DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
SECTION: BEHIND THE TREASON ALLEGATIONS
SUBSECTION: HAZEL O’LEARY
Revised 8/20/99
Summarized from research by ohmlaw98:
As far back as June 93 Hazel O’Leary moved against the wishes of the DOD and State Department, to declassify certain Nuclear Research Information. In December of 94 she signed an agreement with Russia to exchange technical information in the field of nuclear warhead safety and security which included open warhead design information.
In February of 95 she became involved in Trade Mission to China and became contact with suspicious individuals, namely Huaren Sheng president of China Petrochemical Corp who would later be ushered by Johnny Chung in October 96 to see O’Leary.
In November of 95 she was under investigation for misuse of taxpayer money. Then, audits in January of 96 showed her responsible for widespread lavish or unaccounted for DOE travel expenses.
Ms. O’Leary was in charge of Department of Energy during the notice of Chinese espionage of nuclear warhead W-88 (late 95 and early 96) through 11/14/96 AFTER notification of the loss of nuclear warhead technology through Chinese espionage, in summer of 1996, at a press conference she said regarding her decision to overrule the State Department and allow the sale of super-computers to China and the sharing of technology. "…Well, you've asked, I think, perhaps the most difficult and subtle question here," O'Leary responded, "and that is how does the United States, in partnership with others of the nuclear nations, go forward to ensure that we all begin to be able to move on to certifying safety and reliability…."
In November 14, 1996 Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary announced her resignation.
In March 11, 1997 ICF Kaiser International, the company that employed the lobbyist that recommended the charity for Johnny Chung's illegal $25,000 contribution to forrmer secretary of energy Hazel O'Leary, announced Monday the O'Leary had been elected to its board.
On December 2, 1997 Janet Reno rejected appointing an independent counsel to investigate whether former Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary solicited a charitable contribution from Johnny Chung in return for a meeting with a Chinese businessmen.
Augusta Chroninle 8/11/96 Karen Schill "… Nationally, Mrs. O'Leary made headlines in 1993 when she became the first federal official to discuss the government's secret radiation experiments on citizens and the first to demand compensation for those victims. The first woman and first black to head an agency traditionally led by men from the military, she kept talking about openness and reform. Then came ``Travelgate'' - revelations last fall that Mrs. O'Leary had spent $4.6 million on 16, at times lavish, business trips abroad since taking office. And news that the secretary had spent $43,500 to track media coverage of her agency… Highly unpopular in Nevada for her effort to halt nuclear testing and for her agency's work on a nuclear waste dump inside Yucca Mountain, Mrs. O'Leary has become a symbol in that state of Washington arrogance. The waste dilemma also has state officials in South Carolina fired up after a decision to import foreign spent nuclear reactor fuel and store it at SRS. The state last month took the Energy Department to court a third time to try to halt such shipments. A little-known utility executive when appointed by President Clinton in 1993, Mrs. O'Leary stunned some observers when she invited several prominent environmentalists to join her staff…."
Investors Business Daily 3/30/99 Paul Sperry "…In auditing former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary's bloated travel budget in June 1996, House Commerce Committee investigators didn't really focus on her China trip any more than her other three overseas ''trade missions.'' ….Fast forward to 1999. Committee investigators now know that: Chinese spies stole the U.S.' latest nuclear missile secrets from Los Alamos and possibly other labs that Energy owns, thanks in part to the security cuts O'Leary made in February 1995 - the same month she went to China….. Beijing bagmen -including John Huang, Charlie Trie and Johnny Chung - beat a path to the White House during the 1996 campaign, raising millions in illegal cash. Chung claims to have bribed O'Leary into meeting with a Chinese petrochemical industry official in October 1995. Former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown allegedly ''sold'' tax-paid seats on his own China trip to big Democratic Party donors like Loral Corp. CEO Bernard Schwartz, who cut a controversial satellite export deal with Beijing officials. All told, Brown's trade junkets raised an estimated $17 million for Democrats. Against that backdrop, O'Leary's China trip takes on new weight, sources say. ''Now we have a clearer picture of all this Chinese chicanery in the 1996 (election) cycle,'' said a House aide familiar with the O'Leary probe. ''And it (O'Leary's China trip) looks like it was just a shakedown operation following the Ron Brown model.''….. The Energy chief led her China mission about six months after Brown's. She took at least 45 ''business delegates,'' while Brown took at least 24. (The agencies still haven't fully disclosed all the participants.) Some showed up on both trips. One, Westinghouse Electric Co., has managed to tag along on yet another tax-backed junket to China - this one led by Commerce Secretary William Daley. He and 18 executives are in China this week. Like Brown's delegation, which boasted 15 major Democratic Party givers, O'Leary's was packed with Democratic donors. An Investor's Business Daily analysis of Federal Election Commission records from 1994 to 1998 shows that, among Energy's China delegation, Democratic donors outnumbered GOP donors by more than 2-to-1. And big Democratic donors dwarfed big GOP donors by 4-to-1. Democratic donors tended to open their wallets wider after the trip. For instance, AES Corp. Chairman Roger Sant gave $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1996 and 1997, but nothing in 1994 or 1995. He also gave his thanks to O'Leary, who now sits on the AES board. The Arlington, Va.-based contractor builds and runs coal-fired power plants and is working on projects in China. Or take Entergy Corp., which owns Arkansas Power & Light. It kicked in $100,000 in soft money to the DNC about four months after the China trip. Entergy President and CEO Terry Ogletree, who rode on the plane, gave $1,000 (the maximum individual gift to candidates) to the Clinton- Gore campaign at the same time, records show. Entergy was also represented on Brown's August-September 1994 trip to China. There, it signed a $1.3 billion deal with Indonesia-based Lippo Group to expand and run a coal- fired power plant in northern China….. Schwartz, for one, joined Brown's key China mission just two months after writing a check to the DNC for $100,000…… In Brown's mission to China, Klayman only recently discovered that fund-raiser Chung tagged along as an ''unofficial'' delegate. While there, Chung met with People's Liberation Army officers. In 1996, Chung funneled at least $100,000 in PLA money to Democratic causes. In auditing O'Leary's trip to China, even the inspector general couldn't make a firm head count…… While there's no direct proof of a pay-to-play scheme at Energy, the department did work closely with Commerce on its trips. For example, O'Leary testified that she and Ron Brown '' convened (with a team from the White House) to conduct trade missions to China.''….. At the same time Energy officials were exchanging information with communist leaders in early 1995, they were dismantling the security system at the nation's top-secret nuclear-weapons research labs. It was also in 1995 that intelligence officers learned that China had stolen from Los Alamos critical data for building miniature nuclear warheads…….. Some experts fear there might be a link between recent Chinese espionage and the administration's trade trips to China. Computer encryption, satellite and energy secrets would be the three most likely things compromised on the trips, they say. Officials with both Commerce and Energy assert that business delegates got ''counterintelligence briefings'' at the airport before takeoff. But according to Layton's report, the China group wasn't briefed until ''the secretary met (them) in Shanghai,'' their first stop, on Feb. 19, 1995. In her statement to Congress, O'Leary said, ''the National Security Council approved our foreign travel in advance.'' That would be the same NSC that gave Chinese espionage at Los Alamos low priority for three years after its discovery. Another troubling aspect to O'Leary's China mission is what happened about eight months later. On Oct. 19, 1995, O'Leary met here with a Chinese petrochemical industry official in what she says was a routine meeting. But Chung claims he arranged the meeting -after giving O'Leary a $25,000 donation. The charge, made on NBC News in August 1997, triggered a review by Attorney General Janet Reno to see if it was probative enough to name an independent counsel to investigate. On Dec. 2, 1997, she announced that it was not…."
FoxNews Freeper JustPiper 3/30/99 from Carl Cameron "…Cox report will have all but 100 pages declassified! Chung said he bribed Hazel O' Leary for secrets with campaign donations! Clinton is being investigated with approving Loral! Shelby and the Senate Investigative Comm. have determined there have been payoffs and contributions to sell missiles! Stayed tune to FNC and O' Reilly then Crier on Thursday! ChinaGate is NOT forgotten on FNC!…"
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 12/7/93 "…At the Secretary of Energy's first Openness Press Conference on December 7, 1993, Secretary O'Leary reemphasized the Department's firm commitment to the President's goal of openness in Government, outlined her Openness Initiative, and, as a signal step in that process, released a wide variety of formerly classified information to the Department's stakeholders. To expedite accessibility of that information, a package of Fact Sheets was provided which summarized the newly released information and provided background sufficient to allow the public to better understand both the significance of the information, and the reasons for its prior classification. Also within that package was information concerning specific steps being taken or planned to expedite release of more information and improve public awareness of and access to newly declassified information and documents…."
ANNEX TO THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ON THE EXCHANGE OF TECHNICAL INFORMATION IN THE FIELD OF NUCLEAR WARHEAD SAFETY AND SECURITY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 12/16/94 "…QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q. What agencies were involved in the interagency review? A. The Department of Energy has direct responsibility under the Atomic Energy Act for administration of the Restricted Data program and has joint responsibility with the Department of Defense for Formerly Restricted Data. Therefore, these two agencies had lead responsibility for the interagency review process. The Department of State, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Intelligence Community provided invaluable support and assistance to the interagency review process and deliberations. Q. Why were some of the review's recommendations not accepted? A. Primarily, these recommendations fell into two categories. First, the review of the original recommendations by the Fundamental Classification Policy Review team by other-agency experts produced useful added information which increased understanding and made declassification inadvisable. Second, there was information upon which, after extensive discussion, the agencies could not agree. This information was referred for additional study by the Technical Evaluation Panel, a group who provides technical expertise and assistance to the DOE Director of Security Affairs. Q. What kinds of concerns caused recommendations to be rejected or deferred? A. If information recommended for declassification was determined to be crucial to national security, or of clearly demonstrated significant value to a proliferant, declassification was rejected. If questions of national security or value to a proliferant could not be answered to the satisfaction of the interagency review, the item was referred for further study by the Technical Evaluation Panel. Q. Why was the Intelligence Community involved in the interagency review? A. The Intelligence Community advised the interagency review on the status of proliferant programs so that determinations of the value of specific information could be made…."
