Loral Exams
Timmerman, Kenneth R.
Lora 1111 It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why the leader of a country without missile defenses has gone out of his way to help another country point missiles at it. KENNETH...
...While Loral and Hughes deny that any U.S...
...TAS has also learned that the connections of former Commerce Department official and DNC fund-raiser John Huang were far more extensive than previously reported, and included a top Commerce official with responsibility for export licensing decisions...
...a U.S...
...A frequent guest at the Clinton White House, he is the single largest individual contributor to the DNC, coughing up more than $1 million to Democrats since June 1994, according to Federal Election Commission Records reviewed by TAS...
...Under Reinsch, the department decontrolled a vast array of strategic technologies, including gas turbine engines, "hot section" production gear, and supercomputers, making them available to China with few if any restrictions...
...A new generation of designer defense companies, for the most part Silicon Valley contributors to the Clinton campaign, have sought to make Chinese missiles more reliable because the Chinese charge less to launch their satellites than their American competitors, and because state-owned China Aerospace has become a full-fledged partner in the Iridium consortium...
...In any other administration, Zia would have been tossed out on his ear...
...But the Loral/Hughes team insisted on performing a full systems analysis aimed at localizing the fault...
...34 July 1998 • The American Spectator Timmerman/China (Continued from page 34) the Asian-American community, who would play a role in later efforts to build support for John Huang among the Asian-American community...
...However, despite repeated attempts, we have been unable to convince the government of China to allow us to conduct post-shipment verifications," Reinsch told a House National Security subcommittee on April 15, 1997...
...Attorney in Los Angeles...
...The Joint Commission's trip led to a massive breakdown in the Commerce Department's export controls regarding China, including the uncontrolled sale of strategic machine-tools from a former B-1 bomber plant, and the transfer of supercomputers and satellite launch technology...
...high-tech exports to China...
...intelligence community analysis of Russian and Chinese space launch vehicles...
...Despite these considerations, Berger recommended that Clinton approve the satellite and technology transfer waiver because it "supported our broader policy of engagement with China...
...Most incoming administrations wait to replace SBA appointments until more sensitive Cabinet positions have been filled...
...We were always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never did...
...29 The Damage Done The decision to allow U.S...
...A White House waiver has gotten The American Spectator • July 1998 79 Loral and Hughes off the hook of a Justice Department investigation into their assistance to the Chinese rocket programs...
...In a February 13, 1998 letter to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Loral Vice President Thomas Ross said Schwartz had been hoping to meet with Clinton to discuss the waiver during a state dinner on February 5, but had "missed you in the crowd...
...If Schwartz briefed them on Loral's military products without first obtaining a State Department marketing license, he may have been breaking the law...
...At every step of the way since he began working as a consultant to the department in 1994, Hoyt Zia was involved in these decisions...
...The Clinton administration has used the SBA on a vast and previously unreported scale to distribute government grants and contracts to minority businesses in exchange for political support...
...and the 1996 decision to transfer authority for Chinese satellite launch approval from the State Department to Ron Brown's Commerce Department...
...But Lew testified in a deposition with Judicial Watch that the SBA had no business with the files...
...And yet, documents released by the White House show that top Loral officials had been counting on Schwartz's personal influence with the president to get the latest satellite waiver approved...
...The Lawyer Another key policy maker on satellite, encryption, and supercomputer exports was Hoyt Zia, a tight-lipped Chinese-American lawyer working for the Commerce Department...
...One big mystery is why the underwriters continued to insure Chinese launches, given a failure rate greater than zo percent...
...Moreover, Schwartz spread his money far and wide to Democratic candidates who could advance his cause and promote U.S...
...Barth's duties...
...law enforcement agencies a "back door" into commercial encryption software sold around the world...
...classified Commerce Department internal working documents on export licenses involving encryption, supercomputers, and satellites...
...national security in the 210 year history of the Republic...
...But times have changed, and the U.S...
...to defend Huang...
...The Chinese have made hundreds of millions of dollars launching U.S...
...Fitz-Pegado brought three of her former assistants with her...
...There, Zia says he met up with Bill Kaneko, a top DNC fund-raiser in (Continued on page 79) 1 But Zia didn't say how well connected Yee was...
...The Payoff U.S...
