Timeline of Cox Report Controversy - 1995

1995

June

• Sometime in June, a walk-in agent for People's Republic of China intelligence services approached the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) office in Taiwan and provided them with an official PRC document classified "Secret" that contained design information of all seven of America's nuclear warheads. Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch was informed the following month.

July

• Clinton's former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet learned of the PRC's theft of America's nuclear warhead designs sometime in July 1995, but did not inform the President at that time.

October

• On or about October 31, the FBI first learned of the PRC's possible theft of advanced U.S. nuclear weapons designs.

November

• CIA Director Deutch informed Clinton's National Security Adviser Anthony Lake about the PRC's theft of America's nuclear weapon designs sometime in November 1995. The president was not briefed at that time.

• In late 1995 and early 1996, United States Department of Energy (DOE) intelligence official Notra Trulock took his findings on the PRC's theft of advanced U.S. nuclear warhead designs to the FBI. Trulock made the discovery independently from the CIA while analyzing data from the PRC's recent underground nuclear test. A team of FBI and DOE officials then traveled to three weapons labs (Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos) and pored over travel and work records of lab scientists who had access to the relevant technology. By February, they narrowed its focus to five possible suspects.