Well...you said "doctorship" - is that what you meant to say?
The U.S. government has determined that one scientific test, among many conducted since North Korea's announced nuclear test, was consistent with a nuclear explosion, a senior administration official said Friday night.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the administration has not made a definitive conclusion about the nature of the explosion.
"The betting is that this was an attempt at a nuclear test that failed," the official said. "We don't think they were trying to fake a nuclear test, but it may have been a nuclear fizzle _ an effort that failed." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
The official said the test measures a type of gas. It is one of a number of analyses conducted this week, which have not provided clarity about what North Korea detonated on Monday.
Earlier Friday, results from another test disclosed Friday _ an initial air sampling _ showed no evidence of radioactive particles that would be expected from a successful nuclear detonation, a U.S. government intelligence official said.
But those test results did not necessarily mean the North Korean blast was not a nuclear explosion, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the sampling results.
It is truly the big lie to say that Clinton's approach to NK didn't work. All evidence shows otherwise.
D. Inhoffe
Senate Floor Statement
June 23, 1999
"Mr. President, I want you to listen again. I am going to pick up on the incredible but true story of the Clinton Administration's betrayal of national security and the scandalous coverup that continues as we speak. In doing so, I fully realize that the majority of Americans will not believe me. They have continued to believe our President even after he has demonstrated over and over that he has no regard for the truth.
Though you would never realize it by listening to the national media or the Clinton spin doctors, the recently released Cox Report has revealed a wealth of information on how the Clinton Administration has undermined national security to simultaneously pursue its misguided foreign policies and self-serving domestic political agendas.
On the one hand, there is the mind-boggling story of how the Clinton Administration deliberately changed almost 50 years of bipartisan security policies--relaxing export restrictions, signing waivers to allow technology transfers, ignoring China's violation of arms control agreements and its theft of our nuclear secrets, opening up even more nuclear and high technology floodgates to China and others-thus harming U.S. national security.
On the other hand, there is the continuing coverup-the effort to hide from Congress and the American people the true damage that has been done to national security and the Clinton administration's central role in allowing so much of it to happen on their watch.
Over three months ago-on March 15-I spoke on this floor about China's theft of the W-88 nuclear warhead. I spoke about how serious this was to our national security-how it was a story with life and death implications for millions of Americans.
I told how President Clinton was directly responsible for downplaying the significance of and covering up this story. While the information on the W-88 design-the crown jewel of our nuclear arsenal--was stolen in the late 1980's, the theft was first discovered in 1995 by this administration. I told how it was this administration and this president who deliberately covered up this vital information from Congress and the American people and, at the same time, lulled our people into a false sense of security by repeating the lie that there were no nuclear missiles targeted at America's children.
At that time, I spoke of six proven incontrovertible facts...and let me repeat them now:
1. President Clinton hosted over 100 campaign fundraisers in the White House, many with Chinese connections.
2. President Clinton used John Huang, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung, James Riady, and others with strong Chinese ties to raise campaign money.
3. President Clinton signed waivers to allow his top campaign fundraiser's aerospace company to transfer U.S. missile guidance technology to China.
4. President Clinton covered up the theft of our most valuable nuclear weapons technology.
5. President Clinton lied to the American people over 130 times about our nation's security while he knew Chinese missiles were aimed at American children.
6. President Clinton single-handedly stopped the deployment of a national missile defense system, exposing every American life to a missile attack, leaving America with no defense whatsoever against an intercontinental ballistic missile.
On March 15, I began my speech by asking the American people to listen as I told them "a story of espionage, conspiracy, deception and cover-up-a story with life and death implications for millions of Americans-a story about national security and a President and an administration that deliberately chose to put national security at risk, while telling the people everything was fine."
In the three months since I made these statements, none of this has been refuted.
Now, I come before you to tell some of the rest of the story that we have learned since March 15. And it is a truly astounding story. We thought the W-88 story was bad--and it is. But with the release of the Cox Report last month, the American people have been presented with documented evidence that the harm that President Clinton has done to U.S. national security is enormously worse than we thought.
On March 15, I said that, as damaging as the W-88 breach was, I believed we had not yet scratched the surface of the national security scandal exposed by this one revelation. I must say that I was right-even beyond my own worst fears.
