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
