Transcript of August 4, 1999, Press Conference on behalf of Radiation Survivors, Washington DC

Vice Admiral Eugene Carroll
Center for Defense Information
http://prop1.org/prop1/990804hn.adm.carroll.speech.htm

Good afternoon. It's an honor to join with concerned, informed individuals to address the tragedy of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons ARE a tragedy, the testing, their barbaric use against innocent people. The continued existence of nuclear weapons is a tragedy. The United States spends more than 30 billion dollars a year to maintain its nuclear war fighting capability. At the same time, as President Eisenhower noted, people hunger and are not fed, people are cold and not clothed. They are an abomination, a threat to the future of humankind.

And particularly so at this moment, because just about eight years ago, at the end of the cold war, we had hope, there was going to be a peace dividend. That peace dividend would include addressing this nuclear question and getting rid of these engines of destruction.

The reality, of course, has turned out to be entirely different. Just a year and a half ago the President of the United States determined that the world's most powerful nation must depend for security upon the availability and use of nuclear weapons. That's the formal policy of the United States of America today. Our security will depend indefinitely upon nuclear weapons.

In pronouncing that he declared that that gave us the right to make first use of those weapons, first use against non-nuclear states if we deemed it in our interests, that we would maintain our arsenal in what's called a "launch-on-warning" condition, meaning that they could be used in the matter of just a few moments if we thought our security was imperiled, creating a hairtrigger situation in which the end of humankind could occur, because of misinformation, system failure, human error, fear.

We live in a world which today is not one whit safer than it was during the Cold War. As has been noted, the existence of nuclear weapons won't deter violence, they don't deter attacks against other nations, they don't even deter attacks against the United States. We have our citizens blown up by truck bombs, our allies are attacked in Kuwait. Nuclear weapons simply do not make us securer and yet we pronounce them the cornerstone of our security.

In the process, a further blow to our hopes at the end of the Cold War, we have caused Russia now to become more reliant on nuclear weapons. They used to have a no-first-use doctrine. They said, "As moral people, we will not make first use of nuclear weapons." Now they've renounced that. They say that nuclear weapons are their security because we threaten them, and they have no other form of military power, no form of political power, no form of economic power, they're a destitute, bankrupt nation, and yet they have thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons, including weapons on hairtrigger alert.

And we have in fact contributed to that situation in Russia. The United States and Russia, by our behavior, threaten the non-proliferation regime of the world. This is another horrible problem. If the superpowers, the great nuclear giants, say "We have to have these weapons for our security," what are we telling other nations? We've seen in India and Pakistan, just in the last year and a half, their actual testing of nuclear weapons to join the nuclear powers. We know that there are other ones. They're only the tip of the iceberg. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and others are attempting to pursue possession of nuclear weapons, to create them.

It is shocking to think that we have this moment in history when there are no great powers threatening each other with fearsome forces, other than these nuclear weapons, that we are not smart enough to get rid of them.

We are living instead in a world in which the danger of nuclear catastrophe is actually increasing day by day, year by year.

I'm pleased, having given you the bad side of the picture, to say that it isn't all bad news. Because the problem is continuing, because it is increasing, because it is becoming more threatening, people are beginning to wake up again. The nuclear freeze movement, which ensued in the 1980's when everyone was convinced that Ronald Reagan wanted to put us in a nuclear war, is now coming back again in a degree. We have the Canberra Declaration, which is a signpost to the world. This was a declaration by some of the most esteemed leaders in the world. Military, political, scientific, Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered together, and declared that the only safety lay in the abolition of nuclear weapons, the total elimination of nuclear weapons on earth. There is a declaration by the 62 generals and admirals a year and a half ago, I'm proud to be one, calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. This represents military people from 17 nations in the world. Now the civilian leaders, premiers, prime ministers, presidents, have joined together in a call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. So there IS awareness that we are in a blind alley, we put ourselves in this position, saying "We trust nuclear weapons," when we should be fearing them.

There are other efforts going forward. I participated in this study, just out, which you might be interested in. We published it under the title, "Jump Start," meaning, Start isn't getting it done, Start is stopped. Let's jump over Start an let's make deep reductions in nuclear weapons, let's take the existing nuclear weapons off hairtrigger alert, and let's establish a solid security accountability system for the fissile material that is so grotesquely excess to anybody's safety. Three steps that will move us toward the reduction of nuclear weapons.

Another group with which I'm participating, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, published a report, "Waging Peace Worldwide," and this calls for nuclear abolition and involves the important leaders and thinkers of the United States and other nations.

You always, I hope, can count on the word from the Center for Defense Information. We publish facts about the dangers, the numbers, the systems, and make recommendations, recipes for dealing with these problems.

So there is a body of public opinion that exists, and I think that can be strengthened into a significant political force.

Now, it has to begin in the United States. I guess our guests (Hibakusha from Japan) are doing their share, but it has to start to here, we started the nuclear age. We're the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons. If we say that they're the cornerstone of our security, we're never going to get rid of them, so it has to start here, which means the American people have to be the engine for change, they have to become alarmed, and concerned, and active, and convince our leadership that we will lead the world toward nuclear abolition.

