-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FEMA Bunkers to Protect Top Government Leaders Mount Weather PERRYVILLE, Va. - While most government employees enjoyed a day off yesterday, Harold Aldrich and his teams on this secluded mountain stood on alert, preparing for the worst. Publicly, officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency say that the Mount Weather facility, about 70 miles west of Washington in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is responsible for monitoring potential natural or man-made disasters and preparing responses for them. The real story, though, is in the details: Mount Weather's most important function is preparing for the worst disasters, those that threaten the top levels of the government. Buried beneath the manicured lawns and turn-of-the-century buildings of the sensitive complex is a 200,000-square-foot bunker designed to protect the president, the nine members of the Supreme Court, and other high-ranking officials during a national crisis, such as a nuclear attack on Washington. Aldrich, who has worked for the government ''in the same capacity'' since 1969, will talk only about his unclassified responsibilities. He oversees hundreds of men and women at Mount Weather (officially known as FEMA's National Emergency Coordination Center) who handle the logistics of the agency's response to disasters, answer telephone banks for affected areas, and notify the proper FEMA officials and federal agencies. ''We really have a dedicated bunch of people, and they really give their all,'' he said one recent morning. ''And I don't hear any griping about having to work on Christmas.'' Although Aldrich won't talk about the top-secret aspects of his job, FEMA spokeswoman Mary Margaret Walker acknowledged that ''there are some security issues'' involving Mount Weather. During the Cold War, it was designated as the primary emergency relocation center for top government officials if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear strike on Washington. It is reportedly one of 96 ''continuity of government'' installations within the Federal Arc, an area within a 300-mile radius of Washington. Most were designed or built during the Eisenhower administration to prevent the Soviets from using a nuclear attack to ''decapitate'' the nation's leadership from the rest of the government and the rest of the country. The Army Corps of Engineers helped build these facilities, from the Federal Reserve bunker at Mount Pony in Culpeper, Va., to the so-called Underground Pentagon within Raven Rock Mountain, located just north of Thurmont, Md., the home of the presidential retreat Camp David. Mount Weather is still surrounded by 10-foot fences with six layers of barbed wire. Helipads and guard towers can be seen from Route 601, a winding mountain road that runs through the above-ground portions of the compound. Guards are heavily armed, and a sign at the front gate warns the curious that the facility is off-limits to the public, by order of the secretary of defense. Unseen to the passersby are the giant metal doors that lead into the bunker, a virtually self-contained facility that can house around 200 people for about a month. The installation has a cafeteria, hospital, sewage-treatment plant, television studio, command center, reservoirs, office buildings, and private apartments. It even has its own crematorium. According to news accounts, Mount Weather would be used to house top federal officials after a nuclear attack. From here, they would direct any retaliation and, presumably, the rebuilding of what's left of the nation. It would also be used if any type of chemical or biological attack or civil unrest threatened the government. ''Due to the nature of the facility, we all have to have a national security clearance, but I'd rather not talk about that,'' said Clyde W. ''Butch'' Stinedruf, a 14-year FEMA employee who is a ''team chief'' for Aldrich in the emergency-warning unit of the operations center. Stinedruf is a former military officer who used to spend his holidays aboard the national airborne command post, a ''flying White House'' in a Boeing 747. He leads one of four teams responsible for notifying officials of potential and actual disasters. He stressed the importance of maintaining operations at facilities such as Mount Weather, even for its unclassified functions, during the holidays. Since adding more unclassified functions to Mount Weather's responsibilities in the early 1990s, FEMA officials have praised the teams there for the job they have done responding to needy citizens. ''We handle all types of emergencies,'' said Stinedruf. ''If you have a tropical depression coming off the coast of Africa, and it looks like it could be developing into something, we start tracking it and notify the hurricane response team.'' Disasters, Stinedruf added, don't take off for the holidays. The Boston Globe, Dec. 26, 1998 Impeached POTUS A Censure May Be "Tricky to Negotiate" Simplify, simplify, simplify TRENT LOTT, the Senate Republican leader, warned Democrats to "calm down" yesterday, saying their talk of censuring President Clinton for his apparent lying might be trickier to negotiate than some assumed. He said a full Senate trial, due to start next