...Through all of this, the Clinton administration has argued that technology sales to China have helped win Chinese government "restraint" in selling ballistic missiles to countries of proliferation concern, such as Iran and Pakistan...
...I never once raised any issue that would be favorable to us, and I've never sought favor, nor gotten favor...
...Along with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, they displayed their military wares at a defense electronics and countermeasures trade fair in Peking on May 15—the first time U.S...
...He also acknowledged that he called Huang on several occasions in October 1996 and later, when Huang was being sought by federal marshals seeking to serve him with subpoenas...
...aerospace projects, including a stint at Northrup Grumman Corporation in the 1980's as the vice president responsible for the development of advanced guidance and navigations systems for U.S...
...no longer has an interest in China as a military buffer against Russia...
...We've seen a whole office of the Commerce Department, staffed with DNC hacks who all managed to obtain top secret security clearances under Ron Brown, be transferred part and parcel over to Motorola," says Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, who deposed Fitz-Pegado last August...
...In a previously classified internal memo released by the White House on May 22, National Security Adviser Berger warned President Clinton on February 12, 1998, that granting the new waiver to Loral would be criticized because it would be seen as letting Loral "off the hook...
...Yet these revelations are only the beginning...
...House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon wrote Defense Secretary William Cohen on May 27th, in hopes of "breaking down a Loral stonewall," to learn what security clearances Lim had benefitted from during his career in the U.S...
...Berger also insisted that the $366,000 contributed to Democratic causes by confessed Chinese agent Johnny Chung had no impact on the administration's decisions to allow technology transfers...
...trans 30 July 19 9 8 • The American Spectator spread the loss among six Western reinsurers based in the U.S., Germany, France, and Bermuda...
...communications satellites, money they have been able to plow into their nuclear missile programs, and have acquired technology that has dramatically improved their nuclear missiles...
...A CIA Assessment The Justice Department waited until October 1997 to launch its own probe into the Loral/Hughes transfers to China, but has since complained that the White House undermined its investigation by issuing a new waiver for Loral in February 1998 that made it legal for the company to export precisely the same technology that was the focus of the Justice Department probe...
...technology to China in exchange for worthless promises...
...Bayuk made it clear that the presence of Customs investigators might discomfit the Chinese...
...This writer first revealed Chung's business ties to Liu Chaoying, the daughter of Lt...
...The inventory of documents spirited away by Sockowitz is breathtaking in both size and importance, and it only came to light as a result of the Judicial Watch lawsuit against the Commerce Department...
...He was involved not only in granting specific export licenses, including those to Hughes, Loral, and Motorola for satellite launches in China, but as a top aide to Undersecretary of Commerce William Reinsch, he played an important role in formulating export licensing policy...
...transfers have amounted to "nothing less than an education that has enabled the Chinese to master for themselves a vast array of Chinese space launch technology deficiencies...
...Missing Documents Another administration insider tied to Huang, Zia, and the Chinese was Commerce Department Special Counsel, Ira Sockowitz...
...But Barth argued successfully that since the worldwide Iridium cellular communications network would require a total of sixty-six active satellites and seven spares, Motorola should get a blanket waiver to launch as many satellites as it chose in China...
...Over the next twelve months, the Loral chief personally contributed $240,000 to the DNC...
...Zia claims he only got to know John Huang after he joined BXA as General Counsel in late 1994, but if that is true the two became fast friends...
...Barth left the NSC later that year to take a senior position as a Motorola lobbyist, just as Tom Ross would join Loral one year later...
...Despite these objections, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown wrested control of satellite exports in March 1996, after intense lobbying by Loral...
...exchange for campaign dollars...
...Not much later, in the fall of 1994, Zia departed again for China to negotiate new export control arrangements with the Chinese as part of the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade...
...Customs Service and the Commerce Department's Office of Export Enforcement to inspect the facilities of the declared purchasers...
...During this investigation, company lawyers learned that Nick Yen, apparently acting on instructions 31 from Lim and his superiors, faxed numerous technical documents to CGWIC in Peking without submitting them to Loral to determine that no classified information was being disclosed...
...A court order has sealed the SBA safe where Sockowitz deposited the files, pending a court order...
...Hearing that Lim was already in Peking and meeting with the Chinese, members of the committee were furious...
