Did Clinton REALLY sell/give nuclear/missle secrets to China/North Korea?

Great Debates
1

I see conservatives complain about this all the time, yet I’ve never seen an article about it… its like they’re getting this information from talk show hosts or something. I would assume if Clinton actually did such treachorous acts the conservatives would impeach him for that instead of who he slept with.

I tried searching a bit and really couldn’t find much. So either I’m an idiot and don’t know how to use a search function (very possible), or Clinton never did any such thing. Can you help me? If you have links to articles listing either way, it would be helpful. I want to either dispel this myth once and for all, or suck it up and move on.

edit: sell or give in title.

2

The only solid evidence I see about this: during Clinton’s second term, LORAL Corporation (a major US satellite mfg., and its president, applied for an export license for China). LORAL’s application was approved…and the technology transfer included critical guidance technology , which the Chinese used to make their ICBMs more accurate. Effectively, LORAL GAVE the Chinese information that saved them decades of R&D…and enabled them to target the USA with guided missles.So Clinton’s boast (that US cities were safe from nuclear attack) is adamned lie-he knew what the Chinese were up to and deliberately ignored the Loral matter.
For this, Clinton deserves to be called the worst US president of modern history…of course,his apologists never mention this affair!

3

Hmm, do you have a link?

I tried doing a google news search on ‘clinton’ and ‘loral’ but only came up with a financial times (uk) article that I need a subscription for and a Rush Limbaugh article.

4

The full story is a bit more complicated than that. First, despite the title of the OP, “Clinton” didn’t give or sell anything to anybody. His adminstration loosened restrictions on technology exports, and a few things got out that probably should not have.

Congress (a Republican Congress, I should point out) conducted a full investigation, and found that while some information was passed to the Chinese by Loral, it didn’t amount to much. The CIA, in fact, said that Loral hadn’t given the Chinese much useful information, and even the Air Force said that the material given to the Chinese by Loral had increased their capabilities only incrementally.

Additionally, Loral didn’t apply for an “export license” to give the Chinese the data in question. They were working with the Chinese, who had a missile failure that destroyed the Loral satellite it was carrying. The Loral techies faxed them some data that pointed to some ways to improve the missile’s reliability and performance. No one in the Clinton adminstration reviewed this data before it was faxed - they were never asked to do so. No “application” was approved.

Ultimately, it’s worth noting that the Congress elected not to pursue the matter as part of the Clinton impeachment and, more to the point, didn’t refer any of it to the Justice Department. If there were a prosecutable offense in there somewhere, I’ve got to think that a referral to DOJ would have been a no-brainer.

What the investigation did lead to, on the other hand, was the realization that Chinese intelligence had been targeting U.S. technology for quite a while, and that some measures needed to be taken to protect sensitive information. The Loral incident, itself, was little more than a tiny pimple on an otherwise acne-ridden face.

You can read all about it here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/missile/keystories.htm. The stories are listed in reverse chronological order, so the first story listed is a final summary of Congress’ findings.

5

Let’s fight some ignorance right now.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/05/22/china.money/

This is a favorite chestnut that gets dragged out by the Rabid Right, and it gets embellished with each telling. They are getting scared about the prospect of running against Howard Dean in the next election, and would prefer to run against Bill Clinton; having lost to him twice, they figure the third time is the charm.

6

China has had ICBMs since at least 1981. Cite. You can’t blame Clinton for that. True, LORAL may have made those missiles better, but with a 5 megaton warhead, their missiles really don’t need to be that accurate.

Keep in mind that Chinese nuclear doctrine places literally zero importance on maintaining a counter-force arsenal: that is, the PRC isn’t going to target US ICBM silos. The Chinese target cities for their strategy of deterrence, which is pretty damn smart, since they probably have less than a couple dozen ICBMs.

You are misquoting. He often said that “there were no nuclear missiles targeted at American cities.” That is, he claimed that China or Russia would have to first target their missiles before launching them, rather than just hitting the launch button.

Kind of a pointless statement, since these weapons can be re-targeted in a matter of minutes.

It seems more likely that LORAL employees acted incompetently in exceeding the scope of their export license. One can hardly blame Clinton for that.

