Communist China plays Uncle Sam for Uncle Sucker--again

By Wes Vernon

Picture a naοve, clueless, out-to-lunch person paying someone for the privilege of digging his own grave. That is not half as ridiculous as what the U.S. is about to do in a dealing with Communist China. (Yes, Communist China — or Red China. That terminology is not fashionable these days. After all, think of all those cheap "Made in China" goods at your local mall.)

Here's what is happening, according to a source I find trustworthy. And compared to this farce, the now-cancelled Dubai ports deal was small-time stuff. This is an extension of an AP story on Friday wherein the Bush administration reportedly was hiring a Hong Kong (now controlled by Communist China) conglomerate to help detect nuclear materials inside cargo passing through the Bahamas to the United States and elsewhere.

That was bad enough, but that wasn't the half of it. Here's what else is going on:

The U.S. Department of Energy is using its Megaports Program to set up scanners at ports of embarkation — such as Shanghai " and other locations around the world," according to Dr. Peter Leitner, President of the Higgins Counterterrorism Research Center, and one who has excellent sources close to the scene of this story. The idea, he says, is to make sure there are no indications of radiological material "that could be made into a bomb; it could be material for a dirty bomb."

The Department of Energy (DOE) was negotiating with the Chinese (PRC, read Red China), "and they said OK, [the U.S.] can use these scanners in China for U.S.-bound cargo."

"However," Dr. Leitner adds, "the Chinese said the U.S. would have to buy Chinese scanners. They're not going to let them install American-made scanners. They would have to be Chinese scanners."

Ah, but we're just at the beginning. Here's the next step — and the next — and...Well, get this:

Then the Chinese say (according to Leitner's paraphrase), "By the way, you have to buy our scanners. Because after all, we're supplying them to you for your purposes. And so you'll have to buy them from us."

Then the Chinese say, "But we don't have the technology to create these scanners. Therefore, you're going to have to transfer the technology to us so we can build them and sell them to you."

DOE agrees to these terms. "Then they try to figure out well, how [does DOE] facilitate such a thing? They have to pay for this stuff. They have the money to pay for it. And then they have to transfer this technology to the Chinese in order to get it back."

But wait! It gets worse!

Says Leitner: "I've also been told that various scientists and engineers from Los Alamos [nuclear laboratory] have been ordered — and are still being ordered — to go to China to help facilitate this tech transfer and this whole program."

Dr. Leitner understands that many of the Los Alamos peronnel are concerned whether this whole thing is illegal, feeling that they're "being ordered into illegal activity."

Cynics might reason well, what else is new? Los Alamos has a sordid history of shoveling out hot information to our enemies. The Rosenbergs and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and other traitors were heavily involved in passing on atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during and immediately after World War II, thus putting the Joe Stalin's Soviets on an equal footing with us and setting off the 46-year Cold War. And later during the Clinton years, there was the Wen-Ho Lee scandal — wherein other technological secrets were passed to Red China, which today has missiles pointed squarely at the United States (see Code Name: Kindred Spirit by Notra Trulock). So what else is new? What's the big deal about a few American scientists and engineers being sent to Communist China to help them with technology they can use in a scanning operation — supposedly for our benefit — that is trustworthy only if one is also prepared to defend the notion that the moon is made of green cheese?

Leitner says the legality is questionable at best. DOE is using a post-Cold War law that created a Materials Protection Control and Accounting Program (MPC&A;) "for the purpose of trying to account for putting some controls on nuclear material from the former Soviet Union." It was never intended for this kind of situation with China, he says.

"They [DOE] decided to use a program that is completely inappropriate for these kinds of activities," the counterterrorism expert adds.

So what is DOE's rationale for making a bad deal where we end up paying (you and I pare paying — this is taxpayers' money, remember) and that could compromise our security?

Replies Dr. Leitner, who is also a professor of the Research Program at George Mason University: "It's their mission to get these scanners located in different ports around the world, and they'll do it by hook or crook. Little pinheads with a mission, and they'll use laws, break laws, and everything else."

Let us stop right there. That comment, as a summation, is self-explanatory.

© Wes Vernon