Experts' Letter On Chinese Espionage & CTBT
CTBT Ratification Can Help Protect Against the Weaponization of Nuclear Secrets Obtained by Espionage
July 30, 1999
The Honorable Trent Lott
United States Senate
487 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2403
RE: Chinese Espionage and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Dear Senator Lott:
In response to reports of Chinese nuclear espionage, Congress is considering important steps to reduce the risk of future spying. In the Senate, strong measures, such as a semi-autonomous agency inside the Energy Department with limited scope and a strong security component, have been approved. But preventing future losses of sensitive information is not sufficient. Congress must also seek to prevent information that has already been lost from damaging US and global security.
In our judgement, there is one essential step -- which only the Senate can take -- which would greatly help to protect the United States against the weaponization of stolen nuclear secrets: ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Whatever information on thermonuclear weapons China may have obtained, it is implausible that Beijing would deploy weapons that incorporate this information without first conducting nuclear explosive tests outlawed by the CTBT. China signed the CTBT and has not conducted a nuclear explosive test since 1996. But the treaty cannot enter into force -- and the verification system cannot be fully implemented -- until the US Senate provides its advice and consent to the President.
The report of the House Select Committee led by Rep. Chris Cox states that "If [China] violates the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by testing surreptitiously, it could further accelerate its nuclear development." An even more serious problem is that without the CTBT, China would be entitled to conduct nuclear tests openly and make gains that could in no way be redressed by the resumption of testing by the United States.
The Senate has the power to help prevent this from happening. With the CTBT in force and its verification system fully operational, China and other nations would be unable to conduct clandestine nuclear tests of even the triggers for smaller and lighter thermonuclear warheads for use on long-range ballistic missiles. This is the central security value of the CTBT, and one that the Senate cannot afford to ignore.
We may never know whether Chinese nuclear weapons development benefited significantly from espionage. According to the April 21 Damage Assessment prepared by the US Intelligence Community and reviewed by an independent panel chaired by Admiral David Jeremiah, "China's technical advances have been made on the basis of classified and unclassified information derived from espionage, contact with US and other countries' scientists, conferences and publications, unauthorized media disclosures, declassified US weapons information, and Chinese indigenous development. The relative contribution of each cannot be determined."
Even if China did acquire detailed design information on sophisticated nuclear weapons, there is no basis to assume that China would field a warhead based on this information without new nuclear tests. As Dr. Harold Agnew, former director of Los Alamos Scientific (now National) Laboratory, observed: "If China doesn't resume testing, no harm will possibly have been done other than to our egos." Computer simulations alone cannot provide confidence that a new thermonuclear weapon will perform properly, and the more sophisticated the design the greater the need for explosive tests.
The likelihood that other countries with relatively little nuclear weapons experience are involved in spying makes the case for the CTBT still more compelling. Nuclear explosive testing would be more important to nations that do not already have sophisticated, well-tested designs, than it is now for China.
Nuclear proliferation -- aided by espionage or not -- is one of the greatest threats to American security. US ratification and entry-into-force of the CTBT will greatly strengthen the nation's ability to contain this threat, and thus enhance the national security interests of the United States.
Sincerely,
Dr. Hans Bethe
Nobel Laureate; Emeritus Professor of Physics, Cornell University; Head of the Manhattan Project's theoretical division
Dr. Freeman Dyson
Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Dr. Richard Garwin
Senior Fellow for Science and Technology, Council on Foreign Relations; IBM Fellow Emeritus; consultant to the Sandia National Laboratory, former consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dr. Kurt Gottfried
Professor of Physics, Cornell University; Chairman of the Board, Union of Concerned Scientists
Dr. Marshall N. Rosenbluth
Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego; National Medal of Science, 1997; a key designer of the first hydrogen bombs
Dr. Jeremiah D. Sullivan
Professor of Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Admiral Stansfield Turner
US Navy (ret.), former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Dr. Herbert F. York
Founding Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; former Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Department of Defense; Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego
Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
US Navy (ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Affiliations for identification purposes only.
