-Caveat Lector-
Who wants to bet this 'probe' will go nowhere?
flw
It has already gone nowhere. This story is the basis for the " Lewinsky/Clinton " scandal, and its
aftermath, the attempt to remove Clinton from office.
Ellements on the Right could not tolerate business as usual if it meant selling dangerous weapons to
the Communists in China. The selling of weapons is better than OK usually, but these systems allowed China to reach US shores with missiles for the VERY FIRST TIME.
These were in fact acts of treason perpetrated by the usual suspects... Capitalist Corporations, and
their henchmen the bribed politicians.
Today we are nuclear targets on the west coast.
Joshua2
washingtonpost.com<A HREF="">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions 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, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Firms Accused of Giving Space Technology to China
State Department Charges That U.S. Companies Made Illegal Transfers
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 1, 2003; Page A07
The State Department has charged that two of the country's largest
aerospace companies, Hughes Electronics Corp. and Boeing Satellite Systems
Inc., illegally transferred sensitive U.S. space technology to China in the
1990s that could have helped Beijing's military develop intercontinental
missiles.
If a federal administrative judge and, later, a top State Department
official agree with the allegations in a 32-page State Department "charging
letter" filed without public notice last Thursday, the companies could be
fined as much as $60 million and barred for three years from selling
controlled technologies overseas, a penalty that could particularly hurt
Boeing.
The companies have strenuously denied wrongdoing in the case, which began
with a series of failed space launches in China starting in 1995. Hughes
officials are alleged to have given Chinese experts detailed information
about rocketry to help China's space program figure out why its rockets
were failing soon after launch.
The Hughes Electronics space launch division, which committed the supposed
improprieties, was purchased by Boeing in 2000 for $3.7 billion. The two
corporate bodies charged by the State Department last week are the Hughes
parent company and the division of Boeing that gobbled up the former Hughes
space launch unit.
This type of administrative charge is extraordinarily rare, U.S. officials
said. The filing reflects officials' anger that the two firms have
aggressively battled the charges and resisted admitting what they did in
China was wrong, they added.
"We don't believe we've done anything wrong," said Hughes Electronics
spokesman Robert Marsocci. "We're in negotiations with the State
Department, and we'll be reviewing our options."
A Boeing spokesman, Dan Beck, said the company would not comment.
The Justice Department spent years on a criminal investigation of those
companies and a third, Loral Space & Communications Ltd., involved in
similar activity in China. But several months ago, federal prosecutors
informed the firms that they would not file criminal charges.
Last January, Loral agreed to pay a $14 million fine and to spend $6
million on internal reforms to stop overseas technology transfers. The
government did not file the kind of administrative charges against Loral
that it filed last week against Hughes and Boeing.
The charging document, signed by William J. Lowell, director of the State
Department's office of defense trade controls, said Hughes and Boeing
committed 123 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the
International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
Government officials praised Loral for facing up to its past improprieties
and imposing corporate guidelines to prevent a recurrence. Officials
offered no such praise for Boeing and Hughes.
"The department has had several rounds of discussion with Hughes and Boeing
to explore a resolution similar to the one with Loral," said State
Department spokesman Jay Greer. "We can note that unlike Loral, Hughes and
Boeing have both failed to recognize the seriousness of the violations and
have been unprepared to take steps to resolve the matter, or to ensure no
recurrence of violations in the future."
Hughes and Boeing for years have insisted the State Department is wrong to
declare it improper for them to have had discussions with Chinese officials
about the space launch failures. The firms point out that during the
mid-1990s, their operations in China were covered by Commerce Department
regulations that were more lax and, the companies say, allowed for some
give and take with Beijing officials. The State Department says that the
more stringent export control laws still were in force, and that the
companies broke them.
After the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, President
Ronald Reagan decided in 1988 that U.S. space companies should be allowed
to launch their satellites aboard China's Long March rockets to accommodate
the fast-growing American telecommunications industry.
But the U.S. firms were barred from giving the Chinese any help on their
launches without U.S. licenses and supervision by Pentagon inspectors. The
U.S. government's fear was that the Chinese could use American know-how on
the Long March commercial rocket launches to help the performance of
Beijing's nuclear-tipped missiles.
The problem was that China's space officials were extremely aggressive in
demanding that the U.S. companies provide "technology transfer" as a
condition for entry into the desirable Chinese market. The issue came to a
head each time a Long March rocket crashed or failed, because global
insurance companies demanded in-depth probes into the technical causes of
the glitches. U.S. firms came under intense pressure to share their
insights with the Chinese.
Hughes Electronics was by far the most hard-charging of the U.S. satellite
manufacturers and staked much of its corporate future in the 1990s on
cracking the Chinese market. The State Department's charging letter lays
out dozens of instances when Hughes engineers or executives gave the
Chinese lengthy briefings or papers describing the reasons that Long
Marches blew up.
Following the January 1995 explosion of a Long March rocket upon liftoff,
Hughes then-Vice President Steven Dorfman wrote to a top Chinese space
official that "Hughes is prepared to fully cooperate with you in
investigating this failure. . . . I have instructed our people to make
available whatever data and resources are required. . . . I strongly
support our mutual cooperation, including meaningful technology transfer."
A Hughes fax that same year said Hughes officials briefed executives of a
top Chinese telecommunications entity "about everything" concerning the
launch problem. The Chinese entity "had been present in all of the failure
meetings to date, and has copies of everything from both sides."
"It is time for Hughes to either 'put up or shut up' in regard to meeting
their previously stated commitment of transferring technology to China,"
said an internal Hughes memorandum in May 1995. "If we want to win [a
particular Chinese contract], Hughes must make a real commitment to
transferring technology to China."
The State Department's charging letter also said that in 1996, Hughes
failed to disclose that a Chinese man it had hired to work as a translator
on a Hughes proposal to build a $600 million communications satellite for
China was the son of a top Chinese general who oversaw the contract.
The son's role "went well beyond that of an interpreter/translator and more
closely resembled that of an intermediary with his father, General Shen,
and other [Chinese] space authorities, in order to cultivate their support
in various matters of interest to Hughes," the State document said. In one
internal Hughes memo, a company executive called the general "the most
important Chinese space official."
In 1999, Hughes officials voluntarily told the State Department they were
uncomfortable that their company, in trying to land that $600 million
Chinese contract, had paid $3 million to an intermediary firm in Macao that
played a murky role in the deal, which Hughes ultimately won, the document
said. The firm was controlled by a business executive who had helped set up
telecommunications networks for the Chinese military, the document said.
Hughes performed an internal investigation of the matter but refused to
divulge the results to State, the department's letter said. In 1999, State
officials rejected Hughes's application for a license to build the network,
citing the company's intimate dealings with China.
If it is found liable in the case, Boeing could lose hundreds of millions
of dollars in overseas sales of satellites and other foreign space
business, officials said.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions 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, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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