Date: 4/9/99 Author: Paul Sperry Investor's Business Daily "...In the mid-1990s, scientists at the nation's nuclear-weapons research labs openly shared data with Chinese visitors. Their guests felt comfortable enough to call Beijing from the labs - and no one stopped them..... How could this happen at such bastions of U.S. military secrets? It was planned that way. As part of the Clinton administration's so-called denuclearization goal, lab directors were actually prodded by former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary and her senior staffers - many of whom were anti-nuclear activists - to open their doors to visitors from other nuclear states and share otherwise classified information. Not just any info - much was still guarded - but the kind that could, among other things, teach Russian and Chinese scientists to test nuclear weapons by computer modeling rather than underground detonation, sources familiar with lab operations say. In 1995, President Clinton announced that the U.S. would pursue a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as a way to stop the building, use and spread of nuclear missiles after the Cold War. To get Russia and China - not to mention U.S. lab directors - on board, Clinton had to convince them that computer models could tell whether existing bombs work without actually blowing them up. Up went billion-dollar labs designed to simulate nuclear blasts through ''virtual testing.'' And out went the welcome mats to foreign scientists. Thousands visited the labs. Some even got jobs.... But he's not sure that O'Leary was in lock step with the White House's plan to denuclearize the globe. He says O'Leary was in over her head when it came to making national security decisions. ''She knew nothing about it,'' he said. ''She was a public affairs director.'' Before Energy, O'Leary headed the PR shop at Northern States Power Co. in Minneapolis. Another former close aide, who wished to go unnamed, also says O'Leary was underqualified. ''It was chaos back then,'' she said. O'Leary did not return calls to her Maryland office. Others doubt O'Leary winged it. ''It is not at all accurate to write this off to incompetence,'' Gaffney said. ''She populated the senior ranks of DOE with anti-nuclear activists. People are policy.'' O'Leary did surround herself with no-nukes. A key adviser, still at Energy, was Dan Reicher, formerly a lawyer for Natural Resources Defense Council's nuclear program. Among the program's top goals? Cutting ''nuclear weapons arsenals with the goal of eventual elimination,'' NRDC's Web site says. Another: Stopping the commercial use of plutonium. It also boasts playing a ''pivotal role'' in ''educating the executive branch'' on the need for a nuclear weapons test ban. Ongoing projects include researching the ''technical steps required for transition to a nuclear-weapons-free world.''
In other words, denuclearization -the administration's policy.....Step No. 1 is getting nuclear states to stop blowing up bombs. To do that, Energy has to show them that testing can be done above ground by computer. It plans to sink $4.5 billion a year over the next 10 years into supercomputers and simulation facilities, among other things, at the labs. Meantime, Energy had invited Chinese scientists to the labs to pick up technical pointers on virtual testing, as well as other techniques like lab security - under the assumption they'd go back to Beijing and start their own programs. But it's plain that Beijing is interested in gleaning U.S. nuclear techniques for targeting rather than testing - much to the chagrin of trusting no-nuke activists in the administration, critics say. ''Looking back on it against the current scandal, these people were running amok,'' Gaffney said..."
Publications of the Center for Security Policy No 97-D 121 9/2/97 "...Last month NBC News reported that Mr. Clinton's controversial first Secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary, allegedly used her office to shakedown a big-time Democratic contributor. The contributor in question, Johnny Chung, told Tom Brokaw that Mrs. O'Leary and her staff demanded -- and received -- a $25,000 gift in exchange for granting a half-hour meeting with her to one of his clients, the president of China Petro-Chemical Corporation. If such a transaction occurred, it would be a serious breach of the public trust and a federal offense. This reality is not altered by the fact that the beneficiary of the alleged shakedown was Mrs. O'Leary's "favorite charity," Africare. As it happens, the $25,000 bought Chung's friends a "three-fer" -- access not only to Secretary O'Leary on the afternoon of 19 October, but a subsequent White House tour with then-presidential advisor George Stephanopoulos and the opportunity to be photographed with President Clinton, who attended the Africare fund-raiser that evening.
Publications of the Center for Security Policy No 97-D 121 9/2/97 on getting support within the labs for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty "...Unfortunately, Mrs. O'Leary made the lab directors an offer they couldn't refuse. As Secretary Schlesinger observed at a symposium convened in July by the Center for Security Policy to consider the future of the U.S. nuclear deterrent: "[The DoE weapons labs] have been silenced...in that it was plain that laboratories that spoke out firmly about the desirability of nuclear testing would discover a significant diminution in their budgets. That has a powerful impact." The impact was particularly powerful on one of the Nation's two nuclear design labs -- Lawrence Livermore -- which Mrs. O'Leary was prepared to shut down altogether if it did not play ball on her favorite arms control agenda item, the CTB..... As could have been reliably predicted, moreover, now that Mrs. O'Leary has left public service the required amounts for this so-called "stockpile stewardship" program are not forthcoming. Some of these critically needed facilities may not get built at all; others won't come on-line on time. Meanwhile, confidence is eroding in an American nuclear arsenal plagued by the collapse of its supporting industrial infrastructure, loss of skilled physicists and engineers and bureaucratic mismanagement. The lab directors are in the unhappy position of having, under duress, compromised their integrity -- and contributed to jeopardizing that of the U.S. nuclear deterrent -- only to fall prey to a classic bait-and-switch scheme...."
Insight 5/17/99 Jennifer Hickey "...In October 1996 the DOE inspector general issued a report involving investigation of the spending and travel practices of then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. While the report was released at a time when Americans first were learning about the Clinton-Gore friendliness toward certain generous Chinese interests, it did not begin in 1996. The report examined four trade missions led by O'Leary, including a February 1995 jaunt to India, Hong Kong and China. O'Leary told the IG that two events preceded her decision to lead a mission to China. The first was a meeting with her acting assistant secretary for fossil energy, and the second was a meeting with industry representatives following the return of both from a two-week trade mission to China in June 1993. On Aug. 6, 1993, 21 of the industry representatives sent O'Leary (and the Commerce Department) a report citing "an urgent need for (1) changes in U.S. policies affecting commercial relationships with China, and (2) formation of a U.S. Government/industry partnership to promote electric power industry trade with China." Within a mere three days, at a meeting with industry representatives, O'Leary agreed to an Energy/ Commerce-led working group to handle the issue...."
Insight 5/17/99 Jennifer Hickey "...Approximately six months after a visit to China by now-deceased Commerce secretary Ron Brown -- a Clinton political bag man whose trade missions allegedly were used to reward big Democratic donors -- O'Leary traveled to China with 138 participants, including a number of federal employees. Although it has been learned that some were large donors to the DNC, such as Terry Ogletree, chief executive officer of Entergy Corp., the IG had some difficulty reconstructing the trip. "In general, we found that passenger lists for chartered flights had names crossed out, names written on the sides of the lists and illegible handwritten names," the 1996 report says.. . It is worth mentioning that in 1994 the 1999 GAO report stated "that the existing system [to protect nuclear materials from theft, loss or diversion] was not able to track all exported nuclear materials and equipment" and thus recommended upgrades in the old system. At the time O'Leary was in China in 1995, GAO was learning that DOE "had not implemented our recommendations and had no plans to do so," according to Rezendes' testimony. The following year, when more foreign visitors were frequenting Los Alamos, the lab funded only 1.1 staff years for its counterintelligence program. "Essentially, one person had to monitor not only thousands of visitors" but also thousands of overseas visits, said Rezendes, before the House Commerce Committee in April...."
Washington Times 4/27/99 Frank J. Gaffney Jr. "...Lately, it seems that scarcely a day goes by without some new revelation about serious security problems at the Department of Energy (DOE) - or the Clinton administration's lack of seriousness about addressing them competently. Less obvious, but no less troubling, are the steps the administration is taking to punish conscientious DOE employees who have been raising alarms about these problems. Much of the blame for the present mess appears to lie with President Clinton's first energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary. Mrs. O'Leary made no secret of her hostility to her department's most important function - maintaining the nation's strategic deterrent and the thermonuclear weaponry that underpins it. While she has mercifully been gone from office for three years, the legacy of the gaggle of anti-nuclear activists Mrs. O'Leary recruited to staff senior DOE positions and the "denuclearization" and "openness" policies she and they promulgated together linger on. In fact, just last month, the current energy secretary, Bill Richardson, succeeded in sneaking through the Senate the nomination of an advocate of the abolition of nuclear weapons to serve as assistant secretary for nonproliferation and national security. This dark-of-night operation is all the more outrageous in light of the mounting evidence that this appointee, Rose Gottemoeller, is implicated in a number of the security scandals now coming to light - and the personnel actions being taken against the whistle-blowers.
Washington Times 4/27/99 Frank J. Gaffney Jr. "...First, Mrs. O'Leary banned personnel badges that clearly indicated whether the bearer had a security clearance and, if so, how high. Her reasoning: Such badges were discriminatory. And second, she ended the practice of requiring reports to DOE headquarters about foreign nationals from "sensitive countries" who visited the unclassified areas of the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories.
Among those who has had the unenviable task of dealing with the deleterious consequences of this sort of security malpractice is Notra Trulock. Until the Cox committee's findings about Chinese espionage at Los Alamos came to light, Mr. Trulock was chief of intelligence at DOE. When his years of warning about the penetration of some of the United States' most sensitive facilities - warnings that were suppressed by, among other superiors, Rose Gottemoeller, to whom the intelligence office reported until a reorganization last fall - were publicly vindicated, Mr. Trulock was demoted and his future at the department seems in jeopardy..."