week, was needed for a "full presentation" of all testimony. He said: "We need to go forward and do our constitutional duty to hear the evidence." His remarks were aimed at re-assuring hard-line Republicans who are demanding an airing of all the evidence of perjury and obstruction of justice. There are fears that some party moderates will join the Senate's 45 Democrats to push for censure. The trial could be adjourned early by a majority vote, which would mean approval by 51 senators. At the moment, most senators feel that there are not enough votes to remove Mr Clinton from office. This would require two-thirds of the 100-member chamber. Mr Lott said a simple rebuke could raise "all kinds of constitutional problems". He added: "I don't think a magic formula has been found yet." The Republican approach to the trial was being worked out in Washington yesterday by Henry Hyde, chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, and the 12 congressmen he has picked to manage the prosecution. All 13 are lawyers and, to nobody's surprise, disagreement is evident in their approach. George Gekas thinks that there is no need to call witnesses such as Monica Lewinsky. Two prominent Republican senators agree. The Arkansas congressman Asa Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor, thinks as many as 15 witnesses need to be called in a trial that would last a month. He ruled out the idea of simply submitting the independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report, as happened in the House. He said: "You diminish the impact of the evidence if it's simply stipulated instead of given in live fashion." However, agreement seems to be building on the need to keep the trial as brief as possible. Congressman Bob Barr said: "A senator's attention span is probably less than an average juror's, so we'll need to simplify, simplify, simplify." London Telegraph, Dec. 30, 1998 The China Scandal Advanced Technology to the PRC The Red Rat Strikes Back by Charles Smith SOFTWAR Best Of 1998 - If Attorney General Janet Reno really wanted to investigate Bill Clinton then she need look no farther than WORLDNETDAILY. Starting in 1998, Worldnetdaily readers were treated to a series of articles on the documented sale of advanced technology to China for campaign donations. One prime example of the documented China scandal is a series of letters written to President Clinton and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown by million-dollar DNC donor Sanford Robertson. Sanford Robertson is a U.S. businessman and a west coast financial banker. He recently sold his firm, Robertson Stephens Company, to Bank of America for well over a billion dollars. Robertson, when interviewed, could not remember traveling to China with Ron Brown. The connections between Sanford Robertson, the Communist Chinese and the Clinton/Gore campaign are provided in his own written words. Robertson bragged in a 1994 letter to Ron Brown that his influence extended into the PRC leadership by employing the son of a powerful red party member. Robertson also foolishly wrote a November, 1994, "thank you" letter to Bill Clinton. The letter was found in the files of Ron Brown at the U.S. Commerce Department. Robertson thanked Clinton in writing for sending him to China on U.S. tax dollars. "Thank you for autographing the pictures taken in the cabinet room before Ron Brown's delegation to China. The trip seemed to be an economic and diplomatic triumph." Robertson's letter to President Clinton specifically mentions how Secretary Brown skipped over "human rights" during his 1994 talks with the communist Chinese leadership. According to Robertson, Brown went directly to more important issues such as "helping Chrysler, Sprint and others with their joint ventures." Robertson concluded his letter to Clinton with a telling post script, and a personal DNC donation report. Robertson wrote to Clinton "Bob Rubin came to our home on Thursday for a Dianne Feinstein dinner, which raised over $100,000 for her campaign. Bob, of course, turned out the financial community and Silicon Valley." Another prime example of Bill Clinton selling lucrative trade rights in exchange for campaign donations is Bernard Schwartz, the CEO of Loral. Schwartz traveled to Beijing in August 1994, on U.S. tax dollars. Schwartz also donated over a million dollars to the DNC. According to documents discovered in the files of Ron Brown, Schwartz met with Chinese Army Lt. General Shen Roug Jun, to sell U.S. communications satellites and buy Chinese space rockets. The meeting between Loral CEO Schwartz and the PLA General was arranged by President Clinton. The documented evidence shows Loral successfully exported advanced military technology using the Brown connection and the massive amount of money donated to the DNC. Another letter discovered in the previously unreleased files of Ron Brown shows that Loral Defense Systems President, Jerald A. Lindfelt, wrote Brown in March of 1996. Lindfelt sought Brown's help in the export of an advanced radar system called SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) to China's State Science and Technology Commission. SAR radar is employed by U.S. bombers, and special military aircraft such as the advanced JSTARS ground surveillance