Let's not be distracted by the self-serving Clinton spin: that everybody does it; that it all happened during previous administrations; that this is only about security at the nuclear weapons labs; that there is equal blame to go around on all sides; that President Clinton acted quickly and properly when he found out; and that the problem is now being fixed.
I am here today to tell you that all of this is wrong. The Clinton spin is nothing more than a dishonest smokescreen designed to divert attention from the real issues. It is also, I believe, an attempt to dissuade people from actually reading the Cox Report and discovering for themselves that the Clinton spin is a snare, a delusion and a lie.
This is why I want to take some time to walk through some of the more important revelations in the Cox Report and to remind my colleagues that we have an obligation to tell the American people the truth--the truth that the media is inexplicably ignoring and that the President seems to hope the people will never find out on their own.
First, let us begin with a simple fact: Sixteen of the 17 most significant major technology breaches revealed in the Cox Report were first discovered after 1994. With the lone exception of the breach of the initial design information of the W-70 warhead (the so-called neutron bomb)--which was first discovered during the Carter administration-everything else was first discovered during the Clinton administration. Let me repeat-sixteen of the 17 most significant major technology breaches revealed in the Cox Report were first discovered during the Clinton administration. Those who tell you otherwise are willfully lying to you.
Second, of the remaining 16 technology breaches, one definitely occurred during the Reagan administration-the W-88 Trident D-5. Seven occurred sometime before 1995, though it is unclear exactly when. And eight occurred-without question--during the Clinton administration.
Let's take a closer look at these. The seven that occurred before 1995 included breaches of information on all of the currently deployed nuclear warheads in the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal: the W-56 Minuteman II; the W-62 Minuteman III; the W-76 Trident C-4; the W-78 Minuteman Mark 12A; and the W-87 Peacekeeper. In addition, there was the breach of classified information on reentry vehicles, the heat shield that protects warheads as they reenter the earth's atmosphere when delivered by long range ballistic missiles.
Let me repeat that all of these technology breaches were first discovered in 1995. They were discovered when a Chinese "walk-in" agent actually approached the CIA at a location outside of China and handed them a secret Chinese government document containing state-of the art classified information about the W-88 and the other U.S. nuclear warheads. We still don't know why he did this, but he did.
The Cox Report also tells us that the Energy Department and FBI investigations of this matter have focused exclusively on the loss of the W-88, which we know happened around 1988. There have been no investigations undertaken about the loss of the other warheads, the timing of whose loss cannot be as clearly pinned down.
Next, we move to the other eight major technology breaches revealed in the Cox Report. All of these were not only first discovered during the Clinton administration, they also happened on Clinton's watch:
1. The transfer of the so-called Legacy Codes containing data on 50 years of U.S. nuclear weapons development including over 1,000 nuclear tests;
2. The sale and diversion to military purposes of hundreds of high performance computers enabling China to enhance its development of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and advanced military aviation equipment;
3. The theft of nuclear warhead simulation technology enhancing China's ability to perfect miniature nuclear warheads without actual testing;
4. The theft of advanced electromagnetic weapons technology useful in the development of anti-satellite and anti-missile systems;
5. The transfer of missile nose cone technology enabling China to substantially improve the reliability of its intercontinental ballistic missiles;
6. The transfer of missile guidance technology (by President Clinton to China) enabling China to substantially improve the accuracy of its ballistic missiles-these same missiles that are targeting US cities;
7. The theft of space-based radar technology giving China the ability to detect our previously undetectable submerged submarines; and
8. The theft of some other "classified thermonuclear weapons information" which "the Clinton administration" (not the Cox committee) "has determined...cannot be made public."
We used to think China was decades behind us in terms of building a modern advanced nuclear arsenal. Now we learn that, later this year, China is planning to test its new JL-2 long range ICBM, a submarine launched ballistic missile with MIRV capability-meaning multiple independently targeted warheads on each missile-almost a replica of our Trident ICBM. This missile will have a range of over 13,000 kilometers and could reach anywhere in the United States from protected Chinese waters.
In addition, we know that China has been helping North Korea, among others, with weapons and technology. North Korea is also expected to test its long range Taepo Dong II missile later this year.
I remind my colleagues we have no defense against either of these potential threats, because of the policy decisions of the Clinton administration. Some one very smart back in 1983 determined that we would need a national missile defense system in place by Fiscal Year 98. We were on track to meet the deadline until 1993 when President Clinton, through his veto power, stopped this missile defense system.
