-------- china

U.S. Says Able To Counter Chinese Nuclear Forces

Inside China Today Saturday, Dec 11 at Prague 10:10 am, N.Y. 04:10 am http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=116217

WASHINGTON, Dec 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) The United States said on Monday it was well aware of China's plans to modernize its nuclear forces over the next decade and more than ready to defend the United States against them.

The White House declined specific comment on a Washington Times report that Beijing was beginning work on a new submarine that will be targeted against U.S. nuclear forces and will carry missile warheads built with stolen U.S. nuclear secrets.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said that he could not comment on the intelligence reports cited in the article but he insisted U.S. nuclear forces were more than a match for any developed by China.

"We believe that we have a superior - a clearly superior - nuclear force and understand the threat and have the ability and the resources to address it," Lockhart said.

"Broadly speaking we know that China is expected to deploy a more modern nuclear force in the decade ahead and in the same broad context, there is no indication that China is using U.S. technology in its deployed nuclear forces," he added.

The spokesman did not address whether China might use U.S. technology in any future nuclear weapons. Beijing vehemently denies that it stole any U.S. nuclear secrets.

The FBI is investigating whether China may have stolen nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The Washington Times, citing Pentagon and other U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports, said the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy would start construction in the next several weeks on its first Type 094 missile submarine.

It cited U.S. officials as saying that the JL-2 missile to be deployed on the submarine and the DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missile on which it is said to be based would be the first to contain stolen U.S. warhead and missile secrets.

But the newspaper noted the comments by those officials contradicted the view of other Clinton administration officials who believe there is no evidence so far that Chinese strategic nuclear weapons will be copied from U.S. systems.

The newspaper said that the new submarines were expected to be deployed in 2005 or 2006.

---

China To Test JL-2 Missile Capable Of Hitting London, New York

Inside China Today Saturday, Dec 11 at Prague 12:28 pm, N.Y. 06:28 am
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=116300

BEIJING, Dec 7, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China will imminently test the Julang 2, an intercontinental sea-to-surface ballistic missile with an estimated range at least 9,000 kilometres (5580 miles) that will boost its nuclear deterent capability, foreign military experts in Beijing said Tuesday.

"The test is imminent," said an expert who asked to not be named, but added the missile, capable of hitting any city in the United States and Europe, could be equipped with a small nuclear warhead.

According to Monday's Washington Times newspaper, the transit of Chinese Golf class submarines from southern areas to the north of the country, carried out last month, signals the approach of the JL-2 test.

The newspaper also put the range of the Jl-2 at nearly 12,000 kilometres.

The second generation Julang, which translates as "great wave," is the successor to the Julang-1, which was tested successfully in the 1980s from Golf submarines, which are powered by Soviet-made engines, and from the Xia, believed to be the Chinese navy's only nuclear-powered submarine.

The Xia's first successful missile launch of the JL-1 took place in September 1988, according to defense specialists Jane's Information Group.

"It was generaly held that (a JL-2 launch) would be from the Golf, but it could also be from a submarine platform or an upgrade of the Xia," Robert Karniol, Jane's Asian correspondent based in Bangkok, told AFP.

China hopes to place the JL-2, also known as the CSS-N-4X, aboard a new generation of type 094 nuclear submarines, whose construction will begin during the next few weeks, said the Washington Times, citing American sources.

The newspaper said the submarine would carry a smaller underwater variant of the Julang-2 and could be operational by 2005-2006.

No confirmation of the new submarine could be obtained from foreign military experts in Beijing, though they said China has two nuclear submarine programs, one for attack submarines, the other for missile-launching types.

Some experts believe the JL-2 will be equipped with a 2.5 megaton warhead, however others believe it will be 10 times less powerful.

A megaton is a unit of explosive power equal to a million tonnes of TNT.

According to American experts, the JL-2, like China's intercontinental surface-to-surface Dongfeng-31 (DF-31), tested successfully this summer, is equipped with technology adapted from the Trident D-5.

The Triden D-5 is America's most modern missile and is equipped with W-88 miniature nuclear warheads.

Only China, Russia and the United States stock a full range of nuclear weapons, comprising surface, air and sea missiles.

If the JL-2 test is successful, Karniol said, "China will have made a significant step in the modernization process of its nuclear force, it will give her a second strike capability if a nuclear war starts." ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)

-------- iraq

U.S. Is Trying to Put Teeth in Inspections of Iraq Arms

By BARBARA CROSSETTE New York Times December 11, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/un-iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS -- As disagreements between the United States and Russia continue to delay action on a new arms inspection plan for Iraq, independent disarmament experts are divided over how important it is to try to put in place an airtight monitoring system if the cost is security council unity against President Saddam Hussein.

The council Friday put off a vote on the inspection plan until Monday at the request of China, which, like Russia, has reservations. But council members did extend the "oil for food" program in Iraq for six months.

"This is really a case where the best is the enemy of the good," said Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr., president of the Arms Control Association, a Washington research organization that publishes Arms Control Today. "Obviously the best would be to get rid of the Iraqi regime and find every last piece of equipment that accumulated before the gulf war or since, but we can't get international support for that."

Keeny, a former deputy director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, advises the United States to be flexible where possible to gain consensus, then "claim victory and get on with perfecting the continued inspection regime."

He spoke in an interview Friday as American and British diplomats spent another day trying to narrow differences with Russia, China and, on some points, France, in order to avoid a Russian veto of the resolution creating a new weapons monitoring commission for Iraq, where there have been no international inspections for a year.

A Russian veto would kill the plan, leaving in place economic sanctions on Iraq that may become increasingly unenforceable. A Russian abstention would advertise council divisions, a boon to Iraq.

The Russians argue that if -- a big if -- Iraq is judged to be cooperating with a new inspection and monitoring system to be installed by the proposed United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency within a given period of time or has met a predetermined list of tasks, then sanctions should be suspended while further inspection work goes on.

The United States wants the arms inspectors to list tasks to be accomplished after, not before, they begin work on the ground. In the past, these demands on the Iraqis have included providing documents, allowing interviews with Iraqi officials or opening of new sites to inspectors.

The Russians and French complain that the wording in the resolution, introduced formally Friday by the British, is not clear enough about what the Iraqis are expected to do and is therefore an invitation for Americans to move the finish line at will.

The American representative, Peter Burleigh, disagreed, saying that three paragraphs in the resolutions make it "very clear what needs to be done." He called the draft now being considered "an artful and constructive way of dealing with some difference of opinion in the council."

But attempts to juggle wording to prevent a Russian veto worry David Albright, president of the independent Institute for Science and International Security in Washington and a former nuclear inspector in Iraq. He notes as an example that an earlier provision suggesting that experts could be drawn from Unscom, the previous inspection commission, has been stripped from the final draft.

"Taking out that language is certainly a warning," Albright said.

"There are enough questions in the resolution that the next steps are going to be critically important in determining the effectiveness of the inspection regime," he said. "Who will be the head of the commission? Will Unmovic (the inspection team) have sufficient experience to conduct inspections? Will their decisions be constantly second-guessed by security council members, who will have authority to approve or disapprove the inspectors' work plans?"

Richard Butler, the former executive chairman of the inspection team, said that the resolution seems to give the new commission far less independence than he had. "Its head will be supervised by what can only be called a political board," he said.

The College of Commissioners intended to oversee the commission will have the right to review all its policy decisions.

"The mandate seems right, but the instrument through which it is to be achieved has been made far less independent," he said.

The creation of a unique disarmament commission as a tool of policy was an interesting experiment, said Ruth Wedgwood, a law professor at Yale. ""When Unscom was founded it was a brilliantly new form of multidimensional verification," she said. "But the experiment is somewhat spoiled already because any future target of an Unscom inspection could take heart from Iraq's success in breaking up the security council alliance."

---

U.S. Eases Stance on Iraq Arms Monitors
Concessions Aimed at Winning Russian Support at U.N. Could Hasten Sanctions' End

By Colum Lynch Washington Post / Reuters Saturday, December 11, 1999; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/11/161l-121199-idx.html

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 10-In a last-ditch effort to win Moscow's backing for the return of U.N. disarmament experts to Iraq, the United States has made concessions that could hasten the suspension of economic sanctions and might reopen Baghdad to limited air traffic, diplomats said today.

The United States and Britain are pushing for a vote as early as Monday on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would offer to ease the 9-year-old embargo on Iraq if Saddam Hussein's government allows U.N. weapons inspectors to return to the country and fully cooperates with them for some period of time.

To avert a Russian veto, diplomats said, the United States agreed to consider shortening that test period. U.S. negotiators previously insisted on a minimum of 180 days of Iraqi cooperation, while Russia called for 60 days. While the two sides have not yet reached agreement, the United States has indicated a willingness to compromise, diplomats said.

The United States also agreed to soften its opposition to the resumption of commercial flights to and from Baghdad. The latest draft of the resolution would allow flights for religious pilgrimages; it also holds out the possibility of lifting prohibitions on the "delivery" of various goods.

French diplomats interpret "delivery" to include transport by air, road and sea, although they acknowledge that the term is deliberately ambiguous, leaving the difficult question to be decided in the future.

A senior Clinton administration official said today the United States would not rule out a case-by-case exemption of flights carrying commercial goods, but he cautioned that the United States was not prepared to allow Iraq to resume business as usual. "We are willing to look at practical arrangements," he said. "But if you are asking about a major change on civil aviation, the answer is a flat no. We would definitely not agree."

The United States has refused to budge, however, on its position that Iraq must demonstrate "full cooperation" with arms inspectors before suspensions can be eased, according to U.S. officials. And the United States has insisted that tight controls be maintained on the use of any Iraqi oil revenue.

"The Americans have given a serious, substantive response to Russia," said an official close to the talks. "But there are limits to how much Russia can be accommodated."

Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, so far has refused to say whether his government will block the resolution, introduced by Britain, to establish a new U.N. arms control agency and send inspectors back into Iraq. The previous U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, was evacuated on the eve of a U.S.-British airstrike one year ago.

But Lavrov indicated today that the American concessions did not go far enough. "The problem with this resolution is, it is very ambiguous, the trigger is ambiguous, and the scope of suspension is ambiguous," he said.

The 15-member Security Council, meanwhile, voted today to permit Iraq to sell $5.26 billion of oil over the next six months to purchase food, medicine and humanitarian goods. The "oil for food" arrangement had been renewed for shorter periods in recent weeks as Russia and the United States sought to use it as a lever in the broader talks.

Baghdad halted oil exports to protest the stopgap extensions but indicated that it would resume pumping if the council passed the six-month renewal. Iraqi oil exports are expected to resume in mid-December.

---

Split U.N. Council Readies New Policy Toward Iraq

Reuters December 11, 1999 Filed at 1:56 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council prepared to take a critical vote that could lead to a suspension of sanctions against Iraq after a six-month extension of the ''oil-for-food'' humanitarian program in Baghdad was approved.

British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, the current council president, said he had scheduled a Monday vote on a resolution that would set up a new arms control commission aimed at returning weapons inspectors to Baghdad after a year's hiatus.

If Iraq cooperates with a new arms commission, the sanctions could be suspended in a complicated and controversial process expected to take at least a year.

The decision to consider the comprehensive resolution, under negotiation for eight months, came after all 15 council members voted Friday for a 180-day extension to the oil-for-food program.

This move allows Iraq to sell $5.26 billion in oil over six months to buy food, medicine and other vital goods for its people.

Iraq stopped exporting oil on Nov. 24 after the council narrowly approved stopgap resolutions extending the oil deal for two weeks and then for one week. Baghdad said it would resume oil sales -- probably on Dec. 15 or 16 -- if the program was renewed for six months.