...Bernie Will Handle It When Loral's Security Committee learned that the company had ignored its warnings and sent teams of engineers to China, it demanded that the company fully investigate and report its findings to the State Department...
...California Republican Christopher Cox has been named to head a special House of Representatives panel to investigate the China/DNC connection as it relates to strategic technology transfer and possible espionage...
...With four additional Senate panels investigating the same charges, the coming months will be rife with new allegations of misdeeds,1 mismanagement, corruption, and worse—committed in...
...I look forward to re-establishing our acquaintance again soon, perhaps on another trade mission with Secretary Brown or in another venue...
...satellites in July 1993, the real problems only came to the surface following the failed launch of Loral's Intelsat 708 on February 14,1996...
...laws were broken, in its "voluntary disclosure" document presented to the State Department two months after the transfers, Loral acknowledged that its own internal policies had been violated...
...This is a capability the Chinese did not have before," a former company official told TAS...
...supercomputers shipped to Chinese institutes...
...Sockowitz and Lew, long-standing DNC operatives, appear to have been transferred to the SBA after Brown's death, as a precaution against a possible Dole victory in November...
...Unofficial reports put the deaths in the hundreds...
...influence peddling by top U.S...
...The documents also included code-word assessments of the administration's "Clipper Chip" project, which was intended to give U.S...
...Customs attaché in Peking, who had asked to attend the negotiating sessions...
...Bush signed seven such waivers before leaving office, and two other waivers allowing U.S...
...I figured that Bernie [Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz] had taken care of it...
...Lim came to this country from China in the late 1960's, Newhouse said, and took a Ph.D...
...He was granted a "higher than top secret" clearance, according to Commerce Department lawyer Bruce Hegyi, and regularly reviewed classified documents relating to Loral, Martin-Marietta, Lockheed, Hughes, and Motorola, all of which were deeply engaged in promoting satellite launches in China...
...internal Commerce Department and NSC memos on encryption and how it should be controlled (and decontrolled) for export...
...Just weeks after Clinton took office in January 1993, Schwartz began lobbying the White House to lift restrictions on satellite and military exports to China...
...The underwriters wanted this team of outside engineers to review technical data presented by the Chinese, in order to validate their analysis of the rocket failure and certify that the problem had been fixed...
...strategic missiles...
...high-tech exporters, who also happen to be major contributors to the DNC and to the Clinton campaigns, have reaped major benefits from this administration's benevolent neglect of their dealings with Peking...
...The Chinese wanted the Americans to confirm their conclusions on the cause of the crash so that they could satisfy the insurance underwriters and proceed with additional The American Spectator • July 1998 launches...
...A State Department cable summarizing the meetings shows that Zia was stiffed by his Chinese counterpart, who broke off the discussions "unwilling to discuss this issue any further...
...Despite the strict security procedures put in place by the Reagan and Bush administrations—including the required presence of a Pentagon security officer from the moment the satellite arrived in China— Sokolski contends that U.S...
...Records from the trip obtained by congressional investigators show that Schwartz met with top officials at China Aerospace Corporation, and with the deputy chairman of the Commission of Science, Technology & Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), China's top military procurement board...
...I told him rather flatly and abruptly, no...
...These documents also show that the Commerce Department rebuffed the U.S...
...Most prominent among them was Lauri FitzPegado, a former Assistant Secretary of Commerce and a special adviser to Ron Brown when he was DNC Chairman in 1992...
...Schwartz is prepared to do anything he can for the Administration," Ickes noted...
...Sokolski contends that the know-how thus transmitted has "helped China master the technology needed to develop its own multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles for the new solid rocket intercontinental ballistic missile it is hying to derive from SS-25 missile technology" provided by the Russians...
...Wah L. Lim to Peking on April io for preliminary meetings with technicians from China Great Wall Industries Corp...
...At the urging of the U.S...
...1 In 1991 Zia left Motorola and moved to Hawaii, where he sold real estate and became active in Democratic politics...
...the F Department was reviewing its regulations governing the sale of super computers to China, and needed assurances that the Chinese would allow agents from the U.S...
...And that's when the problems began...
...A September 20, 1994 memo by Ickes urges Clinton to personally tap Schwartz, Vernon Jordan, and Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller to call in the debt...
