Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
CONVERSATIONS - With Norman Dicks
Interview by Johan Benson Aerospace America September, 1999 Pg. 12
Norman Dicks was first elected to Congress in November 1976. He graduated
from the University of Washington in 1963 and received his Juris Doctor
degree from the university's law school in 1968. Later that year he joined
the staff of then-Sen. Warren Magnuson, serving as his legislative assistant
and later as his
administrative assistant until running for Congress.
In Congress Dicks received a rare first-term appointment to the House
Appropriations Committee, on which he still serves. He is a member of three
key appropriations subcommittees: defense, interior, and military
construction. In the present Congress he is the ranking Democratic member of
the interior appropriations subcommittee, which places him in a leadership
position on federal environmental and natural resource policies, and on
Indian Affairs.
Dicks has been an influential member of Congress on defense and national
security issues. In the 1980s he was involved in all of the major arms
control debates in Congress, and was appointed as an official observer to
the U.S.-Soviet arms reduction talks because of his expertise. In 1990 he
was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on
which he served for eight years. In 1998 he was appointed as the ranking
Democrat on a special select committee investigating technology transfer to
the PRC.
Rep. Dicks was awarded the CIA director's medal, among others, for the
completion of his service on the Intelligence Committee.
Q. You were the ranking member of the committee investigating the transfer
of technology to China. The report received unanimous approval, but Rep. Cox
(R-Calif.) said the members did not agree on every issue. What issues
divided you?
My concern was that there were very serious breaches of security at the DOE
labs. I felt that in the rewriting of the report there was an effort to
portray things in what I call a worst-case scenario. That is, they would
say, "here
is what we believe the Chinese have acquired, and here is what they can
possibly do with it," even though that
hadn't occurred.
We, the Democrats on the committee, tried our best to put the whole thing
into context, but we made a mistake in not writing separate views on some of
these issues. We tried in the press conference and in interviews to make
sure that people understood that there were some differences of opinion on
the conclusions reached and on the overall tone of the report. I felt it was
written pretty harshly, and could have been toned more moderately. There
could have been a greater effort to say there were differing views -- you
have to dig for it.
When we would try to present differing views, our conclusions were given one
or two sentences and were not given the same treatment that the majority's
views were.
But overall, I wanted to have all the Democrats in support of the efforts to
try and strengthen counterintelligence at these labs, which I felt was a
disaster. The only way we were going to get it done was if we had a unified
report. I don't disagree with the conclusions, but I wanted to make sure
people understood that reasonable people could differ on these issues.
Q. What has the PRC done with the information they obtained?
The PRC benefited from the espionage in terms of gathering some very
important and sensitive information they should never have been able to get.
The question is, what have they been able to do with that? Have they been
able to deploy new weapons? They've done some testing on a warhead
resembling our W-88, for
example, but they haven't really deployed anything incorporating the
technologies they stole.
This was in our report, but again the majority really pushed hard to go to
the outer edge of the envelope, in terms of the possible things that could
happen. My point is, those things were all possible, but none of them have
happened so far. It takes a mature reader to be able to look at this report
and put it into perspective. People need to read the entire report, not
just the conclusions, to get more of the context. This thing was very bad,
but it was not catastrophic. We still have overwhelming nuclear and military
superiority in every way over the Chinese. The Chinese don't even have
landing craft to get to Taiwan, let alone to San Francisco or Seattle.
One reason I wanted to support the report was I could imagine what people
would have said if we were in opposition to the conclusions. That would have
been something. I was trying to make sure the report was responsible. I
still think it is a very good report; it is one that will wake people up to
the fact that there are serious problems at the labs, and we need to be more
serious about how we deal with the question of technology exports. Sometimes
you can't write a report by being objective; people yawn, and they don't pay
attention. The
administration is paying attention to this, of that you can be sure.
Q. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson says he has taken steps to secure our
weapons secrets from further espionage. The Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board report on lab security, however, strongly disagreed, and called the
DOE bureaucracy arrogant and foot-dragging in its implementation of needed
counterintelligence reforms. What is your view?