The United States last month insisted on the short extensions to pressure council members into adopting the broader, comprehensive resolution that would make some of the oil-for-food provisions obsolete.

DELIBERATE AMBIGUITY

Passage of the resolution Monday is not certain despite compromises on all sides.

Some key areas, such as precisely what would trigger the suspension, are left purposely ambiguous in an effort to get support from all 15 council members.

But diplomats are unsure how Russia, China and France -- more sympathetic to Iraq -- will vote. Moscow and Beijing are not expected to support the resolution but might abstain rather than use their veto power to kill it.

France is expected to vote in favor or abstain, diplomats said.

Greenstock was optimistic.

``I am confident that this is a good text, which should get support from a maximum number of members of the council and will be carried,'' he said Friday.

The sanctions were imposed on Iraq after President Saddam Hussein's government invaded Kuwait in August 1990, leading to the 1991 Gulf War. After the war, any lifting of the sanctions was linked to the scrapping of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a procedure that has taken nearly 10 years.

Arms inspectors left Iraq a year ago, shortly before U.S.-British bombing raids against Baghdad for its alleged failure to cooperate with the U.N. disarmament commission.

Friday, Russia proposed amendments, supported by China and Malaysia, to the full council that would have required Iraq to cooperate, but not fully cooperate, with the inspectors, diplomats said.

The aim was to prevent the United States and Britain from imposing arms requirements that Iraq could not meet and thus keeping the sanctions in place indefinitely.

Russia also wanted the sanctions to be suspended by next December regardless of Iraq's cooperation, a proposal Greenstock said would allow Iraq to ``sit and wait.''

Moscow's Ambassador Sergei Lavrov said the resolution was too ambiguous.

``We don't think it is clear-cut, and we believe it is not as it should be,'' he told reporters.

U.S. representative Peter Burleigh said he anticipated talks throughout the weekend on the resolution among Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.

France, which had earlier approved the text, said the resolution would have little impact if all council members did not support it.

Its Ambassador Alain Dejammet said it was necessary to have clarity in the resolution and make sure Russia was supporting the document or Iraq would never cooperate.

Iraq has lobbied vigorously against the resolution, threatening France with a break in diplomatic and economic ties and attempting to persuade Moscow to use its veto. Baghdad wants nothing less than a clear path to the lifting of the sanctions, which have ruined its economy.

-------- korea

Guerilla dynasty diplomacy

Date: 11/12/99

The last time, it ended when the entire staff of the North Korean embassy were noticed checking onto a flight out of Canberra one Saturday.

A letter arrived in the ordinary mail on Monday at the Department of Foreign Affairs, announcing that diplomatic relations were being broken off.

In Pyongyang, young second secretary Adrian Buzo waited for the other shoe to drop. It came the following Thursday.

He and the other Australian Embassy staffer had 48 hours to leave, meaning they had to be on Saturday's train to Beijing.

The brief summer of Australian representation in the North Korean capital - six months from April 1975 - was over.

This week, news emerged of a fresh North Korean overture to Canberra through embassy officials in Bangkok. It has been agreed senior officials will talk in February in Pyongyang about re-opening ties.

Dr Adrian Buzo, now at 51 an internationally respected Korea specialist and Pyongyang-watcher in academia, is not holding his breath about any thaw in the North Korean regime's attitude to the outside world.

His new book The Guerilla Dynasty (Allen & Unwin), contains sobering advice for any officials expecting to make a diplomatic breakthrough.

The North Koreans have made a few ''tactical'' retreats from their starkly isolationist version of Stalinism, he says, ''but strategically they still see the world according to a formula which has been set in stone for half a century.''

The transfer of power from the state's founder, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, to his son Kim Jong Il, now 57, has been accompanied by no real change in policy, Buzo asserts.

''This policy has seen, by most estimates, two million people starved in defence of a set of political principles, not as a consequence of natural disaster,'' he says. ''They have been allowed to starve because they were denied access to food that could have saved their lives. It's probably the first political famine this century since the Ukraine in the 1930s.

''It could have been ended in a matter of weeks with two or three phone calls to purchase grain.''

Buzo's bleak assessment of North Korea began forming soon after he arrived in Pyongyang in April 1975.

Having studied Chinese and Japanese at Sydney University, he had volunteered to be the first Korean specialist for the Department of Foreign Affairs, and spent two years knocking around South Korea in the company of fringe characters - ''stage actors, handicapped people, university students'' - to learn the language.

In Pyongyang, even foreigners who spoke Korean found an almost impermeable barrier between them and local society.

''I found the prophylactic existence exceeded anything you could have possibly imagined,'' Buzo recalled this week.

He began to see that the ''self-inflicted economic vandalism'' of the North Koreans pointed to a guerilla mentality that permitted the routine ''ripping off''' of economic or business opportunities.

''The only reality which really counted was a military reality,'' he said.

Buzo was able to spot that the then Whitlam government's optimistic diplomacy of remaining ''even-handed'' between the North and South Koreans in the United Nations, of ''cutting the Gordian knot'' of the Korean stand-off, was doomed.

''I was the only one who reported what the North Koreans were going to do if we continued acting the way we were in the UN,'' he said.

The advice from Second Secretary Buzo conflicted with the scenarios sent back by his ambassador, Stephen Fitzgerald, who had dual accreditation from Beijing.

''Of course, that was shock-horror back in the department because the North Koreans were not supposed to act like that,'' Buzo said. ''It would mean they were not responsive to Gough Whitlam's brilliant diplomacy!.

''So they basically shovelled shit on top of me.

'' I got back to find rude remarks in the margins of the memo I had sent.''

Buzo sighs at the naivety of the ''strong tide of leftism'' then running in the Australian government.

''It took quite a while for the North Koreans and the others to work out what on earth we were on about,'' he said.

''When they finally decided they knew what we were doing, they chucked us out.'' His advice to the diplomats looking anew at the Korean peninsula is to rember that the traumatic division and war of 1945-55 has left deep wounds on both sides.

Both sides of Korea are still mentally in an era from which neighbouring countries like Japan have moved on.

For all its evident modernity, South Korea, Buzo says, is barely emerging from its version of Japan's Meiji-Taisho period (1868-1926), characterised by military putschists, domineering capitalists and demagogic politicians.

In North Korea, Kim Jong Il's guerilla dynasty aims just to hang on, knowing they ''own the mythology'' of national liberation, in the expectation the Americans will tire one day and leave South Korea to collapse.

The Americans, under former defence secretary William Perry, who try to negotiate the North Koreans into a ''reasonable'' international approach, still do not really know the standing of the people across the table, or to whom they report.

Despite its deep technological backwardness and periodic concessions on weapons inspections, Pyongyang continues to mount enough of a military threat to have Japan seriously considering a theatre missile defence system, at the cost of great unease in China.

''I would not be surprised that when and if the final collapse comes, we find that the military threat was overstated,'' Buzo says.

''We know their military is deeply inefficient in many ways.

''The point is, it is still a military which is capable of separating weapons-grade plutonium and firing missiles, which shed parts as they go, over the Japanese main islands into the Pacific Ocean.''


-------- japan

Japan Had More US Nukes Than Thought

By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer DECEMBER 11, 15:28 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS719B7V00
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Japan-Nuclear.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite its aversion to nuclear weapons, Japan allowed more American nuclear weapons on its territory during the 1950s and '60s than officials of either country have publicly acknowledged, according to declassified U.S. government documents.

Nuclear weapons for U.S. planes, submarines and surface ships were located on two Japanese islands - Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima - before the United States returned the islands to full Japanese control in 1968, according to the documents, which cite the types of weapons at various locations but not their numbers.

After the United States ended its occupation of Japan in 1951 and the World War II enemies signed a security treaty, it was Japan's official policy not to permit nuclear weapons on its territory. Washington took the view that this prohibition did not extend to islands which remained under U.S. jurisdiction after 1951, according to a Clinton administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In 1997, secret U.S. government documents were declassified and the public learned that the island of Okinawa had been home to American nuclear weapons before it was returned to Japanese control in 1972. But the role of Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima was first disclosed in a report to be published Monday in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by nuclear historians Robert S. Norris, William Arkin and William Burr.

``Fabled as a `non-nuclear nation,' Japan is beginning to look very different, given what we now know,'' the authors wrote. ``Japan may have had its principles, but the Pentagon had its nuclear war plans and it pushed the envelope as far as it could.''

Pentagon spokesman P.J. Crowley said Friday that the government documents on which the Bulletin based its article are authentic, but he said the U.S. government is sticking to its policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons at any location, either now or in the past.

``It is in our interest to continue to maintain a necessary level of ambiguity about these systems,'' Crowley said.

In the early 1950s, U.S. officials believed they needed to have nuclear weapons, or their non-nuclear components, dispersed in Europe and in the Pacific in case war broke out with the Soviet Union. They were deployed by the thousands in such places as South Korea, Guam, the Philippines and Taiwan. As defense strategies evolved in the Cold War, the Pentagon consolidated its arsenal. Today, the only U.S. nuclear weapons deployed outside the United States are bombs for aircraft stationed in several European NATO countries.

The new disclosures about U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan are not likely to affect U.S.-Japan relations today, but they fill a gap in the historical record of Japan's role in supporting U.S. nuclear war plans.

There is no evidence that the U.S. government ever obtained permission from Japan to store complete nuclear weapons on the main islands. Yet a declassified appendix to a secret U.S. Far East Command report, dated Nov. 1, 1956, indicates that 13 separate locations in Japan - including sites on the main islands - had nuclear weapons or components or were earmarked to receive weapons in the event of impending war.

These included Misawa, Itazuki, Atsugi, Iwakuni, Johnson and Komaki air bases on the mainland, although it is not clear from the available records whether complete nuclear weapons ever were placed at these sites.

The roles of Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima as nuclear storage sites are clearer.

A top secret June 1957 memorandum for Adm. Arthur Radford, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed the dispersal of nuclear weapons in the Bonin and Volcano islands. The Bonins are a group of Japanese islands, about 500 miles southeast of the mainland, of which only Chichi Jima is inhabited. In the three-island Volcano group, 120 miles from Chichi Jima, only Iwo Jima played a military role.

``On 6 February 1956 the chief of naval operations stated that one weapon with core was placed in storage on Chichi Jima,'' the Radford memo said.

The records do not state how many bombs were placed on Chichi Jima. A Pentagon history of the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons, declassified earlier this year, showed that the first bombs on Chichi Jima were withdrawn after only three months, coinciding with the introduction of the Navy's Regulus nuclear missiles, which were fired from submarines. These missiles were kept on Chichi Jima until 1964.

The last nuclear weapons on the island, W30 warheads for Navy surface-to-air Talos missiles, were withdrawn in December 1965.

Because of Chichi Jima's nuclear role, the U.S. government resisted Japan's push to repopulate the island, which had been evacuated during World War II. Mansfield Sprague, an assistant secretary of defense in the Eisenhower administration, told the ``CNN & Time'' news program that U.S. officials felt that allowing the Japanese to return was too big of a security risk.

``Well, if they'd been able to come back to the islands, some of them might have been spies,'' Sprague said in a ``CNN & Time'' interview to be broadcast Sunday.

Also in February 1956, ``non-nuclear bombs'' - components without the nuclear core - were placed on Iwo Jima and kept there until June 1966, according to the Pentagon's ``History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons.'' Compete nuclear bombs were on Iwo Jima from September 1956 to December 1959.

Declassified records of the U.S. Far East Command show that Detachment One of the Air Force's 7th Tactical Depot Squadron had a nuclear storage site at Central Air Base on Iwo Jima. Norris and his co-authors interviewed a former Air Force officer assigned there who told them the island served as a ``recovery facility.'' In the event of nuclear war, bombers which had released their weapons over the Soviet Union or China were to fly to Iwo Jima to be refueled and reloaded with bombs for a second attack.