Vermonter 4/29/99 reports "...Don't know if this is new news to anyone else, but it was to me. Last night I listened to a radio show which had James Gaffney (sp?) on. One of the comments he made was that when O'leary was energy secretary she had the color coded ID badges, which indicated what level of security clearance people had, replaced with a universal badge because coding people like that was DISCRIMINATORY!!!!! This happened in spite of protests from the professional security personel and scientists...."
The American Spectator 5/99 John Roberts II "....After the 1992 election, matters only got worse. "The priorities were wrong, " says former Secretary Herrington, "and when that was over you had a secretary of Energy put in there whose priorities were world travel, junketing with businessmen and CEOs, and a huge declassification effort including things that shouldn't have been declassified. And you had a culture at DOE that was anti-nuclear." When she took over the department as Clinton's first energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary made clear that she thought DOE had too many secrets. She ordered an agency-wide review of files and documents for the purpose of releasing information. Her new team of political appointees, many drawn from the ranks of the anti-nuclear movement or extremist environmental groups, were eager to ferret out and disclose the department's secrets. O'Leary chose Dan Riecher, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, to be her chief of staff and later named him assistant secretary. "That was like putting a fox in the henhouse," says Brewer, who points out that the activist hard-line NRDC had frequently filed nuisance suits against the department during the eighties. Riecher drew other environmental activists into the ranks of DOE's mid-level and junior political appointees. Another senior O'Leary appointee, Terry Lash, was drawn from the Illinois state environmental protection agency. At DOE, Lash drew fire from Congress for misusing funds appropriated for nuclear reactor and safety research programs by reallocating the money for alternative and renewable energy grants. One former high-ranking Energy Department security official is convinced that O'Leary's environmental activists have used their access to official information to funnel documents to environmental and anti-nuclear groups, ensuring a wave of litigation against future nuclear power or nuclear weapons programs. He believes that classified information has been compromised because of the political ideology of the anti-nuclear activists...."
The American Spectator 5/99 John Roberts II "....In December 1993, O'Leary declassified 204 previously-secret nuclear tests just before traveling to Russia. The secretary justified disclosing the secret tests in order, as she put it, to "expose the impact of the Cold War, both in terms of environmental health and safety impacts and also impacts on, if you will, the psyche of the nation." According to a Washington Post account from December 8, O'Leary's goal was to expose secrets from "an unresponsive bureaucracy wedded to a bomb-building culture." Instead of heeding Trulock's warnings, O'Leary ordered the department's intelligence division to cease gathering information on anti-nuclear extremists and environmental radicals--such as those responsible for the recent arson at a Vail, Colorado ski resort--who frequently impede shipments of nuclear materials. She forbade them even to keep newspaper clippings on the suspect groups. O'Leary's actions were destructive to department morale. "The guys making the nuclear weapons felt like they were the bad guys, and they really got the short end of the stick," recalls Bergen. Tight budgets and program cutbacks at the national labs after the Cold War left U.S. weapons scientists, like their Russian counterparts, wondering about their futures. The new disrepute of the nuclear weapons profession and the government investigations at Rocky Flats combined with the sudden declassification of long-guarded DOE secrets fostered the perception among nuclear lab employees that security no longer mattered. The situation virtually invited foreign intelligence services to redouble their efforts to recruit nuclear spies...."
The American Spectator 5/99 John Roberts II "....Trulock was not the only one to warn O'Leary to tighten security. As part of her declassification drive, the secretary had appointed a top-level committee to decide which secret DOE activities could be declassified. The end-product was something called the Fundamental Review, which determined that many of the documents and programs classified during the Cold War no longer required secrecy. But as the Fundamental Review progressed, there arose a strong belief among the committee that the department's vital secrets needed better safeguarding. "We should identify what really ought to be protected, and build the walls higher around it," explains Troy Wade, who served on the committee. But while O'Leary was more than pleased to accept the committee's recommendations on declassification, she ignored its advice to improve security in coordination with other agencies including the FBI and the Defense Department....".... Ambassador Lilley says the second phase of China's espionage against the U. S. started in the seventies, when the PRC established a mission in the U.S. By 1973, after the historic Washington-Peking rapprochement, the Chinese " espionage program really took off." Their top intelligence goals were to gain access to nuclear technology and to disrupt Taiwan's relations with the U.S. Chinese agents began to "spot, develop and recruit" spies in the Chinese- American community, Lilley says. "We know this from defectors and from documents. We know it." "It's a massive operation," he says. "There are hundreds of cases of illicit acquisition of high technology." Notra Trulock's assessment that China had the W-88 sent shock waves through the U.S. intelligence community. Until then, defense planners had dismissed China's nuclear arsenal as sixties-era technology, amounting to a small number of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could not support multiple warheads. Now the strategic calculus has changed. According to the Office of Naval Intelligence, China is developing a nuclear submarine fleet that is expected to be operational early in the next century. China's ballistic missile submarines will be armed with 16 advanced JL-2 missiles capable of hitting parts of the United States while operating off China's coast. If the JL-2 missiles are armed with W-88 type multiple warheads, each Chinese submarine can carry up to 80 nuclear warheads. China is also modernizing its land-based missile forces. Sometime next year China is expected to begin deploying the DF-41 road-mobile ICBM, with a range of 7,500 miles. These mobile missiles can also be adapted to carry W-88 type warheads. In addition, China is upgrading its silo-based nuclear missiles. A new variant, the CSS-4, will have an 8,000 mile range. When China's new land- and sea-based nuclear weapons platforms are operational, the W-88 design will make the PRC a full-fledged member of the nuclear club.....China's sharing of missile technology with North Korea and nuclear technology with allies such as Pakistan raises entirely new security concerns for U.S. defense planners. A key question regarding the theft of the W-88 design is precisely what China acquired from its spies in the United States...."
The Center for Security Policy 4/26/99 No. 99-D 48 "...Lately, it seems that scarcely a day goes by without some new revelation about serious security problems at the Department of Energy (DOE) -- or the Clinton Administration's lack of seriousness about addressing them competently. Less obvious, but no less troubling, are the steps the Administration is taking to punish conscientious DOE employees who have been raising alarms about these problems. Much of the blame for the present mess appears to lie with President Clinton's first Secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary.(1) Mrs. O'Leary made no secret of her hostility to her Department's most important function -- maintaining the Nation's strategic deterrent and the thermonuclear weaponry that underpins it. While she has mercifully been gone from office for three years, the legacy of the gaggle of anti-nuclear activists O'Leary recruited to staff senior DOE positions and the "denuclearization" and "openness" policies that she and they promulgated together linger on. In fact, just last month, the current Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, succeeded in sneaking through the Senate the nomination of an advocate of the abolition of nuclear weapons to serve as Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation and National Security. This dark-of-night operation is all the more outrageous in light of the mounting evidence that this appointee, Rose Gottemoeller,(2) is implicated in a number of the security scandals now coming to light -- and the personnel actions being taken against the whistle-blowers....Two further O'Leary "openness" initiatives contributed to the circumstances under which the penetration of U.S. nuclear facilities by Communist China, among others, has occurred during the present administration. ....First, Mrs. O'Leary banned personnel badges that clearly indicated whether the bearer had a security clearance and, if so, how high. Her reasoning: Such badges were discriminatory. And second, she ended the practice of requiring reports to DOE headquarters about foreign nationals from "sensitive countries" who visited the unclassified areas of the Nation's nuclear weapons laboratories....."
The Center for Security Policy 4/26/99 No. 99-D 48 "...On 17 April 1995, President Clinton lent his authority to an "openness" initiative championed by Mrs. O'Leary, the current White House Chief of Staff, John Podesta, and then-NSC staffer Morton Halperin(3) with his signature of Executive Order 12958. This order called for the automatic declassification by 17 April 2000 of all documents containing historical information that are 25 years or older......"
Gaffney's Web Site 4/99 "...Executive Order 12958, signed by President Clinton on April 17, 1995. E.O. 12958 calls for the automatic declassification by April 17, 2000 of all documents containing historical information that are 25 years or older. While the order allows a few exceptions in the name of protecting national security (notably, an injunction that "nothing in this order shall supersede the [classification requirements of] the Atomic Energy Act of 1954"), the practical effect of the order has been greatly to abbreviate the time and necessarily to diminish the care with which documents are scrutinized prior to their release to the public. What amounted to "pressure [to] release sensitive nuclear weapons information" (to coin a phrase) came not only from then-Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary but from declassification-devotées in the White House like then-NSC staffer Morton Halperin and the current Chief of Staff, John Podesta. Under such pressure, the Administration wound up engaging in the wholesale declassification of papers, including some containing Restricted Data (RD) or Formerly Restricted Data (FRD)....The Senators' [Kyl, Shelby, Smith] concerns prompted them to amend the FY1999 defense authorization act to tighten up procedures for reviewing this material and to require a presidential certification that it is "highly unlikely" RD or FRD material is being released pursuant to E.O. 12958. It is worth noting that Mr. Podesta and the Administration strenuously opposed this amendment and have generally tried to thwart its implementation as intended. Among the senior officials who are said to have contributed to this effort is Rose Gottemoeller, whose controversial nomination to become Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nonproliferation and National Security was recently sneaked through the Senate without any effort being made to examine her role in the unfolding China scandal and other DoE security problems.