If we are to hold Presidents accountable for the illegal – or at least stupid – acts of employees of private corporations, then we should also indict Reagan for approving export licenses that allowed samples of extremely dangerous biological agents to be sold to Iraq during the mid-to-late 1980s. Actaully, since he was selling arms to two terrorist supporting nations, that’s probably a more severe blow to US national security, seeing as how we have gone on to fight two wars against one of those countries.

And as far as giving nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, that allegation is silly. Clinton made a deal that would have resulted in the end of North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for Japan and South Korea financing a light water nuclear reactor, which can be used for electricity, but has little to no use in a nuclear weapons program. That was in 1994. The light water reactors were never built, thus, quite obviously, have nothing to do with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

7

web (not news … it’s quite old now) search for “loral china technology” and you should find stuff.

http://www.loral.com/china-investigation.html

Basically, here’s what happened:

Intelsat, an international communications consortium, wanted to put a commercial communications satellite in orbit.

Intelsat hired Loral to make the satellite.

Intelsat hired the Chinese to launch the satellite. The Chinese used one of their Long March rockets, the same sort they would use to hit us with ICBMs. No shocker there, since the US and Russians have always used ICBM rockets for space launches.

The US govt. (under Clinton) approved a waiver allowing the US company, Loral, to launch on a Chinese rocket. Both Bush Sr. and Clinton had approved a number of such waivers over the years.

Problem: the launch failed (as rocket launches often do).

The Chinese, being secretive, conducted a private investigation of the failure. They announced that the failure was caused by a low-tech problem: a failed solder joint.

Insurers, among them US insurers, weren’t too happy with all this, and said they would not insure future launches w/o more data/assurances. So they set up a committee, including people from Loral, to request information from the Chinese so that they could make a better assessment. The Chinese complied, and, judging by the information they were given, the committee said, yep, it was that darned solder.

Then the committee made a mistake: It sent a report back to the Chinese without first getting approval from the US Govt. (who has to sign off on all communications, apparently, in order to prevent unauth. tech. transfers).

In the course of this committee’s work, they sent no techical data to the Chinese, made no suggestions about improving missile guidance systems, etc. It sounds like they just sent a report back on their findings, which were based on Chinese information and agreed with it. (I have not read the report, so yes, it’s possible that they said, “Oh, and by the way, if you recalibrate your guidance gyroscopes you’ll increase your accuracy by 45%…”)

The main problem is that they failed to go through channels, and there was the risk that the Chinese could have gained technology secrets from us. But that does not seem to have happened.

The further complication (isn’t there always one?) is that Loral/its founder was apparently a contributor to the Democrats (gasp! no govt. contractor has ever given money to the party in power…).

8

Then where do you see it?

I don’t think even Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan would say this, it’s so insane. I have heard people say he was irresponsibly lax in security, etc., which may or many not be true, but that’s nowhere near the same as saying he actively sold or gave secrets out. Do you have a cite where someone other than a crackpot conspiracy theorist actually alleges this?

9

Thank you. I tried to edit my post to say that I searched yahoo and got a bunch of stuff.

Does anyone have anything else about this besides the launch? What about conservatives saying its clinton’s fault about the chinese person working at the one nuclear lab?

10

Now, you wouldn’t be referring to our own ralph124c, now would you? That’s not allowed in GD. :wink:

11

I see a bunch of peole on other internet forums complain about it :wink: I figured I’d have a better chance at actually getting PROOF on whether it actually happened or not, or what actually happened in the first place if i asked for help here.
Oh, and Rush Limbaugh DID say something about it (it was one of the two responses I got on the news.google.com search). Unfortunately I didn’t see what he said about it since I didn’t want to register. From the context of the title, it seems as if he’s regarding Clinton as a traitor.

12

That would be the case of Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear scientist at the Los Alamos atomic research facility, accused of leaking nuclear bomb secrets to the Chinese in 1999:

This is yet another case of hysterical conservatives telling part of a story in order to smear the uninvolved.

13

omg thats it. Thanks! I love you. (not gay)

14

Not that there’s anything wrong with that… :wink:

15
16

Yeah. If a liberal news reporter said it, it must be true.

17

Great debate tactic there Lib. If you can’t fault the facts, go after the reporter. Everybody knows all Liberals™ are notorious liars.

Ad Hominem, much?

18

That was pretty sad, Lib. Thanks for the great contribution to the thread.

19

I don’t like wearing rubber pants.

20

Ad Verecundiam, much?