---

Report: Japan Mulls N. Korea Talks

Associated Press December 11, 1999 Filed at 3:52 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-NKorea.html

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan is considering holding preliminary talks on setting up diplomatic ties with communist North Korea as early as Dec. 20, a newspaper reported today.

The talks would be held in Beijing and involve senior officials from both sides, the national Asahi Shimbun reported. They would discuss resuming talks on normalizing relations, which broke down in 1992 over allegations that North Korean agents kidnapped Japanese citizens.

Kyodo News service also reported today that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi will sign an agreement by the end of the month to help build two nuclear power reactors in North Korea.

The offer by the three major Japanese companies are part of a 1994 deal to provide nuclear power plants to North Korea in exchange for a promise that it would stop its nuclear weapons program.

The offices of Mitsubishi Heavy, Toshiba and Hitachi were closed today and officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

In June, Japan approved a $1 billion contribution to the nuclear power plant project, known as KEDO, or the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which is estimated to cost $4.6 billion.

South Korea will be the biggest contributor to the project with $3.2 billion, while the United States will contribute $115 million and the European Union $80 million.

Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi stressed the importance of normalizing ties with Pyongyang in a speech today at the United Nations University in Tokyo.

``Our basic policy is to correct a relationship that has not been normal since the end of World War II,'' he was quoted as saying by Kyodo News.

He added that debate within the government on sanctions against North Korea is progressing. The sanctions were imposed after Pyongyang tested a ballistic missile last year.

-------- puerto rico

No Accord on Island Bombing as Administration and Puerto Rico Point Fingers

New York Times December 11, 1999 By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/puertorico-vieques.html

WASHINGTON -- Hopes for settling the dispute over bombing exercises on the island of Vieques appeared to dwindle today, as senior administration officials and the governor of Puerto Rico differed over whether they had actually agreed on the future of a bombing range there and, if so, what exactly they had agreed to.

White House and Pentagon officials complained that the governor had reneged on a promise to endorse President Clinton's proposals, while the governor said the president had announced a plan that did not reflect the actual negotiations with Puerto Rican officials.

Clinton's compromise plan, recommended by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, rejected an earlier Navy recommendation to continue live-fire exercises on Vieques and accepted a Puerto Rican demand to halt the use of explosives.

The plan also delayed several major decisions on the Navy's future role in Vieques while the Navy and the Puerto Rican governor discussed whether the military could resume exercises in March with ordnance containing no explosives.

As part of the package, the Navy offered the island $40 million in economic revival money to show that it understands it must "repair relations" with the people of Vieques.

But just hours after the deal was announced last week by senior military and civilian Navy Department officials, Gov. Pedro J. Rosselló publicly rejected the offer.

Stunned, the Pentagon has now postponed several aspects of the proposal and is discussing moves that could have a serious economic impact on Puerto Rico.

"The White House was surprised by the rejection," a senior administration official said. "We had been led to believe that the governor would endorse this."

Cohen said he had crafted the compromise with the Navy and Marines in recent weeks and was working under the assumption that the White House had negotiated an agreement with Governor Rosselló.

"The White House told us they believed the governor would accept this," Cohen said in an interview. "So, yes, I was surprised when the governor did not support the agreement."

Through a spokesman, Governor Rosselló said that Cohen misunderstood what had happened.

"It was the other way around," said Alfonso Aguilar, the governor's spokesman. "The president's plan did not reflect what the governor had agreed to. We were surprised and disappointed."

Only President Clinton and several of his senior aides spoke directly to Governor Rosselló. Clinton stepped into the negotiations on Veteran's Day and spoke to the governor at least three times before the proposal was announced last week.

Governor Rosselló believed that the president had agreed that the plan would include legally binding commitments that the bombing on the island would end and the Navy would leave, his spokesman said.

Several defense officials said today that they believed the confusion was the fault of politics.

The Vieques issue has brought a rare unity among the people of Puerto Rico, who in turn have put it on the national political agenda. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is running for senator from New York State, which has a large Puerto Rican population, has sided with Puerto Rico against the Navy. So has Vice President Al Gore, whose presidential campaign co-chairman in Puerto Rico is Governor Rosselló.

But the White House said it, too, was chagrined.

"None of us was thrilled about where we ended up on Friday," the senior administration official said.

Governor Rosselló will negotiate only with the president and his senior aides in discussions on Vieques, and not with the Navy, his spokesman said today, adding that the governor expected the president to reconsider the plan.

"We are only dealing with the policy makers," Aguilar said. "The Navy should understand its role in these things. The commander in chief is the policy maker, and the Navy takes orders from President Clinton."

The Navy has postponed sending Rear Adm. Kevin Green to San Juan as the special representative for Vieques, even though the admiral's wife had already arrived there.

And the senior administration official said today that without a "very good sense of whether these talks will go forward in the next several weeks," the military would reconsider its entire relationship with Puerto Rico.

The territory is also home to Roosevelt Roads, one of the Navy's largest bases and one of Puerto Rico's largest employers.

At the same time, Pentagon officials, the White House and the governor said they wanted to continue looking for some way to bring the sides together to resume discussions.

The negotiations are complicated by the presence of hundreds of demonstrators camping on the Vieques firing range who refuse to leave for fear that the Navy will return. The range has been closed since a civilian Puerto Rican guard was killed after Marine jets dropped bombs that unintentionally hit an observation tower last spring.

That death galvanized Puerto Rican complaints against the Navy's use of the 900-acre range on Vieques. The small island has high unemployment; its residents have suffered health problems, including a high incidence of cancer, and the island's coral reef and wildlife have been threatened by the bombing.

For his part, Cohen said last week's proposal was the best the Pentagon could offer. The loss of Vieques would mean the end of all coordinated live-fire exercises on the east coast for the Navy. The service says such training is essential as preparation for combat.

The senior Administration official said the White House appreciated that "the Defense Department worked extremely hard" on the proposal and had no intention of changing it. On the other hand, the official said, the governor was also working hard to find an accord, and the White House hoped to find a way to persuade both sides that the only area of disagreement is how to implement the proposal.

-------- russia

Russia Deploys Second Batch Of New Nuclear Missiles

Russia Today Saturday, Dec 11 at Prague 12:28 pm, N.Y. 06:28 am
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=117663

MOSCOW, Dec 10, 1999 -- (Reuters) Russia said on Friday it had deployed a second batch of its advanced Topol-M missiles as part of a scheme to upgrade the cash-starved country's ageing nuclear arsenal with its deterrent of choice for the next century.

A Strategic Rocket Forces spokesman told Reuters the 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles went on to active duty at Tatishchevo in the southern Saratov region on the Volga River. Ten of the missiles were deployed in the same area a year ago.

"Of the five nuclear powers, none of the others will match these weapons in the next few years," Colonel-General Vladimir Yakovlev, the forces' commander, told Russian news agencies.

Britain, China, France and the United States are the four other declared nuclear powers which, like Russia, have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

On Thursday during a visit to China, President Boris Yeltsin warned the United States not to put pressure on Russia over its Chechnya military campaign and to remember Moscow had a huge nuclear arsenal. Washington played down the implied threat.

Topol-M, known to NATO as the SS-27, is a three-stage, single warhead missile with a range of 10,000 km (6,200 miles). The 20 missiles deployed so far sit in silos and are meant as a replacement for SS-19 missiles, which date from the 1970s.

The aim is for Topol-M eventually to replace all six land-based missile types in silos and on mobile launchers. Russia also has missiles aboard submarines and aircraft.

CASH SHORT BUT DEPLOYMENT GOING AHEAD

Yakovlev told a news conference earlier this week 72 percent of Russia's arsenal of 2,000 missiles were beyond their original shelf-life. But he said that did not mean they were obsolete.

"The planned pace of re-equipping the Strategic Rocket Forces has been maintained despite the financial difficulties faced by the nuclear forces and the armed forces as a whole," said the latest edition of the weekly newspaper Vek.

With cash short, the aim is to provide a credible nuclear umbrella under which military reform can then proceed.

But the Kremlin has yet to approve a draft military doctrine that places increased emphasis on nuclear deterrence and possible first strikes. The newspaper Izvestia said the draft may be reworked to water down these references.

Yakovlev and other Russian military officials have said Topol-M is designed to carry a single warhead but could easily be adapted to carry multiple warheads as a way to counter the United States if it goes ahead with a national missile defense system that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile pact.

Even now Topol-M is unbeatable, Yakovlev said on Friday.

"Topol-M is able to breach any anti-missile system that exists in the world and any which will be built in the near future," Interfax news agency quoted the general as saying.

He told Izvestia: "I think the Americans are bluffing when they attach such great significance to anti-missile defense."

Russia has ruled out altering ABM to allow the United States to deploy a missile shield against so-called rogue states.

Yakovlev also appeared to put pressure on the State Duma lower house of parliament to ratify the START-2 arms pact on Monday. He told Izvestia a failure to ratify could restart an arms race and lead to a freeze in weapons inspections.

The United States has ratified START-2, which would cut arsenals to no more than 3,500 warheads each by 2007.

---

Yeltsin puts missiles on red alert

From Will Stewart in Moscow 11 December, 1999 UK Express Newspapers Ltd
http://www.lineone.net/express/99/12/11/news/n0400yeltsin-d.html

Boris Yeltsin put his most powerful nuclear missiles on full alert last night in what was seen as a dramatic warning to the West over Chechnya.

The Kremlin deployed ten new Topol-M missiles - its newest, most sophisticated and deadliest weapons - in a state of combat readiness.

The move coincided with President Yeltsin's return to Russia after a trip to China, during which he hit back at criticism of his campaign in Chechnya and warned the West to keep its nose out. "Russia is a great power that possesses a full nuclear arsenal," he thundered in Beijing. "It is us who will dictate."

The West was told in advance of Russia's deployment, as dictated by nuclear treaty commitments. But the timing and the rarity of such a move amounts to a dramatic show of force designed to back Yeltsin's message.

The intercontinental missiles - with a 6,200 mile range and capable of striking Britain or America - were put in readiness in the Saratov region, 400 miles south-east of Moscow.

Russia publicly portrayed the move as a scheduled test of a new weapon, which replaces its SS-19 missiles, dating to the 1970s.

But observers last night said the provocative timing could only be linked to the Chechen crisis - and Yeltsin's anger at the West's hostile reaction to his bloody military purge in the troubled region. Many Russian politicians and analysts say Yeltsin is too ill to rule Russia and have his finger on the trigger of the world's second largest nuclear power.

In televised comments yesterday, even his wife Naina admitted that he had "never been in such a bad state as he is now" after a bout of pneumonia which followed a succession of health problems, including heart trouble.

While putting Russia's missiles on alert is seen as posturing bluster, Britain's foremost independent nuclear expert, John Large, warned it was a foolish manoeuvre, particularly in relation to the millennium bug, for which it is feared Russia is still ill-prepared.

"There was an unwritten agreement for both Russia and the US not to deploy nuclear weapons before the Y2K period," he said.

"Even if the weapons themselves are OK - which I very much doubt since their testing system has been effectively down and out for three years - they would have to work within the strategic defence system there which is full of Y2K glitches. There is no real need for it - it is a risk they don't need to take.

"I am not suggesting that these nuclear bombs will go off on their own, but we do expect to see the defence systems playing up a bit."

The Topol-M missile is relatively small and can be transported on a mobile launch pad, meaning it would be hard to locate and take out in the first strike of a nuclear confrontation.

"Of the five nuclear powers, none of the others will match these weapons in the next few years," bragged Colonel-General Vladimir Yakovlev, Russian forces commander. "Topol-M is able to breach any anti-missile system that exists in the world and any which will be built in the near future."

