FAS Note: The following remarks by Rep. Bereuter refer to a right-wing critique of the Cox Committee report that was prepared by a Dr. James Gordon Prather, and that is posted at www.polyconomics.com/prather.html.
Congressional Record: July 19, 1999 (Senate)
Page H5825-H5826
AN ACCURATE READING OF THE COX COMMITTEE REPORT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, following the public release of the Final
Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/
Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, more commonly
referred to as the Cox Committee report, there have been attempts to
discredit the work of the select committee.
As one of the nine members of the select committee, this Member would
like to reemphasize the truly bipartisan nature of the select committee
and underscore that every finding made by the Cox committee in its
report is fully corroborated with evidence detailed either in the
public report itself or in the classified version.
The Cox committee report is not and has never claimed to be a
comprehensive report, nor was it ever meant to be one. When rumors
first arose that sensitive military technology was being illegally
transferred to the People's Republic of China, the House of
Representatives created a select committee to investigate such
allegations with emphasis on the launch failure investigations of the
failures of two Chinese rockets carrying commercial satellites produced
by American companies and an investigation of the sale of high
performance computers to China.
In the course of our investigation, far more disturbing information
came to light that took us into unanticipated directions. Even as we
were trying to close the select committee's operations, new revelations
kept being brought to our attention by whistleblowers. It became clear
that a very deep institutional problem had existed for some time in
some of our Federal agencies and particularly the Department of Energy
and its national laboratories, there at least since the late 1970s. I
believe that these lapses of security at the DOE weapons laboratories
taken together resulted in the most serious espionage loss and
counterintelligence failure in American history. Moreover, these lapses
facilitated the most serious theft ever of sensitive U.S. technology
and information.
Clearly, what the select committee revealed is very disturbing.
Americans should be angry that their own government's lax security,
indifference, naivete and incompetence resulted in such serious damage
to our national security. The loss of sensitive nuclear weapons
information to China is a national embarrassment and an incredibly
important loss.
The bipartisan Cox committee report should be used as the starting
point in our efforts to fix the serious problems the select committee
identified. Rather, some have focused on discrediting the report by
improperly interpreting the very clear language we used and questioning
the construction of the report. Instead, they should just focus their
attention on the actual meaning of straightforward, plain English
meanings of the words we used. We were very careful in what we said and
how we said it.
The most recent distortion circulated in Washington and in the
national media is a document written by Dr. James Gordon Prather
entitled "A Technical Reassessment of the Conclusions and Implications
of the Cox Committee Report." It was released personally by the
Honorable Jack Kemp after Empower America, the organization to which
Mr. Kemp belongs and which sponsored Dr. Prather's research, refused to
endorse the final document. The Prather document was also the subject
of a Wall Street Journal article and one of Robert Novak's columns last
week.
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Dr. Prather claims that our select committee erred in finding that
Chinese espionage penetrated U.S. weapons labs. Indeed he claims there
was no evidence of Chinese espionage, that the real culprit is the
Clinton administration's policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament and
opening up the Nation's nuclear secrets to the world.
That is pure nonsense. Of course there was espionage. After careful
review of the Prather document, this Member concludes that it was
written with an underlying political agenda in mind; that is, to focus
attention and blame on the Clinton administration, particularly its
policy of engagement with China and its declassification of nuclear
secrets. There is plenty of blame that might be headed that direction,
but that should not discredit the Cox Committee Report.
If partisan politics is the purpose of the report, then we should
recognize it as such, but it is a disservice to the Nation to discredit
the work of the Cox committee if the result is that their
recommendations are not implemented.
The cover letter to the Prather document clearly states, quote, "the
White House is using the espionage angle to mask the real security risk
which comes not from foreign spies, but rather from the Clinton
administration's own ill-conceived strategy," end of quote. Of course
the United States is a target of foreign espionage, including Chinese
espionage. To ignore or fail to act on such evidence is an
embarrassment to the Clinton administration, and it is dangerous.
Without the Cox Committee, we would still not know of this massive
failure or be seeing corrective action. There is a significant
difference between analyzing the motive behind whatever partisan spin
and public relations angle the White House has given to the Cox
Committee Report and the Prather analysis of the contents and
conclusions of the report itself.
It appears to this Member that the Prather document mixes up these
distinctions for its partisan purposes. In order to better support and
prove its conclusions, the Clinton administration policy alone, and not
any Chinese espionage, is responsible for American national security
losses. The Prather analysis necessarily had to redefine the Cox
committee report in a critical way. Unfortunately the overall
credibility of the Prather document is suspect, given its numerous
flaws and its noticeable selective cherry picking of the Cox committee
report.
For example, the Prather document essentially dismisses the charge
that China stole design information for the neutron bomb with the help
of Taiwan-born Peter Lee.
This dismissal is based on a deliberately selective reading of our
report, faulty assumptions and a disregard for other information which
is still classified. The Prather document called this theft charge
(quote) "ridiculous" (unquote) and opined that the Cox Committee, in
its zeal to be bipartisan, claimed the Chinese stole neutron bomb
information (quote),
[[Page H5826]]
"because the alleged spying happened on Reagan's watch, not Clinton's
watch." (unquote). Notwithstanding Dr. Prather's interpretations,
Peter Lee pled guilty to willfully passing classified U.S. defense
information to PRC scientists and to providing false statements to a
U.S. government agency.
The Prather document also introduces the case of Wen Ho Lee, another
scientist at Los Alamos. In fairness, the Prather document states that
"Wen Ho Lee is not mentioned by name in the Cox Report . . ." He is
not. However, aside from the caveat, Prather treats the Wen Ho Lee case
as if it was the lynchpin of our investigation. It was not and
furthermore the allegations against Wen Ho Lee are, at this time, still
just that--allegations.
This Member does not disagree with Dr. Prather that through our open
system, smart people can gather significant amounts of information
other countries would consider very sensitive. Mr. Speaker, our
colleagues may recall the publicity that was given to the book
"Mushroom" which was written back in 1978 by John Phillips, then an
undergraduate student at Princeton University. Mr. Phillips wrote about
how he was able to design an atomic bomb using only the open-source
information available in the university's library. Experts confirmed
the design was valid. This Member is sure that the Chinese and others
have similarly used our open system, as Dr. Prather states. However,
the detailed design plans and other extremely sensitive information
relating to the neutron bomb and other thermonuclear warheads have not
been declassified and are not in Princeton's library or on the Los
Alamos public website.
There are numerous other instances in the Prather document of
inaccurate interpretations and distortions of the Cox Committee Report
for which there is not enough time this evening to detail. However,
given the apparent political objectives of the Prather document and the
questionable selectivity of its analysis, it should be seen for what it
really is: a partisan attack or a partisan counterattack to a Clinton
Administration selective leak and spin operation against the findings
of the Cox Committee, and it therefore does not warrant any further
attention.
Mr. Speaker, the Congress has just begun the job of implementing many
of the 38 recommendations made in the Cox Committee Report. Most can be
implemented by the executive branch without legislation. Some
recommendations, such as increasing the penalties for export control
violations, are relatively easy to legislate. Others such as
reauthorizing the Export Administration Act, are not so simple and will
take time and effort. This Member strongly urges his colleagues to
concentrate on implementing these recommendations and not be distracted
and dissuaded from this duty by those critics like the author of the
Prather Report who all too apparently has a different agenda.