But as the Cox Report points out, nuclear espionage by China is only one part of the problem. China's efforts to acquire U.S. military related technology is pervasive. Operating through a maze of government and quasi-government entities and front companies, China has established a technology gathering network of immense proportions.
They are willing and able to trade, bribe, buy, or steal to get U.S. advanced technology-all for the purpose of enhancing their long-term military potential. Their success is often determined largely by our willingness to make it easier for them to get what they want.
The Cox Report has shed light on the fact that the Clinton administration has actually helped China in its technology acquisition efforts or made it easier for them to commit thefts and espionage. You know the truth is always difficult and controversy is difficult. It is easier to take polls and tell people what they want to hear. But I have to make a decision-who do I love more, this President or America. That is easy. The following are just some of the things that the Clinton administration has done. And I want to applaud Cong. Weldon for helping to bring many of these things to light.
1. In 1993, the Clinton Administration removed the color-coded security badges that had been used for years at Energy weapons labs claiming they were "discriminatory"-- as if that makes any sense whatsoever. Now just a few weeks ago, in the wake of all these revelations, the Energy Department has reinstated the color-coded badges to tell us it is fixing the problem. But I don't hear current Energy Secretary Bill Richardson talking about who created this particular problem.
2. In 1993, the Clinton Administration put a hold on doing FBI background checks for lab workers and visitors, an action which helped to dramatically increase the number of people going to the labs who would previously have not been allowed to have access.
3. In 1995, the Clinton Administration took the extraordinary action of overturning its own agency's decision to revoke the security clearance of an employee found guilty of breaching classified information. When this happened, it sent a message to employees throughout the Department, that this administration was not serious about countering breaches of classified information.
4. The Clinton Administration deliberately, and many would say recklessly, declassified massive amounts of nuclear-related information in what the Clinton administration touted as a new spirit of openness.
5. In the W-88 investigation, the Clinton Administration turned down four requests for wiretaps on a suspect who was identified in 1996 and allowed to stay in his sensitive job until news reports surfaced in 1999.
6. In 1995, someone at the Department of Energy gave a classified design diagram of the W-87 nuclear warhead to U.S. News & World Report magazine which printed it in its July 31 issue that year. Rep. Curt Weldon is still trying to get answers about how this leak was investigated and what was determined. He has good reason to believe the investigation was quashed because it was going to lead straight to President Clinton's Energy Secretary.
7. Career whistleblowers at the Department of Energy, who tried to warn of serious security breaches-people like Notra Trulock, the former Director of Intelligence, and Ed McCallum, the former security and safeguards chief-were thwarted for years by Clinton political appointees who refused to let them brief Congress and others about what they knew. Trulock was demoted, but will now get to keep his job. McCallum appears on his way to being scapegoated and perhaps fired for trying to tell the truth.
8. Rejecting advice from his Secretaries of State and Defense, President Clinton approved switching the licensing authority for satellites and other high technology from the State Department to the Commerce Department, making it easier for China to acquire U.S. missile technology.
9. President Clinton granted waivers making it easier for U.S. companies to transfer missile and satellite technology to China during the launching of U.S. satellites on Chinese rockets.
10. In 1994, President Clinton ended COCOM, the Coordinating Committee on Multinational Export Control, the multi-nation agreement among U.S. friends and allies that they would not sell certain high technology items to countries like China. When this happened, it opened the commercial floodgates. Ever since, there has been a wild scramble of competition to sell more and more advanced technology to China. As a result, proliferation has never been worse than it has been in the last six years.
11. In a series of decisions throughout his presidency-and many surrounding the 1996 election--Clinton has consistently relaxed export and trade restrictions on various forms of high technology of interest to China.
12. At the same time, President Clinton has ignored or downplayed numerous China's arms control violations by not imposing sanctions required by law. So while we're selling more and more high tech to China, China is sending prohibited military technology to countries like Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Egypt. And what does the Clinton administration do? Nothing.
What are the motives for all this? Why did the Clinton administration act the way it did, in almost total disregard for any traditional concern for U.S. national security?
The Cox Report did not answer these questions because it was only concerned with the facts of the security breaches themselves, not what was behind it.
