WASHINGTON-Motorola Inc. last week vehemently denied transferring sensitive technology to Communist China after a leaked classified Air Force report concluded Chinese nuclear missile capabilities improved as a result of work on Iridium global satellite launches.
Excerpts of the report by the Air Force National Air Intelligence Center, reported last Tuesday by the Washington Times, could pull Motorola into the line of fire of congressional and Justice Department investigators probing suspected U.S. satellite technology transfers to China.
Loral Corp. and Hughes Electronics Co. are the primary targets of those probes, which overlap with separate investigations on alleged Chinese government efforts to influence U.S. elections through illegal campaign contributions to Democrats in the 1996 election cycle.
“The technology built into the [smart dispenser] has many potential uses beyond the Iridium mission,” the Times quotes the Air Force report as stating.
The Times describes the smart dispenser as an upper-stage booster with solid and liquid fuel propulsion, avionics, guidance and communications. Those components, according to the report, could give China strategic nuclear military capabilities “not previously available with past Chinese space launch vehicles.”
Norman Sandler, director of global strategic issues for Motorola, said all technology tied to Iridium satellite launches from China was thoroughly reviewed by the U.S. government before export licenses were granted and was carefully monitored as launch preparations progressed.
“No U.S. technology was transferred by Motorola that went into the dispenser,” said Sandler. He said the Chinese have been able to deploy multiple nuclear warheads from missiles since the early 1980s.
“Motorola did not teach or direct the Chinese to do anything that they had not already done,” Sandler added. Motorola, headquartered in Schaumburg, Ill., is the largest mobile communications equipment manufacturer in the United States.
National security, intelligence and defense agencies within the Clinton administration openly disagree whether U.S. satellite exports to China have put the United States at risk.
Five Chinese satellite launch failures occurred between 1991 and 1996 and none since. Some, like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), said it is no coincidence that China’s recent satellite launch successes run parallel with accelerated U.S. technology transfers to that country.
“The Clinton administration’s export controls for satellite are wholly inadequate,” said Lott. “They have not protected sensitive U.S. technology. National security concerns are regularly downplayed and even ignored.”
Lott’s interim report on U.S. satellite technology exports to China, drawn from various GOP-led committees, triggered sharp criticism from the Clinton administration and Democrats in Congress.
