A TECHNICAL REASSESSMENT OF THE CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE COX COMMITTEE REPORT
Damage Assessment: Impact of the "Redacted" Cox Committee Report
In their presentation to the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Nonproliferation, both Chairman Chris Cox [R-CA] and Ranking Democrat Norm Dicks [D-WA] urged that their Committee Report, "US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with People's Republic of China" (US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, Report of the Select Committee, committed to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, and "declassified", in part, pursuant to House Resolution 9, as amended, 106th Congress, 1st Session, http://www.house gov/coxreport/) not be interpreted as an indictment of the People's Republic of China[PRC] -- but rather an Indictment of the United States Government for allowing the PRC to "acquire information and technology, including sensitive national security secrets."
Indeed, the evidence presented in the Chapter of the Cox Report, entitled "PRC Theft of US Thermonuclear Warhead Information," is--when properly understood--sufficient to "indict":
* the Clinton Administration for its subversion, through its policies of Openness and PRC Engagement, of our own nuclear weapons Laboratories and their "mission" oriented programs; and
* the 104th Congress for failure to provide, in a timely fashion, effective and necessary "oversight" over the Clinton administration policies.
What the evidence presented in the Redacted Report does not do is support the primary charge that US nuclear weapons Labs were "penetrated" by PRC agents more than 20 years ago and that some of those PRC "moles" are still there, actively spying for the PRC.
We now know that there are two very different views about how the "Evidence" of PRC "spying" ought to be interpreted. One view was held by some career Administration "Security" officials charged with erecting and maintaining high "fences" around our nuclear weapons research, development, testing, production, transportation and storage facilities--and apprehending any Spy attempting to "penetrate" them. A contrary view of the evidence is held by most "Experts" charged with making "Net Assessments" of the PRC's capabilities.
The Security officials had felt for many years that they had found "holes" in their fences, or "gates" left open, and were frustrated in their attempts to get anyone at the Labs or at DOE or in Congress to "fix" the holes or close the "gates." Although most of the Security officials wouldn't know a Secret unless it was so stamped--as it is required to be--at the top and bottom of every page, and they had no evidence that any Spy had "entered" or that any Secret had "exited," when they got the opportunity to testify before the Cox Committee about their frustrations, they did.
On the other hand, the Experts do know a Secret when they see one [stamped or not] and on the two occasions described below when they have been asked to Assess the Evidence of PRC Spying, they have not been convinced that any PRC Spy has "penetrated" the Labs' "fences" or that any Lab Secrets had been spirited away to Beijing.
Unfortunately, the Cox Committee chose to accept the interpretation of the Security officials, before fully hearing the opposing Assessment of the Experts. Now, the Congress and the Clinton Administration [for its own self-serving purposes] are proceeding to act on the Security officials' interpretation. Indeed, the hue and cry in Congress and in the Administration resulting from the release of the Redacted Report--which was mostly devoted to non-nuclear issues--has been focused almost entirely on the "culture of lax security" at our weapons Labs.
Considerable damage has already been done to the reputations of our Labs and to their ability to carry out their 'Mission". In particular, the Labs Mission to assist the Russians prevent proliferation of Russian nuclear weapons, fissile materials, nuclear technologies and technologists--where there are seen by the Security officials to be the same "holes" in the "fence" and the same "gates" left open--has been seriously damaged in the rush to repair all the "holes" and close all the "gates".
But because--after the Top Secret Report was made available to the Clinton Administration for a "Classification Revue"--Chairman Cox asked for such an Assessment by the Experts, we have now got the consensus view of what US Experts conclude the PRC has actually gotten from us, legally and illegally. It is important to note that at the time the Cox Committee Report 'filed' its Report, the committee had not had the benefit of the consensus view of the US Experts.
The purpose of this analysis is to compare and contrast the Redacted Report with the consensus of the Experts in order to gain a basis for a proper interpretation of the Evidence on which the Cox Committee made its findings. Once the findings and recommendations of the Redacted Report are interpreted on the basis of the Experts' Assessment, then perhaps it will be possible to undo some of the damage that has already been done because of the misinterpretations of the Evidence.