The deployment came 24 hours ahead of today's deadline - set by Russia a few days ago - for people in the Chechen capital Grozny to "flee or perish".

Moscow yesterday appeared to have extended the deadline for residents to get out of the ruined city. But the Kremlin immediately stung the West by implying a new ultimatum to wipe out Grozny was on the way.

The missile manoeuvre also came as Europe's leaders gathered for an EU summit in Helsinki.

They were last night preparing to fire off a salvo of condemnation for the Russian offensive in Chechnya, which has seen thousands of civilians killed and tens of thousands of refugees spilling across the borders into neighbouring Ingushetia.

"It can't be business as usual while Russia continues with these actions in Chechnya," a British source said at the Helsinki summit. "I imagine there will be some words of condemnation."

But little hard action was expected to back up the words. The West is aware that, in practical terms, there is little it can do to halt the Russian offensive, though the EU is likely to shelve a science and technology agreement and a £1.5 billion aid package to Russia in protest over the action in Chechnya.

The nuclear deterrent on both sides of the old Iron Curtain is credited with maintaining peace since the end of the Second World War.

But in recent months the post-Cold War nuclear consensus has collapsed and Russia and the US seem on the verge of a new arms race.

---

China And Russia Jointly Oppose U.S. Missile Defense System

Russia Today Saturday, Dec 11 at Prague 12:28 pm, N.Y. 06:28 am
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=117499

BEIJING, Dec 10, 1999 -- (Reuters) China and Russia Friday expressed opposition to US attempts to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty as a preliminary step towards development of a proposed US anti-missile defense system.

A Sino-Russian communiqué said the two countries are strongly against US efforts to change the treaty, which curbs the proliferation of missiles and missile defense systems.

"The 1972 ABM treaty must be completely and strictly respected," the communiqué said.

"The plans of some countries in the Asian Pacific region to take steps to deploy an anti-missile defense system will destroy peace and stability in the region."

Washington has made efforts to amend language in the treaty which outlaws the development of anti-missile systems.

The communiqué further said: "The Russian side supports the Chinese side in opposing the position of any country under any form of bringing the Chinese province of Taiwan into a (anti-missile defense) plan."

The maintenance of the present global strategic balance was a crucial part of the strategic partnership between the two countries, it said.

China also expressed its understanding of Russia's position concerning the State Duma's failure to ratify the START 2 treaty with the US, which aims to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both sides.

Beijing and Moscow also expressed "regret at the US refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty."

-------- ukraine

Chernobyl Plant Reduces Output

DECEMBER 11, 18:31 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS719DTI80

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The Chernobyl nuclear power plant malfunctioned, prompting operators to reduce electrical output by 10 percent on Saturday, a Ukrainian news agency reported. No radiation leakage was reported.

Operators found a mechanical defect in one of the eight safety valves in the sole working reactor and switched it off, the UNIAN news agency said. The device was aimed at preventing the pressure inside the reactor from rising excessively.

No further cuts in production were expected, the report said.

The Chernobyl plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, was closed for planned repairs from July 1 until Nov. 26. Since it restarted in November, it has experienced several breakdowns.

Western governments and environmental groups have protested against the plant's operation, demanding its immediate closure.

However, the Ukrainian government has said that due to a lack of funds, it cannot honor its previous pledge to close Chernobyl by the end of this year. It has pledged to shut down the plant sometime in 2000, but authorities say they need two more reactors built to compensate for the energy loss when Chernobyl closes.

Meanwhile, a reactor at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was shut down Saturday for planned tests of its safety system. The reactor was to be restarted later in the day.

Currently, 10 out of 14 reactors at Ukraine's five nuclear power plants are working, producing about 40 percent of the country's electricity. --------

-------- plutonium

Mystery arrival may be just a hunk of junk

Sydney Morninig Herald Date: 11/12/99 By RICHARD MACEY
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9912/11/text/pageone5.html

The object that made a splash in Guyra by landing in the town's reservoir is likely to have been a meteorite. But it and its kind are not the only dangers lurking beyond the stratosphere.

In the space age, what goes way, way up often comes down.

At least once or twice a week a piece of man-made orbiting space junk, slowed by friction with the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere, crashes back. Most are never seen, but occasionally their meteor-like fireballs attract the attention of startled earthlings.

The cosmic scrap includes old satellites, used rocket stages and tiny bits and pieces jettisoned by spacecraft, including instrument and window covers.

Most satellites burn up on re-entry, but now and again large fragments survive the fall to Earth, causing panic. Wreckage from the US Skylab space station rained down over Western Australia in 1979.

Tracking space junk is the job of the US Space Command's Space Surveillance Network, based in Colorado Springs.

''We can track an object 10 centimetres wide out to 600 kilometres,'' its spokesman, Major Mike Birmingham, told the Herald.

''We need to be sure a bit of falling space debris is not mistaken for an incoming missile.''

As of November 17 the network, which uses 17 radar and optical telescope tracking stations around the world, was following 8,731 man-made objects in space.

That included 2,629 satellites, 6,012 bits of spacecraft debris and 90 probes travelling beyond Earth orbit.

Major Birmingham said there had never been a reported case of someone being injured by falling junk.

''The closest call, I believe, was a Delta rocket stage that landed near a farmhouse in Texas a few years ago.''

But the Soviet Union's spy satellite, Cosmos 954, designed to spy on Western navies, caused panic in January 1978 when it fell over Canada, spewing its plutonium power source over a wide area.

In 1964, a US plutonium-powered satellite fell into the Atlantic after a launch failure. Later, a Nimbus weather satellite also crashed during launch, but its plutonium generators were found and used again.

The Apollo 13 mission, which almost ended in disaster in 1970 when an oxygen tank exploded on the way to the moon, carried a plutonium power source in its lunar module, Aquarius. The astronauts made it safely home but Aquarius burnt up in the atmosphere, dumping the nuclear generator into the Pacific. Three years ago Russia's Mars 96 probe, carrying 200 grams of plutonium, was stranded in Earth orbit when its launch rocket malfunctioned. The probe, wrongly thinking it was on its way to the red planet, fired its engine, sending the craft and its nuclear fuel crashing back to Earth over the eastern Pacific.

The US's space tracking authority missed the unexpected re-entry and assumed the orbiting rocket still carried the plutonium, causing President Clinton to phone Prime Minister Howard, warning that the deadly material could be hurtling our way.

Mr Howard put the emergency services on standby, totally unaware the probe carrying the plutonium had fallen back the day before.

Next year Russia is expected to send its abandoned Mir space station, weighing more than 130 tonnes, crashing back into the atmosphere south-east of New Zealand, no doubt triggering another wave of space junk hysteria.

This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.

--------

Dear Peace and Enviro advocates: Here is an article from today's Tri-Valley Herald about DOE's new report on its "Stockpile Stewardship" program. I have the half-dozen page executive summary DOE put out, and the document is available on the web at www.dp.doe.gov/dp_web/news_f.htm

In sum, this is very dangerous, particularly as this DOE deadly wish list from Uncle Santa is backed by a VERY REAL effort to increase Stockpile Stewardship funding by $500 million extra dollars in the next budget. DOE is very serious about ramping up the nuclear weapons complex ever-more -- and we must mobilize to stop this, no matter how busy or overworked we already are! Peace, Marylia

Please read the article...

--

DOE commits to refurbish aging nuclear weapons
Revival of some phased-out research recommended

FROM STAFF REPORTS Saturday, December 11, 1999 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers

LIVERMORE — Nuclear bombs aren't aging as well as the Energy De partment thought they would.

"The number of weapons facing re furbishing is substantially larger than was expected," Energy Undersecretary Ernest Moniz said Friday after the re- lease of an annual report on the nation's Stockpile Stewardship Program.

"These refurbishment campaigns, in the next decade, are very consider able," Moniz said.

Under current U.S. policy, the En ergy Department no longer builds new warheads; it repairs and maintains the old ones. At the same time, the govern ment is stepping up supercomputer re search for improved virtual detonations of bombs so that weapon eers can keep their skills sharp.

The Energy Department recom mends some nuclear weapons research programs be revived after having been phased out. Officials did not provide details.

"The nation is restoring its capacity to produce nuclear weapons components in the enduring nuclear stock pile," according to a government statement.

Each year for the past four years, the Energy Department has conducted a review and certified the stockpile "safe and reliable."

Troubles with the construction of the National Ignition Facility laser complex at Lawrence Livermore Lab; a project that lab and Energy Department managers have called a keystone of this stewardship program likely will not cause a major disruption in the program, officials said Friday.

Marylia Kelley, a frequent lab critic and executive director of the Livermore-based Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, said she viewed the plan as a recipe for a return to the Cold War.

"It's an outline for reconstituting the size and style of the Cold War nuclear weapons complex," she said. "It is a plan that says the Cold War is back on track, and it's going to cost the American taxpayer one hell of a lot."

Ordered by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in October, the review recommends 15 Energy Department actions. Moniz served as chairman for a panel of experts who assisted with the review.

Assembling a work force that can in crease production of nuclear weapons materials, recruiting top researchers, revisiting its weapons refurbishment program and developing a plutonium manufacturing and testing strategy are among the recommendations outlined in the review.

Developing a long-term budget plan for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and seeking "to restore programs at the laboratories that support weapons related research" are also recommended goals.

The report said the Stockpile Stewardship Program is effective, and for the fourth year in a row the active nu clear weapons arsenal will be certified as reliable.

-------- us nuc weapons facilities

Closing Piketon is an option, USEC says

The Columbus Dispatch, December 11, 1999 By Jonathan Riskind http://www.dispatch.com/pan/localarchive/closernws.html

The company running the plants will do what's needed to make money, an analyst's report says.

WASHINGTON -- The president of the company running America's two uranium-enrichment plants has let Wall Street know he aims to maximize corporate profits -- even if that means shutting down one of the facilities.

The company, USEC, would choose between the plant in Piketon, Ohio, which employs about 2,000 workers, or a sister plant in Paducah, Ky., that employs about 1,800. The Paducah plant is being upgraded to match Piketon's capacity.

Before closing either plant, USEC would have to show that it wasn't violating the terms of an agreement with the federal government promising to keep both sites open until at least 2005.

But William H. Timbers Jr., USEC's president and chief executive officer, said the company "will not put anything off the table where profitability is concerned,'' according to an Oct. 11 report by a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst obtained by The Dispatch.

"In its single-minded focus on profitability, Mr. Timbers said the company is analyzing whether to shut down one of its two production plants,'' the report said. "Savings might be around $100 million annually.''

Morgan Stanley managed the $1.9 billion stock offering that turned the federal United States Enrichment Corp. into the private USEC.

After the privatization last year, 500 people at the plants were laid off. About another 850 people will reportedly lose their jobs after the government's privatization restrictions on further layoffs are removed in July.

USEC unsuccessfully sought a federal bailout of up to a $200 million this fall. It complained its role as the executive agent in charge of carrying out a Russian arms-control deal on behalf of the U.S. government was costing it money. That is part of the reason, USEC officials have said, layoffs might be needed.

Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson rejected the bailout partly because he questioned USEC's need for the money and partly because the company refused to tie worker protections to government assistance.

While Richardson "continues to be concerned about of the future of the workers . . . we fully expect USEC to meet its obligations'' to operate the plant through 2004, an energy department official said.

Critics say the company's need to pay a $100 million annual dividend to shareholders -- a group already steaming because the company's current stock price of about $7.50 is down from its $14 initial offering value -- is the main reason big cost reductions are required.

The critics also note that USEC officials said before privatization they could carry out the Russian deal -- which involves buying Russian enriched uranium culled from nuclear warheads and selling it as commercial nuclear power plant fuel.