But FBI Director Louis Freeh did assign one man to look into this. His name was Charles LaBella, who became head of the Justice Department's China Task Force. He and his investigators spent months looking into the connections, trying to connect the dots with campaign contributions, foreign influences and administration actions. What he found is laid out in a 100-page memo he prepared for Janet Reno. We know this memo argues in favor of the appointment of an independent counsel to carry on the investigation.
But the memo itself has remained secret, even though it has been subpoenaed by Congress. Janet Reno, who rejected its recommendation for an independent counsel, has refused to release the memo to the Congress or to the public. It is time for that memo to be released.
FBI Director Freeh has testified that the public knows only about one percent of what the FBI knows about the Chinagate scandal. It is time for the truth to come out. It is time for the public to get some sense of the other 99% which is contained in the LaBella memo.
Mr. President, over the last six years, President Clinton and his administration have shown a pervasive disregard for national security. In both actions and inactions, this President has broken ranks with the bipartisan consensus about national security that helped us win the Cold War.
His policies and attitudes-towards export controls, nuclear weapons, militarily important high technology, and dealing with our adversaries in the world--have been strikingly different from those of all of his predecessors in the modern era.
His administration has acted as if the end of the Cold War gave them carte blanche license to open the commercial and technology floodgates to countries like China....simply because it was good for business, or good for getting campaign contributions, or good for other domestic political reasons.
The traditional concern about national security-about protecting our nuclear secrets, about maintaining our military and technological superiority, about sanctioning those in the world who engaged in flagrant and hostile espionage and proliferation-all that went out the window, replaced by other priorities this President somehow thought were more important.
President Clinton claims he has "redefined" national security. In fact-as the Cox Report conclusively documents--he has "harmed" national security. This is the message that every American must understand.
My hope is that we never again have a president who is so disrespectful of, and inattentive to, traditional national security concerns.
Yesterday at the joint hearing of the Armed Services, Energy and Intelligence committees, I asked whether or not it would be possible to put in place some safeguards so that no future president could ever again so successfully undo the country's national security defenses as this one has. We are working on an answer.
Some of us will continue to speak out-seeing it as our highest duty of public service. As I said on March 15-and repeat again here today-I only hope America is listening. We have a nation to save.
The Congressional Record, Senate Section, June 23, 1999 (Note: 4 page .pdf download)
U.S. Aid Helps N. Korea Build Nukes, Congress Told
By Lawrence Morahan
CNS Staff Writer
17 April, 2000
(CNSNews.com) - North Korea's nuclear production capacity will increase from a dozen nuclear bombs a year to 65 a year by 2010, thanks in large part to American taxpayer money, two renowned U.S. nuclear scientists told congressional leaders last week.
North Korea observers have long suspected the communist dictatorship is using Western humanitarian aid to starving North Koreans to feed Kim Jong Il's million-man army.
But an aid policy initiated by the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s to finance two light water nuclear reactors in North Korea puts the isolated communist country on the fast track in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, William R. Graham and Victor Gilinsky told members of the House Policy Committee.
North Korea's missile proliferation has accelerated dramatically since the Clinton-Gore administration began giving aid to the regime in 1994.
"There were no known No-dong missile sales abroad until after the United States signed the so-called Agreed Framework with North Korea," House Speaker Dennis Hastert's North Korea advisory group reported.
But since U.S. aid began, the communist state has sold crucial technology to Iran for the Shahab missile that now threatens U.S. forces and their allies in the Middle East, and for a Pakistani missile in 1998 that disrupted the fragile stability of South Asia.
In 1994 the Clinton administration signed an agreement with North Korea that was designed to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons development program. North Korea sought light water reactors to provide for their energy needs and the U.S. agreed to provide them in exchange for North Korea giving up its nuclear program.
Western aid also earned donor countries the right to inspect the North Korean nuclear facilities.
The U.S. believed the plutonium produced would have to be refined before it could be used for weapons grade plutonium, said Chuck Downs, a leading North Korea expert and author of "Over the Line: North Korea's Negotiating Strategy," in an interview with CNSNews.com. But even though the plutonium wasn't the same yield as that used by the U.S. and some NATO countries, it could still be used to make nuclear weapons, he said.
For the past six years the United States has been trying to put in place two 1,000-megawatt light water reactors in North Korea.
The Clinton administration gambled that construction would take so long that North Korea would collapse politically and economically before the reactors were put in place, Downs said.