Then it has to become a global effort, just like the nuclear freeze began in the '80's, it started here in the United States, but pretty soon there were people in Munich, and people in Milan, and people in South Africa, there were people all over the world demonstrating against nuclear weapons. And I think we can build that sort of spirit, concern, and activism with the facts. Groups like this are helpful, you get the information out, it shows everybody that there are concerned, informed individuals who want to change what's going on in the world today. So let's cling together, let's work together, let's count on each other, and let's get on with this imperative, to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

###

Comments from audience:

Ellen Thomas, Proposition One Committee:

I don't have a question, but I'd like to speak to what Admiral Carroll had to say about the need to abolish nuclear weapons and to start here in the United States. I'm not sure that everyone in this room is aware that on July 16th, on the anniversary of the dropping of the first bomb, Trinity, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey jointly co-sponsored a bill in the United States Congress entitled the "Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act." What this is asking the United States to do is to promise the world that we will get rid of all our nuclear bombs if everyone else does, and that we'll use the money instead for converting those industries, cleaning up the environmental mess, and providing for human needs. In other words, solar panels and windmills instead of missiles and bombs, so there should never be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Thank you.

Question: I'm Lee Vandervorn, Executive Director of Veterans for Peace.... Admiral Carroll, I'd like to direct a question to you, and ask you how we can get better media exposure. It is so tough to get this word out. We are thousands of veterans ourselves, and many of our members are atomic veterans who talk about this issue. We feel many times we're speaking to the choir. We need to get more attention. Do you have any solutions?

Answer:

In a word, no.

[The videotape ends here; the essence of Admiral Carroll's further response was that in his experience, journalists see nuclear weapons as a non-issue. This opinion was reinforced recently by Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, who told Ellen Thomas that she probably wouldn't write about HR-2545 "because the only thing we're writing about for the foreseeable future is the CTBT."] ###

Questions? Please contact John Steinbach, 703-369-7427, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Committee of Gray Panthers; or Ellen Thomas, 202-462-0757, Proposition One Committee, prop1@prop1.org

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August 21, 1999

HUNDREDS EXPECTED AT BRATTLEBORO COMMONS RALLY WILL DEMAND SHUTDOWN OF VERMONT YANKEE

Hundreds of protestors are expected at a rally Sunday, August 22, 1999 on the Commons in Brattleboro, Vermont, and will demand the shutdown of the Vermont Yankee atomic reactor....

The rally is part of a weeklong action camp in nearby Dummerston, VT, sponsored by the Nuclear Free Northeast Campaign. At least 200 environmental activists are expected to attend the weeklong camp, which will feature workshops on nuclear issues, nonviolence training, organizational development and strategy seminars and more. Workshop leaders and trainers are being drawn from across the United States. This year’s camp has over 100 contributors and sponsors.

On Thursday, August 26, 1999, the Campaign will take its issues to the gates of the Vermont Yankee reactor in Vernon, where a rally will take place that likely will include non-violent civil disobedience and a New Orleans-style dancing funeral for Vermont Yankee.

Said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a co-sponsor of the Nuclear Free Northeast Campaign, “We’re building on the success of last year’s efforts and creating a growing and ongoing movement to help reach the very achievable and necessary goal of creating a nuclear-free future. We’re focusing on Vermont Yankee because its safety, atomic waste and economic problems are symptomatic of the problems caused by nuclear reactors throughout the region. Four New England reactors already have closed permanently in the past eight years, it’s time to make Vermont Yankee the fifth.”

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New Guy At the CIA

By David Ignatius, Sunday, August 22, 1999; Page B07
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/22/136l-082299-idx.html

Surely the best job in Washington right now, if you like a big challenge, is to be director of the CIA. The place has been a mess for more than a decade, it has a permanent "Kick Me" sign attached to its behind, and its best employees are screaming for real leadership.

And unlike a lot of the other government tasks, there's no doubting that this one really matters. The agency's mission is to figure out the real threats that could get Americans killed -- and then manipulate our adversaries, steal their secrets and spin them so much that they don't know which end is up.

Hard not to enjoy a job like that. But you need a cast-iron stomach to do it right these days. The CIA remains everyone's favorite whipping boy, and it continues to make enough dumb mistakes, such as targeting bombs on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, to deserve much of its miserable press.

So how's the new guy, George Tenet, doing? He's just finished two years on the job, and it's a good time for a fitness report.

When Tenet was appointed as director of central intelligence in July 1997, it seemed unlikely he was the right person for the job. He had made his mark as a staff man, directing the Senate Intelligence Committee. But the agency needed a strong leader -- someone who could tell the professional nit-pickers and second-guessers in Congress and the media to take a hike, and someone who could overturn the culture of mediocrity that had developed at Langley.

The first good thing to say about Tenet is that he hung the right portrait on the wall. Looming over his private dining area is a painting of former director Richard Helms, looking as lean and self-assured as a professional jewel thief.

Tenet has embraced the spirit of Helms's trademark phrase within the agency, "Let's get on with it." He wants his people to get out in the world and run operations. Tenet is said to open his 8 a.m. staff meeting by asking a simple question: "Who did we recruit last night, and what difference will it make?"

A second thing to like about Tenet is that he talks like a high school football coach. Ask him what he thinks about a newspaper column that morning suggesting that, in light of all the CIA screw-ups, he should resign, and he answers: "I don't give a ----!" And he sounds like he means it.

On paper, Tenet's record looks pretty good so far. He's on a hiring binge: The number of job offers is up 52 percent over a year ago, and the agency just brought in its largest class of new hires in nearly a decade. Resignations by case officers are also said to have declined and are now about half the rate of three years ago.

Tenet gets generally good marks from Congress. The wisest of his overseers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss -- a former CIA case officer himself -- says that "energy and enthusiasm are a lot better in the field" and that "risk-taking is understood again."

