Chinese Spy Scandal

Re “Time to Say Farewell to Spy Scandal,” Column Left, Sept. 14: Robert Scheer asserted four main “facts”; each of them is false.

Five days before his column appeared, the most recent National Intelligence Estimate--the consensus of the entire U.S. intelligence community--stated that the People’s Republic of China is expected to test “a longer range mobile ICBM within the next several years; it will be targeted primarily against the United States.” The report also stated that both this and a new sea-launched nuclear missile will likely be fitted with “smaller nuclear warheads--in part influenced by U.S. technology gained through espionage.” Yet Scheer’s column states there were “no secrets proved lost.”

He also adds, “No new dangerous weapons [have been] deployed.” But since the just-published U.S. intelligence consensus is that the PRC’s weapons, using stolen U.S. design information, are now being built and will be deployed in the future, this is small comfort.

Scheer describes the evidence of W-88 design information obtained by the PRC as “phony documents.” But the U.S. government officials who examined the documents produced by a PRC double agent concluded that the highly classified U.S. warhead design information they contained was in fact genuine. Moreover, as has been publicly reported, the PRC has in fact built and successfully tested its own variation of the W-88.

Finally, Scheer implies that since no criminal charges have been filed, no espionage occurred. The inability to bring an indictment against an individual or individuals does not mean that espionage was not committed.

Espionage did occur. It is not a “hoax,” but remains a serious problem, and tendentious efforts to pretend otherwise do a great disservice.

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX

Chairman, R-Huntington Beach

REP. NORM DICKS

Ranking Democrat, D-Wash.

House Select Committee on U.S.

National Security and Military/

Commercial Concerns with PRC