A USEC spokeswoman stressed there is no imminent plan to shut down a plant, but acknowledged many cost-cutting options are being considered.

"In an effort to remain competitive in the global market USEC is evaluating its costs and looking for possible ways to reduce its costs,'' Elizabeth Stuckle said. "USEC is looking across the board at everything.''

But the law allowing for privatization requires USEC to keep both plants open until at least January 2005 unless certain financial conditions are met, Stuckle said.

Those conditions include operating at less than a 10 percent profit margin for 12 consecutive months and having the company's credit rating downgraded to lower than investment grade value.

Profit margins twice have dipped below that level, but not in consecutive quarters, and USEC's credit rating has been downgraded but remains above the minimum for investment grade.

USEC's most recent financial report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn't predict any of the conditions required to close a plant being met soon.

But Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, is worried that USEC has "little regard'' for its commitment to keep both plants.

Strickland said he wants a meeting with Richardson to discuss the possibility of the federal government buying back the nation's uranium-enrichment industry to ensure a long- term domestic source of the material is safeguarded.

Meanwhile, in light of Timbers' comments, "I hope this information is compelling enough to cause any decision-makers in the federal government to hold the company's feet to the fire in terms of the commitments it has made,'' Strickland said.

Piketon workers, already bracing for more layoffs, are hoping USEC decides to invest in new technology for its long-term future instead of closing a plant for short-term profits, said Dan Minter, president of the Paper-Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union, which represents workers.

---

Physicist Is Indicted In Nuclear Spy Probe
Wen Ho Lee Accused Of Mishandling Secrets

December 11, 1999; Page A01 By Vernon Loeb and David A. Vise Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/11/165l-121199-idx.html

Nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee, a central figure in the government's Chinese espionage investigation at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was arrested yesterday in New Mexico and charged with 59 counts of mishandling classified information and violating secrecy provisions of the Atomic Energy Act. Some of the counts carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

FBI agents arrested Lee at his modest ranch-style home outside Los Alamos and took him to Albuquerque, where he was arraigned before a U.S. magistrate and ordered held without bail until a detention hearing on Monday.

His arrest came after a federal grand jury issued a far-reaching indictment that charged Lee with downloading vast quantities of highly sensitive information related to the design, construction and testing of nuclear weapons from a classified computing network at Los Alamos to his unsecure office computer and to 10 portable tapes, seven of which are missing.

In the indictment, Lee is charged with counts that carry life sentences for violating the Atomic Energy Act and a provision in the espionage statutes that carries a 10-year prison term for gross negligence in the handling of classified defense information. However, the indictment does not allege that Lee deliberately passed secret information to China or any other foreign government.

"The case is being prosecuted because Wen Ho Lee has denied the United States its exclusive dominion and control over some of this nation's most sensitive nuclear secrets," John J. Kelly, the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque, told a news conference.

"Although he has not been charged with communicating classified information to a foreign power, the mishandling of classified information alleged in the indictment has resulted in serious damage to important national interests," Kelly said.

Mark Holscher, Lee's attorney at the Los Angeles firm of O'Melveny & Myers, denounced the indictment as "a horrible injustice" and said in a statement that the government is "blatantly overreaching and wholly unjustified" in seeking to have Lee held without bail, since Lee has already surrendered his passport.

"He has been under 24-hour, seven-day a week surveillance since March 1999, even though the government has fully acknowledged that it has no evidence that he engaged in any espionage activities," Holscher said.

"We look forward to proving Doctor Lee's innocence and his being exonerated of all charges that are being brought against him," the lawyer added.

In a separate letter faxed to Kelly four hours prior to the indictment, Holscher said Lee is ready to take a polygraph examination to establish his innocence and will immediately provide prosecutors with "credible and verifiable" information showing that "at no time did he mishandle those tapes in question and to confirm that he did not provide those tapes to any third party."

Lee's indictment, approved by Attorney General Janet Reno, comes after months of political furor over suspected Chinese espionage at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories.

Amid the politically charged atmosphere in Washington, the FBI committed massive resources to its probe of Lee's activities at Los Alamos.

The FBI said Lee's indictment was based on work by more than 60 agents and computer specialists who conducted more than 1,000 interviews and searched more than a million computer files. An additional 200 FBI agents have been involved in watching Lee 24 hours a day since April, U.S. officials said.

Lee, 59, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen, was fired in March for mishandling classified information and failing to report contacts with Chinese scientists after working for almost 20 years in the top secret X Division at Los Alamos, which designed America's most advanced nuclear warhead, the W-88.

At the time, authorities identified Lee as the prime suspect in a three-year probe into China's apparent theft of nuclear secrets, including information about the design of the W-88.

After his dismissal, Lee gave investigators permission to search his office. They discovered that he had downloaded computer data from Los Alamos's classified network to his unclassified desktop computer.

According to the 44-page indictment and interviews with U.S. officials, Lee allegedly abused a computer security system at Los Alamos that permits scientists with high-level clearances to work with classified and unclassified data simultaneously.

Rather than returning the classified computer data to its secure environment, Lee transferred 380 computer files into an "open" area in the computer system and changed its coding so that it no longer carried a classified designation.

He then allegedly copied the data on nine separate high-volume computer tapes. In the process, Lee allegedly used an associate's computer to download some data that his computer was blocked from copying.

Within a few hours after Lee was advised on Feb. 10 that he had failed a polygraph exam, he deleted the classified files he had put into the open system, an apparent effort to conceal the illicit activities, according to the indictment and federal officials.

The misappropriated information allegedly covered the physical and radioactive properties of nuclear weapons, the precise shapes and sizes of nuclear weapons and, most significantly, computer codes used to simulate nuclear explosions. "These are the tools by which you test nuclear weapons," one official said.

There is uncertainty over the seven missing tapes. Investigators said they hope that Lee, now facing the possibility of life in prison, may become a cooperating witness and explain what happened to the tapes.

Reno's decision to indict Lee, following a briefing on the case last week at the White House for senior officials, ended months of speculation about whether he could or should be charged with felony counts for downloading computer data.

The speculation was fueled by the Justice Department's decision in April not to prosecute former CIA director John M. Deutch after CIA technicians discovered classified materials stored on Deutch's unsecure laptop computer at his home.

Legal scholars said Lee's indictment may be the first time a government employee has been charged with "gross negligence" in handling classified information without evidence that the information fell into the hands of a third party.

The charges against Lee also appear to be the first criminal prosecution under a section of the Atomic Energy Act that prohibits removing, concealing or tampering with classified nuclear weapons data. Under this section, the individual must act "with intent to injure the United States or with intent to secure an advantage to any foreign nation."

Lee's indictment was applauded on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have faulted the nation's weapons labs for alarmingly lax security and counterintelligence procedures.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) described the arrest as "an overdue step in a long story in which the attorney general paid too little attention to serious and credible espionage allegations."

Chinese American groups, meanwhile, expressed concern that spy mania might poison the atmosphere for immigrant scientists. C.Y. Wong, a Chinese American physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who is chairman of the Overseas Chinese Physics Association, said the indictment is "flawed" because some investigators have alleged that Lee was singled out as a suspect on the basis of his ethnicity.

"We hope the indictment will not bring up anti-Chinese American sentiment," Wong said. "It is something we're afraid of, that the trial will be emotional and drag on for a year."

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

What Lee Allegedly Took

A 59-count federal indictment alleges that Wen Ho Lee downloaded and removed the following classified information from Los Alamos National Laboratory:

Data on the physical and radioactive properties of materials used to make nuclear weapons.

The exact shapes and sizes used in the design and simulated testing of nuclear weapons.

The computer instructions to simulate the detonation of a nuclear weapon.

Computer "source codes" used to determine whether designs for nuclear weapons would work and to compare bomb test results with predictions.

Libraries of data collected from actual tests of nuclear weapons.

Data on nuclear bomb test problems, yield calculations and other nuclear weapons design and detonation information.

Computer programs needed to run the design and testing files.

SOURCE: Justice Department

---

U.S. Physicist Lee Charged With 59 Counts

Reuters Updated 12:00 AM ET December 11, 1999 By Tabassum Zakaria
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/991211/00/news-china-spying

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. government physicist at the center of a China spying scandal was indicted on Friday on 59 criminal charges relating to mishandling top secret nuclear weapons data, though he was not charged with spying.

Wen Ho Lee, 59, was charged with violating the Atomic Energy Act and the Federal Espionage Act, with the most serious counts carrying a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The physicist, who was fired from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in March, became publicly linked to a scandal over allegations that China stole U.S. nuclear secrets.

U.S. officials had previously said Lee was unlikely to be charged with espionage because of the lack of evidence he handed classified information to China. Beijing has steadfastly denied stealing secrets.

"Although Lee has not been charged with communicating classified information to a foreign power, the mishandling of classified information alleged in the indictment has, in the government's view, resulted in serious damage to important national interests," U.S. Attorney John Kelly said.

"The indictment does not allege that Lee passed classified information to any particular foreign government, including the People's Republic of China," he said in a statement.

The indictment included 29 counts charging unlawful tampering, altering, concealing or removing of restricted data, 10 counts of unlawful receipt or acquisition of restricted data, 10 counts of unlawful gathering of national defense information, and 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information.

NUCLEAR SECRETS

Restricted data were defined as files containing information such as physical and radioactive properties of materials used to construct nuclear weapons, descriptions of the exact dimensions of nuclear weapons used in connection with the design and simulated testing of nuclear weapons, and data concerning nuclear bomb test problems.

The FBI arrested the graying, bespectacled Lee at his home near Los Alamos earlier on Friday and he was taken to Albuquerque where he appeared before a federal judge who read the charges.

"We are severely disappointed that the Justice Department has taken the precipitous act of seeking an indictment against Dr. Lee," a statement from his lawyer said. "We look forward to proving Dr. Lee's innocence and his being exonerated of all charges that are being brought against him."

Lee's lawyers said the physicist had offered to take a lie-detector test to prove he did not criminally mishandle classified material. The statement said they were "deeply troubled" by the prosecution seeking Lee be held without bail.

Lee was fired for security violations amid suspicion of espionage. He had the high-level "Q" security clearance at the nuclear weapons research lab and worked in the "X Division" which is responsible for the research, design, and development of nuclear weapons and contains some of the most secret U.S. nuclear data.

The indictment alleges that in 1993 and 1994 Lee knowingly assembled 19 files containing secret and classified data on nuclear weapon research design, construction and testing from a classified Los Alamos computer system.

Lee is accused of moving that information to an unclassified computer and then downloading 17 of the 19 files onto nine portable computer tapes.

The indictment charges that Lee in 1997 downloaded onto a tenth portable computer tape current nuclear weapons design codes and other information. Prosecutors say seven of the tapes are unaccounted for.

NATIONAL SECURITY DAMAGE ALLEGED

The physicist in the past acknowledged downloading classified information into his unclassified computer.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose department oversees the U.S. nuclear labs, agreed with the decision to prosecute Lee. "By definition, the unauthorized disclosure of secret restricted data can reasonably be expected to result in serious damage to the national security," he said in a statement.

A congressional report released earlier this year said China had obtained classified U.S. information on seven nuclear warheads and the neutron bomb over two decades, including the W-88 miniaturized warhead.

Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican who chaired the panel that issued that report said: "In recent weeks I have been briefed about the significance of the nuclear codes that have been transferred and that are the subject of this case. In view of that, this (arrest) is a logical step."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said the indictment was an "overdue step" and criticized the Justice Department's handling of the initial investigation.

He said early missteps may "prevent the American people from ever learning what Wen Ho Lee did with the classified information he illegally transferred to a non-secure computer."

Lee, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen, had said he was unfairly singled out because of his ethnicity. The FBI later broadened its investigation after officials decided the initial probe had been too narrowly focused.