And Tenet made a tough but correct decision Friday, when he decided to suspend indefinitely the security clearance of his predecessor, John Deutch, who had improperly handled classified information on his personal computer. That's the kind of accountability the agency needs.

But the rebuilding is just starting. The CIA work force is graying and greening at the same time, and Tenet reckons that by 2005, up to 35 percent of the CIA's employees will have worked at the agency five years or less. To take up the slack, he's bringing former CIA officers back on contract -- especially to handle "surge" demands in crisis areas such as the Balkans.

Tenet's biggest challenge will be to focus the agency's energies on the hard targets -- the things that could actually get us killed, such as Iraqi germ warfare, or Iranian nuclear bombs or North Korean missiles.

Tackling these hard problems will require a big change in the CIA bureaucracy, which has tended in recent years to reward easy successes, rather than slow and patient operations that can take years to mature. Embittered former officers complain that promotions were often based on what amounted to phony recruitments -- impressive-looking strings of agents who didn't have access to information that mattered.

Tenet claims he wants to change that numbers game and push his case officers to take more risks. He says privately that in two years as director, he has never turned down a good operation because it sounded too risky. Some of those risks will inevitably go bad, but Tenet insists he'll be there to back up his people. If a good operation screws up, he tells people, his response will be: "That's life. It's a cost of doing business."

In all these ways, Tenet sounds like the kind of boss you'd want to work for if you were a spy. But to make the CIA a great intelligence service again, Tenet will have to be more than a coach and cheerleader. The agency needs tough love.

Insiders say the organization is still too big and bloated, with too many people doing things that don't make the country safer or smarter. Hiring more case officers and dispatching them under thin cover to U.S. embassies overseas won't fix what's wrong. The agency needs new ways to hide its agents and steal secrets -- ways that fit the realities of our global, high-tech economy.

Being CIA director may be the best job in Washington, but it's also the hardest. To do it right, Tenet will need to make more friends, yes -- and also a lot more enemies.

---

CIA Cuts Ex-Spy Director's Clearance

By Robert Burns AP Military Writer Saturday, August 21, 1999; 1:14 a.m. EDT
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990821/V000153-082199-idx.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a highly unusual move, the CIA pulled the security clearances for former Director John Deutch, unwilling to excuse his violation of agency rules by keeping secret files on an unsecured home computer.

Central Intelligence Agency spokesman William Harlow said Friday he knew of no precedent for the action taken against Deutch, a former deputy defense secretary who spent 38 years in public service before leaving the CIA in December 1996.

The decision to suspend Deutch's security clearances was made by CIA Director George Tenet, Deutch's successor. Tenet acted after reviewing an inspector general's report on Deutch's improper handling of classified materials.

``Director Tenet regrets that it was necessary for him to take this action, particularly in light of Dr. Deutch's distinguished record of public service,'' the CIA public affairs office said in a written statement.

Deutch issued a written statement through the CIA in which he acknowledged he erred by using an unsecured computer to write classified documents and memoranda at his home. He stressed that investigators found no information was compromised as a result of his lapses.

``I respect the decision of the director to suspend my CIA clearances,'' Deutch said. ``As for the future, I intend to do everything in my power to reassure my colleagues at the agency of my commitment to comply with the rules that safeguard classified information.''

The inspector general's report to Tenet on July 13 is classified. Tenet said it found no evidence that national security information was lost due to Deutch's security lapses, but ``potential for damage to U.S. security existed.''

The CIA normally does not announce suspension of security clearances but did this time because of prior news coverage about the Deutch case, officials said.

John Pike, an intelligence specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, said he believes Tenet acted because of the public uproar over allegations that Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, gave China secrets about America's nuclear arsenal. The Lee investigation has unleashed an avalanche of charges about government inattention to lapses in protection of classified materials.

``There was no way they could conceivably explain letting Deutch off the hook'' in light of the Lee case, Pike said, even though most officials regarded Deutch's lapses at the time as ``the sort of normal violation that is against the rules but is frequently practiced'' and not punished.

Deutch is an unpaid consultant to the CIA. The suspension of his security clearances makes it unlikely that the relationship will continue, Terrence O'Donnell, his personal attorney, said in an interview. O'Donnell said the CIA gave no assurance when the suspension might be reconsidered.

Deutch was CIA director from May 1995 to December 1996. When he was leaving his CIA post, agency technicians went to his home for routine checks to ensure that secrets were properly protected. They found 31 classified documents on a CIA-issued computer not configured for classified work.

The Justice Department decided in April not to prosecute Deutch but recommended that the CIA review Deutch's continued suitability to hold high-level security clearances. It concluded that Deutch's security lapses were reckless rather than criminal.

In its statement Friday, the CIA said Tenet decided to suspend Deutch's clearances indefinitely in light of the ``nature of the security violations involved'' and the former director's responsibility as a senior intelligence official to set the highest standards in the protection of classified information.

Just last month, Deutch concluded a stint as chairman of a bipartisan commission that assessed the government's preparedness to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, a role in which he relied on CIA security clearances.

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Deutch's CIA Clearance Suspended
Home Computer Security Lapses Led to Unprecedented Action Against Ex-Director

By Vernon Loeb and John F. Harris Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, August 21, 1999; Page A02
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/21/088l-082199-idx.html

CIA Director George J. Tenet announced yesterday that he has suspended the security clearance of his predecessor, John M. Deutch, for violating government rules by working with classified material on an unsecured computer at his home.

The unprecedented action against a widely respected and still powerful former official comes at a time of heightened concern over foreign espionage and the handling of classified information. It was clearly intended as a signal that the federal government, and the CIA in particular, is determined to tighten security.

