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The gift came in mid-1995. A few months
earlier, the CIA's sophisticated analysis of seismographic
and other data gleaned from a series of nuclear weapons
test explosions in China between 1992 and 1994, had indicated
that the People's republic of China (PRC) had made a technological
break-through in developing smaller thermonuclear warheads
with an increased yield-to-weight ratio. Although both the
US and the USSR had developed such war-fighting warheads
in the nineteen-seventies, it showed China had unexpectedly
advanced in its bomb- building technology. The burning intelligence
issue for the CIA was how? Had it been the product of China's
own scientific work? Had China obtained it from elements
in the former Soviet Union (which would raise further questions
about Sino-Russian secret collaboration)? Or had it obtained
it from a spy the United States?
At this juncture came the gift. At an
overseas diplomatic post, a Chinese official with access
to secrets documents came to a CIA officer bearing secrets.
He claimed he wanted to defect and to show his bona fides
he would make the CIA a present of secret documents. The
documents later arrived via UPS. Among other things, it
contained a document marked secret in Chinese which offered
a tantalizing clue to how China made its technological break-through.
This document described U.S. design information including
the exterior dimensions of the W-88 warhead used on the
Trident submarine. Since this warhead had been designed
at the Los Alamos Lab, it suggested that China had obtained
the technology in question through a spy who worked in this
laboratory prior to the time China had developed the high-yield
warheads it tested in 1992, which, given the lead time involved,
meant the spy had to be operating in the 1984-1988 during
the Bush Presidency. This highly-specific lead focused the
FBI's attention on those scientists and technicians at Los
Alamos who had access to the design plans of the W-88 warhead
during that time period.
Meanwhile, the CIA looking their gift
horse in the mouth, determined that he had been disinformation.
The gift-bearer was, it further determined, acting "secretly
under the direction of the [Chinese] intelligence services"
when he sent them the documents. This suggested the gifted
document painting tracks towards Los Alamos were part of
a provocation designed to misdirect the attention of American
intelligence away from something it might discover. Such
disinformation need not be false so long as it is diverting.
Just as in the famous Gestalt experiment in which the same
picture can be organized in the mind as either human profiles
or a vase— but not both at the same time— the gifted information
could be seen either as an espionage case or a disinformation
case.
As an espionage case, the issue was
who provided Chinese intelligence with the U.S. thermonuclear
warhead design information and other technical information
on U.S. nuclear weapons in the document it provided the
CIA. The investigation into the technical staff at Los Alamos
turned up evidence of egregiously lax security procedures
(which added fuel to the ongoing bureaucratic struggle over
whether the Department of Energy or FBI should have primary
responsible for counter-espionage there), but it failed
to produce direct evidence of spying, such as unexplained
deposit in bank accounts of scientists, incriminating scraps
in garbage cans or secret rendezvouses spotted by surveillance.
The suspicion focused on Wen Ho Lee, n American scientist
born in Taiwan, who had worked for 20 years at Los Alamos.
Even though Robert S. Vrooman, then former chief of counterintelligence
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, held that there was no
evidence whatsoever against Lee, and that the design information
of the miniature W-88 nuclear warhead had been distributed
to 548 different addresses at the Defense Department, Energy
Department, various defense firms, the armed services and
even the National Guard, Lee was eventually indicted for
mishandling classified data. No espionage case was ever
brought.
Meanwhile, the disinformation case remained.
The issue through this lense was not where the data on the
W-88 design originated but why it was gifted in 1995 to
the CIA. Disinformation can be used either tactically or
strategically. At a tactical level, it can be used to divert
away from a valued spy. In this situation, Chinese, intelligence,
learning that the technical analysis of its 1992 testing,
could compromise an active agent it had in the U.S. national
security establishment, might have provided a red herring
leading to Los Alamos to protect the real agent. At a strategic
level, the Chinese may have been concerned that U.S. decipherment
of their tests might uncover some technological transfers
from other nuclear powers. So, to divert from that trail,
China might want to focus U.S. attention on conventional
espionage. Such are the problems of intellectual Trojan
Horses.
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