...Sockowitz, who had traveled with Zia to China in 1994, has told investigators that he was merely transferring the documents to his new office at the Small Business Administration, where he went along with his Commerce Department boss, Ginger Lew...
...supercomputers would wind up in the hands of Chinese nuclear weapons and missile designers, since so many ostensibly commercial entities in the PRC are in fact controlled by the People's Liberation Army and its procurement wing, COSTIND...
...Following the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy students, all military and space cooperation with China halted...
...She left Commerce shortly after Ron Brown's death in 1996 to become a top aide to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown...
...More troubling aspects of this story are still to come...
...export control restrictions were met and no classified material was transferred to ineligible foreign parties...
...It was truly a pleasure to meet you and to spend some time with you in Guangzhou and Hong Kong," the letter reads...
...review team will not provide advice or direction on how to correct the deficiencies" of the Chinese rocket, because the company had not obtained the required license to do so from the Department of State...
...a broken regulatory machine...
...Despite the Security Committee's explicit instructions, Berry approved Lim's request and sent a team of engineers to Peking a few days later to make an initial assessment of the Chinese findings during meetings on April 15-16...
...With events spiraling out of control in South Asia, largely as a result of the Clinton administration's sellall-to-Communist China policy, Clinton may yet achieve his enduring legacy as the man who did the most damage to U.S...
...Shortly after the China trip, White House adviser and fundraiser Harold Ickes informed Clinton of a $3 million shortfall in the DNC coffers...
...Like other administration spokesmen, the National Security Adviser claimed he had 28 July 1998 • The American Spectator no idea that Johnny Chung was in business with the daughter of a top Chinese general —a fact known to TAS readers for more than a year...
...It was Zia who teamed up with Kaneko, the director of the Association of Asian Pacific Americans, to organize a late October 1996 press conference in Washington, D.C...
...In the official Chinese account of the accident, six people were killed and 57 injured when a guidance failure caused the rocket to veer off course and plow into a residential area on a neighboring hillside 22 seconds after takeoff...
...Despite this, TAS has learned, since taking office President Clinton has signed an additional nineteen waivers for satellite launches in China, and as many separate licenses allowing the satellite-makers to transfer "technical data" to the Chinese to allow them to mate the satellites to the Long March booster rockets...
...Added to that is another $5oo,00o in contributions by Loral employees to Democratic candidates...
...ly transferring similar technology to Iran and Pakistan—has helped convince India of the need to demonstrate its nuclear capabilities in self-defense...
...The two missiles share the same rocket motors, the same exhaust nozzles, the same airframe, motor cases, liners and insulation, the same propellants, the same staging mechanism, the same inertial guidance system—and most significantly, the same payload separation devices...
...CGWIC), the maker of the Long March booster rockets...
...Normally, satellite exports are approved on a case-bycase basis under the Tiananmen sanctions...
...They have also gained access to supercomputers and encryption technology...
...Pushing through more export control waivers for the Iridium system, including access to sensitive encryption technology...
...In April 1993 I met Barth in the Old Executive Office Building to discuss the proposed sale of a Cray supercomputer to China, which some in Congress were then opposing...
...As general counsel of the Bureau of Export Administration (MA), Zia was privy to special CIA reports on China, as well as signals intelligence intercepted by the National Security Agency...
...satellite makers to launch civilian telecommunications satellites in China was prompted by the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, which sharply curtailed NASA's ability to meet industry's demand for launches...
...Loral and Hughes sent their engineers back to China on April 30, where they were given "tours of the test facility for the guidance system, the assembly facility for the launch vehicle, and the facility where the inertial measurement unit was made," according to a Loral damage assessment prepared for the State Department and obtained by TAS...
...FEC records reviewed by TAS show that in addition to over $1 million in soft money to the DNC and its affiliates, Schwartz gave another $no,000 in precious hard money to the campaigns of key Clinton supporters , including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, Massachusetts Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, New Jersey Democrat Robert Torricelli, California Representatives Jane Harman and Tom Lantos, and Nebraska Senator Robert Kerrey, the minority chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which has been tasked to review the Loral sales to China...
...Berry met the next day with SS/L's Government Security Committee, an oversight board established because of the company's partial foreign ownership, to ensure that U.S...