Washington Times 5/4/99 Frank J. Gaffney Jr, "...Unfortunately for the Clinton team, any competent investigation will readily establish that the "breakdown" was systemic. It started at the top, with the president and his first energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary, and with the policies they promulgated. A short sampler of these includes the following: * Both Mr. Clinton and Mrs. O'Leary declared their commitment to "denuclearization." While not well defined, this policy, in practice, clearly meant the nation's traditional commitment to assuring the future viability of the nuclear deterrent was greatly diminished, if not now non-existent. * Mrs. O'Leary made a fetish of "openness" - including disclosing the whereabouts of every facility housing nuclear weapons and/or related materials. She prohibited badges that clearly showed who had clearances on the grounds that they were discriminatory. * The president directed in Executive Order 12958 that classified information of historical interest be automatically declassified after 25 years.... * Mr. Clinton's budgets diverted Energy Department funds needed to assure the security of U.S. nuclear weapons sites to other purposes.... * Mrs. O'Leary also directed that the practice of requiring reports about foreign nationals from sensitive countries to unclassified areas of the nuclear laboratories be dispensed with. There were no background checks conducted on most of the thousands of these foreign visitors, at least some of whom would likely have had access to the unclassified computer system to which Mr. Lee is alleged to have transferred the U.S. "legacy codes." ...These Clinton administration actions could not but encourage the perception throughout the DOE nuclear weapons complex that personnel, information and physical security were no longer important. That message was most powerfully communicated, however, by the priority given by the Clinton team to securing international support - particularly from nuclear and nuclear-wannabe states - for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). ....The Clinton administration also encouraged contacts between Russian and Chinese scientists (to say nothing of Iranians, North Koreans, Indians and even Iraqis) and personnel at America's nuclear labs. And it has either explicitly approved or turned a blind eye to the transfer by lab personnel of sensitive U.S. technology, for example, for the nominal purpose of helping the Kremlin maintain the security of its nuclear arsenal stockpile. ....."
Reuters 5/5/99 "...Senate Energy Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, waving a floppy disk said he was astonished that a scientist could basically download top secret information at the labs and walk out with it in a pocket. "It's the same as an individual walking out the door with what's in their mind, how do we stop that?'' John Browne, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory said. The same would apply to papers carried out with the secret designation cut off, he added. "It's an individual...determined to get classified information out of a classified area, that is of course the most serious security violation of all,'' Browne said..... Domenici proposed creating a special set of security requirements for Energy Department employees with access to nuclear information, requiring the FBI to handle all "Q'' clearance background checks, and requiring those employees as a condition of clearance to agree to take polygraph tests. The "Q'' clearance is a top secret designation for employees who work on nuclear weapons designs. Domenici also proposed allowing the government to log e-mail and telephone traffic in and out of the labs and allowing the FBI to search computers and monitor telephones within the labs, which currently is not allowed. In the past, even cooks in the cafeteria at Los Alamos were given the "Q'' clearance, but under former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary that was canceled because of the expense of background checks in which investigators talk to neighbors, friends, and other acquaintances of the prospective employee. Now the cafeteria is located outside the classified zone at Los Alamos, a lab official attending the hearing said. "We tell people don't talk classified in the cafeteria,'' he added. Under O'Leary, color coding of badges to designate security clearance was also eliminated, which the lab directors testified made it more difficult to tell who had top security clearance and who did not. The badge color coding was in the process of being reinstated, the directors said...."
American Spectator 5/99 John B. Roberts II "...After the 1992 election, matters only got worse. "The priorities were wrong, " says former Secretary Herrington, "and when that was over you had a secretary of Energy put in there whose priorities were world travel, junketing with businessmen and CEOs, and a huge declassification effort including things that shouldn't have been declassified. And you had a culture at DOE that was anti-nuclear." When she took over the department as Clinton's first energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary made clear that she thought DOE had too many secrets. She ordered an agency-wide review of files and documents for the purpose of releasing information. Her new team of political appointees, many drawn from the ranks of the anti-nuclear movement or extremist environmental groups, were eager to ferret out and disclose the department's secrets. O'Leary chose Dan Riecher, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, to be her chief of staff and later named him assistant secretary. "That was like putting a fox in the henhouse," says Brewer, who points out that the activist hard-line NRDC had frequently filed nuisance suits against the department during the eighties. Riecher drew other environmental activists into the ranks of DOE's mid-level and junior political appointees. Another senior O'Leary appointee, Terry Lash, was drawn from the Illinois state environmental protection agency. At DOE, Lash drew fire from Congress for misusing funds appropriated for nuclear reactor and safety research programs by reallocating the money for alternative and renewable energy grants. One former high-ranking Energy Department security official is convinced that O'Leary's environmental activists have used their access to official information to funnel documents to environmental and anti-nuclear groups, ensuring a wave of litigation against future nuclear power or nuclear weapons programs. He believes that classified information has been compromised because of the political ideology of the anti-nuclear activists...."
American Spectator 5/99 John B. Roberts II "...Instead of heeding Trulock's warnings, O'Leary ordered the department's intelligence division to cease gathering information on anti-nuclear extremists and environmental radicals--such as those responsible for the recent arson at a Vail, Colorado ski resort--who frequently impede shipments of nuclear materials. She forbade them even to keep newspaper clippings on the suspect groups. O'Leary's actions were destructive to department morale. "The guys making the nuclear weapons felt like they were the bad guys, and they really got the short end of the stick," recalls Bergen. Tight budgets and program cutbacks at the national labs after the Cold War left U.S. weapons scientists, like their Russian counterparts, wondering about their futures. The new disrepute of the nuclear weapons profession and the government investigations at Rocky Flats combined with the sudden declassification of long-guarded DOE secrets fostered the perception among nuclear lab employees that security no longer mattered. The situation virtually invited foreign intelligence services to redouble their efforts to recruit nuclear spies. Trulock was not the only one to warn O'Leary to tighten security. As part of her declassification drive, the secretary had appointed a top-level committee to decide which secret DOE activities could be declassified. The end-product was something called the Fundamental Review, which determined that many of the documents and programs classified during the Cold War no longer required secrecy. But as the Fundamental Review progressed, there arose a strong belief among the committee that the department's vital secrets needed better safeguarding. "We should identify what really ought to be protected, and build the walls higher around it," explains Troy Wade, who served on the committee. But while O'Leary was more than pleased to accept the committee's recommendations on declassification, she ignored its advice to improve security in coordination with other agencies including the FBI and the Defense Department...."
New York Times 5/10/99 JEFF GERTH and JAMES RISEN - "...In January 1985, Lee met with top Chinese nuclear scientists, where he twice divulged secrets about his laser work and "discussed problems the United States was having in its nuclear weapons testing simulation program," according to court records. Lee had traveled to China with a group of scientists at the invitation of a Chinese visitor to his laboratory. Lee was supposed to act as a translator for the American delegation, according to the 1998 report on threats to the Department of Energy. Lee later told the bureau that on or about Jan. 9, 1985, in a Beijing hotel room, a Chinese nuclear-weapons scientist asked for Lee's help, saying that China was a "poor country." Lee told the FBI, according to court records, that he decided to help because he wanted to bring China's scientific capabilities "closer to the United States." The Chinese scientist drew a diagram and asked Lee questions about his laser research, according to court records filed in connection with his sentencing. Lee said he responded with detailed answers. The next day, Lee was picked up at his hotel and driven to another hotel to meet a group of Chinese scientists. He answered their questions for two hours, drawing diagrams and providing specific mathematical and experimental results related to laser fusion research. The laser fusion research that he gave to the Chinese was declassified by Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary in 1993, prompting several of Lee's former colleagues to recommend a lenient sentence to the sentencing judge...."
NewsMax.com 5/9/99 "....Now that it's clear America's nuclear security has gone up in smoke, it may be time to borrow a phrase from the Great Chicago Fire and ponder the role of former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary and her onetime cash cow, Johnny Chung. Recent media reports have focused on the $300,000 Chung received from Chinese military intelligence and the $35,000 of that sum (at least) that found its way into Democratic National Committee coffers. But the press seems to be suffering a bout of collective amnesia regarding information on Chung it reported two years ago, which points to a much more direct financial connection to Mrs. O'Leary -- and even a member of the First Family. O'Leary was in charge of security policy at U.S. nuclear labs where Newsweek, for instance, has now described the Chinese penetration as "total". Here's what's been on the record about the Chung-O'Leary money trail for nearly two years: "No less startling was Mr. Chung's allegation that the Democratic Party was not the only player with a ravenous appetite for money. He also described how he was, in effect, shaken down for a $25,000 donation to Africare, a charitable organization supported by the Energy Secretary at the time, Hazel O'Leary." (New York Times -- Aug. 22, 1997) Here's how Chung himself put it, in an exchange with NBC's Tom Brokaw days before the Times report: BROKAW: Were you surprised when someone could get you in to see Hazel O'Leary if you would write a check to her favorite charity? CHUNG: I begin to understand a little bit, but I am still a little bit suprised. BROKAW: Yeah. Who picked up the check? CHUNG: There's one gentleman, present himself as the Energy Department official, and said I'm here to pick it up, the $25,000 check... BROKAW: To Africare? CHUNG: To Africare. BROKAW: A charity that the Energy Secretary supports, she sends over somebody from the Energy Department to pick it up, and you get a meeting with her with a very prominent Chinese petrochemical official? CHUNG: Yes. (Investor's Business Daily -- Aug. 26, 1997.....
NewsMax.com 5/9/99 "....NewsMax.com's executive editor Chris Ruddy was the first to uncover a possible connection between lax security at our weapons labs and policy changes implemented through O'Leary. In his March 11, 1999 report, "Scientist: Clinton Administration Gave China Top Nuclear Secrets", Ruddy revealed: "China's efforts culminated with a delegation of Chinese scientists who visited (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) in the winter of 1994, and another visit by Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary at about the same time." Ruddy's source, a Livermore whistleblower, contended that, "the Clinton administration has, in fact, aggressively sought to provide China with some of the most closely guarded nuclear weapons technology." At Livermore, this scientist said, "the administration had facilitated the transfer of laser technology employed in the process of making nuclear weapons-grade plutonium." After O'Leary's 1994 meeting at the California lab, "the scientist recalled several Livermore scientists in a heated debate over whether 'this type of information (relating to the weapons enriching laser process) should be considered for technology transfer' to China." "The deal with China for the technology transfer was consumated, the scientist said, sometime later that year after O'Leary's visit, when top DOE officials, Department of Commerce officials representing Ron Brown, White House representatives and Chinese government officials met in a guarded room at the Pleasanton Hilton nearby to Livermore." ...."