"As things have turned out, North Korea has received $380 million in aid from various countries last year, $210 million of it from the U.S., and that is enough to satisfy the needs of their regime. So the regime is roaring drunk and not at all collapsing," Downs said.
When they are in place in 2010, the light water reactors will give the North Koreans 490 kilograms of plutonium every year, allowing them to build 60 to 100 nuclear weapons a year.
"The kinds of facilities that existed in 1994 could only have produced two bombs a year and the kind they conceived [before U.S. aid] a dozen a year," Downs said.
Nuclear critics say it is impossible to decouple the risks from the benefits of nuclear power, or the ability of countries that have nuclear power to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Ted Taylor, a nuclear scientist and critic of U.S. nuclear policy, told CNSNews.com that all of the world's 450-odd nuclear power plants automatically make plutonium as a side product. "So there's a huge amount of plutonium, which is the stuff from which nuclear weapons are made or can be made, spreading worldwide without adequate safeguards against criminals, terrorists, or governments that are disobeying rules."
Taylor, an architect for decades of the U.S. nuclear program, including the program at Los Alamos, was a member of a presidential commission to investigate the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. "Nuclear energy is a major activity for destructive forces," he said.
North Korea Seeks Relations with South Korea
Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who has written extensively on North Korea, told CNSNews.com that North Korea seemed to be headed in a more moderate direction politically and has indicated this by agreeing to meet with South Korea for the first time in 50 years.
"I think everyone accepts the fact that the North Korean nuclear program is in deep freeze at the moment, but the question is if we didn't essentially buy them off, what would be the alternative," Bandow said. "They haven't offered any ... There's reason to be critical but if you're going to be critical you have to come up with an alternative and I haven't seen one yet."
But Downs insisted the U.S. should stand firm when dealing with North Korea, especially in view of its known policies of nuclear proliferation to the United States' enemies around the world.
"If you're in the mode of giving gifts, then you give them gifts that don't kill you. You don't hand children the gun. We could have gone in and said we'll give them $20 billion worth of hydroelectric dams and solar energy, wind power, whatever they wanted. We could have thrown in a $5 billion distribution system so that this energy could actually be used. Right now they have two light water reactors that will produce 490 kilograms of plutonium but no distribution system, and they have no idea how they're going to distribute that electricity - if indeed that was their intention at all."
Everybody Didn't Do It: Clinton Administration is in a Class by Itself on Damaging Security Practices
(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton Administration's damage-limitation strategy in response to revelations about its failure to safeguard U.S. nuclear secrets from Chinese espionage -- namely, that other presidencies have had such problems, too -- has begun to unravel as scrutiny of the relevant facts has intensified. In particular, a succession of former officials and independent analysts have now established that the current administration departed from past practice significantly, notably by turning a blind eye to Chinese efforts to penetrate the U.S. government and economy and by punishing government employees who have sought to protect American interests.1
The latter aspect was powerfully underscored in an op.ed. article which appeared in yesterday's edition of the Wall Street Journal (see the attached). It was authored by a former Reagan Administration official, Michael Ledeen, who is currently a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Ledeen describes how President Reagan's administration expected -- and elicited -- enormous help in preventing the flow of high-technology to Communist regimes "from professional civil servants, particularly in the military." He added that: "It would have been unthinkable for those experts to have been silenced or coerced into lying about matters that directly affected national security. Yet, this has happened repeatedly during the Clinton years, as some recently uncovered documents show." (Emphasis added.)
Enter Jonathan Fox
As Mr. Ledeen notes, a case in point is that of Jonathan Fox, an attorney specializing in arms control on the staff of what was, until recently, called the Defense Special Weapons Agency. 2 Mr. Fox ran afoul of the Clinton party line when he wrote a memorandum opposing the President's certification that China was no longer proliferating nuclear weapons technology. According to Mr. Ledeen, "Mr. Fox's memo argued against the agreement on these grounds:
"It 'presents real and substantial risk to the common defense and security of both the United States and allied countries.'
"It 'can result in a significant increase of the risk of nuclear weapons technology proliferation.'
"'The environment surrounding these exchange measures cannot guarantee timely warning of willful diversion of otherwise confidential information to non-nuclear states for nuclear weapons development.'
"There was no guarantee that the nuclear information would be limited to non-military applications in China itself."