...The wholesale transfer of advanced aerospace, nuclear, and supercomputer technology to China —and China's clear record of repeatedKENNETH R. TIMMERMAN is a frequent contributor to TAS...
...According to Sokolski, the U.S...
...KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN ational Security Adviser Sandy Berger has finally confirmed what many of us suspected all along: The Clinton administration's repeated sales of missile technology to China were deliberate acts, "pursued absolutely and totally on the basis of our judgment about national security...
...In the most recent and most controversial case —the waiver granted to Loral on February 18, 1998—Congress was notified during a recess...
...company could boost a satellite into space on a Chinese rocket...
...CGWIC then asked Lim if he would head up the Independent Review Committee that was scheduled to hold its first official meeting in Peking on April 15...
...In his Judicial Watch deposition, Zia describes how the two would regularly visit each other's offices, and go out to lunch at the nearby Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C...
...This has "upgraded China's ability to integrate and launch more complex military payloads," including reconnaissance satellites and nuclear warheads...
...In his four years at Commerce, Hoyt Zia has racked up an impressive record of failure: technology exports out of control, diverted to military and even nuclear end-users in China and Russia...
...Schwartz appears to be the key player in the affair...
...Now Chung has begun to sing like Pavarotti, blowing the lid off the administration's denials that it peddled influence to the Chinese government during the 1996 campaign...
...While he was at BXA, Zia continued to actively support the Democratic National Committee...
...Yee also accompanied Ron Brown as note taker on the September 1994 trade promotion trip to China with Loral President Bernard Schwartz...
...government analysis of industry proposals on how to decontrol encryption software...
...Newhouse refused to comment on the substance of the allegations against Lim, but noted that so far neither the Justice Department, the Pentagon, nor any other agency of the U.S...
...Zia began seeing her socially and politically in the mid-1980's, he said...
...But Zia was no ordinary Commerce Department lawyer: he was a key insider with access to highly classified information of vital importance to the Chinese, who also happened to be a close friend of former Lippo Bank official and DNC fundraiser John Huang...
...and cross town to work for the DNC, where Huang was holding court...
...Asi an appointees would all leave their jobs at 5:00 p.m...
...Zia was back in Peking on January 19, 1998, for another, negotiating session, according to documents released by the Commerce Department to independent encryption specialist Charles Smith, who writes occasionally for Insight magazine...
...32 July 19 98 The American Spectator The Men on the Inside In two other key decisions related to the February 1998 Loral waiver, personal influence and arm-twisting evidently outweighed considerations of national security: the July 1993 blanket waiver granted to Motorola to launch up to 12 Iridium satellites in China...
...In a classified 1995 memo, Secretary of State Warren Christopher sided with the Defense Department, the intelligence agencies, and some of his own advisers in opposing the transfer to Commerce, on the grounds that loosening controls on the encryption technologies embedded in commercial satellites could jeopardize "significant military and intelligence interests," the New York Times reported...
...He began working on Chinese satellite projects in the early 1990's, after a long career in industry developing top-secret U.S...
...During the 1996 presidential campaign, Zia said, he regularly worked as a DNC volunteer, dialing for dollars among the Asian-American community...
...Word would be passed around among Asian appointees," who would all leave their government jobs at 5:oo p.m...
...government had sought to interview him or his client...
...Barth lobbied the administration to shift control of commercial communications satellites from the State Department, where they were considered munitions items because of embedThe American Spectator • July 1998 ded encryption technologies, to the Commerce Department, where licensing requirements were far less stringent...
...She has since admitted to Justice Department investigators to having destroyed all her notes from the trip—evidence which would have established whether Bernard Schwartz briefed the Chinese on military products...
...He also took part in interagency panels reviewing highly classified documents with respect to encryption technology and supercomputer exports to China...
...The satellite was insured for $205 million by a consortium headed by China Pacific Insurance Co...
...technology handed over benefited the Chinese nuclear missile program in several key ways, including the following: • It taught the Chinese why and how to build clean rooms for satellite launch integration...
...and cross town to work for the DNC—where John Huang was holding cou rt...
...According to former Pentagon official Henry Sokolski, "the argument made at the time was that such cooperation might well strengthen China militarily, and that given our continuing Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, this would be a benefit...
...In short, indirect missile technology transfers were assumed...