Investor's Business Daily 5/24/99 Aaron Steelman "....When Tiahrt and Grams introduced a bill to get rid of Energy in 1995, then Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary fought relentlessly to save her agency. She used every argument at her disposal, including the claim that Defense could not be trusted to oversee the country's nuclear labs and weapons stockpiles. In a June 1995 interview, National Journal asked O'Leary: ''Why not move Energy's defense-related missions to the Defense Department?'' Her reply: ''You need a clear wall between the technical people who design weapons and certify their safety and reliability and those who would use and deploy and maybe, in their haste to deploy, would not make the careful review of the reliability and safety.'' The Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor, who in 1995 headed up a congressional advisory panel on how to eliminate Energy, says this argument was very effective. ''It was the main reason the Department of Energy was able to stave off elimination in the early days of the 104th Congress,'' Taylor said...."
Investor's Business Daily 5/24/99 Aaron Steelman "....GAO study author Victor Rezendes wrote that over the last 20 years, his agency has issued ''nearly 50 recommendations for improving programs for controlling foreign visitor access, protecting classified and sensitive information, maintaining physical security over facilities and property, ensuring the trustworthiness of employees, and accounting for nuclear materials.'' Rezendes added: ''While the (department) has often agreed to take corrective actions, we have found that the implementation has often not been successful and that problems recur over the years.'' Rezendes found two reasons for these ongoing problems: ''First, (Energy) managers and contractors have shown a lack of attention and/or priority to security matters. ''Second, and probably most importantly, there is a serious lack of accountability at (Energy). Efforts to address security problems have languished for years without resolution or repercussions to those organizations responsible.''...."
New York Times 5/30/99 "..."In terms of the phenomenology of nuclear weapons," Cochran said, "the cat is out of the bag." Even before the China scandal broke, experts outside the administration faulted the openness as promoting the bomb's spread. Last year, a bipartisan commission of nine military specialists led by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the "extensive declassification" of secrets had inadvertently aided the global spread of deadly weapons...... In September 1996, Clinton traveled to the United Nations to sign the newly negotiated accord on behalf of the United States, followed by 151 other countries, including China. "It was my proudest moment," O'Leary, the former energy secretary, said of watching the president. Today, key nations, including the United States, have yet to ratify the accord. So it is in legal limbo..... "
New York Post 6/1/99 Dick Morris "... Clinton's real error in this scandal was his appointment of two incompetents to run the Energy Department - Hazel O'Leary and Federico Pena. Neither was remotely qualified to protect our vital national secrets. O'Leary was a utility regulator from Minnesota and Pena was former Mayor of Denver. O'Leary, easily the dumbest member of the cabinet, was chosen because she is a black woman. Her tenure in office was marred by her constant, high-priced foreign junkets. Federico Pena screwed up as Transportation secretary by defending Valujet after one of its planes crashed in Florida. Pena's pro-Valujet bias made Clinton angry and he sent word to stop defending and start investigating the airline. Determined to get rid of Pena, Clinton had to keep him on in the second term when Henry Cisneros quit as Housing secretary. The president needed to keep Pena to keep two Hispanics in his cabinet. For this reason, and for no other, Clinton appointed Pena to the Energy Department, where he felt he would do no damage. He was wrong. So little did Clinton think about Energy that he once mused to me that we probably could consolidate it with the Defense Department without any real loss. Now, that looks like a very good idea. Congress needs to get Pena and O'Leary before the proper committees and ask some very, very tough questions. But, above all, Congress has got to have some backbone and stand up to China and make it pay for what it has done to us...."
NewsMax.com 6/2/99 Inside Cover Kenneth Timmerman information "...The Rocky Flats security scandal may be the most damaging yet, since the cover-up is apparently still ongoing. ...According to Timmerman, "Richardson is now attempting to prevent a top DOE official in charge of safeguards and security from testifying before Congress. Why? Because that official, Edward J. McCallum, had made clear his intention to warn Congress and the public of devastating gaps in security procedures at nuclear storage sites such as Rocky Flats." Richardson already knows what McCallum has to say, since McCallum privately warned the Clinton administration last January about trouble at Rocky Flats. The consequences of the cover-up could be dramatic. "Terrorists could easily penetrate the facility and steal weapons grade plutonium, or construct and detonate a nuclear bomb on the site without DOE security teams being able to prevent it," reports the Spectator, based on what McCallum told Timmerman. It gets worse. McCallum was fired from his DOE post, or rather, "placed on adminstrative leave without pay" just last month. Bill Richardson personally gave the order to axe the whistleblower because he was "pissed off" at McCallum's attempts to inform Congress, according to what sources have told the Spectator. White House flaks may have a tough time spinning the Rocky Flats scandal for other reasons. Not only has the administration "repeatedly and obstinately" refused to correct the problem, but Mrs. O'Leary may be vulnerable to conflict of interest charges. Timmerman writes: "Under O'Leary's stewardship, Rocky Flats cut its security force by 40 percent, allowing prime contactor Kaiser-Hill LLC to improve its profit margin despite an overall reduction in the funds it received from DOE. Indeed, Kaiser Hill actually earned performance bonuses from DOE, because its cleanup operations were going ahead on schedule." Kaiser-Hill was apparently grateful for Mrs. O'Leary's indulgence, since she wound up on the board of ICF Kaiser, its parent company, upon her retirement from DOE. She remains on Kaiser's board today, while her husband does consulting work for the company....."
6/7/99 David Horowitz "....In fact, the current national security crisis may be said to have begun when President Clinton appointed anti-military environmental leftist Hazel O'Leary to be secretary of energy, and therefore in charge of the nation's nuclear weapons labs. O'Leary promptly surrounded herself with other political leftists (including a "Marxist-Feminist") and anti-nuclear activists, appointing them as assistant secretaries with responsibility for the nuclear labs. In one of her first acts, O'Leary declassified 11 million pages of reports, including information on 204 nuclear tests, a move she described as an action to safeguard the environment and as a protest against a "bomb-building" culture. Having made America's nuclear weapons secrets available to adversary powers, O'Leary then took steps to relax security precautions at the labs under her control. She appointed Rose Gottemoeller, a former Clinton National Security Council staffer with extreme anti-nuclear views, to be director in charge of national security issues. Gottemoeller had been previously nominated to fill the post -- long-vacant in the Clinton administration -- of assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. But her appointment was successfully blocked by congressional Republicans because of her radical disarmament views. The Clinton response to her rejection on security grounds was to appoint her to be in charge of security for the nation's nuclear weapons labs...."
FoxNews 6/8/99 Freeper truthkeeper reports "...What I heard them report was "Fox News has learned that former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary may have caused a national security leak..." They went on to mention that Rep. Curt Weldon, during his House presentation yesterday, "showed a magazine article from 1995 that had a description and diagram of a nuclear warhead that matched" one of our "stolen" ones. (Sorry guys, this wording is not exact, but pretty close.) Additionally, Fox reports that this information was published "at about the time that Clinton now claims he began tightening national security" in the matter. These short little reports (given by their news reader, not one of their big guns like Cameron, et al) do not elaborate on Fox's claim that they "have learned that O'Leary may be the cause of the leak," but I predict we'll be hearing a subsequent "exclusive report" with more details. I watch Fox all the time, and that seems to be their pattern...."
Curt Weldon Website 6/8/99 "...if you listen to Secretary Bill Richardson traveling around the country, he would have us believe that the only problems with the labs were problems that started under previous administrations which he has now cleaned up. That is hogwash, Mr. Speaker. Let us look at the facts. Mr. Speaker, it was in 1993 and 1994 when Hazel O'Leary was appointed to be the Secretary of Energy by President Bill Clinton that she decided that the color-coded ID system used in our Department of Energy labs which said based upon the color of the chain and the ID that you wore around your neck, you would only be allowed access to certain parts of our laboratories. It was the way that we kept people out of illegally accessing information that they did not have the proper clearance for. When Hazel O'Leary came into office, this long established practice that had been under previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, was overturned because she thought that color-coding was discriminatory. So what happened, Mr. Speaker, was in 1993 and 1994, the Clinton administration did away with that identification process which made it almost impossible for the lab directors and others to know whether or not a person was in a correct area of a lab gathering information and access to data that they should not have had. Now, Mr. Speaker, if that was a good decision back in 1993 and 1994 which maybe the President would say was the case, why then did this administration 2 weeks ago move to reinstate the policy that Hazel O'Leary did away with in 1993 and 1994? If it was good back in 1993 and 1994 and if the color-coded ID system was not necessary, why did they all of a sudden 2 weeks ago tell the labs, `You're now going to put back into place a color-coded ID system' at a tremendous cost to taxpayers. That was under this administration, Mr. Speaker...."
Curt Weldon Website 6/8/99 "... Number two, it was this administration and Hazel O'Leary who decided that FBI background checks, which had been the case under previous administrations, before people could gain access to our labs, that FBI background checks had to be done so that we could determine whether or not those people were spies or whether or not they were appropriately entitled to have access to classified information. Again it was Secretary O'Leary, Bill Clinton's appointee, who in 1993 and 1994 put a hold in at least two of our labs on FBI background checks, allowing scores of people to get access to our labs, not just Chinese or Asian nationals but a whole host of people because they were not being required to have FBI background checks...."
Curt Weldon Website 6/8/99 "... Number three, Mr. Speaker. It was in the 1993-1994 time frame when an employee of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory who had retired was accused of releasing sensitive and classified information in a public setting. The Oakland office of the Department of Energy did an investigation of that employee and they found out, and in fact accused him of violating the requirements of security at our labs. What did they do? They penalized that retiree by removing the access he had to classified information even as a retiree. They took the appropriate steps. What did Hazel O'Leary do, Mr. Speaker? When that removal of that retiree's classified status was undertaken and when he appealed it, all the way up to the Secretary's office, Secretary O'Leary overruled the Oakland office of the Department of Energy and reinstated the employee's classification status. Every employee in every laboratory in America saw the signal being sent by this administration, `We don't need color-coded IDs, we don't need to have FBI background checks, and when employees give out classified information, we're not going to consider that a major issue.' ..."
