CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSE

May 26, 1999
		House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) wants more security at U.S. laboratories -- but supports continued engagement with China. Four members of Congress then debate America's relationship with China and what should be done to better secure U.S. secrets.

Full coverage of the investigation into Chinese Espionage May 25, 1999: Chairman Cox and Rep. Dicks on their findings May 25, 1999: Washington responds to the committee's findings May 25, 1999: Cox Committee presents findings -- In RealAudio April 30, 1999: Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on possible espionage March 9, 1999: Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) blames lax security March 9, 1999: Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji denies China involvement April 8, 1999: Security procedures at Los Alamos National Laboratories   Los Alamos National Laboratory Chinese Embassy in the United States Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-CA) Committee Ranking Democrat Norm Dicks (WA) The U.S. Department of Energy	JIM LEHRER: Now, four more Congressional opinions on what should be done about the China allegations. They come from Republicans Dana Rohrbacher of California and Porter Goss of Florida, and Democrats John Spratt of South Carolina and Ellen Tauscher of California. Congressman Goss, you were on the Select Committee, you're also chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Do you agree with Speaker Hastert that China is not the main culprit in all of this? REP. PORTER GOSS, (R) Florida: Well, I think that China was spying as many countries do. So they are complicit, and they are continuing to try their espionage and they are continuing to try and pedal influence illegal in this country. But the fact of the matter is our defenses that were let down because we have a primary responsibility to protect our own most important secrets, weapon labs and our nuclear capabilities. We talk about the safety of the children. I can't think of a more applicable place to look than that for the future generations. And obviously, there were serious lapses and corrections are the first thing that need to be taken care of and I think the Speaker is dead on on that. JIM LEHRER: So you think what should be done about this is mostly something that should be done internally within the U.S. Government, not externally in our relations with China? REP. PORTER GOSS: Well, I think that the way we conduct our external relations with China is extremely important. And I think that the intelligence role in import-export policies is a factor that needs to be pursued. But I believe the major steps need to be taken domestically in the United States with regard to how we go about our counterintelligence, not only with Department of Energy, but in the other dozen or so agencies involved in the intelligence community that have these secrets and in dealing with the problem of law enforcement and intelligence resources who are tasked against those who are trying to steal our secrets. We obviously have not done as well as we should. There are lots of leftovers out of this report to track down. We've got several espionage cases DOJ is working on right now. There are people asking the question properly, what did the Chinese get for their hundreds of thousands of dollars of political influence money? What were they trying to get? Those are the kinds of things I think we need to know more about and then the remaining questions about Congressional oversight. Were we getting the same kind of candid information out of the administration on this subject as we deserved to have on the Hill? Or were there some problems? And there are some inconsistencies that need to be sorted out there so that our oversight does work so that we can be sure when we tell the American people that things are under control that we know what we're talking about. JIM LEHRER: Now, Congressman Spratt, you were also on the Select Committee. If you had to cite one thing that you think would be the most important thing that should be done as a result of this report, what would it be? REP. JOHN SPRATT, (D) South Carolina: We need a counterintelligence program that works. I've been involved with the DOE programs and with the labs for a long time. And every time I went to the labs back in the late 80's, early 90's, I came away with the impression they had a counterintelligence program. I thought they had one. Clearly, they had one with serious lapses in it. We have a bill - we'll be offering it as an amendment to the defense authorization bill on the floor when it comes up soon, which will codify the creation of this office and make sure the director of it is wired directly into the Secretary of Energy and then wired into each of the labs at the highest levels of the lab. But, in addition to that, if this is just a staff function, it won't be sufficient. The notion of security needs to be implicated in the people who work with the most secure things in the whole labs, the weapons designs. There needs to be a program - they have to convince them that this is not the responsibility of counterintelligence alone, it's their responsibility to enforce, carry out and make this program work.
	A new system of security.