plane. SAR radar played a major role in detecting and destroying Iraqi tanks during the Gulf war. "We've worked hard trying to resolve these problems with the Department of State, the Department of Commerce and the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA)," Loral's Lindfelt wrote to Brown. "But someone in these organizations always manages to block our participation... Over the years we have found that this type of obstacle often comes from lower levels of management rather than by people willing to look at the bigger picture. Could you help us by identifying someone in the Commerce Department high enough in the organization to help us resolve these issues and open this marketplace..." Of course, Lindfelt knew he was writing to someone "high enough" in the Commerce Department who could appreciate Loral's plight. Brown was well aware that Schwartz had donated over a million dollars to Bill Clinton - the same man that would sign any waivers. President Clinton left a paper trail a mile wide between himself and his Chinese benefactors. Money paid to U.S. and Chinese agents went directly into Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign. In exchange, Clinton used his pen to sign waiver after waiver, circumventing Congress and the law, to export satellites, super computers, radars, secure communications, and bombing navigation equipment to China. In fact, according to the GAO, Clinton personally authorized a secure communications system be sold directly to the Chinese Air Force. Motorola obtained a waiver from Bill Clinton to sell a secure communications system to the Chinese police. Motorola obtained that waiver over the objections of State Department diplomats who noted that the Chinese police beat, tortured and killed dissidents as a matter of PRC state policy. A policy of oppression that continues today. In February 1995, Motorola was impatient with the delay over human rights and their proposed sale to red China. Motorola's CEO wrote Ron Brown an angry letter detailing his objections. According to Tooker, Brown needed to "Delegate to the export control officer appropriate authority for reviewing certain classes of controls, e.g., encryption... Export controls administered by the State Department at the behest of the National Security Agency (NSA) should NOT be referred for endless delay to the human rights bureau and myriad others in State." In July 1995, Motorola got the waiver. Clinton overrode the objections of his diplomats and okayed the export with his signature. In response, the CEO of Motorola, Gary Tooker, wrote a personal note to Ron Brown, expressing his gratitude. "Dear RON," wrote Tooker to Brown. "I am writing to thank you and some key members of the Commerce Department for your assistance in obtaining the Presidential waiver for encryption export sales to China." Of course, Ms. Reno is aware of all this. She participated in the China encryption scandal. She approved of President Clinton's use of executive fiat to transfer power to the Brown dominated Commerce Department. Ms. Reno appointed her trusted Assistant Attorney General Webster Hubbell to over-see a secret National Security Agency (NSA) encryption chip project in 1993. Hubbell attended at least one meeting at NSA Headquarters in May 1993, along with Vince Foster and Benard Nussbaum. Documents from Hubbell's personal schedule for 1993 show that the Whitewater figure met multiple times at the White House on a top secret computer chip project called CLIPPER. Hubbell met with the then National Security Council (NSC) advisor George Tenet. Tenet is currently the Director of the CIA. Hubbell resigned from the Justice Department in April of 1994. In late June 1994, Lippo boss James Riady met with John Huang and Bill Clinton during five days of White House visits. Early the next week, a Lippo unit paid Hubbell about $100,000. In December 1994, Hubbell pled guilty to several felony charges relating to illegal billing in the Whitewater affair. Webb Hubbell also cited his Fifth Amendment rights to not testify before the Senate Congressional hearings. Reno, Hubbell, Huang, and the communist Chinese Generals all shared a common interest in U.S. secure military communication systems. Huang, also a Lippo paid agent, was so interested he sought secret information. Huang was briefed 37 times on satellite encrypted communications by the CIA. Huang has also taken the Fifth. Ms. Reno has been heavily involved in the making of export policy of interest to China for quite some time. One 1996 CIA report noted that Ms. Reno wanted to monitor all American domestic computer communications such as email, using a technique to secretly intercept and decode any messages. According to the CIA Director, the government would mandate all computers be equipped with a special "back-door" system called "key recovery". Federal agents would use a secret "key" for a back door to secretly read any computer communication. Prime targets for government monitoring would be foreign governments, banks, corporations, and individuals targeted by the Clinton administration. The keys were to be held by "key recovery agents" licensed by the Commerce Department. Janet Reno wanted to wire a bug into your home, your bank account, your Congressman and your