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Praise for The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq
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I have spent much of the past six years investigating the Clinton administration's sell-off of our military technology to Communist China, primarily for the American Spectator. During this time, I learned more about corruption than I ever would have believed possible. For the first time in American history we had a President of the United States who took money from the head of a foreign intelligence service. In any other era, such behavior would have been called Treason. During the Clinton presidency, it was dismissed as just a "mistake." But the corruption was not limited to the White House, or even to a single political party: it spread throughout the upper echelons of American society, reaching Members of Congress, intelligence community analysts, top business leaders, and the media. When a Congressional commission, led by California Republican Christopher Cox and Washington state Democrat Norman Dicks, uncovered evidence that China had gained access to U.S. nuclear secrets through espionage, the Washington Post assigned a journalist whose wife was a Clinton administration appointee to cover the story. Walter Pincus and his wife Ann were frequent guests of the first couple at Camp David. After several years at the U.S. Information Agency, Ann Pincus was transferred in the late 1990s to the Office of Research and Media Reaction at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (IN/R), the same office that "lost" a laptop computer loaded with highly classified intelligence documents in April 2000. In his reports for the Post, Walter Pincus consistently sought to debunk the China espionage allegations, insisting against all evidence that the Department of Energy's lead investigator was motivated by racism because he focused on a Taiwanese-born nuclear scientist. (The same analysis was being put forward by IN/R in interagency discussions). When it was subsequently revealed that the scientist, Wen Ho Lee, had downloaded massive amounts of data relating to U.S. nuclear weapons secrets onto a series of zip disks which were missing, Pincus claimed that government analysts could not agree on whether the material was classified. China's nuclear espionage and the way it was misreported (but mainly unreported) by the main media is part of a deeper and ultimately more dangerous trend: China's concerted efforts through corruption, trade, and investment to entwine U.S. interests so thoroughly with those of the PRC that no future President will dare to contain China's military might, because of the unacceptable military and economic costs to America. The emergence of Communist China as a world power, armed with U.S. help, will be President Clinton's ultimate legacy. How to counter it will be one of the greatest challenges facing his successor. At every critical decision-making juncture since January 1993, Clinton political appointees have allowed trade to trump our national security interests, starting with the decision to abolish the international export control organization, Cocom. The investigations I conducted - first on Capitol Hill, then at Time magazine, and finally at the American Spectator - document how those decisions were made, step by step, in exchange for campaign contributions and personal profit. That is the record presented in this book. Today we are facing a new generation of Chinese nuclear missile, the DF-31, that is far more accurate and deadly than anything the PRC has been able to build before. Using commercial satellite technology, the PRC has developed a multiple warhead dispenser for the DF-31. Using commercially-available Global Positioning System receivers, the PRC designed new and more accurate guidance systems. Access to solid fuel propellant secrets allowed the Chinese to build reliable rocket motors that could be used on road-mobile launchers and in submarines. These are American technologies, that reached Communist China with the active assistance of the Clinton-Gore administration. Up until the end of 1998, the U.S. intelligence community estimated that the DF-31 would not be ready for testing until 2005. In fact, the Chinese tested it in 1999, and displayed what they claimed were production launch canisters and mobile launchers at their 50 year "celebration" in Beijing that September. How did they beat the clock by six full years? Exclusive interviews I conducted with a Chinese defector provide the answer. His first-hand account of his work at a Chinese missile plant provides a stunning inside view of exactly how the Chinese acquired and used U.S. technology to build these new weapons. When I confronted the U.S. companies he named with his information, they were quick to insist that everything they did had been approved by the U.S. government. For the first time in history American cities and its people are at risk from a nuclear first strike from Communist China, not just a retaliatory second strike. This is a far cry from Bill Clinton's boast to have built a world in which "no more nuclear missiles" are pointed at American cities. The Cox report, which confirmed many of the stories I first reported in the American Spectator, also shows that U.S. technology approved for export to China by the Clinton administration has helped the Chinese military build a new encrypted communications network for command and control. Those sales were championed by then Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Perry, who over-ruled the objections of the National Security Agency and his own Defense Technology Security Administration. (Readers will find two complete chapters on Mr. Perry and his troubling relationship to Communist China in this book). Later, by welcoming large Chinese military delegations to our military exercises in the Pacific - another Perry initiative - the U.S. demonstrated to the Chinese how to exploit this technology to their advantage on the battlefield. The arming of Communist China by the Clinton administration took place at a time when China's hostile intentions were becoming increasingly clear, both toward the United States and toward democratic Taiwan. While we cannot know whether China will be our enemy in ten of fifteen years, hostile statements and provocative actions by the Chinese military provide no reassurance that China will be our friend. Bill Clinton flipped a coin and bet on China's friendship. For the first time in our history, an American president has made diluting American power and strengthening her potential adversaries the center of his national security policy. In taking this case to audiences around the country and in my home state of Maryland, I discovered that ordinary citizens were shocked and outraged when I laid out the facts of what had actually occurred during the Clinton years. Their response was heartening, and frustrating at the same time. As a journalist, I felt I could lead the horse to water, by exposing the facts: but I could not make him drink - that is, to do something about it. My growing conviction that the security of our Republic was in danger ultimately prompted me to set aside my journalist's pen for six months to run for public office. Although my first-time United States Senate campaign in Maryland was unsuccessful, I won tens of thousands of supporters and brought a much higher awareness of these problems to the voters of my state. This book is a continuation of those efforts. Resistance is not futile. Easter Day, April 23, 2000 Kensington, MD |