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From: News and Views | Opinion |
Wednesday, March 17, 1999

China Spy Tale
Is Bum Rap on Bill

WASHINGTON
In 1988, Wen Ho Lee, a U.S. nuclear-weapons scientist with top-secret knowledge of how to make miniature hydrogen bombs, was allowed to go to China to meet with his counterparts. He may have shared his knowledge with them.

Our President at the time of this apparent breach in our national security — the "worst case of espionage since the Rosenbergs gave the atom bomb to Russia," Republicans are saying — was Ronald Reagan. The defense secretary was Caspar Weinberger.

Yet now, in our latest burst of national hysteria over China, the Clinton administration is being blamed for slowness in closing the barn door — 10 years after the horse escaped from a Republican administration.

Lee has been fired from his job, but there is not enough evidence to charge him with any crime. Republican presidential hopefuls are demanding the head of national security adviser Sandy Berger. The lunatic right is thundering that there is treason afoot.

And on the basis of what evidence? China may have developed a small nuclear warhead. It would not be surprising. Russia, Britain and France have already done so. The Chinese appear to have knowledge of the U.S.-designed W-88 warhead, but much of that is contained in classified manuals that are fairly widespread in the defense establishment.

Lee apparently has confessed to unauthorized contacts with the Chinese, in violation of Department of Energy internal rules. He reportedly would not cooperate on a polygraph examination. But no one is exactly sure what secrets, if any, were stolen from the Los Alamos laboratory where Lee worked. The FBI watched him for three years after the first suspicions were raised and has been unable to make any kind of case.

"Clearly they do not have any conclusive evidence against him, or he would be doing hard time in prison by now," says John Pike, a weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists.

But Pike also asks a fundamental question: "How could it happen that an American scientist with access to nuclear weapons secrets was even allowed in the same room with Chinese scientists?" He then suggests an answer: "Because the Chinese in the 1980s were our partners against the Evil Empire. This is a problem from the Reagan years, and the Clinton administration solved it. Case closed."

That reality won't stop the loony right from lynching Lee on general suspicion, with the aid of supposedly responsible media. The respectable press (this means you, New York Times) once opposed lynch mobs; now it leads them.

Last year, the "worst case of espionage since the Rosenbergs" was the U.S. policy of allowing China to launch U.S.-built communications satellites. The year before that, the hysteria was over John Huang, the Clinton fund-raiser who was convicted in the press — and nowhere else — of commercial espionage for China.

The "case" against Wen Ho Lee and the Clinton administration only proves the truth of the old adage that only Richard Nixon could have made the original opening to China because any Democrat who followed exactly the same policy would have been accused of treason — by Richard Nixon. The Clinton administration pursues the same business-oriented policies pioneered by Republicans and gets accused of being soft on communism.

But Republican candidates who try to profit from China-bashing have a problem. American business sees China as a huge and profitable market for American exports, chiefly in high technology. China-bashing could cost them money. If businesses lose money, they have less to give in campaign contributions to Republican candidates. Whoops! Watch the air go out of this scandal.