from TPDL 1999-May-25, from the US House of Representatives via Capitol Hill Blue:

Excerpts from the Cox report

Excerpts from the congressional report on Chinese espionage aimed at U.S. nuclear secrets and satellite technology:

``The People's Republic of China (PRC) has stolen design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons.

``The Select Committee judges that the PRC's next generation of thermonuclear weapons, currently under development, will exploit elements of stolen U.S. design information.

``PRC penetration of our national weapons laboratories spans at least the past several decades and almost certainly continues today.''

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``These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories enabled the PRC to design, develop and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible. The stolen U.S. nuclear secrets give the PRC design information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with our own.''

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``The stolen information includes classified information on seven U.S. thermonuclear warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal.

``The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced radiation weapon (commonly known as the `neutron bomb'), which neither the United States, nor any other nation, has yet deployed.''

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``In addition, in the mid-1990s the PRC stole, possibly from a U.S. national weapons laboratory, classified thermonuclear weapons information that cannot be identified in this unclassified report. Because this recent espionage case is currently under investigation and involves sensitive intelligence sources and methods, the Clinton administration has determined that further information cannot be made public without affecting national security or ongoing criminal investigations.''

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``The Select Committee has found that the primary focus of this long-term, ongoing PRC intelligence collection effort has been on the following national weapons laboratories:

--Los Alamos

--Lawrence Livermore

--Oak Ridge

--Sandia''

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``With the stolen U.S. technology, the PRC has leaped, in a handful of years, from 1950s-era strategic nuclear capabilities to the more modern thermonuclear weapons designs. These modern thermonuclear weapons took the United States decades of effort, hundreds of millions of dollars and numerous nuclear tests to achieve.''