Tenet said in a one-page statement that he decided to suspend Deutch's clearance for an indefinite period "upon consideration of the nature of the security violations involved and Dr. Deutch's responsibility, as leader of the Intelligence Community, to set the highest standards in the protection of classified information."

Deutch, who served as CIA director from May 1995 to December 1996 and now teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, issued a one-page statement of his own, noting that he has served every president since John F. Kennedy in sensitive positions without ever improperly disclosing classified information. But he admitted that his record has not been "free of error."

"While serving as Director of Central Intelligence I erred in using CIA-issued computers that were not configured for classified work to compose classified documents and memoranda," Deutch said. "While it was absolutely necessary for me to work at home and while on travel, in hindsight it is clear that I should have insisted that I be provided the means of accomplishing this work in a manner fully consistent with all the security rules."

Deutch said he "respected" Tenet's decision to suspend his CIA clearances and would do everything he could to assure his former colleagues at the CIA that he is committed to following security rules.

The Justice Department decided in April not to prosecute Deutch for the security lapses, which were discovered when he left office, when CIA specialists went to his Washington home to remove a classified computer and safe. They discovered 31 files containing highly sensitive classified information on his personal computer.

In recent weeks, Chinese American groups have questioned the Justice Department's decision. They said the case appeared to show a double standard, since federal prosecutors are still considering whether to bring charges against Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who admitted to keeping secret data on an unclassified computer in his office. Lee has come under suspicion of espionage and was fired from his job as a nuclear weapons designer in March, although he has not been charged with any crime and maintains that he is innocent.

It remains unclear whether Deutch will also lose his Defense Department security clearance, but one high-ranking government official said he believed Tenet's decision would lead to the suspension of all of Deutch's clearances. Tenet has sole discretion in deciding if and when Deutch's CIA clearances can be restored.

The rebuke was all the more striking because Deutch remains an intimate of many of the most senior officials in the Clinton administration's foreign policy team. He is close friends with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot and remains in regular contact with other senior officials at the White House and intelligence agencies.

Newsweek first reported in April that Deutch was under investigation for mishandling classified information. The investigation languished while Deutch was appointed by the CIA to head a bipartisan commission on weapons of mass destruction. But the probe took on urgency, Newsweek reported, when Energy Secretary Bill Richardson picked Deutch to head an effort to evaluate security problems at the nation's nuclear laboratories, an advisory post from which Deutch quickly withdrew.

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Former Chief of C.I.A. Is Stripped of Right to Classified Information

By STEVEN LEE MYERS, August 21, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/cia-deutch.html

WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency announced on Friday that it had suspended the security clearance of its former Director, John M. Deutch, after concluding that as Director he had improperly handled national secrets on a desktop computer at his home.

Deutch's actions, which occurred during the 18 months he served as Director of Central Intelligence before resigning in December 1996, left highly classified information on an unsecured computer, vulnerable to spies or computer hackers, the agency concluded.

The suspension is the first time in the agency's 52 years that a former Director has been stripped of access to highly classified information.

In a statement announcing the suspension, the agency said the current Director, George J. Tenet, had imposed the suspension "for an indefinite period of time" after the agency's inspector general concluded that Deutch had created a risk to the nation's security.

While the inspector general's report "found no evidence that national security information was lost, the potential for damage to U.S. security existed as a result of the actions described in the report," the statement said.

The charges against Deutch arose days after he stepped down as Director, when C.I.A. technicians reviewing equipment in his house in Maryland discovered highly classified information on a computer. Although the computer belonged to the agency, it was not equipped to contain classified information.

In April, Newsweek magazine reported that the technicians had discovered 31 secret files, including documents related to Iraq and a 1996 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American troops. Officials at the agency declined to discuss the files in greater detail, so the extent of lapses by Deutch and the nature of the data involved remain unknown.

In a statement also released by the agency, Deutch expressed regret for mishandling the information and acknowledged he had failed to follow the strict rules for safeguarding secrets. He said he respected Tenet's decision to suspend his clearance.

"I want to make it clear that I never considered the information to be at risk or intended to violate security procedures," Deutch said. "But good intentions are simply not good enough. Strict compliance is the standard."

Deutch's case has parallels to the one against Wen Ho Lee, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who was dismissed in March after being accused of transferring classified computer files to a personal computer. Lee, who has denied the accusations, remains the subject of an investigation into whether he passed information about the nation's nuclear arsenal to China.

Administration officials said the decision to discipline Deutch had nothing to do with the uproar over Lee and China's espionage. But an associate of Deutch suggested the furor over security lapses at Los Alamos had created a climate that made it difficult for the agency not to punish Deutch harshly.

"I don't know how Los Alamos factored in," said the associate, who would speak on the condition of not being named, "but it is a difficult period."

After Deutch stepped down as Director, he continued to serve in advisory roles that required access to classified information, including as a consultant to Tenet and as chairman of the Commission on Non-Proliferation, a group mandated by Congress that recently completed a study of the spread of weapons.

Shortly after the accusations about China's espionage surfaced, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson appointed Deutch to review security at weapons laboratories, but Deutch withdrew shortly after.

The suspension of Deutch's security clearance precludes him from serving in those kinds of positions.

The Director of Central Intelligence has the power to review and lift a suspension, but that is seen as unlikely in Deutch's case, given the agency's findings against him.

The Justice Department had investigated Deutch's actions but after a yearlong inquiry declined to charge him with criminal wrongdoing. But the department referred its findings to the C.I.A. for disciplinary proceedings after concluding that the actions were reckless.