life. Janet Reno, according to Deutch, proposed an all out Federal take-over of the computer industry. The Justice Department, proposed "legislation that would ... ban the import and domestic manufacture, sale or distribution of encryption that does not have key recovery." The Chinese Generals were keenly aware of the clumsy attempt to bug U.S. equipment they purchased. The red Generals were privy to all the inner secrets through their White House contacts. The NSA back doors and other bugs secretly stashed in satellites by U.S. intelligence agencies have been discovered, disabled or circumvented by the Chinese Army spy masters. America lost the first Information War. The attempt to bug Beijing failed. Janet Reno will never investigate this matter because she is hip deep in the China scandal. Reno appointed the convicted former partner of Hillary Clinton as her trusted Deputy in the Department of Justice. Attorney General Reno continues to ignore the penetration of Chinese agents into the White House. Reno refuses to see any evidence because it links her to the greatest spy story of the 20th Century. Softwar Newsletter, Dec. 29, 1998 Russian Follies $1 Billion Missing from Central Bank? So much money to keep track of Russia's interior ministry said yesterday it was widening its investigation into alleged wrongdoing at the central bank and suggested more than $1bn could have gone missing. Ministry officials said they were trawling through central bank records from the past six years and were also examining finance ministry accounts. The investigation now includes experts from the prosecutor general's office as well as the FSB, successor to the KGB. Sergei Stepashin, interior minister, said: "We have been picking through the central bank's activities since 1992. We are talking about enormous losses." The interior ministry launched its investigation into misuse of funds at the central bank soon after Russia's financial crisis broke on August 17, when the government devalued the rouble and defaulted on its domestic debt. The Auditing Chamber, the government's financial watchdog, questioned how the central bank had used the $4.8bn loan it received from the International Monetary Fund in July as part of a last-ditch attempt to save the rouble. There were also allegations that the central bank had given soft credits to several politically influential commercial banks, which were facing big repayments on hard currency loans. Sergei Dubinin, head of the central bank at the time of the August crisis, yesterday fiercely rejected suggestions he had been involved in any wrongdoing. He added that it was difficult to fight with "phantoms" who aired vague allegations rather than specific charges. Mr Dubinin said the bank had been subject to emotional attacks, tarnishing its reputation and threatening its independence. "If we want to have a weak currency, we should destroy the independent central bank, as has been done in his own time by the president of Belarus," he said. Other former government officials have suggested the investigation is politically motivated and is designed to blacken names, not to achieve prosecutions. Previous audits of central bank and finance ministry activities have not uncovered evidence of fraud. The central bank has always said that it spent the IMF money on the purposes for which it was intended. Up to $3.8bn was spent on the failed defence of the rouble, while the remaining $1bn was used to retire a slab of government debt. But central bank staff have at times come under enormous pressure from Russia's aggressive financial institutions to grant them special favours. Unidentified gunmen have twice fired on Mr Dubinin's apartment. The Financial Times, Dec. 29, 1998 Covert Operations Spook Company's Activities Probed Vector Microwave Research Corp. The federal agents who burst into the Alexandria office of Vector Microwave Research Corp. one morning late last year got right to the point. "This is a court-authorized search," an agent announced. "Stand up, don't turn off your computers. We'll take care of that." The raid, which netted U.S. Customs Service and Navy investigators boxes of records and computer disks, came as a shock to a firm that made a business of eluding attention. For years, Vector had performed secret tasks for the CIA and the U.S. military, using guile, experience and connections, including those of its president, retired Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Vector was a leading entrepreneur in a classified or "black" specialty with high stakes and few rules: covertly acquiring foreign missiles, radar, artillery and other weapons for U.S. intelligence agencies. Its work was seen as crucial by some U.S. officials who study innovations in foreign weaponry as part of efforts to protect Americans from the global spread of ballistic missiles and other arms. But the rise and fall of Vector illustrates the awkward bargain that can result when agencies such as the CIA and the DIA privatize covert operations. When Vector went out of business earlier this year, it left a trail of mysterious dealings, some that may have run counter to U.S. policy, according to government officials, former Vector employees and the firm's competitors. Today, investigators are trying