Such a presidential certification that effectively found that none of these to be the case was required by law before the United States could embark upon commercial nuclear cooperation with the PRC. 3 Political appointees in Mr. Fox's chain of command gave him the option of changing his memo or losing his job. In the end, the memo was rewritten to suit the Administration's needs for an undeserved Pentagon seal-of-approval. It was not signed in that form by Jonathan Fox, however.
As Mr. Ledeen points out, this is not an isolated case:
"Mr. Fox is not the only weapons expert in the government to have been instructed to lie or remain silent about the true consequences of sending military technology to China. Notra Trulock and his colleagues were told by their superiors at the Department of Energy that they should stop annoying people with accounts of Chinese espionage at Los Alamos. Similarly, professionals in the Pentagon such as Michael Maloof and Peter Leitner 4 were told to keep quiet about the approval of high-tech licenses that would strengthen Chinese military power. Both of them spoke out; others remain silent.
"But even when the professionals stick by their principles, their superiors have chosen to substitute facts with politically expedient disinformation. On at least two occasions, military experts who argued against high-tech exports to China later discovered that their recommendations had been altered in the Pentagon's computerized data base."
The Actual Record
"Disinformation" also describes efforts by Clinton Administration officials -- notably, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson -- to suggest that the real problems with security took place on the watches of previous Presidents. In fact, as Investor's Business Daily reported on 9 June 1999:
"The declassified version of the House [Cox Committee] report identifies 11 cases of Chinese espionage since the late 1970s. Eight took place during President Clinton's years in office. Two of the three prior cases were first learned in 1995 and 1997. In other words, the vast majority of the leaks over the past 20 years have sprung on Clinton's watch and nearly all the old leaks have shown up then. That's not all.
"The House report doesn't disclose the full extent of Chinese espionage in the Clinton years. Citing 'national security' reasons, the White House censured nearly 375 pages, including several recent cases. At least 24 times, the declassified version of the report states: 'The Clinton administration has determined further information cannot be made public.' Left out are details about Chinese espionage that took place in the 'mid-1990s' or 'late 1990s.'
"'Some of the most significant thefts occurred in the last four years,'said Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., who headed the House panel."
The Bottom Line
Conscientious government officials like Messrs. Fox, Maloof and Leitner, who were properly lauded by Mr. Ledeen and others he did not mention by name (notably, Ed McCallum, a retired lieutenant colonel in Army special operations who, in his capacity as DOE's Director of Safeguards and Security, has been warning for years about the Clinton Administration's malign neglect of basic security procedures at the Department of Energy 5 ) have a critical role to play in a real, and urgently needed, national damage-limitation strategy. Congress must ensure that they are given political protection against further retribution by the Clinton Administration.
More important still, these patriots must be given a platform from which they can help to identify the full extent of the Clinton team's malfeasance with respect to physical, information and personnel security matters and to direct corrective actions. An ideal approach to providing such a vehicle would be the creation of a Select Committee of the Senate imbued with the same authority and access to information and resources as the counterpart Cox Committee had in the House to whose staff such individuals might be temporarily detailed. At a minimum, they should be given ample opportunities to testify before this or other relevant committees of the Congress.
1 See the Center's Decision Briefs entitled China's Nuclear Theft, Strategic Build-up Underscore Folly of Clinton Denuclearization, C.T.B. (No. 99-D 31, 8 March 1999) and Campaigns Clinton Legacy Watch # 41: Security Meltdown at D.O.E. ([url=No. 99-D 48]No. 99-D 48, 26 April 1999[/url]).
2 See Broadening the Lens: Peter Leitner's Revelations on '60 Minutes,' Capitol Hill Indict Clinton Technology Insecurity (No. 98-D 101, 6 June 1998).
3 See the Casey Institute Perspective entitled The Big Lie: Long-term U.S. Interests Will Not Be Served By Presidential Misrepresentation Of Chinese Proliferation Acts (No. 97-C 105, 16 October 1997).
4 See Profile In Courage: Peter Leitner Blows The Whistle On Clinton's Dangerous Export Decontrol Policies (No. 97-P 82, 19 June 1997), Profile in Courage: Mike Maloof Speaks Truth to Power about Clinton's Dangerous Tech Transfers to China (No. 98-D 192, 30 November 1998) and S.O.S. -- Save Our Submarines: Latest Revelation About Chinese Espionage Underscores Need to Retain Full Trident Force (No. 99-D 58, 13 May 1999).