Curt Weldon Website 6/8/99 "... One more point, Mr. Speaker. And you do not hear Bill Richardson talking about these facts, but I am offering to debate him here tonight, anytime, anyplace. Mr. Richardson says that when this administration found out, in 1995, that the Chinese had stolen the designs to one of our most sophisticated warheads, the W-88 and the W-87, that they immediately took action, they began a process of closing in on the security, and he said that began in 1995. Mr. Speaker, I want to call particular attention to my colleagues and to the American people this two-page spread that was in the July 31st, 1995 issue of U.S. News and World Report entitled `Shockwave' documenting the annihilation and destruction that would be caused by a nuclear attack or a nuclear bomb going off. In this document, Mr. Speaker, is an illustration of the W-87 warhead. Mr. Speaker, in 1995, this was classified. Mr. Speaker, this administration, in 1995, leaked this document to U.S. News and World Report, giving the entire populace of the world, through U.S. News and World Report, access to the design of the W-87 nuclear warhead, the same year that Bill Richardson is saying they were putting the clamps on the control of our technology.
Curt Weldon Website 6/8/99 "...But it does not stop there, Mr. Speaker. Because when this occurred, the Department of Energy began an internal investigation as to who would have leaked this design of this W-87 nuclear warhead, who would have given this information out to a national magazine. Mr. Speaker, I have the name of the person that was conducting that investigation, and I have been told that he was told to stop the investigation because they knew where it was going to lead to, that it was Hazel O'Leary herself who gave U.S. News and World Report the actual diagram of the W-87 nuclear warhead in 1995. Yet Secretary Richardson, on the Sunday morning news shows, is saying, `We have taken the steps to close these gaps.' Mr. Speaker, I am today asking for a full investigation as to whether or not the Department of Energy did such an internal investigation and I want to know whether or not the individual who was overseeing this was told by his superiors not to pursue finding out who leaked this information in 1995. And, Mr. Speaker, if this administration was so intent on controlling access to these kinds of secrets, then they would surely be able to give us the answers to the questions I am posing tonight. Who did the investigation, and who did they find out leaked this particular diagram to U.S. News and World Report in 1995? It was not the Reagan administration, Mr. Speaker, and it was not the Bush administration. It was this administration....."
Freeper truthkeeper report on O'Reilly Factor FoxNews 6/8/99 "...This was the most important O'Reilly I have seen yet. You all MUST catch the rerun; there is so much new information vis-a-vis Chinagate and Hazel O'Leary REALLY being in the soup over the Rocky Flats lab (more bribery, boneheaded decisions, releasing classified nuke data to U.S. News and World Report, declassifying tons of security documents, etc.). O'Reilly asked Weldon if she knew what she was doing or was she just stupid? Weldon replied, "I think just stupid." O'Reilly and Weldon used terms tonight like treason, massive White House cover-up, corruption of the entire federal government, etc. Man...it was HEAVY. O'Reilly said he plans to chase this story till the last dog dies and will have Weldon on his show "repeatedly" to discuss these matters. Weldon also stated that Louie Freeh testified previously before the House Intelligence Committee that THE AMERICAN PEOPLE knew "ONLY 1% of the campaign finance scandal information." Wicked Witch Reno has been sitting on the Charles LaBella memo (WHICH NAMES ALL THE NAMES including you-know-who) for years now and wouldn't even release it to the Cox Committee. Weldon practically BEGGED the viewers to FLOOD Congress with demands for the release of the ENTIRE LaBella memo, not "selected portions" of it (e.g., the Cox Report). Then O'Reilly asked the obvious question: "So why doesn't Congress just subpoena it?" Weldon looked kind of sheepish and answered, "Well, that's one way to do it.".... O'Reilly ended this segment by saying that Congress needs to haul the butts of Hazel O'Leary and the Commander-in-Briefs up there and FORCE them to testify...."
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 6/9/99 Paul Sperry "...Around 1994, Energy's Oakland, Calif., office stripped another Livermore scientist of his security clearance after he divulged classified information at a public setting. Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary overturned the Oakland office and ''gave this guy back his classified status,'' Weldon said. In 1992, by contrast, U.S. Customs arrested Chinese spy Bin Wu for smuggling night-vision equipment used by U.S. tank crews to China. He's serving a 10-year prison term...."
David Limbaugh/newsmax.com 6/12/99 "...Weldon, by summarizing just a minute portion of the evidence, exposed Richardson's statement for the shameless lie that it is. A portion of his summary focused on the consistently regrettable activities of former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Here are a few of the facts Weldon underscored: -- Shortly after O'Leary was appointed in 1993, she abandoned the long-established practice of requiring people to wear color-coded IDs in order to acquire access to our labs. She discarded the system, saying that color-coding was discriminatory. How's that for a jolt of mindless liberalism. (As a footnote, the administration reinstated color-coding a few weeks ago). -- O'Leary decided that FBI background checks were also unnecessary for access to our labs and thus dispensed with them in at least two of our labs. This allowed lab access to untold numbers of people, not just Chinese or Asian nationals. -- In 1993 or 1994, a retired employee of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory was accused of releasing sensitive and classified information. He was penalized with a removal of his access to classified information. Amazingly, O'Leary overruled the Oakland office of the Energy Department and reinstated the retiree's classification status. -- Someone in the Energy Department leaked the design of the W-87 nuclear warhead to U.S. News and World Report, which exhibited the good patriotism of publishing a design-revealing diagram of the weapon in its July 31, 1995, issue. Reportedly, the Energy Department's internal investigation to determine who was responsible for the leak was stopped dead in its tracks because it was discovered that the person responsible for the leaks was none other than O'Leary...."
The Center For Security Policy 6/15/99 "...Today, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) released the findings of its 90-day study of security issues at the Department of Energy. Although the report itself was unavailable at this writing, press reports indicate that the PFIAB analysis not only paints a grim picture of past breaches of the most basic procedures for safeguarding classified nuclear weapons data. It also reveals that the gross disregard for elementary physical, information and personnel security -- encouraged by Mr. Clinton's first Energy Secretary, Hazel O'Leary, and epitomized in her infamous December 1993 declaration that, "Someone else has the job of looking more carefully at the national security interest" -- continues to this day under her successor, Bill Richardson...."
The Center For Security Policy 6/15/99 "...Other highlights of then-Secretary O'Leary's lengthy -- and frequently incoherent -- press conference on Tuesday, 7 December 1993 ....In particular, Mrs. O'Leary clearly took pleasure in disclosing theretofore secret information concerning: the total quantity and precise locations around the country of much of the Nation's stockpile of plutonium -- an invitation to domestic or foreign acts of terrorism; the fact that there were then "three miles" of (ostensibly) unduly classified documents, which Sec. O'Leary promised aggressively to declassify. (She did so, releasing, among other sensitive information, nuclear weapons-relevant "Restricted Data" and "Formerly Restricted Data" despite a specific statutory prohibition on doing so contained in the Atomic Energy Act); the number of secret underground nuclear tests that the United States had conducted (the government had previously chosen not to announce some 200 tests whose low yields could not be detected by others) -- a potential intelligence windfall for foreign powers; and the explosive allegation that the Department of Energy's bureaucratic predecessors had conducted radiological experiments on human beings without obtaining the participants' informed consent....."
Manchester Union Leader Richard Lessner 6/23/99 ".... As the Center for Security Policy points out, a casual approach to security characterized the department's institutional culture from the first day of the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton's first energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary, demonstrated a shocking disregard for even the most elemental security procedures. At a now notorious press conference in 1993, Secretary O'Leary famously declared, "Someone else has the job of looking more carefully at national security interests." But Ms. O'Leary's negligence was not limited to harebrained disavowals of responsibility. She and her claque of anti-nuke zealots undertook a premeditated campaign to de-emphasize security. Under Ms. O'Leary, the department repeatedly made public sensitive information. She revealed the total quantity and precise locations of the nation's plutonium stockpile. Her department declassified "three miles" of secret documents, including sensitive documents related to nuclear weapons research. She made public the exact number and nature of the United States' underground nuclear tests, especially undetectable low-yield tests, a potential intelligence windfall for foreign powers. This was a calculated attack on the department's nuclear security. As the Center for Security Policy notes, "It should come as no surprise that Secretary O'Leary, her senior subordinates and their successors proved indifferent to U.S. national security interests given that they were generally selected to hold such high offices on the basis of 'diversity' and leftist ideologies." The problem here is that the same bunch that presided over the worst foreign espionage scandal since the Rosenberg atomic spy ring is still in charge of the nation's nuclear secrets. As the Rudman panel reported, the Energy Department is a dysfunctional bureaucracy that is incapable of reforming itself. Department bureaucrats, Mr. Rudman informed the President, are actively trying to block security reforms....."
Washington Post 6/30/99 Walter Pincus Vernon Loeb "...Edward J. McCallum, a retired Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel who served as DOE's director of safeguards and security until he was placed on paid administrative leave two months ago, said in an interview yesterday that Energy Department security forces are still inadequate. There are 4,000 security personnel for 50 facilities. "The major dozen or so facilities are well under strength; they're running 25 percent overtime on average." While DOE SWAT teams used to protect nuclear facilities from terrorist attacks have been reduced by 50 percent since 1992, McCallum said, there has been increase of 30 percent in the amount of nuclear materials for which the department is responsible. McCallum, who has been openly critical of the way the administration has handled DOE security, said he had been using Army Green Berets and Navy SEALS to help train department security personnel and to help pinpoint security vulnerabilities at the nation's nuclear facilities. He said that unlike himself, Glenn Podonsky, a longtime DOE employee who headed the new investigation called for by Richardson, could get the results of his investigations "to the secretary. I couldn't get it past the Office of Nonproliferation and National Security, an office formed in 1993 that separated us from the secretary's office." Podonsky, who headed the new investigation, said in an interview that when he went to the Energy Department to do inspections and evaluations in the late 1980s, "I would get mild attention from assistant secretaries and the labs would push back on recommendations." Then-Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary cut back on his budget and emphasized health and safety inspections, other sources said. Besides physical security at Energy Department facilities, McCallum said, the department must also rectify serious cyber-security problems. "The classified systems have never been penetrated," McCallum said. "But the unclassified, sensitive computer systems have been, hundreds of times or more." ...."