...04 80 July r 9 9 8 • The American Spectator...
...On evenings and weekends I would go to DNC headquarters and make phone calls, stuff envelopes, and other voluntary work," he said...
...It validated China's satellite kick motor, a solid-fuel engine used to boost satellites into precise near earth orbits...
...On May i4, in an analysis presented to a Senate subcommittee chaired by Thad Cochran, the CIA compared the "Long March" space booster rocket to China's CSS-4 nuclear missile, highlighting the technologies shared by the two systems...
...Both decisions are now under investigation by Congress...
...aerospace and computer companies—all of it amounting to a massive hemorrhage of U.S...
...Lim's deputy Nick Yen, who was the official note taker of the Independent Review Committee, faxed his minutes on the technical exchanges to China Great Wall Industry in Peking on April 25...
...At one point, eleven Loral employees attended a fund-raiser for California Democrat Jane Harman only days before the 1996 election, kicking in an additional $6,250 in hard money to her campaign...
...On the contrary: Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been openly transferring massive amounts of strategic weaponry to China, including Sukhoi-z7 fighter-bombers, Kilo-class submarines, and state-of-the-art Sovremennyi-class destroyers equipped with nuclear-tipped SS-N-22 anti-shipping missiles...
...against missiles launched by rogue states, but they have been more than willing to help the Chinese to target the United States with nuclear warheads...
...Loral sent Senior Vice President Dr...
...Barth argued that it was impossible to control high technology any longer, and that safeguard requirements aimed at preventing the Chinese from using the supercomputer for weapons design were "hopelessly expensive" and "ineffective...
...Said Cochran: "We think the risks have been elevated to a point where our national security is in jeopardy...
...As Sokolski points out, these technology transfers "began under Republican administrations, not Clinton...
...He also sought to sell the Chinese airborne military reconnaissance cameras, missile guidance systems, laser designation pods, and shipboard weapons systems...
...TAS has learned that the Loral team provided the Chinese with some zoo pages of technical data and analysis which it never submitted to the Security Committee, and reviewed 500 pages of technical materials submitted by the Chinese...
...Since this was the fifth such failure since 1990, the insurance companies were in no mood to accept Chinese assurances that all would be well in future launches...
...But Zia's sworn deposition to Judicial Watch last October revealed that Huang could access virtually any classified document he wished simply by going down the hall to visit with his "personal friend," the BXA's general counsel Hoyt Zia...
...In August 1996, shortly before the elections, Ira Sockowitz walked out of his fifth-floor office in the Commerce Department carrying 2,800 pages of highly classified intelligence documents on encryption, supercomputers, and satellite technology under review for sale to China...
...Sockowitz is now working as an international trade consultant, and his files would have been of immense value to clients interested in exporting super-computers, encryption software, or satellites to China and Russia—as well as to those respective governments...
...Schwartz rebutted the accusations of cunying favor on ABC's "This Week" on May 24...
...The data have helped Chinese rocket designers to improve the accuracy and reliability of the Long March launchers...
...Lim phoned Palo Alto to relay the Chinese request to the president of Loral's Space Systems division (SS/L), Robert Berry...
...In fact, the technology transferred to China through the satellite sales has helped China improve the nuclear missiles it trains on the United States...
...A law was passed requiring the President to sign a waiver before a U.S...
...Although President Clinton first granted waivers for the Chinese to boost U.S...
...Exactly why the Chinese sought Lim as their primary interlocutor remains unclear...
...The Pentagon was concerned that U.S...
...According to minutes of that meeting obtained by TAS, the committee told Berry point-blank that "the U.S...
...As a corporate lawyer for Motorola in the 1980's and a DNC activist in the Asian Pacific American community in California, he became close to Ron Brown's future assistant at the Commerce Department, Melinda Yee...
...Since November 1996, the CIA has limited access to the Sockowitz files to congressional investigators because of the highly sensitive information they contain...
...She is a target of the Justice Department DNC-China fund-raising probe because of her relations to the recently indicted Nora Lum, a DNC donor accused of having transferred stock in a company she controlled, Dynamic Energy Resources, Inc., to Yee's mother shortly after President Clinton took office...
...At a meeting in Peking one month after the crash, the insurance companies threatened to withhold coverage from future launches unless China submitted its findings on the cause of the crash to an "Independent Review Committee...