Deutch said in his statement that he had erred by using his personal computer "to compose classified documents and memoranda."

"While it was absolutely necessary for me to work at home and while on travel," he said, "in hindsight it is clear that I should have insisted that I be provided the means of accomplishing this work in a manner fully consistent with all the security rules. No one, including the Director, is exempt from compliance with these rules."

Deutch, now a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, served for nearly four decades in various national security positions, including Under Secretary of Energy and Deputy Secretary of Defense.

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Worker: I read nuclear papers
Many had access to data Lee is accused of leaking

BY DAN STOBER Mercury News Staff Writer, August 21, 1999
http://www.sjmercury.com/asia/docs/secret082299.htm

In the 1980s, a time when Los Alamos National Laboratory computer scientist Wen Ho Lee is accused of leaking nuclear secrets to China, Kathie Harine was an obscure researcher working for a Defense Department contractor.

But even as a minor player on the margins of the Cold War -- Harine was working on an environmental impact statement for the MX missile -- she had unexpected access to the intimate secrets of U.S. weapons.

If she had access to such documents, she says now, so did thousands of other people working for the government or defense contractors. ``There are documents all over,'' she said.

Her experience, she said, supports the argument of Robert S. Vrooman, the former chief of counterintelligence at Los Alamos, who last week criticized the government for singling out Lee as China's source of information while ignoring thousands of other people who have had access to nuclear weapons design information.

Vrooman, who faces unspecified disciplinary action for not denying Lee access to secret information after he came under suspicion of espionage, charged that investigators focused on Lee in part because he is Taiwanese-American. Lee was fired from Los Alamos in March, but has not been charged with any crime.

High-level clearance

Harine worked for a government contractor, HDR Sciences, and had a high-level security clearance. Her work in the 1980s on the environmental impact statement took her to the Defense Nuclear Agency archive of classified documents in Santa Barbara.

In the reading room of the archive, she said she unexpectedly found shelves stacked with highly classified monthly reports from the two U.S. nuclear design centers, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Curious, she picked up one of the reports off the shelf and began reading. Then, because she was interested in nuclear weapons, she said she read more and more. According to Harine, the reports were full of what the government calls Classified Nuclear Weapons Design Information.

``They described each (nuclear) test, what the weapons looked like inside,'' Harine said last week from Sacramento, where she lives. The reports, complete with tables and diagrams, included the expected results for a particular nuclear explosion as well as the actual outcome.

One article, Harine said, was written by the well-know physicist Edward Teller and explained in some detail all the major technical advances in nuclear weapons over the years.

When Harine was done with her reading, she knew the insider secrets -- but no one else knew that she knew them. For although she had signed into the reading room each day, there was no paper trail to indicate which documents she had read once she was inside.

It's doubtful, she said, that the FBI or anyone else involved in the highly publicized investigation of Lee has any idea that those highly sensitive documents were ever in Santa Barbara. Anyone with access to the archives, if they chose, could have provided information to China, she said.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy said Friday that no one was available to discuss the situation outlined by Harine. Lee is suspected of leaking information on the W-88, the thermonuclear explosive for the Trident missile.

Vrooman has told congressional investigators and reporters that classified documents about the W-88, could have been leaked to Chinese agents from hundreds of different locations belonging to the government or private contractors.

One ``rather detailed description of the W-88,'' Vrooman told the Washington Post, was distributed to 548 different addresses at the Defense Department, Energy Department, various defense firms, the armed services and even the National Guard.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee reported this month that neither the FBI nor the security officials of the Department of Energy -- the federal agency that owns the weapons labs -- pursued the widespread availability of crucial nuclear weapons information.

The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board reached a similar conclusion in June.

`Widely available'

``The information was widely available,'' said Sidney Drell, a Stanford physicist who serves on the advisory board. ``There were manuals for the Department of Defense. They service it; they have to use it. They have to have instructions. You can't just give it to them and say, `Good luck.' ''

``It's wrong to think that there are only five people in the world who know about this weapon and that Wen Ho Lee was one of them.''

In 1995, the Energy Department estimated that it was guarding 280 million pages of classified documents, according to Steven Aftergood, who writes a newsletter called Secrecy and Government for the Federation of American Scientists. ``Department of Defense documents are held in over a thousand locations, worldwide, and there is not a universal index to them.

``The government has a huge records management problem,'' he said. ``Documents get lost, they get misplaced, on a huge basis.''

Harine, the scientist who found the documents in Santa Barbara, went on to work for Lockheed Missile & Space in Sunnyvale. One of the documents she came across there was a ``classification guide'' for the W-88, a book that spells out what employees may legally say about various aspects of the warhead -- and to whom.

``Interestingly, those guides have a great deal of detail on the actual warhead design,'' she said. ``And those get distributed widely. I saw those at Lockheed, and they had all the information anyone would need.''

Informative monthly reports

But the most informative documents of those she read, Harine said, were the monthly reports from Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. On that point, she has agreement from Ray Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at Lawrence Livermore who has dozens of editions of Research Monthly -- the Livermore publication -- locked in his office safe.

``I've always thought that if anybody wanted to know all about nuclear weapons, all they'd have to do is get hold of these Research Monthlys,'' he said. ``That's what I did, because it's the best source that exists.''

Each edition, he said, would usually explain the design progress of a particular weapon, with ``details and a lot of information about what problems people had and how they fixed them. A gold mine would be worthless by comparison.''