Charleston Post and Courier 7/2/99 "... The New York Times reported last weekend that senior administration officials first learned of possible Chinese spying at the Energy Department's nuclear-weapons labs in Los Alamos, N.M., in July 1995, when then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary told then-White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta about it. That's eight months sooner than the White House previously dated the initial briefing. The Times also reported that then-CIA Director John Deutch, after concluding that the Chinese had stolen design information on the W-88 (the most advanced U.S. nuclear warhead), informed then-National Security Adviser Anthony Lake of his conclusions - in November 1995. Samuel Berger, then Mr. Lake's deputy and now national security adviser, repeatedly said he first learned of the "problem" in April 1996. He said he finally told President Clinton in the summer of 1997 - or early in 1998 (he's not sure). .... Why did high-level administration officials wait two years to inform the president of this threat? Particularly, why did Mr. Berger, who sat in on several early 1996 meetings with Asian fund-raisers and knew that Chinese aerospace officials were making large contributions to the Clinton re-election campaign, not tell the president of the Los Alamos "problem"? ...Why did Attorney General Janet Reno reject an FBI request to wiretap a suspected spy at Los Alamos in 1997? Why did administration officials wait until after that suspected spy's name surfaced in news reports to remove him from his position - and from his access to highly classified nuclear data? ...How could White House special counsel Jim Kennedy keep a straight face last weekend while dismissing this latest revelation - the 1995 O'Leary-Panetta meeting - as "simply an informal heads-up to the White House"? Who in the White House kept his or her head up when informed that the Chinese were stealing nuclear-weapons secrets? ...."
The American Spectator 6/99 Kenneth R. Timmerman "...In the latest episode of the Clinton administration's cover-up of its mind-boggling security lapses at our nuclear weapons labs, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson is now attempting to prevent a top DOE official in charge of safeguards and security from testifying before Congress. Why? ....Because that official, Edward J. McCallum, had made clear his intention to warn Congress and the public of devastating gaps in the security procedures at nuclear storage sites such as Rocky Flats, Colorado, that the Clinton administration has repeatedly, and obstinately, refused to correct. Security at Rocky Flats was so bad, McCallum warned President Clinton in a January 27, 1997 report, that terrorists could easily penetrate the facility and steal weapons-grade plutonium, or construct and detonate a nuclear bomb on the site without DOE security teams being able to prevent it. Budget reductions and other "disturbing trends" had turned DOE security into a " hollow force that goes below the bottom line and makes it more difficult to fulfill National Security mandates," McCallum wrote... In a telephone conversation four months later, McCallum was more blunt. The risk was "extremely high," he told the recently dismissed head of the Rocky Flats security detail, that terrorists could successfully attack the plutonium storage site, unleashing "a little mushroom cloud" over nearby Denver. By all accounts, McCallum's reports angered Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary, who not only failed to act on his warnings but consistently reduced the budget for security at the nation's nuclear labs--far below what McCallum and other security officials warned was the danger level. Under O'Leary's stewardship, Rocky Flats cut its security force by 40 percent, allowing prime contractor Kaiser-Hill LLC to improve its profit margin despite an overall reduction in the funds it received from DOE. Indeed, by skimping on security, Kaiser-Hill actually earned performance bonuses from DOE, because its cleanup operations were going ahead on schedule. During the Cold War, Rocky Flats was used to machine highly toxic plutonium into nuclear weapons cores...."
The American Spectator 6/99 Kenneth R. Timmerman "...In a twist that should no longer shock observers of the Clinton administration, almost as soon as O'Leary resigned as secretary of energy in January 1997, she joined the board of ICF Kaiser, the parent of the company that McCallum had cited for poor management of Rocky Flats. O'Leary remains on the Kaiser board today, and her husband, John O'Leary, does consulting work for the group. Kaiser also hired Thomas Grumbley, a former aide to Al Gore who was put in charge of DOE's Office of Science and Technology. At DOE, Grumbley had "harpooned" Kaiser's performance at Rocky Flats, according to Mark Graf, the former security chief at Rocky Flats. Grumbley now works for Kaiser as president of its Environment & Facilities Management Group. In 1997, the House Commerce Committee discovered that Grumbley had funneled lucrative DOE contracts to Molten Metal Technology, after the company had hired Gore aide (and top DNC fundraiser) Peter Knight as its chief Washington lobbyist. MMT executives contributed $50,000 in 1994 to the University of Tennessee to establish a chair honoring the vice president's sister, and in 1995 told Knight they would raise $50,000 for the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, according to Commerce Committee documents.
Washington Times 7/5/99 "…(1) After learning in April of 1995 from their monitoring of Chinese nuclear test explosions that China had apparently acquired classified design information about the United States' most sophisticated nuclear warhead, the W-88, why did Department of Energy (DOE) weapons scientists and counterintelligence officials delay for an entire year -- until April 1996 -- reporting this alarming information to the White House? (2) Given that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials learned of the same development in 1995 as well, why would that agency not advise the White House? Those questions have now been answered. In fact, DOE counterintelligence officials did not wait nearly so long. Nor did their CIA counterparts. As early as July 1995, DOE Secretary Hazel O'Leary conveyed her department's suspicions to no less a senior White House official than Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, according to an article in the New York Times. Within days, CIA Director John Deutch, a former deputy secretary of defense, told Mr. Panetta that the CIA had independently gathered intelligence confirming the suspicions of DOE officials; namely, that China had stolen secret information about the W-88….. In November of 1995, a convinced Mr. Deutch personally briefed White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake -- who implausibly asserts that he cannot recall the briefing, although the White House acknowledges there is a record of it. In any event, Mr. Lake claims to have failed to brief the president. Moreover, Mr. Panetta, the government official who probably spent more time with Mr. Clinton than anybody else at the time, admitted to the Times that he failed to mention to the president what Mrs. O'Leary and Mr. Deutch told him in July 1995…..Imagine that. CIA Director Deutch informs the the White House Chief of Staff in July 1995 that his agency suspects Chinese nuclear espionage involving America's most advanced nuclear warhead. After the sober-minded Mr. Deutch becomes convinced of the nuclear espionage, he personally briefs the president's national security adviser. Five months later, DOE counterintelligence officers gave then-Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger what they termed an "explicit" and "detailed" briefing. And none of these three --neither Mr. Panetta, nor Mr. Lake nor Mr. Berger -- ever considered the information sufficiently alarming to brief the president. (At one point, within days after the scandal exploded in early March this year, Mr. Berger, who became national security adviser in early 1996, claimed to have briefed the president in April 1996, but the White House now insists the president was not briefed until July 1997, after DOE officials briefed Mr. Berger a second time.) Either these three senior White House officials are among the most incompetent aides ever to serve a U.S. president, a prospect that, admittedly, is difficult to believe in Mr. Panetta's case. Or they are lying…."
Insight Magazine 8/2/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "…According to an Insight source within the department, O'Leary's first official act at the DOE headquarters was to "get rid of the guns" which, under Section 161 K of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, 1954 as amended, are supposed to be issued to DOE security forces for their own protection, for the protection of others and to safeguard special nuclear materials and weapons. . . . . Other O'Leary changes included redesigning identification badges at DOE facilities to "minimize" the apparent differences between security-clearance levels and between federal employees and private contractors. Apparently the secretary objected to the badge designations because they "labeled" people. . . . . O'Leary even ordered the layered exterior security fences removed and the security personnel eliminated at those posts. As the "islands of security" became smaller, the number of security posts became fewer and the number of security personnel was reduced. In fact, under the DOE "openness" policy, security forces were reduced by nearly 50 percent…."
Judicial Watch 7/16/99 "…Hillary Clinton, former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, the Commerce Department, and other government officials were also tied to illegal fundraising, bribery, and other crimes in Chung's sworn testimony. Chung's testimony came in Judicial Watch's Chinagate lawsuit against the Commerce Department over its sale of taxpayer-financed trade mission seats in exchange for campaign contributions and related issues…."
Public Diplomacy Query 7/10/99 Freeper Born in a Rage "… TN-347739, Title: US Labs to Help Companies Develop Supercomputer Software Date: 6-7-94 Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary told reporters June 7 that the program, called the Industrial Computing Initiative, is meant to develop scientific and commercial applications for "massively parallel" supercomputers, which are up to a thousand times more powerful than older generation supercomputers. ..."will provide more powerful computation tools for national security, energy planning, climate modeling and other programs." About half the funds for the $52-million, three-year program will be federal money. Cray Research, the heaviest privatesector contributor, will provide $12 million, and the rest will come from major firms such as Alcoa Aluminum, Amoco, Boeing, General Motors, AT&T Bell Laboratories and International Technology Corporation. Another project, involving Hughes Aircraft and the Lawrence Livermore lab, calls for space communications systems that will make U.S. built spacecraft more competitive in the global market…."