I think the DOE has improved the counterintelligence program somewhat, but a
lot of work needs to be done. Ed Curran, DOE's chief of counterintelligence,
is a professional in whom I have tremendous confidence. He says we are about
85% of the way there. I think it will take at least a few more months before
they can conclusively stand up to outside scrutiny such as that given by the
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the GAO, or anyone else. There are some
very tough problems to resolve. Until you have given the polygraph tests and
carried out other counterintelligence activities, you don't really know
where you stand, or how many problems you've got. I think that secretary
Richardson got caught up in trying to get this issue behind him and the
administration, and wanted to show dramatic action had been taken.
Q. What did the Rudman report show?
I always suggest to my Republican colleagues that they should read this
report by former Sen. Rudman's group. It starts back in 1979 with the GAO
report, which mentions the "DOE's erroneous classification of a nuclear
weapons design document"; in 1983, under President Reagan's administration,
the DOE issues a classified policy statement characterizing potential
threats to DOE facilities. The DOE indicates this statement provides a
consistent basis for identification of vulnerabilities and the design of
corrective actions at the department's
nuclear facilities. The president notifies the secretary of defense and
secretary of energy of his interest in strengthening the White House role in
monitoring and overseeing programs concerning the security of U.S. nuclear
weapons facilities; this also was in 1983.
You go through this report and you see there has been a clear pattern of not
getting the job done. And President Clinton, to his credit, issued
presidential decision directive PDD-61 in February 1998, and started moving
the administration toward a much stronger position on this issue.
I believe our report has caused a tremendous acceleration of efforts to get
the mess at the labs under control and put in appropriate
counterintelligence measures. That is one of the reasons why, even though I
had some concerns about overstatement at the outer edge of the envelope, it
was still important to have unanimous recommendation, so that Democrats and
Republicans were together in telling the administration and Congress that
this is a very serious problem and has to be dealt with.
For those who want only to blame President Clinton, Rudman points out this
goes back through three administrations. At least Bill Clinton did
something; their guys didn't do anything. That's why I said, when George W.
Bush started holding press conferences about this, maybe he ought to call
his old man, who had been vice president and president for 12 years in which
zippo was done on this.
Rudman is good, he's fair, he is a Republican, and he laid it out pretty
well. We have the right people in place, the resources are there, and I
think Richardson can get the job done.
Q. The administration appears to have been tardy in reacting to the spying,
as almost three years passed before it issued a presidential decision
directive calling for tighter security at the labs. Were there good reasons
for this slow action?
I don't think there was a three-year lapse from when the president found out
and when he took action. The issue focuses on his national security advisor,
Sandy Berger. When did Berger know? He was told in the spring of 1996 that
there was a counterintelligence investigation going on -- that the FBI is
doing this, and the CIA is doing that. I looked at that briefing, and I saw
the slide he was shown. I would not have reacted any differently than he
did. He tried to strengthen counterintelligence, he notified the
congressional committees, and a couple of other things. There was nothing
that dramatic in those slides.
In August of 1997, when he was briefed again, it was pretty dramatic. That
was when he briefed the president, which led to the PDD; that took a few
months to get done. I was not briefed on this, though the committee staff
was, and they didn't react to it. Neither the House nor Senate Democrats or
Republicans thought there was some catastrophic event going on.
It wasn't until I was shown the slide that listed everything the PRC had
stolen that I really thought 'Oh my God, this is a very serious, scandalous
problem,' that I went immediately to Secretary Richardson, who had just been
sworn in, and I said, you had better do everything you can to strengthen
counterintelligence at the labs, because there has been a terrible lapse in
vigilance.
That was in the fall of 1998, and the president had signed his PDD in
February. During that year there were other lapses; there were efforts by a
lot of people at DOE to undercut the president's PDD, still arguing that we
didn't need to do this, as it wasn't that serious. I've urged the secretary
to discipline those people. Some heads should roll. I think the president
acted, and did so within a reasonable period of time. When Chris Cox and I
went down to brief him, he was absolutely committed to helping us implement
the recommendations in our
report.
Q. Did they implement all of them?
I don't think they will do every single one. I have been impressed that most
of them have held up to scrutiny. I think the vast majority will be done.
Some of them will require legislation. For example, to get the export
administration act reauthorized, we have been going around testifying to all
the committees. They seem to be pumped up to go ahead and take action.