The distribution list for Research Monthly was several pages long, he said. Numerous copies went to the Pentagon, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Nuclear Agency, the National Security Agency, individual military officers, the nuclear weapons production facilities, the military services and defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed and ``all of the missile outfits.''

The distribution list has several hundred addresses on it, Kidder said. Each copy has an individual tracking number on it, and is supposed to be tracked virtually forever, unless it is destroyed.

``I would ask the question, `Have you had an accounting, and how many of them are unaccounted for?' '' Kidder said.

Contact Dan Stober at dstober@sjmercury.com or (408) 271-3730.

Read the Cox Report
http://www.sjmercury.com/asia/center/coxreport/1.htm

---

Newsweek: Justice Department Security Chief Urging Superiors
Not to Proceed With Case Against Fired Los Alamos Scientist Wen Ho Lee

NEWSWEEK August 22, 1999
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-22-1999/0001007356&EDATE=

In the August 30 issue of Newsweek, (on newsstands Monday, August 23), Senior Editor Steven Levy offers a personal portrait of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Levy reports on Gates' philanthropy, the federal Antitrust suit and reveals a personal side of the $77 billion man, including life as a father and husband. (PRNewsFoto)[MN] NEW YORK, NY USA 08/21/1999

Ex-CIA Boss Deutch Had Memos About Terrorism and Iraqi Weapons Program on Home Computer

NEW YORK, Aug. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Internal Security chief John Dion has urged his superiors at the Justice Department not to proceed with a case of mishandling information against Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist suspected of leaking nuclear secrets to China, sources tell Newsweek in the current issue. Lee was fired from his job but investigators have already conceded that they don't have the evidence to convict Lee as a spy. Agents instead are focusing on Lee's admission that he transferred nuclear codes onto his unsecured office computer. Insiders say that even if they decide against indicting Lee, prosecutors may never admit they went too far in publicly fingering him, reports Washington Correspondent Daniel Klaidman in the August 30 issue (on newsstands Monday, August 23).

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990822/HSSU001 )

In another case, Newsweek has learned that among the mishandled materials found in retired CIA director John Deutch's briefcase and loaded onto his unsecured home computer were memos to President Clinton about terrorism and the Iraqi weapons program which were marked "Sensitive Compartmented Information" -- the highest possible level of secrecy, Klaidman reports. The CIA made the discovery in 1996. Deutch was stripped of his security clearance last week.

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Los Alamos National Lab at a Glance

By The Associated Press Thursday, August 19, 1999; 3:21 p.m. EDT
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990819/V000837-081999-idx.html

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in brief.

LOCATION: Covers 43 square miles near Los Alamos, N.M., 35 miles northwest of Santa Fe., on the Pajarito Plateau, elevation 7,600 feet.

HISTORY: Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project to design and build the world's first atomic bomb. Selected by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer because of its remoteness and isolation.

MANAGEMENT: One of three government nuclear weapons labs under the Energy Department. Managed by the University of California since 1943.

BUDGET: $1.26 billion a year with 60 percent going for nuclear weapons programs, the rest for multidisciplinary unclassified research.

WORKFORCE: 7,130 regular employees, including about 4,000 scientists and engineers with advanced degrees. About 450 foreign researchers also work in non-classified research, including 93 researchers from China.

DEFENSE MISSION: Historically to design, develop and test American's nuclear warheads, including the W-88 warhead on missiles aboard Trident submarines. No new weapons being developed. Key defense mission now is to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile through sophisticated computer modeling instead of actual bomb tests.

NONDEFENSE MISSION: Multidisciplinary research into broad range of areas including environmental cleanup, alternative energy sources, biomedical sciences and basic sciences.

CHINA-SPYING: The focus of a security and espionage controversy stemming from the apparent loss of nuclear warhead secrets to China in the 1980s. A Los Alamos scientist was fired in March after being suspected since 1996 of having given China nuclear secrets. The scientist has not been charged, but the controversy has unleashed calls in Congress for security improvements at all weapons labs, and disciplinary action against three Los Alamos officials including the lab's former director.

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Comsat Sale to Lockheed Endorsed

By Tim Smart Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 21, 1999; Page E01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/21/046l-082199-idx.html

Shareholders of Comsat Corp., the satellite services company, yesterday overwhelmingly approved a $2.8 billion purchase offer from aerospace giant and Bethesda neighbor Lockheed Martin Corp.

Comsat said 99 percent of the votes cast, representing about 74 percent of the company's outstanding shares, favored the deal.

Lockheed, the country's largest defense contractor, agreed last September to buy up to 49 percent of Comsat at $45.50 a share, conditioned on the Federal Communications Commission approving Lockheed as a "common carrier" under the nation's telecommunications laws.

Once that is achieved, Lockheed said it would move forward with plans to buy the rest of Comsat if it is successful in convincing Congress to pass legislation amending the 1963 law that created Comsat and limited outside ownership. The Senate has voted overwhelmingly to lift the limits on outside ownership, but there has been little action in the House.

Lockheed gained an important edge this week when Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee on telecommunications, encouraged the FCC to proceed with its action on the common-carrier issue. The FCC is now considering Lockheed's purchase of Comsat.

"Granting common-carrier approval should be a simple pro forma matter," said George Dellinger, a telecommunications analyst at Washington Analysis Group.

The Comsat shareholder vote comes as a welcome boost to Lockheed, which has suffered a series of setbacks this year, including a loss in the second quarter, delays and failures in its satellite-launching business, and a House vote to cut $1.8 billion in defense spending for the company's F-22 jet fighter.