Related Stories

U.S. Releases Indictment of Nuclear Physicist Lee (Dec 10 6:10 pm ET)
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U.S. Physicist Lee Indicted on 59 Counts (Dec 10 5:24 pm ET)
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/991210/17/news-china-spying

US Physicist Lee Arrested in Nuclear Secrets Case (Dec 10 3:38 pm ET)
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U.S. Considering Charges Against Physicist Lee (Dec 10 1:31 pm ET)
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/991210/13/news-china-spying

U.S. Reportedly Near Decision on Ex-Los Alamos Worker (Dec 8 8:04 am ET)
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/991211/00/news-politics-bradley

US Near Decision on Ex-Los Alamos Worker - Report (Dec 8 7:10 am ET)
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/991208/07/news-china-spying

---

THE OVERVIEW - Nuclear Weapons Engineer Indicted in Removal of Data

By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN New York Times December 11, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/121199china-spying-rdp.html

WASHINGTON -- A federal grand jury in New Mexico indicted a nuclear weapons engineer on Friday on 59 counts of illegally removing highly classified design, construction and testing data from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory where he was employed.

The indictment charged that the engineer, Wen Ho Lee, had violated the Atomic Energy Act and Foreign Espionage Act, assembling collections of 19 computer files that contained some of the country's most closely held nuclear weapons secrets.

Dr. Lee, who has been under scrutiny for more than five years, was arrested this afternoon at his home outside of Los Alamos by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He made an initial appearance at the federal courthouse in Albuquerque and, after prosecutors described him as a flight risk, a federal magistrate ordered him held without bail pending a detention hearing on Monday.

The indictment accused Dr. Lee of transferring classified information into unclassified computer files at the Los Alamos laboratory and downloading other material onto portable tapes. The indictment said that seven of the tapes that Dr. Lee had made, containing critical nuclear secrets, could not be found.

The most serious offenses in the indictment, removing classified nuclear weapons data, are punishable by a maximum of a life sentence in prison.

The indictment accused Dr. Lee of mishandling nuclear data but did not accuse him of spying or of any espionage offenses related to a foreign government. Nevertheless the case has been one of the most notably sensitive issues in recent United States relations with China, as well as internal American debates over policy.

Separately, officials said they were aware that the government would be criticized for singling Dr. Lee out for prosecution and would be prepared to show at his trial that unlike any other scientist or laboratory employee who mishandled secrets, Dr. Lee had selectively stripped the Los Alamos files of every conceivable secret related to nuclear weapons development over the last 50 years, an incalculable loss of research that in the wrong hands could alter the global balance of nuclear arms. [Article, page A17]

On Friday, Dr. Lee's lawyer, Mark Holscher of Los Angeles, issued a statement saying that the charges against Dr. Lee were groundless and that federal prosecutors were "wholly unjustified in suggesting that Dr. Lee is a flight risk."

Holscher said that Dr. Lee had been unfairly singled out because of he is a Chinese-American and that "prosecutive decisions in this case have been influenced by other branches of government."

His complaint was an apparent reference to accusations by Dr. Lee's supporters that the scientist had been turned into a scapegoat by law enforcement and energy officials who had been criticized by Republicans in Congress for security lapses at the country's nuclear weapons laboratories.

Holscher specifically denied any accusations of wrongdoing in connection with the tapes in a letter dated today to the federal prosecutor in New Mexico, John J. Kelly. He offered to make Dr. Lee available for a polygraph test "to verify our repeated written representations that at no time did he mishandle those tapes in question and to confirm that he did not provide the tapes to any third party."

It is unlikely that prosecutors will accept Dr. Lee's offer. In the past Dr. Lee has voluntarily taken government polygraph examinations, law enforcement officials said, and has given some answers about his activities that appeared to be deceptive. The results of polygraph examinations are not admissible as evidence.

The indictment did not allege that Dr. Lee gave the material to any unauthorized person or government, but it did charge that he removed classified nuclear weapons data "with the intent to injure the United States and with the intent to secure an advantage for a foreign power."

The indictment did not explain how the government would prove Dr. Lee's intent, and at a news conference in Albuquerque, Kelly declined to discuss what evidence the government had obtained that would demonstrate Dr. Lee's motives.

At the federal courthouse in Albuquerque, the intense drama involving Dr. Lee, which has seemed at times to threaten the nation's relationship with China, was reduced to a brief and routine procedural hearing.

Dr. Lee sat calmly in the sparsely filled courtroom wearing a brown leather jacket over a pink, open-collared shirt. He sat at the defense table across from Kelly, the United States attorney, and three assistants.

The magistrate, Donald Svet, asked Dr. Lee whether he had read the charges against him.

"Yes," he answered quietly, "I read them in the last couple of hours."

The magistrate asked, "Are you aware of the penalties," and Dr. Lee shook his head, no.

After the counts were summarized, the magistrate asked again, "Do you understand?"

Dr. Lee answered, "What is the total number of years, I don't understand."

Neither the judge nor the prosecutors fully answered Dr. Lee's query before the hearing ended and he was placed in the custody of a United State marshal and escorted to jail until the detention hearing on Monday.

For months, Dr. Lee's case has been the focal point of a furious debate within the cloistered worlds of counterintelligence, law enforcement and nuclear science. And today's charges are unlikely to quell that controversy, particularly within scientific circles.

Since Dr. Lee was fired from his job in March, some scientists have said he was selectively punished because other researchers had sometimes removed classified information without being severely punished.

But Dr. Lee was charged with 29 counts of removing and tampering with restricted data, 10 counts of retaining restricted data, 10 counts of gathering national defense information and 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information under the Federal Espionage Act.

With its lengthy list of serious felony charges the government left little doubt that prosecutors had concluded that Lee was responsible for what some counterintelligence officials regarded as the most serious breach in security at the weapons laboratories in recent decades.

But in the politically charged debate over American-Chinese relations, the indictment seemed certain to further stir emotions about Dr. Lee's case and whether he could be blamed for what government officials said was the loss of a vast store of secret data sufficient to alter the world's strategic balance of power.

But after a security investigation dating back to late 1994, investigators have been unable to uncover concrete evidence that Dr. Lee passed any nuclear secrets to China or any other government.

Lee, 59, is a naturalized American citizen born in Taiwan who has worked in United States weapons labs for 20 years. He had been under suspicion in an inquiry into Beijing's suspected theft of technology known as W-88, the design for the United States' most advanced miniaturized nuclear warhead.

Investigators were unable to determine who was responsible for the W-88 loss or even whether Chinese scientist might have acquired the technology on their own. But counterintelligence authorities continued to investigate Dr. Lee on circumstantial grounds that he had access to some of the information and had traveled to China on scientific exchange visits.

Dr. Lee's lawyers have portrayed these trips as innocent and said that they were approved by the government in advance.

Investigators eager to step up their inquiry into Dr. Lee had long sought permission from Attorney General Janet Reno to begin covert electronic surveillance of him. While that effort was blocked by Ms. Reno's intelligence aides, the point became moot earlier this year when Dr. Lee agreed to a voluntary search of his office and home.

Agents said that in the search they uncovered evidence that he transferred weapons data to nonsecure computers -- the first indication of the extensive removal of information that came to be the central point of Friday's indictment.

---

Key Events in Wen Ho Lee Case

Albuquerque JournalSaturday, December 11, 1999
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/12news12-11-99.htm

Key developments in investigations of alleged China espionage and former Los Alamos National Laboratory computer scientist Wen Ho Lee:

1992: U.S. intelligence officials learn China has exploded an advanced, miniaturized nuclear weapon.

1995: U.S. intelligence officials receive evidence suggesting the Chinese may have obtained critical design information about the W88 nuclear warhead, one of the most sophisticated warheads in the U.S. arsenal. The FBI is informed.

Early 1996: The FBI focuses its investigation on Los Alamos National Laboratory and on LANL scientist Wen Ho Lee, an American citizen born in Taiwan.

1998: July -- A U.S. House committee begins investigating U.S. technology transfers to China and then turns its focus to espionage.

1999: March 8 -- Los Alamos National Laboratory fires Lee in connection with an investigation into disclosure of sensitive nuclear missile technology to China in the 1980s. U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson orders Lee fired. Lee is accused of "failing to properly safeguard classified material."

March 15 -- The Central Intelligence Agency names retired Admiral David Jeremiah to review its own damage assessment of nuclear weapons technology allegedly lost to China. Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji denies China stole nuclear secrets from the U.S.

April 10 -- FBI agents search Lee's home in White Rock, near Los Alamos, for nearly six hours.

May 7: Wen Ho Lee's attorney calls the fired Los Alamos scientist a "loyal American" who never gave U.S. nuclear secrets to China "or any unauthorized person."

May 11 -- Richardson announces an overhaul of security and counterintelligence at the Department of Interior, including creation of a security czar.

May 25 -- A House committee on Chinese spying concludes Chinese spies had targeted Los Alamos, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and two other national laboratories since the 1970s. China set a high priority on stealing U.S. computer codes for simulating nuclear weapons as they detonate, the report says. FBI agents reported finding those classified codes on Lee's unclassified computer.

Aug. 1 -- In an interview with "60 Minutes," Lee says he is innocent and a convenient scapegoat for the Department of Energy because he was born in Taiwan.

Sept. 11 -- Two former Los Alamos National Laboratory counterintelligence officers are disciplined and former lab director "Sig" Hecker gets a personnel letter "regarding his responsibilities."

Oct. 5 -- President Clinton signs into law a Department of Energy reorganization plan, authored by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and others. The reorganization is aimed at improving security and accountability within DOE and its national laboratories.

Dec. 10 -- Federal agents arrest Lee in Los Alamos. A federal grand jury in Albuquerque indicts him on 59 counts under the U.S. Espionage Act and the Atomic Energy Act.

---

A CLOSER LOOK
Basis of Charges Against Wen Ho Lee

New York Times December 11, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/121199china-spying-text.html

Related Article
The Overview: Nuclear Weapons Engineer Indicted in Removal of Data
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/121199china-spying-rdp.html

Following is the United States Code under which Wen Ho Lee was charged:

TITLE 42 Section 2275.

Receipt of Restricted Data

Whoever, with intent to injure the United States or with intent to secure an advantage to any foreign nation, acquires, or attempts or conspires to acquire any document, writing, sketch, photograph, plan, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information involving or incorporating restricted data shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by imprisonment for life, or by imprisonment for any term of years or a fine of not more than $20,000 or both.

Section 2276.

Tampering, Altering, Concealing and Removing Restricted Data Whoever, with intent to injure the United States or with intent to secure an advantage to any foreign nation, removes, conceals, tampers with, alters, mutilates, or destroys any document, writing, sketch, photograph, plan, model, instrument, appliance, or note involving or incorporating restricted data and used by any individual or person in connection with the production of special nuclear material, or research or development relating to atomic energy, conducted by the United States, or financed in whole or in part by federal funds, or conducted with the aid of special nuclear material, shall be punished by imprisonment for life, or by imprisonment for any term of years or a fine of not more than $20,000 or both.

Title 18

Section 793 (c) Unlawful Gathering of National Defense Information Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the national defense, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter . . .

(e) Unlawful Retention of National Defense Information Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it . . .

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years or both.

---

THE CHARGES
It Wasn't Mere Carelessness, the Government Maintains

New York Times December 11, 1999 By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/121199china-spying-secrets.html

-WASHINGTON -- In a 59-count indictment in federal court in Albuquerque, the government on Friday accused Wen Ho Lee not just of being a scientist who inadvertently mishandled classified materials but also of being someone who repeatedly and willfully compromised America's most sensitive nuclear secrets.