...Ironically, American defense companies aren't allowed to build ballistic missile defenses that would protect the U.S...
...Says one former Loral official: "The Chinese felt comfortable with him because he was a native-born Chinese speaker, and because he had a good reputation in the field...
...So sensitive is the matter of these waivers, the White House has regularly delayed notifying Congress as the law requires it to do...
...The Chinese government, through its equity stake in the Iridium worldwide cellular telephone project, will reap huge profits from the millions of new cellular customers using their service in China, providing even more cash for strategic weapons modernization...
...In May1997, after the DNC/China fund-raising scandal caused Commerce Department officials to duck for cover, Barth was joined at Motorola by no fewer than four former Clinton political appointees...
...China's Man at Loral Public attention started to focus on the satellite technology issue in April, when New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth revealed that a grand jury was probing the possible transfer of strategic missile technology to the Chinese by Loral and Hughes during their satellite launch programs...
...When the China scandals first broke in October 1996, reporters were told that Huang was a lowly "trade promotion" hack, who never paid much attention to the classified briefings on China he received weekly from the CIA, and that the real decisions on strategic technology were made by the Bureau of Export Administration...
...companies to provide components to foreign manufacturers launching their satellites in China...
...Schwartz and Loral refused to respond to repeated TAS queries on this and related issues...
...The company knew they had done something wrong," a former Loral official told TAS...
...Despite this, the Commerce Department approved the license that was pending...
...David Benner of US Customs just called me and stated he heard about the BXAtravelers...and wanted to come along," wrote the Commerce Department's representative in Peking, Mark Bayuk...
...defense contractors have been allowed to participate in such an event since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989...
...classified internal government memoranda on proposed purchases of weapons-grade uranium from Russia by Arkansas firms...
...Zia's first mission for the Commerce Department was to accompany Bernard Schwartz during the August-September 1994 trade mission to China...
...Ross, a former top aide to Berger at the NSC, was hired by Loral in 1995 to become their chief government lobbyist...
...And in this waiver, says a former Loral official familiar with the case, the White House quietly dropped most of the security procedures put in place by the previous two administrations, eliminating the requirement that a Pentagon official constantly accompany the satellite in China...
...Now it has prompted Pakistan to follow suit, setting in motion a nuclear arms race such as the world has not seen since the darkest years of the Cold War...
...Lim has since left Loral and now works as a senior executive at Hughes Space and Communications Company in Los Angeles...
...This kick motor's development could help China perfect a post boost vehicle (PBV) to deliver warheads against nations armed with missile defenses," Sokolski says...
...Liu Huaqing, in "While America Sleeps," in June 1997, and has been chronicling the Clinton administration high-technology sell-off to China in these pages since "China Shops," TAS, March 1995...
...In June 1993, before leaving the NSC, Barth recommended that President Clinton approve an application by Motorola to launch a series of its Iridium communications satellites from China...
...In 1995 the Commerce Department removed controls on most supercomputers, allowing them to be sold directly to Chinese military facilities...
...Of a total of 998 individual Loral contributions reviewed by TAS, only ten were made to Republican candidates or to the RNC, for a total of $17,895...
...Christopher also warned that transferring control over satellites to Commerce would "raise suspicions that we are trying to evade China sanctions" imposed following China's sale of M-u missiles to Pakistan in 1991 and 1993...
...national security by helping the Chinese to make more reliable rockets...
...in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1973...
...satellite-makers whose technology deals with China were approved by Clinton White House rulings...
...This astonishing admission, apparently intended to dispel suspicions that those sales were motivated by the quest for campaign donations, unwittingly reveals just how defective the administration's national security judgment has been...
...An investigation by TAS has discovered a far more troubling pattern of administration connivance with Peking to facilitate the transfer of strategic The American Spectator • July 1998 missile technology to the People's Liberation Army...
...But by far the most significant technology giveaway resulted from the recent cooperation between the PRC and Motorola, which began launching its "Iridium" series of communications satellites in China last year under Clinton waivers...
...Whatever assurances Zia brought back from his negotiations in Peking were broken almost immediately by the Chinese...
...The DNC did not respond to TAS inquiries as to Zia's duties as a DNC volunteer...