5 See Saving Lieutenant Colonel McCallum (No. 99-D 64, 1 June 1999).
The House Policy Committee Christopher Cox, Chairman
http://policy.house.gov
Policy Committee Reviews Clinton-Gore North Korea Aid
WASHINGTON (Tuesday, April 11, 2000) -- The House Policy Committee will examine ways to put an end to the Clinton-Gore aid to Kim Jong Il's Stalinist North Korean dictatorship. That aid is being used to feed Kim Jong Il's million-man army, to provide fuel oil for North Korean military industries, and to build light water nuclear reactors that will provide plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Two top nuclear scientists will discuss the dangers posed by Clinton-Gore financed light water nuclear reactors during a briefing at the Committee's weekly executive session at noon, Wednesday, April 12 in the Capitol.
The U.S.-supplied light water reactors will produce plutonium sufficient to arm 65 nuclear warheads each year. These warheads would pose an increased threat because they could be mounted on long-range North Korean ICBMs developed while the Clinton-Gore administration gave foreign aid to North Korea.
The two nuclear scientists who will brief the Policy Committee, Dr. William R. Graham and Dr. Victor Gilinsky, are expected to tell the House Leaders that while the facilities North Korea was building on its own would have produced enough nuclear weapons-grade material for about a dozen bombs a year, the plutonium produced by the new light water nuclear reactors U.S. taxpayers are financing can be reprocessed to arm 65 bombs a year-more than five times as many.
"Of course, the politically correct Clinton-Gore administration would never finance the construction of nuclear power plants for taxpayers in the United States," said House Policy Chairman Christopher Cox. "If North Korea needs electricity, and if U.S. taxpayers must pay for it (a dubious proposition in all events), then a decision could have been made to supply hydroelectric power or any other means of generation that does not increase security risks. Yet when Vice Foreign Minister Kang Suk-Ju proposed on July 15, 1993 that America subsidize North Korea's light water nuclear reactors, the Clinton-Gore administration said yes. American taxpayers have been paying for these nuclear time bombs ever since."
Background
Until the Clinton-Gore administration, U.S. policy stood firm against the self-appointed Communist gods Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. To the very last day of the Bush administration, North Korea received no U.S. aid, subsidies, or trade. Thus, Clinton's initiation of U.S. taxpayer subsidies for North Korea, and his plan to completely normalize relations with this bizarre and dangerous Communist country, is a radical break with longstanding American policy.
Today, even as North Korea poses one of the greatest threats to American and allied interests anywhere around the globe, the Clinton-Gore administration has made Kim Jong Il's dictatorship the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific region. This astonishing policy reversal has made taxpayers in the United States one of the principal financiers of the Stalinist regime's survival.
North Korea is not simply a dictatorship: it is a uniquely monstrous tyranny that has tormented the Korean people for half a century, that continues to starve men, women, and children through man-made famine, and that has created the most completely totalitarian and militarized state in human history. Nor is it merely a theoretical threat to America. Kim Jong Il's million-man army, which considers itself formally at war with the United States, is building long-range missiles that will enable it to subject American territory to nuclear, biological, and chemical blackmail.
In 1998, without warning, North Korea fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile 850 miles directly over Japan. This surprise missile launch recklessly jeopardized the safety of the people of Japan. As a result of this stunning action, the world was alerted to a long-range missile capability that few people before then believed North Korea possessed. Since then, Japan-also with U.S. taxpayer support-has been scrambling to deploy a missile defense to protect its citizens and 40,000 American troops from the rapidly escalating North Korean threat.
On December 8, 1998, after four years of Clinton-Gore directed U.S. foreign aid, North Korean Defense Ministry officials rewarded American taxpayers by publicly announcing they were "ready to annihilate U.S. imperialists," and said they would "plunge the damned U.S. territory into a sea of flame." (This amazing threat is at http://policy.house.gov/nk/threattext.htm.)
North Korea is a virulent proliferator of dangerous weapons: it has sold crucial technology to Iran for the Shahab missile that now threatens U.S. forces across the Middle East, and to Pakistan for the Ghauri missile that in 1998 disrupted the fragile stability of South Asia. Tellingly, North Korea's missile proliferation has dramatically accelerated since the Clinton-Gore administration began giving the regime U.S. taxpayer support in 1994. There were no known No-dong missile sales abroad until after the United States signed the so-called Agreed Framework with North Korea.