to determine at whose behest the firm bid for a batch of North Korean missiles. Also unresolved is whether the firm, trying to sweeten a deal for the purchase of Chinese missiles, provided China sensitive technical specifications on the U.S. Stinger antiaircraft missile. So complex was the web of connections surrounding Vector that its founder, Donald Mayes, became a business partner with China's state-owned missile manufacturer while secretly buying Chinese weapons for the U.S. government. Government officials admit they may never know the scope of Vector's activities. "Where's the reality?" said a U.S. official who has pursued Vector for years. "We'll never untangle some of this." No charges have been brought in the federal inquiry, and attorneys for Vector and its executives deny wrongdoing. The agents who led the Nov. 20, 1997, raid are looking into a number of Vector projects, as well as a private side deal in which Mayes sold Russian helicopters to the Mexican navy. Guidelines for Bribes The ongoing investigation had not been made public previously, and, besides scant references in the business press, Vector itself has hardly been mentioned in print. The firm quietly went out of business recently after spinning off parts of the company to competitors. Perroots, 65, did not respond to messages left at his Virginia home. Mayes, 60, who is living in Mexico, responded through his Washington attorney, Thomas Green. "It's hard for me to get into Mr. Mayes' activities, but they were appropriate and didn't violate any laws," Green said. Green also read a statement issued by Mayes, which said: "Anything we've done for the U.S. government was completely approved." Vector's allies said any prosecution would fail because of Vector's intelligence ties. Executives of Vector and its competitors in the "foreign materiel acquisition" business, such as BDM International of McLean and Electronic Warfare Associates of Dulles, stride the marble halls of defense ministries from Moscow to Minsk to Beijing competing for weaponry on secret CIA and DIA wish lists. Because they can deny any direct tie to the U.S. government, they can buy from people who wouldn't deal with Washington, or require deniability to do so. The contractors, in turn, are held to secrecy by the U.S. government. Operating largely on their own in this shadowy world, people who scour the globe for arms on the government's behalf acknowledge that they could face legal trouble if U.S. investigators questioned them about their methods. U.S. officials say people who bribe foreign officials while on authorized U.S. government assignment won't be prosecuted under statutes that prohibit such corrupt practices. But people who bribe seeking foreign arms "on speculation" � in the hopes of finding a government buyer � may be in legal jeopardy, officials said. "If you say what you do, you can go to jail" because of U.S. anti-bribery laws, said a Vector competitor, who acknowledged that people in his industry commonly retain middlemen to bribe foreign officials. "The U.S. is paying us to go to a foreign country and find somebody to do an illegal thing for us. ... Do you want a Boy Scout doing it, or somebody who can get the job done to save U.S. lives?" 'Name and Access' Mayes, who was described by an employee as "one of the most cunning individuals I've ever met," learned the arms acquisition trade at a cluster of firms in Virginia's Tidewater area in the 1970s. He founded Vector in 1984, and it was soon acquiring missiles, electronics and ships from China, France and elsewhere. Many of Vector's 150 employees tested the materiel at a California Navy base, or designed classified computer networks for the government. Other employees worked on purely commercial projects, such as a plan to bury waste from South Korean nuclear reactors in the Mongolian desert, and a plan to build a Russian casino � until Moscow mobsters seized their slot machines. In 1989 Mayes hired retiring Air Force Lt. Gen. Perroots, who had spent three years as DIA director. A favorite of former CIA director William J. Casey, Perroots had superb intelligence connections. "Mayes told people, 'We got Len for his name and access,' " a former Vector executive said. "Len did what he was told" by Mayes, who often left Perroots in the dark, former employees said. Several people who worked at Vector's headquarters on South Washington Street in Alexandria said freewheeling foreign missions brought out a swagger in Mayes, who cultivated a disdain for law enforcement officials who wanted to question him about his activities. They said the hulking 6-foot-4 Oklahoman boasted that federal agents were too stupid to nail him. "He bragged about how his phone was tapped, and he was outsmarting them, and they'd never get him," a Vector consultant said of Mayes. Green, Mayes' lawyer, denied Mayes ever said that. "Mayes compartmented everything from his own employees," a firm official said. "We called him 'prince of darkness.' He'd go overseas on a trip, and no one would know what he was doing." His wife, a former CIA employee, "would call and say, 'Where's Don?' " Former Vector associates said the firm performed a variety of "little tasks" for the government, nearly all of them secret. The company maintained