WASHINGTON-The Republican congressional leadership plans hearings to investigate Clinton-administration approval of commercial satellite technology transfers from U.S. wireless firms to China that Pentagon and intelligence officials say were converted to improve Beijing’s long-range nuclear missile capability.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), according to congressional aides, are setting the stage for hearings on, among other things, the role campaign contributions and lobbying may have played in presidential waivers and other government clearances issued to Loral Corp., Hughes Electronic Corp. and Motorola Inc. to allow commercial satellites to be launched from rockets in China.
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), head of the Senate Government Affairs subcommittee on international security, proliferation and federal services, is scheduled to hold a hearing May 20 on commercial satellite technology transfers.
Others committees will tackle the issue as well.
The latest revelations linking Communist China, Democratic campaign contributions and U.S. high technology could complicate President Clinton’s trip to Beijing in late June and U.S.-Sino trade relations.
Moreover, some say the issue could erupt into perhaps the greatest domestic controversy the president has faced yet because of the national security implications involved.
China, which enjoys a $50 billion trade surplus with the United States, is the largest potential export market for U.S. wireless manufacturers and service providers.
To improve its trading position, China is fighting for World Trade Organization membership.
The GOP’s point man on the satellite technology transfer issue is Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), chairman of the Science subcommittee on space.
“They [GOP leadership] all want Mr. Rohrabacher to hold hearings,” said Michele Davis, a spokeswoman for Armey.
The GOP-led Congress has asked the White House for information on presidential waivers enabling U.S. wireless firms to launch satellites from rockets in China. After the fact-finding phase is completed, hearings are expected to begin.
“This is going to be the mother of all investigations,” Rohrabacher told RCR last week in a telephone interview. He said Clinton’s satellite export policy represents a betrayal of the American people.
Rohrabacher, which has satellite manufacturing in his district, said he has supported U.S.-Sino commercial satellite projects in the past.
But all that changed, Rohrabacher said, when an official from Motorola- which along with Hughes and Loral have launched satellites from rockets in China as cost- and time-savings measures- told him the Chinese Long March rocket had been perfected.
Knowing guidance and control technology is a weak link in China’s missile-development program, Rohrabacher said it suddenly occurred to him that firms like Motorola, Loral and Hughes, with Clinton-administration backing, likely were helping China improve its strategic nuclear missile reliability.
Rohrabacher took to the House floor April 30 to deliver a scorching rebuke of Clinton, accused the president and the administration “of doing everything they can to quash the investigation” conducted by the Justice Department into transfers of U.S. commercial satellite technology to China.
“We have a strict policy on what type of [satellite technology] is permitted” for export, said C.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “We believe we have safeguards in place to protect that technology.”
Crowley noted that U.S. policy since the 1980s has encouraged commercial engagement with China in hopes of discouraging nuclear proliferation.
Republicans and even Clinton himself concede “constructive engagement” with China has done little to improve that country’s sordid human-rights record and other Beijing policies of President Jiang Zemin at odds with U.S. interests.
The U.S. government banned the launch of American satellites from China after the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. Nine waivers of that policy have been granted by Clinton. Former President Bush granted two waivers.
Justice investigators are looking into whether Loral and Hughes scientists gave Chinese officials sensitive stage-separation rocket technology in the aftermath of a 1996 explosion of a Chinese rocket carrying a non-mobile communications Loral satellite.
Hughes and Loral have denied any wrongdoing.
Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz, a friend of Clinton’s who accompanied late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on a 1994 trade trip to China to promote his global satellite phone project, was the largest single campaign donor to Democrats in the 1995-1996 election cycle.
Schwartz, whose firm is licensed to operate the Globalstar satellite phone system, gave $632,000 in soft money to the party during the Clinton-Gore re-election effort and threw another $421,000 the Democrats’ way the past two years.
Justice, in a related matter, also is probing allegations that Hillary Rodham Clinton directed Brown, who died with 34 others in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia, to award seats on trade missions in exchange for $50,000 campaign contributions.
Motorola, the top U.S. maker of pagers, mobile phones and two-way radios, has a strong presence in China. Through its financial interest in Iridium L.L.C., Motorola plans to compete in the emerging global satellite phone market.
Iridium recently launched two satellites on board a China Long March rocket.
“Motorola has received a number of required export licenses and approvals from the U.S. government for launch of Iridium satellites from China,” said Tim Kellogg, a Motorola spokes-man.
Neither Kellogg nor the White House would say whether government approvals included a presidential waiver.
“All of those approvals were granted on very tight conditions that no missile or launch technology is transferred to China,” Kellogg stated.
But some defense and intelligence officials in the United States believe that is precisely what happened.
A classified May 1997 Pentagon report, brought to light in an April 13 New York Times article, concluded the “United States national security interests have been harmed” as a result from Loral and Hughes satellite-rocket technology transfers to China.
More recently, The Washington Times, citing a new CIA report sent to top U.S. policymakers last month, said 13 of China’s 18 long-range nuclear missiles are aimed at the United States.
Rohrabacher and other GOP lawmakers say they believe Clinton policy is to blame.
When asked to comment on the Defense Department and CIA findings, the NSC’s Crowley replied, “It’s not appropriate to talk about intelligence reports.”
The government reports are particularly embarrassing to Clinton, who previously has said there are no nuclear missiles pointed at the United States, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who recently boasted of a new “strategic partnership” with China.
Crowley insists the president’s comments from a year-and-a-half ago referred only to Russia, though he admitted Russian nuclear missiles can be reprogrammed and redirected toward the United States within minutes.
Hughes, for its part, manufactures satellites and terrestrial wireless infrastructure networks.
According to the same New York Times article, C. Michael Armstrong, then-chief executive of Hughes and now at AT&T Corp., aggressively lobbied Clinton to loosen high-tech military export restrictions that tightened further after U.S. intelligence agents learned in 1992 of Chinese missile technology sales to Pakistan.
Armstrong, according to the Times, argued commercial satellite technology could not be converted to military and therefore should be allowed to slip in under the military export sanctions. And he reportedly played the trade card, saying the United States would lose business to Europ
e.
Armstrong’s persistence apparently paid off.
Clinton named Armstrong to head the Export Council in 1994. The same year, the president dropped the 1992 export sanctions and let three Hughes satellite projects to go forward in China.
Wireless firms with aerospace interests hit the jackpot in 1996 when Clinton gave into industry demands to transfer most satellite technology licensing powers from the State Department-which focused on national security implications-to the Commerce Department, which is business-oriented.
