China Got Secret Data on U.S. Warhead

Chief Suspect Is a Scientist At Weapons Laboratory Of Energy Department

January 7, 1999 - Carla Anne Robbins - The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- China received secret design information for the most modern U.S. nuclear warhead, and U.S. officials say the top suspect is an American scientist working at a U.S. Department of Energy weapons laboratory.

The FBI is still investigating the incident, which occurred in the mid-1980s at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but was only uncovered in 1995. No arrest has been made, but officials say the suspect, whom they declined to name, has been removed from any sensitive projects.

U.S. officials describe the loss of data on the W88 warhead as the most significant in a 20-year espionage effort by Beijing that targeted the U.S. nuclear-weapons laboratories. The W88 sits atop the submarine-launched Trident II ballistic missile.

China hasn't developed a weapons system using the W88 information, and officials say it still faces very high design hurdles. But U.S. analysts believe it tested a warhead with characteristics similar to the W88 in the mid-1990s. The information could ultimately help China design a new generation of smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons potentially with multiple warheads. The U.S. stopped building new nuclear warheads in 1990.

There is considerable debate about how much information was passed to Beijing. It appears, however, that China didn't get any equipment, blueprints or advanced designs.

Instead, officials believe, China was given general, but still highly secret, information about the warhead's weight, size and explosive power, and its state-of-the-art internal configuration, which allowed designers to minimize size and weight without losing power. "The most important thing is they learned it could be done this way," said one U.S. official, adding that that knowledge may have saved China "between two and 10 years" of warhead-design efforts.

The W88 case is the third major Chinese espionage effort uncovered at the U.S. labs over the last two decades. They have forced the Clinton administration to completely revamp the Department of Energy's counterintelligence efforts.

The three cases were also a key part of a special House committee investigation into American high-technology transfers to China. The committee, whose chairman is California Republican Christopher Cox, completed a classified 700-page report in late December that included recommendations for tightening security at the weapons labs and greater congressional oversight.

In the late 1970s, a Taiwan-born American scientist working at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California passed classified information to Beijing about the U.S. neutron-bomb program. A decade later, China tested a neutron warhead, but hasn't deployed one. The scientist was fired but never arrested due to lack of hard evidence, officials say.

In the mid-1980s, another Taiwan-born American scientist working at New Mexico's Los Alamos laboratory, Peter Lee, passed classified information to China about U.S. laser technology. The lasers, according to officials, can be used to simulate nuclear explosions for either weapons design or stockpile maintenance. As part of a plea-bargain agreement, Mr. Lee was sentenced in early 1998 to spend 12 months in a halfway house.

In recent years, the Energy Department has been criticized for lax security at its weapons labs and particularly for a ballooning number of foreign visitors -- including from Russia and China -- to unclassified programs.

While U.S. officials say there are real dangers from these official contacts, the three known espionage cases all preceded the foreign-visitor programs and the Clinton administration. Instead, they blame a long-standing effort by China to recruit laboratory scientists -- many of ethnic-Chinese origin -- to pass on information. As far as U.S. analysts can discern, no payment has been involved in any of the three cases.

In early 1998, President Clinton issued a classified-decision directive -- PDD-61 -- calling for sweeping changes to the Energy Department's counterintelligence program. The department has since established an independent intelligence office, headed up by a CIA official and a separate office of counterintelligence, headed up by a former FBI official. It has also placed counterintelligence officers at all five weapons-design labs, begun more intensive security reviews for scientists working in sensitive programs -- including lie-detector tests -- and changed the screening process for foreign scientists applying to visit any of the labs. The department's classified counterintelligence budget has doubled between fiscal years 1998 and 1999 and is expected to double again next year, officials say.

Some critics, including members of the Cox committee, have complained that the Clinton White House still moved too slowly -- waiting three years between uncovering the W88 case and issuing the presidential directive. Officials say that resistance to the changes, and especially to financial reviews and lie-detector tests, was fierce, especially at the labs.

Edward Curran, the new counterintelligence director, says that when he came in early 1998, the Energy Department's spy-catching efforts "didn't even meet minimal standards." That is now changing, he says, but the threat continues to be very real. Department labs "have the best computers and the smartest scientists in the world . . . without a question they are the No. 1 target" for foreign countries trying to steal U.S. technology.