The effort, which officials said would ultimately involve reams of technical evidence of illegal computer transfers, was intended to counter what prosecutors fear might be Dr. Lee's best defense -- the argument that scientists routinely mishandled sensitive, classified materials at the government's weapons laboratories.

The F.B.I. and federal prosecutors are expected to offer evidence that they say will show that the magnitude of the transfers, and the way in which they were done, fits a pattern of illegal activity that differentiates Dr. Lee from other federal employees who have inadvertently mishandled classified materials.

Prosecutors did not accuse Dr. Lee, a former scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, of giving nuclear information to another country or even to any unauthorized individuals.

Instead, prosecutors said he transferred secret information from a classified computer network at Los Alamos into an unsecure system, then copied much of the information onto portable, high-volume computer tapes, some of which are missing.

The government said the files included thousands of pages of documents related to the design, construction and testing of America's nuclear weapons arsenal.

Dr. Lee's lawyers and other supporters have said that he is the victim of a selective, racist and highly politicized prosecution by a government that has ignored other cases involving the mishandling of classified documents.

His lawyer, Mark Holscher, and supporters of Dr. Lee have pointed to the case of John M. Deutch, the former C.I.A. director, who was investigated for mishandling classified information on his personal computer. Deutch had his security clearance removed, but was not charged with any crimes.

Dr. Lee had worked in the X Division at Los Alamos, which handled the laboratory's secret work on nuclear weapons design, in a position giving him access to a computer network containing classified nuclear weapons designs and related materials.

In addition, investigators said, he had access to an unclassified, or open network, and a third computer, known as Machine C, that served as a bridge between the classified and unclassified networks. Machine C was used by bomb designers when they needed to use both classified and unclassified materials. It allowed the designers to bring both kinds of materials together without declassifying the secret material. When they were finished, the designers were required to return the classified and unclassified materials to their respective systems, investigators said.

The indictment charges that Dr. Lee misused Machine C to declassify thousands of pages of nuclear weapons documents unilaterally. He moved classified documents onto Machine C, erased the classification markings on the documents and then moved them into the unsecure, or open computer system, the indictment said.

"This is a massive amount of declassifying without authority to do so," a government official said.

Dr. Lee then copied the files onto high-volume computer tapes, the indictment said. In 1993 and 1994, Dr. Lee copied about 380 of those computer files onto 9 portable computer tapes. Of those tapes, 2 have been recovered by the F.B.I., while the other 7 are missing. In 1997, Dr. Lee copied classified data onto a 10th tape, but that tape has been recovered, investigators said.

Included on the copied documents were the so-called Legacy codes, which provide mathematical approximations of U.S. weapons designs.

The government has charged that the transfers covered a range of secret documents, including "data files that contain information relating to the physical and radioactive properties used to construct nuclear weapons," information "that includes descriptions of the exact dimensions and geometry of nuclear weapons used in connection with the design and simulated testing of nuclear weapons, and the computer instructions to set up a simulated nuclear weapons detonation."

Further, the indictment said, Dr. Lee transferred information concerning nuclear bomb test problems and yield calculations from actual bomb tests as well as the computer programs needed to run the design and testing files.

"These are not random files, this is not general information," a senior government official said.

The government began its investigation of Dr. Lee in connection with China's apparent theft of secret data related to the W-88 warhead, which was designed at Los Alamos.

Dr. Lee had been the main suspect in that investigation for nearly three years, but the F.B.I. never found evidence that he committed espionage.

In September, after determining that the initial inquiry into the W-88 theft had been flawed and that it prematurely focused on Dr. Lee, the F.B.I. and Justice Department widened its investigation to look for other possible sources for the information.

In the process, the government said it determined that Dr. Lee had violated security regulations at Los Alamos, and he was fired in March. After he was dismissed, investigators said a search of his computer turned up evidence of unauthorized transfers of classified data and the government started a new inquiry to determine the extent and possible damage from Dr. Lee's computer activities.

The F.B.I. assigned teams of forensic computer experts to reconstruct and review Dr. Lee's computer activities across several networks throughout the Los Alamos complex.

What the computer experts found, according to officials, was that on Feb. 10, within two hours of when Dr. Lee had been told that he had flunked a polygraph examination, he began to delete hundreds of computer files in the open system that contained the classified data he had transferred.

Investigators said Dr. Lee took one of the portable computer tapes containing classified material, loaded the data onto a server, deleted the information from the tape and then returned the tape to his office. The result was that the tape did not appear to contain classified data.

But F.B.I. experts were able to reconstruct all of the deleted files on that tape and elsewhere in the computer system, officials said.

In a search of his office, the F.B.I. also found two of the computer tapes containing classified data and handwritten instructions explaining how to accomplish many of the computer transfers that Dr. Lee apparently had conducted, officials added.

Federal prosecutors have asked Dr. Lee's attorneys to account for the missing tapes, officials said.

Holscher said in a statement that he had offered "to make Dr. Lee available to a mutually agreeable polygraph examiner to prove that at no time did he criminally mishandle any classified material that was in his possession and that he did not provide any classified information to any unauthorized parties."

He added that Dr. Lee was not guilty and that he was "extremely disappointed by the Justice Department's refusal to explore approaches which would establish that Dr. Lee did not in any way criminally violate the laws of the United States while working as an employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory."

To prove that Dr. Lee was not singled out unfairly by being prosecuted for routine computer activities, government officials said the F.B.I. interviewed 700 employees at Los Alamos, including 400 current and former employees in the division where Dr. Lee worked.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose department oversees the nuclear laboratories, has agreed to declassify some nuclear-related information, in part to allow scientists from Los Alamos to testify about the significance of the classified material transferred by Dr. Lee.

---

THE RESPONSE
Lee's Defenders Say the Scientist Is a Victim of a Witch Hunt Against China

By DAVID STOUT New York Times December 11, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/121199china-spying-rdp.html

WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for Wen Ho Lee reacted to his indictment on Friday with anger and dismay, while a former high-ranking government lawyer said the charges arose at least partly because Dr. Lee is of Chinese descent and the current political climate "demonizes China."

"We look forward to proving Dr. Lee's innocence and his being exonerated of all charges," the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers said in a statement.

The firm said the government had spurned repeated efforts by Dr. Lee to prove his innocence.

The firm said it was "deeply troubled" by the government's position that Dr. Lee, 59, a former nuclear scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, should be held without bail to await trial.

"We believe the Justice Department is blatantly overreaching and wholly unjustified in suggesting that Dr. Lee is a flight risk," the law firm said, asserting that during the three years Dr. Lee has been under investigation he has cooperated fully with the government.

Meanwhile, a former government lawyer, Hoyt Zia, said the indictment was "part of the witch hunt" spawned by a political atmosphere that "demonizes China."

Until several months ago, Zia was chief counsel for export administration in the Commerce Department. He is now executive director of the Pacific Telecommunications Council, an organization that promotes information services in the Pacific region.

Zia, a former Marine Corps officer who is of Chinese descent, said he occasionally had to prove his loyalty as an American in situations in which a Caucasian would not have been required to do so.

The 59-count indictment does not accuse Dr. Lee of espionage, or deliberately passing secrets to another country. Rather, it accuses him of tampering with or altering classified information on nuclear weapons while that data was on a computer system at Los Alamos, and that he unlawfully transferred some of that information to unsecured computers.

Zia said that even assuming there was evidence of "technical violations" by Dr. Lee, "a lot of people have done at least as many violations as he has."

Zia noted that the Central Intelligence Agency suspended the security clearance of its former director, John M. Deutch, in August after concluding that as director he had improperly handled classified information on a computer in his home during the 18 months he headed the agency before resigning in December 1996.

The loss of clearance meant Deutch could no longer serve as an adviser to the agency, even though there was never a suggestion that he intended to do anything traitorous. The investigation found only that he had left secrets vulnerable to spies or computer hackers -- a point that Deutch acknowledged.

Dr. Lee's case has been marked not only by questions about the nature of his security violations, if any, but whether he has been treated differently because of his race. He is a naturalized American citizen who was born in Taiwan.

A former head of counterintelligence at Los Alamos said in August that he thought Dr. Lee was unfairly singled out because of his race.

The former chief, Robert S. Vrooman, said "a lot of Caucasians" were not investigated, even though they had access to weapons secrets and saw some of the same people that Dr. Lee saw.

Vrooman was criticized for allowing Dr. Lee's continued access to nuclear secrets, and Vrooman's assertions of bias were denied by investigators.

O'Melveny & Myers released copies of a letter that Mark Holscher, Dr. Lee's lawyer, sent today to federal prosecutors in Albuquerque in an effort to head off the indictment.

Holscher said he and his client could easily answer the prosecutors' questions about supposedly missing computer tapes. The lawyer said he would make Dr. Lee "immediately available to a mutually agreeable polygraph examiner" to prove that Dr. Lee had not mishandled the tapes nor given them to someone else.

"By separate letter, we will again raise with you our deep concerns with the manner in which this investigation continues to be mishandled," Holscher wrote. He said an indictment in the absence of any proof that Dr. Lee had given computer tapes to anyone would be a "horrible injustice."

The law firm's statement asserted that prosecutors had made decisions that had been "influenced by other branches of government whose political motives and agendas are suspect."

The law firm did not elaborate on the subject of "political motives and agendas," but relations between China and the United States have been sensitive in recent years, over issues including trade, human rights and suspicions of Chinese attempts to influence the 1996 presidential election through illicit campaign contributions.

Zia said that while he was in the Commerce Department he was interviewed by investigators looking into campaign fund-raising, even though he had nothing to do with raising money and had no ties to the Chinese government.

The firm said the case had been the subject of much inaccurate reporting. Given the inaccurate coverage and Vrooman's assertions of ethnic bias, the firm said, "It is astounding to have this case reach this level." The firm said it was outraged by the government's refusal to grant bail.

"Dr. Lee voluntarily relinquished his passport and voluntarily notified the government on every occasion on which he has traveled outside of the Los Alamos area for the past nine months," the firm said. "He has been under 24-hour, 7-day-a-week surveillance since March 1999, even though the government has fully acknowledged that it has no evidence that he engaged in any espionage activities."

---

THE STRATEGIES
Prosecution Will Mean Tug of War on Secrets

New York Times December 11, 1999 By RAYMOND BONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/121199china-spying-rdp.html

WASHINGTON -- Before deciding to go ahead with Friday's indictment of Wen Ho Lee, senior law enforcement and intelligence officials of the Clinton administration concluded that the necessity of a prosecution outweighed any damage to national security that might result from the release of classified information.

That judgment will be seriously challenged, as the case unfolds over the coming weeks and months.

According to the government, Lee had access to the most sensitive nuclear weapons data possessed by the United States, which if disclosed, could case serious damage to the national security.

The dilemma for the government will be how to prove its case against Lee in court without disclosing this information. What typically happens in such cases is that the government will try to withhold as much information as possible, in the interests of national security, and that defense lawyers will try to force the government to disclose as much as possible, in order to defend their client.

Lee will also surely want much more classified information, including the names of any informers against him. Many charges of espionage have not even been filed because intelligence agencies have not wanted to expose their sources and methods.

In the past, defendants have used the threat of disclosing secrets and intelligence gathering operations in open court to persuade the government to drop a case. In response, a law was enacted, in 1981, that now guides the government and defense in the use of classified information at trial.

The law, known as the Classified Information Procedure Act, frees the government from the choice of disclosing classified information or dismissing the indictment, said Stephen Jones, the lawyer for Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The law means the government "does not have to give everything in its purest form," Jones said.

But it still has to give something, or choose between security and criminal justice.

The legal skirmishing will begin when Lee's lawyers request classified information, and the judge determines that he needs it for his defense. At that point, the government can ask the court for permission to submit a summary of the information, or a statement admitting to the facts the classified information would prove.