contact with people the government wanted to keep tabs on, including a businessman from Bahrain with ties in Iran, a former company executive said. U.S. officials unsuccessfully used Mayes to try to lure the man to this country in connection with a Customs investigation, the former executive said. Government officials also used Vector to pry information from an Iraqi official with whom it had grown close: the flamboyant, Rolls Royce-driving Iraqi Brig. Gen. Nabil Said, military attache� at Baghdad's embassy here in the years before the Persian Gulf War. Vector also informed intelligence officials about its dealings with Moscow. In 1990, while trying to buy a supersonic Soviet antiship missile, officials of the firm met a Soviet general who was defense attache� at the embassy in Washington. The attache�, Grigoriy Yakovlev, ended up working with Vector on numerous deals. "The relationship was prejudged [by U.S. officials] and guidance was provided" by U.S. agencies, said Patrick Sweet, who worked with Vector. What guidance did U.S. officials give? "Our policy is not to get into that," Sweet replied. Yakovlev later became a paid Vector deal-spotter in Moscow. In addition, U.S. officials asked traveling Vector executives to make specific inquiries of Russian space officials about production methods on new electronic and optical technologies, a former company executive said. Vector's practices have earned some enemies within the U.S. government. In the late 1980s, naval intelligence officials accused the firm of overcharging for Chinese missiles and delivering Chinese missile electronics that were different from what the firm had promised. The Navy refused to pay the firm's $390,000 fee, but after Vector's sustained lobbying, Navy officials ultimately paid in full, industry executives said. In 1993 Navy officials launched a criminal probe of the firm for alleged fraud, which was later dropped. Mayes wrote an eight-page, single-spaced letter to Congress complaining that Navy intelligence was out to destroy Vector by leaking its proprietary proposals to competitors in "a war of innuendo, investigations and outright abuse." The resentment flared again last year, when Perroots persuaded the Pentagon inspector general to investigate Perroots's old agency, the DIA, for allegedly giving a competitor details of Vector's plan to acquire Russian missiles. Vector's allies say the current probe of Vector was engineered by enemies of the firm in DIA and Customs, which has simmered at the unregulated importing of arms into this country by firms such as Vector. DIA and Customs declined comment. Customs is investigating Mayes for a private deal that apparently had no links to the government. Mayes allegedly lacked a State Department license when his employees repaired Russian helicopters for the Mexican Navy and trained its pilots to fly them. Mayes sold the Mi-8 copters to the Mexicans for search-and-rescue work. While the copters lacked military equipment, Mayes' associates allegedly advised Mexico on how to outfit them with guns, an industry executive said. Maintaining or upgrading aircraft without a license could violate U.S. arms exports law. "What the Mexican government does with the copters is its business," said Green, Mayes' lawyer. North Korean Missiles Another investigation by Customs agents has examined Vector's efforts to acquire a North Korean missile. Vector officials said they had U.S. approval for a deal, according to industry executives and the National Security News Service, an independent investigative group that conducted research on Vector. U.S. officials asked The Washington Post not to identify the type of missile to avoid jeopardizing future covert operations. Industry executives familiar with Vector's work said Perroots arranged for a South Korean consultant to approach a Seoul company to broker a $33 million deal to buy four missiles and a launcher from Pyongyang. They said Vector also had a U.S. consultant pay a Venezuelan military official $50,000 for a phony "end-user certificate," a document used in import-export work to indicate an item's destination. In this case, the North Koreans were meant to think the missiles were headed to Pakistan and then Venezuela. Vector never got the missiles. Customs has reviewed the indirect dealings between Vector and North Korean officials, which took place in Beijing, since any financial transactions with North Korea would be a violation of U.S. laws banning commercial ties to the country. Agents are also looking into whether Vector had approval to seek the missiles, since some U.S. agencies had said such a mission could be illegal, in part because it would threaten weapons agreements to which the United States is a signatory. A U.S. government official said that Vector's efforts were "amateurish," and that it stumbled into the deal without U.S. authorization. "I thought we were doing everything by the book," said a former Vector executive. "DIA said they needed it." Perhaps the most baffling and sensitive area of Vector's enterprise has been in China, which also has sparked the Customs Service's interest. Chiefly, investigators are exploring whether, in efforts to secure Chinese missiles in about 1991, Mayes gave Chinese engineers technical advice that could