The Center For Security Policy 7/21/99 "... Why was President Clinton's Rose Garden statement yesterday -- in which he urged Senate hearings this fall and final action on the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- all but ignored today by the Nation's leading newspapers?.... Whatever the reason, the White House press corps' failure to publicize these presidential remarks does not bode well for the power-play that anti-nuclear activists within and outside the Clinton-Gore Administration hope to unleash in the next few weeks in a bid to secure Senate advice and consent to this controversial and fatally flawed accord....The following were among the more egregious misrepresentations in Mr. Clinton's statement: "We have, today, a robust nuclear force." The fact is that we are not sure whether today's U.S. deterrent is "robust." In the interval since 1992, when the United States unilaterally suspended its underground nuclear test program, officials at the national laboratories responsible for certifying the stockpile have been reduced to making informed guesses about the actual condition of our arsenal.... "Nuclear experts affirm that we can maintain a safe and reliable deterrent without nuclear tests." Actually, some do; some don't. In fact, until Mr. Clinton's first Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary blackmailed the U.S. nuclear laboratories into agreeing to support the CTBT, virtually no one in positions of responsibility for the American deterrent believed that it could be safely and reliably maintained in the absence of periodic underground testing...
"If our Senate fails to act, the treaty cannot enter into force for any country." The implication is that if, on the other hand, the Senate does act, the CTBT will come into force. This is not the case. Unless and until all other nuclear powers -- including North Korea, which has shown no interest in joining the treaty regime -- become state parties, the Comprehensive Test Ban cannot, by its own terms, come into force.... He declared: "The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will strengthen our national security by constraining the development of more advanced and more destructive nuclear weapons, and by limited the possibilities for more countries to acquire nuclear weapons. It will also enhance our ability to detect suspicious activities by other nations." In fact, due to the inherent unverifiability of a "zero-yield" Comprehensive Test Ban, there is no way to say for certain whether other nations are exploiting the ability to conduct undetectable low-yield and/or de-coupled tests to develop "more advanced and more destructive nuclear weapons." .....More to the point, there is now an active world market for nuclear weapons-related know-how and technology. Nations no longer need to test their own nuclear devices; they can buy tested ones from the likes of Russia and China..... "
FoX News Channel's THE O'REILLY FACTOR 7/27/99 Freeper Aloha Ronnie "...called for a Congressional Hearing to be called by the House Armed Services Committee...to bring in POTUS's Former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary UNDER OATH to explain why she opened up our Nuclear Candy Store to the Chinese Army and to explain why Energy Dept Whistle Blower Col. McCullum was placed on 14 months Adminsrtative Leave instead of being listened to by her. Col. McCullum was the one Guy within the Energy Dept trying to stop the transfer of our Nuclear Secrets to the Chinese...but O'Leary wouldn't even talk to him! If the White House does not spring Hazel O'Leary to testify before the Committee and if Col. McCullum isn't given his old job back ....Host Bill O'Reilly is threatening to personally go down to the White House to ask Why Not...even to the Point of being arrested by the Police! Now how's that for 'FIRE IN THE BELLY' ...A-C-T-I-O-N....? "
Insight Magazine Vol 15 No 31 8/23/99 Rep Curt Weldon R-PA "...I read with interest Sam Cohen's recent critique of the Cox Committee's report of technology transfer to China released by the Hosue Select Committee on u.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns With the People's Republic of China (see Check Your Facts: Cox Report Bombs,"Insight Magazine, 8/9/99). I expected a more thorough analysis by the self-described "father of the neutron bomb." He should have checked his facts. Let me take one of his most egregious errors and turn it on its head. Cohen delivered a scathing rebuke of the Cox report for publishing a diagram that details the workings and components of the W-87 warhead. Why, Cohen wonders, would the United States publish a detailed, classified design of one of its most advanced warheads in an unclassified congressional report? The diagram in question -- which Cohen says would be a useful blueprint for India and Pakistan -- was actually reprinted from the July 31, 1995 issue of U.S. News and World Report. In fact, the Cox report cites the source of the diagram in captions below and beside the graphic. So this diagram, which "any competent nuclear scientists could use to work back to the actual design" was actually made public four years ago -- on every newstand in the world. How did such classified material find its way in to print and become available to any rogue government with a few dollars to spare the cover price? The answer is shocking. it highlights the utter incompetence and complete lack of concern about national security that have come to permeate the Clinton-Gore Administration...."
Insight Magazine Vol 15 No 31 8/23/99 Rep Curt Weldon R-PA "...The events surrounding the leak of this classified document were related to me by personal sources and independently confirmed by Carl Cameron of Fox News -- one of the few dedicated network reporters who continues to pursue the China story. According to those sources, the leak occurred during an interview that Hazel O'Leary -- then Secretary of Energy -- was conducting with a reporter from U.S. News. According to my sources, O'Leary opened up a ledger of classified documents sitting on her desk and proceeded to show the reporter a diagram of the W-87 warhead in order to prove a point. She then handed the classified diagram of the nuclear warhead to the reporter. Her staff attempted to protest, pointing out that the document was classified. O'Leary hesitated a moment, took the document back from the reporter, crossed out the word "classified" and promptly gave it back to the U.S. News staffer. When the document was published soon after, the Department of Energy and the intelligence community was aghast at the leak. In fact, the Department of Energy launched an investigation to determine the source of the leak and punish the individual responsible. Needless to say, the investigation was quietly put to an end when it was determined that O'Leary was the culprit. As Cohen noted, if he or other lower-level government employees publicly had revealed such details about the workings of the W-87, he would have been severely punished. So would a Member of Congress. But when the culprit is a Clinton-Gore Cabinet official, the incident conveniently is covered up. Like most revelations involving the mishandling of classified information by the Clinton-Gore Administration, the issue was ignored by much of the mainstream press. But that does not make the security violation any less egregious or worthy of punishment...."
WorldNet Daily 8/3/99 Joseph Farah "....Impeachment hearing hero David Schippers told Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News Network that former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary gave marching orders to halt all scheduled promotions of white males in her vast federal bureaucracy. "Now you know something about Hazel O'Leary in your capacity as -- looking over everything, and ... that there was an ongoing ... conspiracy to make certain that no white males got promoted to any offices of responsibility and got -- indeed got no promotions at all," he said. "Really?" questioned O'Reilly. "So Hazel O'Leary, then the chief of the Department of Energy, you're saying that your client told you, was knocking out all white males that -- when they -- when they were up for promotion?" "As I understand it -- this is secondhand. As I understand it, when Hazel O'Leary got into the office, she asked for the promotion list and then asked them to strike the names of all white males," charged Schippers. "That's against the law," observed O'Reilly astutely. "Well, this information's been furnished to the -- to the Congress. They have it," said Schippers. Is it hard to believe? Not with the bunch in this administration -- not with what I know about the political nature of Hazel O'Leary, who personally targeted me and my organization for extinction as well. She's the former Cabinet official who made phone calls to my news organization's donor base threatening individuals with government retribution if they continued to support the Western Journalism Center, parent company of WorldNetDaily.com...."
The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com) 8/9/99 Rep Hayword, House of Representatives "...The lead story, Mr. Speaker, in today's Washington Times reads as follows: 'China Tests New Long Range Missile.' Bill Gertz, the byline, he writes and I quote, 'China successfully test-fired its newest long-range missile yesterday amid heightened tensions with Taiwan over pro-independence remarks by the island's President. The CIA believes the DF-31 test launched from a base in central China will be the first new Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile to incorporate stolen U.S. warhead design and missile technology, according to U.S. officials.' Mr. Speaker, when I read those words this morning, I could not help but reflect on the revelations that have rocked our Nation's capital and our entire country in the past several months. The fund-raising scandals, the apparent absence of concern at our Nation's nuclear laboratories, the wholesale theft of our nuclear secrets and the apparent cooperation of some in the private sector, and some in alleged government service to make it so. Mr. Speaker, what perverse pride can anyone derive from these revelations? Is there actually pride on the part of the Clinton- Gore gang and their fund-raisers this morning? Is there actually pride in the heart of Bernard Schwartz, the leading giver to the Democratic National Committee, whose firm, Loral, gave technology to the Communist Chinese? C. Michael Armstrong, the one-time CEO of Hughes, another company that gave technology to the Communist Chinese, can he feel pride at these revelations this morning? Is our national security advisor, Sandy Berger, who sat on this information and apparently withheld it from the highest levels of government, does he feel pride this morning that our Nation is at risk? How proud former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary must be this morning, with her socialist utopian vision of sharing our nuclear technology with those who oppose us in the world. And finally and sadly, how proud the President and Vice President of the United States must be. Mr. Speaker, our constitutional republic has survived scores of scoundrels and scalawags, but to have those at the highest level of government speak of a strategic partnership with Communist China and then have it revealed in the fullness of time just what that strategic partnership meant, crass partisan, political advantage through scandalous fund-raising that has led us to this sorry state of affairs...."
Reuters FOX 8/11/99 "...When asked by a reporter, he [Richardson] refused to rule out that former energy secretary Hazel O'Leary would be criticized for how she dealt with the laboratory and be held responsible for its security problems. "Wait for my report,'' Richardson said. O'Leary, who was President Clinton's first energy secretary from 1993 to 1997, did with away color-coded security badges for laboratory workers. The badges made it easier for guards to know who had access to the classified areas. In addition, O'Leary has been accused of blocking Congress from getting information about security problems at Los Alamos. She has denied those charges...."
Investor's Business Daily-EDITORIALS 8/18/99 "…***Chung wanted to set up meetings for Chinese scientists at the Energy Department. He first called the DNC for help, and was told a donation to then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary's favorite charity, Africare, would to the trick. A top aide to O'Leary repeated the same "advice" to Chung at the department. Chung made the donation, and the Chinese got their meeting.
NewsMax.com 8/16/99 "…Chung also stated in the interview that the two faxes he received from Hazel O'Leaary inviting him to attend the Africare charity function, and were subsequently taken back from Chung, were not the faxes submitted for evidence by O'Leary to the FBI: CHUNG: OK? And this is what happened. I got a letter later on from the attorney general, Janet Reno, and said to me, only a few words to say thank you, it's not enough. I also like to show to you what the original letter is, and what the letter FBI showed to me. They retrieve all of them. They're different. O'REILLY: So, when the gentleman came in and took the faxes away from you, the African-American gentleman, the faxes that the FBI asked for, they gave them different faxes? CHUNG: That's what I say to the FBI, it's different…."