Q. The U.S. apparently found out about the espionage as a result of a PRC
agent delivering classified documents to the CIA. Why would China reveal
this information to us?
I think they wanted to send us a message that they had our nuclear secrets
and we had better be careful about taking sides with Taiwan. Remember we had
intervened in the Taiwan straits with two aircraft carriers in 1998. They
also told the Taiwanese they had our secrets. I think that was what the
message was all about.
Q. But they haven't deployed any of the technology they are said to have
stolen. Without deployment, how do you know they really got anything?
These are the questions I have raised. When you are playing politics,
sometimes you let things out in order to create a reaction, and the other
side will back off a little bit. They haven't deployed anything yet, but
they've done some testing, and there is a very remarkable similarity between
the U.S. W-88 warhead design and what they are working on. I do have
questions about whether they can successfully carry this off.
Q. You've said in the press conference that China has a poor record in
assimilating foreign technology.
I cautioned people at our press conference that we shouldn't overreact. You
must remember that they have 18 nuclear weapons and we have 6,000. We also
have the B-2 bomber, which looked very good with all those smart weapons in
Kosovo. It wouldn't be a fair fight.
Q. Speaking of Kosovo, a B-2 put one of those smart weapons into the
Chinese embassy. Are you satisfied with our explanation of the accident?
That was a mistake. I am absolutely satisfied it was a mistake; it was not
intentional. We would not do that purposely.
Q. Do you blame the CIA?
The blame starts in the CIA and goes right to NIMA, the National Imagery and
Mapping Agency, that prepares maps from satellite imagery. And the people in
the military who ultimately get these targets should have done a better job
of checking. It was a breakdown in the checking process.
We had a few other situations like that: In Italy we had a map that didn't
show the cable car crossing the valley; it was struck by a Marine jet,
killing 20 people. Then we erroneously targeted a pharmaceutical factory in
the Sudan that was alleged to be producing toxic chemicals for the terrorist
Osama bin Laden. It was a target selection problem. This is something we
have to be concerned about. We blew it. I am not sure the Chinese believe that.
Q. Two former weapons lab directors, Harold Agnew and John Foster,
reportedly doubted the seriousness of the information obtained by the PRC.
Agnew reportedly said much of the information said to have been stolen was
made public many years ago, and that much is available on the Internet.
What's your view on this?
That may be so, but it does not excuse the lack of a credible
counter-intelligence program, and the fact that they were able to get their
hands on secret information, and were able to get people to give them
information in scientific exchanges. There was just a complete breakdown of
security at the labs that cannot be excused because some of this stuff was
on the Internet.
Q. Did any of the lab directors testify before your committee?
No, we didn't have them testify, we didn't have enough time. We had about
five months to get this report done. As I look at the Rudman report, I wish
we had brought up every Republican secretary of energy to tell us why they
didn't do something about the reports they were getting.
Q. You said the information acquired by China pales in comparison to that
provided to them by Russia. What did the PRC get from Russia?
We can give you a long list of the weapons systems the Russians gave or sold
to China. They also gave them a lot of technology. Experts at DOD say what
the PRC got from the Russians was 99.9% compared to the 0.1% they got from
us. This puts the importance of the information from Hughes and Loral into
perspective.
The Federation of American Scientists has said that having access to the GPS
system is a much more serious issue. We told the president, 'you really have
to crack down on the Russians, because they are giving them a lot of stuff
they shouldn't be giving them.' I'm not trying to excuse the failure here,
as others have, but we have to fix these problems.
Q. Many companies are fearful that their ability to export goods will be
seriously hampered by overreactive enforcement of export control laws, now
that responsibility for its enforcement has been transferred to State. Are
you concerned that over-zealous enforcement may occur?
I think that is an overreaction. What we have to do is make sure that State
has the resources to process the applications in a timely way. What we tried
to say was, 'let's take a very careful look at the high-end dual-use
systems, such as high-performance computers, and then expedite the things
down at the bottom end of the list that really are marginal in terms of any
dual-use capability.' We also recommended providing more money.
We are trying to emphasize that in the rush to advance our commercial
interests, we don't leave national security out. I think this will work out.
People here are sensible, and are not going to overreact and take draconian
measures that will hurt our economy.
Copyright 1999 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.;
All Rights Reserved
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