Timeline of Cox Report Controversy - 1996

1996

• In early 1996, Notra Trulock told CIA officials about his discoveries on the PRC's theft of America's nuclear warhead designs.

February

• On February 14, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) space launch vehicle crashed destroying the Loral Space & Communications satellite it was carrying. PRC officials kept American investigators away from the crash scene. When they were finally allowed access, they found the militarily sensitive encryption chips were missing even though their encasing was left intact (encryption technology denies outsiders access to, or control over, American satellites in space). Loral and Hughes Electronics' engineers were accused of giving missile secrets to China in the ensuing investigation of the launch failure.

March

• On March 27, Energy Department officials were notified by an American agent that it appeared the PRC recently stole U.S. neutron bomb secrets.

April

• Sometime in April 1996, intelligence analyst Ronald Pandolfi wrote a report for the CIA warning about military implications of Hughes Electronics' sharing of missile expertise with the PRC. The CIA decided not to distribute the classified report to select government officials, as is routinely done with intelligence estimates, saying it was insufficiently rigorous. The report would be kept from Congress until late 1998.

• On April 13, the Energy Department briefed the White House about the PRC's espionage at Los Alamos weapons lab. A group of senior officials including Notra Trulock met with Deputy National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and told him that the PRC appeared to have acquired both W-88 nuclear and neutron bomb secrets and that a spy for the PRC might still be at Los Alamos. Berger later stated he did not inform the president of the espionage until July 1997, but did inform Congress in April 1996 The Energy Department also notified Defense Secretary Perry, Attorney General Janet Reno, and FBI Director Louis Freeh about China's alleged espionage during this same time period. Allegedly, no one informed the president.

• Sometime in April, Vice President Al Gore's national security advisor Leon Fuerth was informed about the PRC's nuclear espionage at America's weapons laboratories. Some documents showed he may have been informed as early as 1995, though Fuerth did not recall a briefing then. Fuerth did not mention the espionage to Gore until March 1999.

May

• On May 30, the FBI formally opened a criminal investigation into the theft of the W-88 nuclear design. Originally only 1 or 2 agents were assigned to the case and the inquiry made little progress over the rest of the year.

June

• In late June or early July, the CIA issued an internal government statement that declared they may have misread their original analysis of the documents delivered by the double agent to their Taiwan offices and that China may not have America's weapons designs after all. The FBI, in turn, suspended their investigation of the matter (which had just started) for about six weeks.