Lockheed scored another victory Thursday when the Pentagon decided to go ahead with the company's troubled missile-defense system. The antimissile program recently completed two successful test firings after a series of failures; the program could be worth as much as $4 billion to Lockheed.

The aerospace giant hopes to add Comsat to its Global Telecommunications subsidiary, a business set up last year to compete in the rapidly growing market for international telecommunications services built around wireless technology. Lockheed is one of the largest providers of communications satellites and the rockets on which they are launched into space.

"We are gratified by the Comsat shareholders' endorsement of this transaction, said John Sponyoe, chief executive of Lockheed's telecommunications unit. "This completes one major milestone and we eagerly await the day when this merger is completed."

Lockheed's stock closed at $37.75 a share yesterday, up 43 3/4 cents, while Comsat shares closed at $35.87 1/2, down 50 cents.

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Clinton's executive orders still are packing a punch

By Frank J. Murray THE WASHINGTON TIMES August 23, 1999
http://www.washtimes.com/news/news1.html#link

President Clinton is literally writing his legacy with his own pen by signing one controversial executive order after another.

Making good on a vow to pick up where Congress leaves off, Mr. Clinton has posted 301 formal executive orders and generated a storm from opponents who say the orders push the limits of presidential power.

The president has used that extraordinary power to revamp civil service rules for workers with psychiatric disabilities, ban discrimination against homosexuals in civilian federal jobs, halt dealings with federal contractors who use products made by foreign child labor, declassify vast stacks of old files, change contracting practices to give Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders a bidding edge, revise food labeling, restrict smoking in government offices, revamp encryption export rules and intervene in a Philadelphia transit strike.

"Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kind of cool," says former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, dismissing objections of critics who despise the process as unconstitutional lawmaking, no matter which president uses it.

"With a stroke of the pen, he may have done irreparable harm to individual rights and liberties," says -- Continued from Front Page -- House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican, who accepts two premises many resist --that such orders do not require congressional approval, and that they have the force of law.

"President Clinton seems bent on using his powers until someone says stop," Mr. Armey said. "President Clinton is running roughshod over our Constitution."

To confuse matters, the process of issuing executive orders is spelled out by executive order. The absence of clear boundaries infuriates those who seek to rein in presidents from governing by fiat.

Other presidents have used executive orders to close banks in the Depression, intern Japanese-Americans during World War II, desegregate the armed forces, ban assassination of foreign leaders, build the Alaska Railroad, protect endangered species, intervene in labor strikes, allow affirmative action for racial and ethnic minorities and block foreign assets during a string of national emergencies almost unbroken since 1933.

Presidents have issued executive orders that exceeded the wishes of Congress since George Washington's 1793 "neutrality order" demanding that citizens stay out of foreign disputes. Such orders have been withdrawn under political pressure or derailed internally before they were signed, but only twice in history have federal courts directly overturned one, legal experts say.

They included Mr. Clinton's 1995 directive barring federal contractors from hiring striker replacements, which conflicted with existing law, and President Truman's 1952 order seizing steel mills in order to avoid a nationwide strike. The Supreme Court nullified the latter because the president acted during the Korean conflict under "emergency" war powers even though no war was declared.

"Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has essentially ruled over time that the executive orders have the force and effect of law. Well, they don't, but if nobody's there to challenge them they continue to carry the effect and force of law," argued Rep. Jack Metcalf, Washington Republican, leader of a brewing rebellion in the House for which he predicts only symbolic success.

Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Republican, went Mr. Metcalf one better and filed a bill seeking to designate executive orders only as advisory without the force of law, unless Congress approves. His proposed Separation of Powers Restoration Act would limit their effect except in cases of pardons, military orders or directives required by a specific federal law.

William J. Olson, a constitutional lawyer who formerly worked in the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel -- which along with Office of Management and Budget approves every executive order for legality -- is preparing a research paper for the Cato Institute that charges Mr. Clinton with using executive orders as a substitute for legislative consideration by Congress.

"It is a deliberate plan to usurp legislative function, and unfortunately most of the time he has faced a Congress that could be described as supine," Mr. Olson said.

Current numbering, now at 13132, began on Oct. 20, 1862, when Abraham Lincoln signed No. 1, establishing a "provisional court" for Louisiana.

The oldest orders still on the books are Nos. 703 and 705, issued Oct. 23, 1907, by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect endangered species. Mr. Roosevelt is credited -- or blamed -- for expanding the practice in number and scope.

"Congress has been asleep at the switch, at least since Teddy Roosevelt, and it is very difficult all these years later to transplant a backbone into Congress but essential that it be done," Mr. Olson said.

In practical terms, Mr. Olson points out, a confrontation now would require Congress to pass a bill blocking an order, then muster two-thirds majorities in both houses to overcome a presidential veto of that bill.

Some see irony in the fact that Mr. Clinton took heat during his first days on the job for an executive order he wouldn't sign. In 1993, under fire from Congress, he reneged on campaign promises to let homosexuals serve openly in military uniform.

He still generates controversy over executive orders, but now the core complaint is that Mr. Clinton, in effect, is not staying within his constitutional authority to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

"When you're running the government you want the agencies of government to act according to the law. Prudent management dictates that you inform people on how they can fulfill the laws," said James E. Kennedy, special adviser to the White House counsel, who argued that Mr. Clinton follows the same policy as every other president.

Mr. Kennedy minimized the impact of Mr. Clinton's Executive Order 13087, signed May 28, 1998, amending a 1969 equal opportunity order to add "sexual orientation," meaning homosexuality, to the list of factors on which federal hiring could not discriminate.