	JIM LEHRER: What did your investigation show as to why that wasn't already inculcated into the system? REP. JOHN SPRATT: Well, if you look at the organizational chart of the nuclear weapons complex, start with the President, the National Security Council, you move through the Secretary of Energy and from him to the Assistant Secretary for the defense programs and from them say to a field office like Albuquerque and then to the national labs, which are run by the University of California - it's what we call a go-co. That attenuation, I think, of authority and communication has something to do with the fact that when orders are issued they don't get carried out and they were left to be carried out by superiors without follow through, obviously. JIM LEHRER: Now, Congresswoman Tauscher, you have a specific suggestion on counterintelligence. Tell us about that. REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER, (D) California: Well, I think it's very important that we understand that we had a long-term systemic failure over at least three decades and a lack of coordination and frankly there's plenty of people to blame. And I believe that we should stay away from the blame game and get right to the issues of making sure that we secure our secrets. We need to know that we have someone responsible and Secretary Richardson has stepped up to that. And he's the man that's going to protect our secrets. We've doubled the budget for counterintelligence. But we need coordination all through the intelligence agencies, the lab directors, and actually at the labs. I have a district in California that I represent that has two national labs in it. And they've done a lot for counterintelligence work but frankly we need to have the entire community understand that there is a heightened as soon as of this. But I'm also concerned, frankly, about the issues of the Asian-American employees at the labs that are good Americans and patriotic Americans and I'm concerned that they're going to get scapegoated because of this issue and I hope that that doesn't happen in the short term. JIM LEHRER: But didn't -- don't you have a specific proposal for a counterintelligence czar of some kind in the Energy Department? REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER: Well, there are lots of people talking about that. I believe it's very important that we have real accountability and responsibility. It's clear that we had a systemic failure and lots of people running around making cases and trying to prosecute but no one standing there very seriously considering about who is protecting our secrets over many, many years and many administrations. And I think that we need to have an Energy Department counterintelligence czar that has been proposed to Secretary Richardson that reports directly to him so that the man in charge or woman in charge of the Department of Energy protects our secrets first an foremost whether the FBI can make a case or the Department of Justice chooses to indict and that we have a series of laws that the Congress -- because we're part of this failure. It's not clear that we over time have stayed relevant over time with the fact that no one was going to walk out of the front door of a lab with a three-ring binder that said secrets on it. We're in a cyber world. We need to know that we can protect everything with the high level of security through technology and those are the kinds of things that I think the Congress needs to look at short term.
	U.S.-China Business Relationships
	JIM LEHRER: Now, Congressman Rohrbacher, this whole investigation got started because you went to then Speaker Gingrich and said you had some information, et cetera, and that got this thing started. Now, the investigation is over. What do you think should be done about it? REP. DANA ROHRABACHER, (R) California: Well, first and foremost the charges I made early on that American companies were engaged in upgrading the capabilities and reliability of Chinese rockets has been verified. So, first, let me say that. A lot of people were giving me flak for making that kind of charge. But first and foremost we've got to quit treating Communist China as if it's our friend. This strategy has been bending over backwards trying to pretend that Communist China is a strategic partner - that's the words they insist on using -- of the United States. This regime is the worst human rights abuser in the world, they're committing genocide in Tibet. Only a few American billionaires are making a profit and everybody's afraid to make them angry. And here we are, we've bent over backwards pretending they're our friends and it's put our country in jeopardy because they've been acting like our enemies. They've been stealing our weapons secret and every child in this country is now going to grow up in a world where this monstrous regime, this totalitarian regime who hates the United States will now have American technology aimed at us and could incinerate us with our own technology. This is a travesty. JIM LEHRER: I take it, then, you disagree with your Speaker? REP. DANA ROHRABACHER: Well, I think the Speaker -- yes, I do disagree with the Speaker. And I think that it's time we have got to recognize Communist China as our enemy. Now that the damage is done the first thing we have to do is have a missile defense system which, again, this President has done everything he could do to oppose and to stand in the way and put roadblocks in the way of. We need a missile defense system right away at least to protect us against these Chinese missiles that are going to be coming up in the next few years. JIM LEHRER: So what does that mean -- we should see China as our enemy? REP. DANA ROHRABACHER: It means that we have got to quit giving preferential trade status to Communist China so that it ends up with a $50 billion surplus, and which they use that hard currency surplus to modernize their own weapons. Of course, they're modernizing their missiles and weapons on technology that they stole from us. That's the first thing it means. Second of all, we've got to make sure that we are standing with our allies like in the Philippines, where the Chinese are using their expansionist and belligerent policies to try to steal the Sprattly Islands from the Philippines, as well as in different areas of the world; we've got to let these tyrants know that we are as tough as they are, or they're going to put us in jeopardy. They think we're fools for letting our labs be open to their scientists and they're right. We are being fools.
	Failure from Within.
	REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER: I have to disagree with my colleague very strongly. I mean, first and foremost, our friends are spying on us. We certainly think that people that are opposed to the United States are spying on us but this was our problem. This was our failure to not protect our secrets. And we can't mix apples and oranges here. It's in our national interest to engage with Chinese. They're a major trading partner for us potentially. And what we can't do is allow some simple isolationist tendencies to creep in here. We have got an agenda. REP. DANA ROHRABACHER: This isn't isolationism. REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER: Well, we have an agenda that we have to stay on top of. We have got to secure our secrets, we have got to make sure that we have strong counterintelligence, that we have communication between the different intelligence agencies and that we're being smart about protecting our secrets. The issue about trading with China is a different issue. And we should talk about that in a trade context about our best interests, not about trying to demagogue somebody that did what lots of people are doing out there, trying to get our secrets, because we're the goody bag of the world. REP. DANA ROHRABACHER: It's not bad for the British or some democratic society to get their hands on our weapons of mass destruction technology. When a government like Communist China or Nazi Germany or some other totalitarian power gets ahold of these weapons, it's means something. We are now in jeopardy because we've been acting foolish. JIM LEHRER: Let me ask Congressman Goss, based on your knowledge from inside the House Intelligence Committee, is what China was doing, is it what everybody is doing, is the Speaker right, that our "friends" are also trying to steal our secrets along with Russia and everybody else? REP. PORTER GOSS: I think the Chinese have been making an extraordinary effort and I think they are somebody we're not sure whether we are going to be their friend or enemies down the road. And I think, therefore, we have to have an extra measure of caution as we deal with them. I think that it is very clear that Chinese are inquisitive. They are ubiquitous. Their form of intelligence espionage is very much different than our organized form of intelligence. I think that basically if they can take advantage of us, they will take advantage of us and they have proven that they will. I believe now that the world is a more dangerous place and we're a little less safe in that world. We've lost some of our competitive edge. I have confidence that we can regain that but I also feel that if we let down our defenses and nobody was there, it wouldn't have mattered. Well, we let down our defense and somebody was there and they were the Chinese. I think that is extra dangerous and something that needs to be brought to everybody's attention.
	Continued Engagement?
	JIM LEHRER: Extra dangerous because they're our enemies, Congressman Goss? REP. PORTER GOSS: Extra dangerous because we dent know yet where they're going. They're a big country. They've got a lot of people, they've got a huge potential in the next century. And I hope they're going to be our friends. But, if they're not, I sure don't want to arm them as our enemy. JIM LEHRER: Congressman Spratt, where do you come down on this? REP. JOHN SPRATT: Well, let me ad an irony to what Mr. Rohrbacher has said. If we had ended our investigation, as we nearly did, mainly with its investigation into Hughes and O'Reilly and the technology that was transferred in the way of rocket and missile technology, it would have been taken seriously, it would have been an earnest white paper with some recommendations that would have been implemented as to export controls. But the basic finding is that most of what the Chinese have gained in the way of the accident investigations at Loral and Hughes conducted, goes to the reliability of the missiles, quality control, diagnostics after a failure. We did not find any significant gain in pay load, range or accuracy of those systems. REP. PORTER GOSS: But there is, John. I think you'll agree an additional danger is the Chinese have customers of their own. And we are very concerned about other rogue countries we know they're doing business with. We know, frankly, they're cheating on some of the agreements and arrangements they've promised us. And we've know that some of that material is going to countries that we don't want to have that material. That creates the danger on a wider range. It isn't just Taiwan. It's other rogue states and other hot spots in the world where we are very concerned. I think that is a very important fact, and one that adds an extra dimension of danger. REP. DANA ROHRABACHER: And perhaps something that the public should also understand is that most of us in Congress were totally unaware of this massive Chinese spy effort that was going on, and in fact I don't know if anybody in Congress was fully aware of it. The President was briefed and, yes, this happened as long ago as during the Reagan years, actually even before the Reagan years. But Reagan and Carter and Nixon and George Bush didn't know about it. This administration has known about this for years, kept it from Congress, kept it from the American people in order to protect what I consider to be a nonsensical policy, which is treating the Communist Chinese like our friends and praying that they will become our friends. It's like hug a Nazi and make a liberal. JIM LEHRER: Congresswoman Tauscher, let her respond to that. Do you feel there's some special responsibility here, special blame that should go to the Clinton administration? REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER: Well, I think that they put themselves in great jeopardy to move forward and put the President's Directive 61 out there and to begin this. I mean, let's face it -- JIM LEHRER: What is that? I'm sorry. REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER: Presidential Directive 61, which included a number of recommendations and asked for a number of reports including one from the CIA to assess exactly what happened. You know, I think to turn a blind eye to 30 years of systemic failure on our part to understand in the post Cold War environment what was going to happen and who the new players on the field were and the fact we've moved into a cyber world where are the secrets aren't kept in three-ring binders and there's a new way to protect then, and maybe we better understand what it is, and coordination between the FBI and the Department of Justice about whose computers are they, and can we check them, it was a systemic failure. It was our fault. We can't blame anybody else. And to suggest we should isolate China and not have them join the World Trade Organization, which is the main opportunity, and mainstream them is I think just not good policy for us. JIM LEHRER: All right. Congresswoman, gentlemen, thank you all very much.

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