When American negotiators first sought to restrain North Korea from new missile sales, North Korea boldly used the opportunity to demand $1 billion annually. Worse yet, the Clinton-Gore administration agreed to give in to North Korea's extortionate demands by paying $60 million, claiming this had "no link" to missiles. When North Korea was asked to reveal a suspected underground nuclear site in the mountains of Kumchang-ri -- one of many sites that is required to be open to inspection under the terms of its 1992 denuclearization agreement with South Korea -- North Korea once again demanded, and received from the Clinton-Gore administration, "compensation" from American taxpayers for fulfilling an existing legal obligation.
Kim Jong Il's callous disregard for American -- and world -- opinion, and his regime's apparent disdain for the Clinton-Gore administration's policy of nurturing ties with the failing Communist state, do not stop there. North Korea notoriously engages in counterfeiting U.S. currency, and sells illegal drugs as a matter of national policy. Kim Jong Il is apparently not shamed by the capture of his diplomats and agents who have been caught red-handed in these criminal activities.
The Clinton-Gore administration, in its sad adherence to this dangerously failed policy of appeasement-for-abuse, at least deserves credit for consistency. It has met every one of North Korea's violations of its international agreements with an apology and a rationalization. The purpose of Wednesday's meeting is to seek ways to end this craven policy, and to make protecting U.S. national security the goal once again.
Paul J. Wilkinson
Director of Communications House Policy Committee
(202) 225-6168
Fax: (202) 225-0931 http://policy.house.gov
Source
- We all have those moments :wink:
..It was in the 1980s that the North Korean weapons program began its clandestine growth with the building of a facility for reprocessing fuel into weapons-grade material and the testing of chemical high explosives. In 1985, around the time U.S. intelligence discovered a third, once-secret reactor, North Korea agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Five years later, U.S. intelligence discovered through satellite photos that a structure had been built that appeared to be capable of separating plutonium from nuclear fuel rods. Under pressure, North Korea signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1992, and inspections of facilities began. But in January 1993, IAEA inspectors were prevented from going to two previously unreported facilities. In the resulting crisis, North Korea attempted to withdraw from the NPT.
The Clinton administration responded in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed plutonium from fuel rods, it would be crossing a "red line" that could trigger military action. The North Koreans "suspended" their withdrawal from the NPT, and bilateral talks with the Clinton administration got underway. When negotiations deadlocked, North Korea removed fuel rods from one of its reactors, a step that brought Carter back into the picture as a negotiator.
The resulting talks led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea would freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program. In return, it would be supplied with conventional fuel and ultimately with two light-water reactors that could not produce potential weapons-grade fuel.
However, a subsequent IAEA inspection determined that North Korea had clandestinely extracted about 24 kilograms of plutonium from its fuel rods, and U.S. intelligence reported that was enough material for two or three 20-kiloton plutonium bombs.
During the next six years of the Clinton administration and into the first years of the current Bush administration, the spent fuel from North Korea's reactors was kept in a storage pond under IAEA supervision. As late as July 5, 2002, in a letter to Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the administration was continuing with the 1994 agreement but holding back some elements until the IAEA certified that the North Koreans had come into full compliance with the NPT's safeguards agreement.
In November 2001, when the Bush administration was absorbed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intelligence analysts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory completed a highly classified report that concluded North Korea had begun construction of a plant to enrich uranium. A National Intelligence Estimate of the North Korean program confirmed the Livermore report, providing evidence that Pyongyang was violating the agreement.
Nonetheless, the Bush administration waited until October 2002 before confronting the North Koreans, who at one meeting confirmed they were following another path to a nuclear weapon using enriched uranium.
Soon thereafter, the United States ended its participation in the 1994 agreement. North Korea ordered IAEA inspectors out, announced it would reprocess the stored fuel rods and withdrew from the NPT. Earlier this year, Pyongyang declared it had nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration then embarked on a new approach, developing a six-nation strategy based on the idea that bilateral U.S.-North Korea negotiations did not work and that only bringing in China and South Korea, which had direct leverage over the Pyongyang government, would gain results.
Like I said another American screw up. Decades of threats diplomacy sticks carrots sanctions blockades talks and no talks resulting in precisely the opposite of what everyone wanted.