"Executive Order 13087 does not reflect any new policy and creates no new law," Mr. Kennedy said. He did not explain why adding a category to a provision with the force of law didn't reflect new policy.

The potential for a president to leave his personal stamp on government is tempting. Mr. Clinton served notice last summer that he would use the orders to advance his agenda despite congressional gridlock.

Opponents of executive orders often are frustrated in attempts to galvanize public opinion against arcane language and euphemisms used in writing them, which do not always clearly indicate the author's goal.

Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, introduced two bills to block Executive Order 13107, on grounds that the Dec. 10, 1998, action implemented three agreements on human rights, torture and racial discrimination "that were never given the advice and consent of the Senate."

Mr. Barr's charge sparked a prairie fire on talk radio that still smolders. Even members of Congress with a deep interest in the issue do not all realize that the congressman withdrew his accusation on Feb. 4 in a written "extension of remarks."

"In clarification, these treaties did in fact pass the Senate by voice vote," Mr. Barr said. But he vowed to continue the fight on the theory that the Senate vote on the agreements may have been unconstitutional.

Public uproar to 1970s news articles about long-standing national states of emergency led to a study by a select bipartisan Senate committee and a cure that proved only temporary.

"This vast range of powers, taken together, confers enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes," the committee said in a 1978 report describing the impact of just four emergencies then in effect.

Congress terminated all four that year and started over by setting up a new system of annual renewals to preclude perpetual states of emergency. The gesture turned out to be hollow.

On Nov. 14, 1979, President Carter declared the next emergency during the Iran hostage crisis, and it is still in effect today. Executive orders renewing emergency declarations have become routine unnoticed paperwork.

Today, 13 such national emergencies are in effect. Two were originally declared by Mr. Carter, including the 1979 Iran emergency, and two by President Bush.

One Clinton emergency order continued export controls after a law on the subject expired in 1994. The rest permitted sanctions, economic controls or other powers relating to foreign policy crises involving Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Burma, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Angola and Cuba, Colombian drug-runners, terrorists threatening the "Middle East peace process," and proliferation of nuclear or chemical weapons.

The committee identified about 500 existing laws that take effect when a president declares an emergency by executive order. They include vast powers to seize property, commodities, fuel and minerals; organize and control the means of production, including compulsory job assignments for civilians; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law and force civilian relocation; seize and control all forms of transportation and restrict travel; seize communications and health facilities; regulate operation of private enterprise; require national registration through the postal service, or otherwise control citizens' lives.

Mr. Clinton incorporated all those powers into his arsenal in Executive Order 12919 on June 3, 1994, as recent presidents since John F. Kennedy have done.

Every executive order must cite an authorizing statute and theoretically be aimed at government agencies under the president's purview.

Mr. Begala said that Mr. Clinton did not conceal his intent to make ample use of executive orders.

"Clinton is an activist, muscular president," Mr. Begala said in an interview, recalling that Mr. Clinton chided Mr. Bush in 1992 and said he intended to use the powers of the presidency to the fullest.

"If you won't use the powers of the presidency to help people, step aside. I will," Mr. Begala quoted the president as telling Mr. Bush.

Clearly, Mr. Clinton knew what some detractors do not: Presidential successors of the opposite party do not lightly wipe the slate clean of every order, or even most of them.

Still on the books 54 years after his death are 80 executive orders issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt. No less than 187 of Mr. Truman's orders remain, including one to end military racial segregation, which former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell praised for starting the "Second Reconstruction."

"President Truman gave us the order to march with Executive Order 9981," Mr. Powell said at a July 26, 1998 ceremony marking its 50th anniversary.

Mr. Truman's final order, issued one day before he left office in 1953, created a national security medal of honor for the nation's top spies, which is still highly coveted and often revealed only in the obituary of its recipient.

Despite uncontradicted statements attributed to Rush Limbaugh that Mr. Clinton issued more executive orders than any prior president, his numbers are at the low end for recent presidents, despite questions about content. Mr. Clinton has averaged 45.8 executive orders a year, the least among the last eight presidents except for Mr. Bush, who averaged 42 per year.

Mr. Carter leads the pack with 80 per year, followed by Mr. Kennedy (76), and Gerald Ford (70). All, however, fell behind a pace that averaged 96 orders per year since 1862.

Mr. Metcalf signed up 72 co-sponsors for his joint resolution to call a halt to this practice, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican.

"Executive orders that press beyond the legitimate powers the president has are a violation of the Constitution. The president can't do things that require the spending of money," Mr. Metcalf said in an interview.

Even the White House seemed to reach that conclusion last year, in the face of bipartisan outrage by the nation's governors over a 1998 order drastically changing federalism rules. The order galvanized opponents to such fury that the White House took the unprecedented step of suspending it in August 1998, three months after it was signed.

That document, Executive Order 13083, junked a working arrangement with the states that President Reagan laid down in 1987. It seemingly prescribed strict adherence to constitutional dictates limiting federal power over the states but set up nine exceptions that would have allowed draconian federal action virtually any time federal agencies decided that states were unable to implement "uniform national standards."

Under heavy fire from Rep. David M. McIntosh, Indiana Republican, the National Governors Association and platoons of mayors and county officials, Mr. Clinton took the unusual action of putting it on the shelf for a year.

On Aug. 5 Mr. Clinton laid the old order to rest with a rewrite welcomed by the National Governors Association, saying in part, "The people of the states are free, subject only to restrictions in the Constitution itself or in constitutionally authorized acts of Congress, to define the moral, political, and legal character of their lives."