China And Spying
Is $39 million too much to spend, on rattraps,
in the future? Not according to
Senate and House negotiators. In a recent
article in the L.A. Times, the Senate
and House reportedly are increasing
spending on operations against spying by $20
million. The last rat trapped
was caught almost 15 years after a significant
amount of top-secret
information was leaked from the U S to China. The U S must
crack down on
spying in order to for our safety as a country. The government
must be more
enforcing against espionage in the U S. China has blatantly showed
us that we
have flaws in our system and need to crack down on spying
opportunities in
the U S. Sources from China claim that by 1992 they had figured
out how to
make miniature H-bombs similar to our W-88 warhead. This comes after
years of
no scientific advances substantial enough to gain this kind of
advancements
from China. China’s version of the miniature bomb is nearly
identical to our
W-88 that it is obvious that information was stolen on how to
build it. A few
of the outer measurements and the width of the trigger casing
are within
four-hundredths of an inch of our original version of the miniature
warheads.
China has tested a few of these types of bombs and they seem to be
as
operative and accurate as ours. If fired from China, they could reach
Alaska or
Hawaii with more explosive power than what was dropped on
Hiroshima in the end
of WWII. An investigation was started on the leakage of
information to China
back in 1995. Wen Ho Lee was the lead suspect, if not
the only major suspect for
nearly four years reported Vernon Loeb and Walter
Pincus in a Washington Post
article. After not enough evidence could be
gathered to put Lee away, a broader
investigation was started. In the end,
the clues kept coming back to Lee. In a
follow up article by Loeb from the
Washington Post, Lee was said to have
admitted to passing nuclear secrets to
China in 1985, while he was working at
the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
For his part in China gaining top-secret
bomb making information, Lee was
sentenced to 12 months in a halfway house, a
$20,000 fine, and 3000 hours of
community service. This type of espionage
normally provokes a life sentence
if found guilty. Why was Lee not prosecuted
more severely? Obviously China
has gained important information from us about
how to build a bomb. It is
also a fact that Lee was involved in leaking some of
that information. What
are we going to do about? The government has showed how
they can have a low
level of security and pay for it later. The judicial system
has showed how
they can let off a major player in putting at risk the lives of
all
Americans. Something must change in the future so that the next Hitler
does
not get our secrets and use them against us. In an anonymous editorial
in the
Los Angeles Times a writer claims that as many as 1000 people
could have the
clearance to obtain vital information pertaining to the bombs
that China nearly
duplicated from the U S. We must reduce the number of
people who have access to
top-secret nuclear information. Is there a valuable
reason that 1000 people have
access to information like this? The more people
involved the bigger risk we
run. Who is willing to take risks like this? I
think that there should be, as
few of people knowledgeable about stuff like
this as possible. We need to
increase clearance levels to restrict people
from leaking information into the
wrong hands. Another step that must be made
to keep the U S on top is to
separate the nuclear department from the
Department of Energy. The D.O.E.
governs over everything from warheads to
windmills. This Department is too broad
and should not carry the ability to
govern over such important matters. In the
latest article by Loeb he claims
that nuclear matters are still going to be
inside the D.O.E. and ultimately
answerable to the secretary. He says that there
will be more guards at the
door but not much changes to be seen. Right now the
nuclear arsenal is in
civilian, not military, hands. This does not seem right,
in order to limit
other countries from gaining important intelligence. The last
key change that
must take place is for more money to be spent on upgrading
security levels.
In the L. A. Times article Sen. Pete V. Domenici said that a
bill recently
passed that would set aside an increase of $102.2 million for the
D. O.
E. That raises their budget to over $4.4 billion to operate the three
major
laboratories where top-secret information is kept. With the money
finally
there for changes to now take place, we can only wait and see. In a
report by
CNN on October 27th, 1999, government officials led by Rep.
Fred Upton,
(R-Michigan) plan on visiting the sites where the money has gone
for security
changes. Upton thinks that by him and others visiting these
sites, that it will
put pressure on them to better protect the nation’s
secrets. If real
significant changes were made then they will not get to see
very much. Hopefully
they will be told that they do not have the proper
clearance to see what changes
were implemented and their access will be
denied. The real reason we are at risk
and should be scared by this is
because China now holds the power to bomb, as
well as other countries as far
away as Russia. From a report released by C-SPAN
the government says "Chinese
strategic nuclear efforts have focused on
developing and deploying a
survivable long-range missile force that can hold a
significant portion of
the U S and Russian populations at risk in a retaliatory
strike. We must
prevent this from happening in the future again. We might have
lucked out
that China was the one that ended up with all of this information and
not
Iraq. Our government can not allow glitches in our home security systems.
By
spending more money for a more sophisticated security system, lowering
the
number of people with access, and separating the nuclear department from
the
D.O.E. we can prevent this from happening again. These changes must
be made
immediately. On May 25,1999 the President spoke on this matter
saying, "The
objective is to ensure that U S national secrets are protected
and that our
civilian technology is not diverted for military purposes."
While he is saying
what we all want to hear, it is not necessarily what is
going to happen. We need
to follow up on this matter and stay educated on our
national security. If it
comes around to the people as voters, we must choose
to protect our security at
almost any cost. Our security is our freedom, and
if it falls into the wrong
hands we risk losing that. Nobody is willing to
risk that.