If the judge rules against the government, it must then dismiss the case, or some of the charges.

This has happened in the past, most notably during the Iran-contra cases, when defendants sought, and were given access to 300,000 pages of classified material. After the legal wrangling, the government dismissed the most serious charges against Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, who was considered the leader of the operation to supply weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels, rather than have some of the information disclosed in court.

For the same reason, the government dropped the complete indictment of another Iran-contra figure, Joseph F. Fernandez, who had been a Central Intelligence Agency operative in Central America during the operations.

But the case of Lee will put far greater pressures on the government, for what is involved is not an embarrassing operation of running guns to rebels, but Americas nuclear secrets. If Lee damaged American security by down loading them on to his computer, the government will have to decide how damage it will risk by revealing them in open court.

---

FBI Chased Lee Despite Spy Doubts

Associated Press DECEMBER 11, 14:02 EST By JOHN SOLOMON
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?PACKAGEID=espionage

WASHINGTON (AP) - Facing flaws in their evidence, FBI officials began to doubt more than a year ago that Los Alamos laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee had given China one of America's most prized nuclear secrets as originally feared, according to government officials and documents.

The agents wrote a memo alerting FBI Director Louis Freeh to their suspicions, officials told The Associated Press. But the pursuit of Lee continued for months - along with a barrage of news leaks implying he was a Chinese spy.

Agents eventually built a lesser case against Lee alleging he removed a wide array of nuclear secrets from secured computers of the government weapons lab where he worked for two decades. He was indicted Friday, but the government offered no evidence that he passed secrets to China or any other country.

The FBI abruptly shifted its espionage focus this fall to other individuals and other government facilities.

The FBI concerns that it might have focused too narrowly on one espionage suspect are detailed in internal documents, stamped secret, that recently were turned over to the Justice Department and Congress.

The documents were described to AP by law enforcement and other government officials. Because the memos are classified, the officials would only speak on condition of anonymity.

They show the FBI office in Albuquerque, N.M., wrote headquarters on Jan. 22 that ``it appears'' that Lee was not responsible for providing China secret information about the W-88, the most advanced U.S nuclear submarine warhead, the officials said.

A subsequent memo dated Jan. 29 and addressed to Freeh stated that the Albuquerque office ``continues to insist'' that Lee had not disclosed the W-88 secrets, the officials said. Freeh attended a briefing on the case in Albuquerque two months later, they said.

FBI officials defend their continued pursuit of Lee, pointing to the indictment Friday. They added that agents developed fresh evidence that continued to warrant focusing on Lee, including that he failed a lie detector test and acted suspiciously during a sting. Government officials say intelligence that hasn't yet been made public also warranted continued scrutiny of Lee.

But FBI officials acknowledge they are no closer today to proving Lee leaked any U.S. nuclear secrets to China or Taiwan.

The emergence of the internal documents forced a top FBI official to alter testimony he gave in June. That testimony said that evidence gathered by the Energy Department's original inquiry against Lee made a ``compelling case'' to focus on the Los Alamos lab near Albuquerque as the likely source of Chinese espionage.

``I believed then that these statements were accurate. ... I have subsequent to that testimony asked for and become aware of additional facts,'' Assistant FBI Director Neil J. Gallagher wrote in a letter to the Senate just last month.

Gallagher, who oversees national security criminal cases, disclosed the Albuquerque office had written reports in November and December 1998 and again in January that ``question the accuracy of certain representations and conclusions'' about the original evidence against Lee.

Gallagher acknowledged ``these documents were sent to FBI headquarters'' and that one was even included in the briefing book he used to prepare for his testimony. But he told the senators, ``I was unaware of their existence before I testified.''

The emergence of the internal documents comes at a sensitive time for the FBI. The memos expressing doubts about Lee may be turned over to defense lawyers in Lee's case, and Congress is currently reviewing the FBI's conduct in a variety of cases including Waco and their mistaken focus on Richard Jewell as the Olympic Park bomber.

The FBI's very public pursuit of Lee, his firing from his lab job, congressional testimony by top law enforcement officials and news media stories based on anonymous sources created a perception that the China espionage investigation was making significant strides earlier this year.

A special congressional committee released a report accusing China of widespread espionage at U.S. nuclear labs that will allow Beijing to modernize its nuclear arsenal in the next few years.

But the FBI documents show that months before the congressional report was released in May, FBI officials suspected the original evidence gathered against Lee was flawed, officials said.

When the Energy Department conducted an administrative inquiry in 1996 that prompted the espionage case, investigators had narrowed the focus to one lab, Los Alamos, and 12 foreign-born scientists, including Lee, officials said.

But in a fall 1998 interview, Lee's boss disclosed to the FBI that about 250 individuals on average each year had access to the W-88 information, including contractors and scientists at other nuclear labs that agents hadn't examined, the officials said.

That fact weighed heavily in the subsequent analyses written by FBI supervisors in Albuquerque that re-examined the evidence and raised concerns that investigators had focused too narrowly on Lee, who had passed an Energy Department lie detector test, officials said.

The analyses also reviewed the evidence that raised FBI suspicions about Lee, including that a foreign scientist had hugged him in public and that Lee had not fully divulged a contact he had with an FBI agent posing as a Chinese official, the sources said.

During an August 1998 sting, an FBI agent posed as a Chinese national and offered his assistance if Lee got in any trouble over his work, the officials said. The undercover agent provided Lee with a beeper number and a hotel name.

FBI agents were thwarted when Lee called the hotel and declined to meet the undercover agent. And Lee's wife, who also works at the Los Alamos lab, alerted Energy Department security officials that her husband had been contacted by a Chinese official offering assistance, the officials said.

However, when Lee himself was questioned about the contact right after the sting, he was vague, failing to mention the beeper number or the hotel, the officials said. Lee later volunteered far more details about the sting in subsequent FBI interviews, officials said.

The FBI continued to pursue Lee, reviewing his Energy Department lie detector test and reversing the conclusion that he had passed, officials said.

FBI agents administered another lie detector that concluded that Lee failed on questions about contacts with foreign nationals and his handling of W-88 secrets. They searched his home in April, the officials said.

Such evidence, however, did not bring the FBI closer to proving Lee had passed a single U.S. secret to China or Taiwan.

And the FBI found more flaws in the original evidence. In August, a scientist who participated in the Energy Department review that led to the Lee allegations divulged to the FBI that he had disagreed with the conclusions, a fact kept from the investigation, officials said.

-------- spies

Espionage, Adding Spies to Life
Flurry of Snooping Warms Up Cold Warriors

Washington Post Saturday, December 11, 1999; Page C01 By Frank Ahrens http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/11/098l-121199-idx.html

It's hardly a return to the glory days of Berlin spy exchanges at midnight. But for the first time in awhile--since the days of Aldrich Ames and John Walker Jr.--there's a spy buzz.

The capture of Russian spy Stanislav Borisovich Gusev--nabbed by the FBI while eavesdropping on the U.S. State Department--is only the most recent event in what has been a flurry of spy activity here and abroad.

Gusev, a technical expert with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, was caught on Wednesday. A week earlier, Russian officials detained American Cheri Leberknight in Moscow, accusing her of spying. A month earlier, Daniel King, a National Security Agency employee, was charged with passing secrets to the Russians. Chinese American scientist Wen Ho Lee was indicted yesterday for stealing nuclear secrets from a Los Alamos, N.M., weapons lab.

Gusev's case is hardly the stuff of James Bond: The Russian aroused suspicion by circling the State Department, looking for a parking meter--something any Washingtonian can sympathize with. The idea of a spy with a roll of quarters--which he does not use to kill someone--doesn't quite tickle the imagination like SPECTRE, Bond's longtime nemesis. Still, Gusev was looking for a spot to pick up transmissions from a sophisticated listening device mysteriously planted inside State's most sacrosanct chambers. And that's good stuff.

"Isn't it wonderful?" asks David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation magazine and an author of spy fiction. His first espionage novel, "Deep Background," has just come out, and the recent news can only help holiday sales of the book. Even a decade after the putative end of the Cold War, he says, a good spy story still grips us.

"Spying has captured people's imaginations because it's about betrayal, and that's one of the more melodramatic conditions in the human condition," Corn says.

And right now, life is in lockstep with art. The most recent spy activity coincides (coincidentally?) with the release of the most recent James Bond film, "The World Is Not Enough," and with TBS's annual resurrection of past Bond films, "15 Days of 007." Earlier this week President Clinton granted the original Bond--Sean Connery--honorary citizenship, telling the actor: "We couldn't have won the Cold War without you."

The most recent Bond movie has been a box office success, and the cable TV film fest likewise does well in ratings. But the same is not true on the literary side. Authors such as Corn are a decreasing lot; espionage thrillers have been dwindling throughout the decade.

"A lot of people considered it a dead genre," says Mark La Framboise, floor manager at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Northwest Washington. "But now we're finding out that the end of the Cold War is not the end of espionage."

Is the genre poised for a resurgence? From the point of view of spy authors, such as Corn, the story of Stanislav Gusev is a gripping one.

"What John Le Carre and others of us have tried to capture in the world of espionage is not one of James Bondmanship, but often one of fumbling and bumbling bureaucrats who occasionally manage to pull off operations such as the one at the State Department but, at the same time, they also display incredibly high moments of ineptitude," he says.

"This is the stuff that we in the business look for," he says. "Already, one can start imagining the [novel's] scenario if not the screenplay."

Although it shouldn't, the idea of a Russian spying on the U.S. government strikes us as almost quaint. It is reminiscent of the legendary Japanese soldier discovered on a South Pacific island years after the end of World War II, unaware that the conflict was over. Instead of being left out in the cold, this spy--Gusev--seems left out of the loop.

But the truth is, there's still plenty of material for spy authors. Even though nearly a decade has passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, both Russia and the United States continue to spy on each other, say intelligence specialists.

The recent spate of spy activity, they say, is a combination of several global factors--any of which would make fine fodder for a spy thriller.

And how's this for a 21st-century spy novel: Russian spies who now steal our HTML codes instead of ICBM specifications? Turns out, it might be true.

The Russians "have refocused the [spy] machine on anything to do with technology," says Arnaud de Borchgrave, president of United Press International and head of the Global Organized Crime Project for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy think tank.

"Espionage activities have been growing in the U.S. because Russia is so far behind us, technologically," de Borchgrave says. Russian agents, he says, often eschew the traditional hard targets--the Pentagon, the CIA--and hit the Internet, posing as American tech workers and infiltrating online chat groups of disgruntled information technology employees, eager to trash their old employers.

In other words, our Russian adversaries might do better to bug Bill Gates.

So, even though Gusev--listening for state secrets while sitting in his car--is the stuff of yesterday's spy stories, he still makes for good copy.

"It's kind of wonderful to have a Russian skulking around the State Department, parking and reparking his car, and then to find this gizmo up on the seventh floor--that's the stuff of a good novel," says Robert Suettinger, a visiting foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and a retired CIA intelligence officer. But then he pauses, laughing, "Well, maybe a not-so-good novel."

---

State Dept. Employees Questioned
Officials Trying to Pinpoint How Listening Device Got in Molding

December 11, 1999; Page A10 By David A. Vise and Steven Mufson Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/11/031l-121199-idx.html

Federal investigators are questioning State Department employees, cleaning workers and others who had access to a seventh-floor conference room where a listening device was planted inside a piece of molding, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The bugging of the State Department became public knowledge this week after the FBI detained Stanislav Borisovich Gusev, a Russian diplomat who was caught outside the building while operating the device, law enforcement officials said. Gusev, who has been in the United States since March, was turned over to the Russian Embassy after claiming diplomatic immunity.

The breach of security on the seventh floor of the State Department, where Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and other senior offici