[I]f this anti-sat weapon was really “kinetic” — i.e., hit-to-kill, non-explosive — instead of a plain ol’ exploding weapon, that’s extremely bad news. That means the booster rocket has to be very accurate “in order to deliver the kill vehicle to the desired initial trajectory…. Then the kill vehicle needs to tweak its trajectory into a precise collision course using on-board propulsion and either on-board target tracking or… command guidance from the ground.” That’s no mean task.

Bill Clinton is responsible for this.

No, this isn’t “Clinton hater” rhetoric, but fact. Really.

The story is long and sordid and the ‘younguns’ among you may not remember, ’cause it happened in the New Camelot years of the 90’s.

In the early 90’s, Motorola designed the Iridium satellite-based cell phone system. Using a constellation of low earth orbit satellites, Iridium would allow a compact handset to make a phone call anywhere on the planet to any other phone on the planet, without complicated dish alignment. It would be like making a cell phone call, but without having to have towers nearby.

In order to get the necessary 66 birds plus spares in orbit in a reasonable time, Motorola needed launch capabilities that exceeded that of NASA.

The Clinton administration (after a suitable “campaign contribution” from Motorola), allowed Motorola to purchase rides to orbit from the Chinese. Okay, it wasn’t a simple quid (”bribe”) pro quo (”foreign export license”), but involved an entire business venture into China. From pagers, to encrypted military two-way radios, to manufacturing plants in China. In all, Motorola sunk more than 2 billion dollars into China (maybe more, but I’ve since sold my Motorola stock so I haven’t kept up).

The problem was that China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (the launch vehicle for Motorola’s satellites) were completely unreliable and more often than not failed to reach orbit.

What was the exact Clinton administration role in this?

1. Encrypted radios required an export license because of the technology. Encrypted radios from Motorola were the deal maker if Moto was going to get into China or to to get the birds launched at all.

2. Export licenses required DOD and State Department approval. Which both departments denied. In fact SecState Warren Christopher was adamant in refusing any militarily useful exports to China, not only for radios but for computers, jet engine designs and manufacturing machinery, missile guidance technology, or anything else that would improve China’s military.

3. China’s missiles were crap. They were a “paper tiger” that simply didn’t threaten the United States because an ICBM that blows up on the pad or during launch is NOT a credible threat to the United States. It is estimated that in 1994, China had ONLY 2 reliable ICBMs capable of launching, but whose accuracy was questionable. Nor was China’s missiles useful vehicles to launch communication satellites, even into low earth orbit.

4. To improve the reliability of the missiles and get Moto’s birds and other commercial payloads into orbit, the Chinese hired Hughes Space and Communications Company and Loral Space & Communications Ltd. However, improving China’s satellite (and ICBM) launch capability required export licenses, as these are clearly covered technologies that cannot be exported to “unfriendly” countries by greedy western businesses. Warren Christopher and DOD demurred and refused to issue them.

5. In order the “expedite” the export licenses, the CEO’s of Hughes and Loral repeatedly “slept in the Lincoln Bedroom” (i.e., gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DNC, played golf with Clinton, attended soirees with Bill and Hillary), and China gave hundreds of thousands to the Clinton’s personal bag man, AL GORE, to personally carry back to Washington from a California “fund raiser” involving “Chinese Budhist nuns” in a campaign money laundering scheme. (Remember when Gore said that there was no “controlling authority” over his behavior in this?)

6. Clinton closed the deal with China by moving export licensing from DOD and State to Commerce and Ron Brown. Who promptly approved them.

7. Even with the export licenses, Hughes and Loral went FAR BEYOND what was approved and gave China the technology to not only launch satellites, but ACCURATELY TARGET cities in the United States.

BTW, this is all amply documented (unlike the utter nonsense and lies from Rep Hinchey) in the 1999 bi-Partisan Cox Report that is available from http://www.house.gov and in the book Betrayal : How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security by Bill Gertz (1999). Both of these document in explicit detail how Clinton undercut national security and illegally transferred military technology to China — and how he was handsomely repaid for doing so.

China’s military capability in space comes from (1) Motorola’s Iridium launches, (2) Hughes’ and Loral’s ILLEGAL transfer of space technology to China to accomplish (1), and Bill Clinton’s (and Al Gore’s) open flouting of the law and acceptance of corporate bribes from China and Hughes/Loral to “get ‘r done” in transferring export licenses to Commerce and his good-buddy Ron Brown.

And, if Hillary does get the Democratic nomination for President, it will prove, once again, that the DEMOCRATIC PARTY is the party of treason, because China’s missile capabilities are where it is at today, BECAUSE OF BILL AND HILLARY’s “Co-Presidency.” And you though I was simply a hyper-partisan Republican, didn’tya?

Potestas Democraticorum delenda est!

georgej on January 18, 2007 at 3:58 PM