help them pirate the design of the U.S. Stinger antiaircraft missile. Through his attorney, Mayes denied giving China any data; the lawyer, Green, said "it's a canard circulating for several years." Former Vector officials said that when Beijing's officials tried to barter sensitive U.S. data from Mayes as a condition for deals, he play-acted, disclosing material that already was public. Industry officials said the government at times allows contractors to give away such "trading material." Whatever his tactics, sources said, Mayes scored many acquisition successes in China, at times by telling the Chinese that the weapons were destined not for this country but for Peru. He obtained the C-801 antiship missile for the CIA around 1987, when Iran was threatening to fire those weapons at U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. He also landed the similar C-601 missile in 1991 for $9.9 million, according to industry executives and an internal company report. Over the same period, Mayes had developed close ties to China Precision Machinery Import & Export Corp. (CPMIEC), Beijing's missile builder. A Vector affiliate, Mayes & Co., became CPMIEC's official, global marketer of a number of its missiles, including the HN-5A, a crude forerunner of the shoulder-fired Stinger. For the Chinese, Mayes' traceable ties to U.S. intelligence made him an odd choice of a partner. In any case, piles of CPMIEC promotional materials were stacked inside Vector's offices, and Mayes tried to sell CPMIEC arms to Saudi Arabia and other nations. At the same time, Mayes was informing U.S. intelligence about China's missile sales, industry officials said. But now investigators are asking whether Mayes, to ingratiate himself with the Chinese, helped them figure out how to place the Stinger's electronics in the nose cone of China's primitive shoulder-fired missile. An industry executive said that around 1991 Mayes boasted that, with the CIA's approval, he gave the Chinese some of the Stinger's technical specifications to deepen his relationship with them. The agency declined comment, but U.S. officials expressed doubt that Mayes had CIA approval to do so. A joint promotional brochure of CPMIEC and Mayes & Co., aimed at marketing China's HN-5As, said the Chinese agency "utilizes the research, design, marketing and tactical capabilities of Mayes & Co. to evaluate and improve" Chinese missile designs. "Mayes & Co. is a small group of highly specialized engineers and technicians that have a unique understanding of the problems associated with electronic and missile systems." The Chinese appear to have incorporated Stinger technology in a new missile that entered Chinese military service in 1996, called the QW-1 Vanguard, the CIA told a Senate committee two years ago. But it is impossible to know where the Chinese got the technology because China is thought to have secured some of the 1,000 or so Stingers the CIA gave Afghan rebels to repel Soviet troops in the 1980s. The Pentagon is now concerned the Vanguard could be fired at U.S. aircraft. CPMIEC, which is notorious for violating global agreements by distributing Chinese missiles around the world, has sold Vanguards to Iran and Pakistan. The Chinese Agent U.S. aviation officials are "increasingly concerned" for the traveling public's safety because of the proliferation of such mobile antiaircraft missiles, said a 1994 State Department report. It noted that rebel militias around the world have shot down 25 commercial airliners using these missiles, killing 536 people. Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this story, though, is the role played by a Chinese military intelligence agent stationed at Beijing's embassy here in the 1980s. The FBI spotted Hou Desheng early on as a bumbler; there was his odd talkativeness, for example. He complained of his difficulty surviving on the $75 a month he was paid as assistant military attache�, said a reporter who used to take him to lunch. Hou showed up weekly at Vector's offices mounting clumsy efforts to learn classified secrets about a Navy electronics program it worked on, a Vector official said. U.S. agents urged Vector to play along, and the firm once left a sensitive-looking file for him, so he would become even more reckless and blunder into a trap, the official said. In 1987 Hou was arrested for espionage in a Washington restaurant after he received what he thought were classified National Security Agency documents from an FBI agent posing as a U.S. traitor. Days later the U.S. government expelled Hou as a spy. Soon after, working out of an office in a Beijing hotel, Hou became Mayes & Co.'s representative in Beijing. He helped Mayes line up the missile deals he swung with China's military, industry executives said. Hou "was a conduit to other people" and remained a Chinese government employee while working for Mayes, a former Vector executive said. Did Mayes and Vector employ a Chinese spy as part of a U.S. intelligence operation? "I can't get into that," he replied. Green, Mayes' lawyer, declined comment on Hou. "It's too sensitive," he said. The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 1998 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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