during a Republican
administration.

Feeding the media's appetite for scandal, Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., released a high-profile
"Chinagate" report on May 25, 1999. The well-received report played down any Reagan-Bush role,
even through the presentation of misleading graphics.

The report's time-line chronology of the scandal covered two full pages [p. 74-75] and packed all
the boxes alleging espionage into the years of the Carter and Clinton administrations. Nothing sinister
appeared in the 12-year swath of the Reagan-Bush years, other than a 1988 test of a neutron bomb built,
the Cox report said, from secrets believed stolen in the "late 1970s," the Carter years.

Only a careful reading of the text inside all the boxes revealed that the principal security breaches under
review occurred between 1984-92, the Reagan-Bush years.

Similar misleading charges came from Republican allies. Larry Klayman's Judicial Watch, for instance,
sent out a solicitation letter in 1999 seeking $5.2 million for a special "Chinagate Task Force" that would
"hold Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the Democratic Party Leadership fully accountable for election fraud,
bribery and possibly treason in connection with the `Chinagate' scandal."

"Chinagate involves actions by President Clinton and Vice President Gore which have put all Americans
at risk from China's nuclear arsenal in exchange for million of dollars in illegal campaign contributions
from the Communist Chinese," Klayman's letter said.

Political Mileage

During the 2000 presidential election campaign, an obscure conservative group got more mileage out
of blaming Clinton and Gore for the espionage. The group aired an ad modeled after Lyndon Johnson's
infamous 1964 commercial that showed a girl picking a daisy before the screen dissolved into a nuclear explosion.

The ad remake in 2000 accused the Clinton-Gore administration of selling vital nuclear secrets to communist
China, in exchange for campaign donations in 1996. The compromised nuclear secrets, the ad stated,
gave communist China "the ability to threaten our homes with long-range nuclear warheads."

While the attacks on Clinton and Gore were high profile, less-noticed evidence continued to build indicating
that the hemorrhage of nuclear secrets actually had occurred on the Reagan-Bush watch.

Last year, federal investigators began translating other documents from the Chinese defector who approached
U.S. officials in Taiwan in 1995. The closer examination indicated that the exposure of nuclear secrets in the
1980s was worse than previously thought.

According to an article in The Washington Post on Oct. 19, 2000, "the documents provided by the defector
show that during the 1980s, Beijing had gathered a large amount of classified information about
U.S. ballistic missiles and reentry vehicles."

Still, the overwhelming public impression remained that the Clinton-Gore administration was responsible.

The Payoff

The ultimate payoff for this twisting of history may have come in November, when possibly millions of
Americans went to the polls determined to throw out the Clinton-Gore crowd for selling nuclear secrets
to communist China. Given all that the public had heard, the sentiment was understandable.

By voting against Al Gore, these voters might have thought they were taking the keys of the Executive Branch
away from the people responsible for Chinese espionage that made Americans more vulnerable to
devastating nuclear attack.

In reality, however, these voters simply were helping return the keys to the political leaders who actually
had overseen the loss of the nuclear secrets in the first place.