-Caveat Lector-
"McCain, on ``Fox News Sunday,'' said "there is no doubt that there was,
frankly, misconduct in government.
"'We need to know all the facts. But I don't know if we'll ever know it
all.'''
White House Angry About China Dates
By WILLIAM C. MANN
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Senators reacted bitterly Sunday to a report the Clinton
White House knew of Chinese nuclear espionage earlier than it has
acknowledged.
``That really shouldn't go on'' said GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who plans
to run for president. ``I'm sick of it.''
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, another GOP presidential aspirant, accused the
administration of covering up and ``misconduct.''
Even a Clinton supporter, Sen. Joe Lieberman, accused the White House of
ineptitude because it apparently knew of security problems in the country's
nuclear weapons laboratories nine months before President Clinton was told.
``Looking back at it, this is critical enough ... that the president should
have been informed. There's no question about it,'' said Lieberman, D-Conn.
The White House acknowledged Sunday it was alerted to suspicions of Chinese
espionage in 1995 but did not learn about details until 1996, as the
administration has maintained.
Chinese spying in U.S. weapons laboratories began in the mid-1980s during the
Reagan administration. It went undiscovered until scientists determined in
1995 that China had gained access to the United States' most advanced nuclear
warhead.
Hatch and other Republicans accuse the administration of ignoring evidence of
the leak partly because of illegal Chinese campaign contributions to
Democrats for the 1996 election campaign.
The New York Times reported Sunday that in July 1995, Hazel O'Leary, then
energy secretary, told then-White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and other
officials about evidence that China may have stolen nuclear secrets.
Word filtered out to other officials in ensuing months, the newspaper said,
citing interviews with current and former officials. It said a new report on
the case issued by the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board refers
to meetings among Energy Department, CIA and White House officials in the
second half of 1995.
Sandy Berger, deputy national security adviser in 1995 who now holds the top
job, has said he did not tell Clinton of the matter until Berger was briefed
thoroughly in July 1997.
On Sunday, the White House denied any formal interagency contact over the
issue before April 1996, when the Energy Department briefed Berger.
Counsel Jim Kennedy said prior discussions of the matter - such as the July
1995 contact - constituted preliminary and informal notification. O'Leary's
talk with Panetta, Kennedy said, was ``simply an informal heads-up to the
White House.''
McCain, appearing with his Senate colleagues on ``Fox News Sunday,'' said
there is ``no doubt that there was some tremendous lapses or even, frankly,
misconduct in government, that we need to know all the facts. But I don't
know if we'll ever know it all.''
Hatch, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said much of
the truth already is known.
``This administration knew in 1995, the national security adviser knew that
this was going on, and they chose to continue to fight for the election
rather than for the American people,'' Hatch said.
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