...When I phoned Lim to ask him about his trips to China during the inquiry, he referred me to his lawyer, George Newhouse, a former Assistant U.S...
...Since October 1993, when Loral began to lobby the Clinton administration to approve additional satellite sales to China, Loral employees have contributed $55,000 to Harman's congressional campaigns—giving them a significant voice in her votes by becoming one of her most reliable sources of campaign funds...
...Between April 1995 and March 1996, while this decision was under review, CEO Schwartz donated more than $281,000 to the Democratic Party...
...strategic technology...
...CPIC) that Since taking office Bill Clinton has signed nineteen satellite launches waivers for in China, and a .5 many separate licenses for technical data fers...
...Motorola has been granted a blanket waiver to launch its satellites in China, in the process transferring MIRV warhead technology to the Chinese military...
...Although Zia testified in a sworn deposition before Judicial Watch last October that he was not on the trip and "did not recall" taking part in any meetings to discuss it, congressional investigators have released a letter apparently written by Zia to Schwartz after the event...
...classified information on Motorola's Iridium satellite project...
...TAS has learned that Schwartz briefed Brown on Loral military products in preparation for that trade trip, seeking Brown's support for selling the Chinese electronic countermeasures gear made by Loral for the Navy's top-line F-18 fighter...
...computer industry, the Commerce 33 Schw artz briefed Ron Brown on Loral's military products, seeking his support in selling the PRC electronic countermeasures gear made for -18...
...In the early days of the Clinton White House, responsibility for export-control issues was vested in Richard Barth, a National Security Council staffer carried over from the Bush administration...
...Skirting the question as to whether he was recruited by John Huang, Zia stated: "There was a general call for people to help out with their campaign activities...
...Despite his earlier failures, Zia had been tasked once again with getting the Chinese to agree to post-shipment verifications on U.S...
...Clinton approved the blanket waiver on July 2,1993...
...Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on May 17, Berger denied that the administration's decisions had been influenced by $632,000 donated to the DNC by Loral Corporation CEO Bernard Schwartz during the 1996 election cycle...
...The only significant difference is the payload: satellites in one case, nuclear warheads in the other...
...I have never spoken to the president of the United States about my business," he said...
...The following week, on April 22, it was the turn of the Chinese to send a technical team to Loral's headquarters in Palo Alto...
...The Loral chief also became close to Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, and accompanied him on a controversial August 27-September 3,1994 trade mission to China...
...The CIA believes the Chinese have made dramatic improvements in the CSS-4 over the past five years, aided at least in part by U.S...
...Nick Yen faxed the minutes of these exchanges to the Chinese on May 6. The Loral/Hughes systems analysis was just the type of technology transfer that caused the National Air Intelligence Center and the State Department's office of Intelligence and Research to conclude, in a still-classified May 1997 joint report, that the interchange had done "damage" to U.S...
...It helped resolve attitude control problems and thus improve the accuracy of China's M-class missiles, which were launched against Taiwan in February 1996 and exported to Syria, Pakistan, and Iran...
...In congressional testimony last year, Reinsch acknowledged that 46 supercomputers, worth $17.5 million, had been exported to China as a result of the decontrols...
...His view was embraced by Clinton political appointees at the Defense, State, and Commerce Departments...
...Crammed with top secret and code-word documents, the cache includes: • a top secret NSA study of the international market for encryption software...
...Loral, Hughes, and other aerospace manufacturers have apparently been cleared to market military products openly in China for the first time...
...Launch delays prevented all but two of these satellites from being shipped to China while President Bush was in office, but President Clinton quietly reissued the waivers...
...When the State Department got wind of these exchanges a few weeks later, it fired off an official letter of complaint on May 29 saying that Loral and Hughes may have violated the law...
...Congressional investigators tell TAS that they have learned from former colleagues of Lim's at Northrup, Honeywell, and Loral of alleged disturbing security lapses by the Chinese-born engineer, including one instance where he allegedly withdrew highly classified documents from a colleague's safe...
...Later that year Zia was appointed general counsel of BXA, a position that made him personally responsible for all legal issues relating to export licensing...
...Zia was vague in his deposition on how he got his Commerce Department job...
...In this all-carrots, no-sticks policy, the Clinton White House has offered the crown jewels of U.S...
Vol. 31 • July 1998 • No. 7
