The irony is, that lead is now being
challenged by China, whose great leap forward in missile and space
technology was aided by the Clintons in exchange for campaign
contributions.
Last Wednesday, China launched its first lunar probe,
the Chang'e 1 lunar orbiter, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who
flew to the moon. The 5,070-pound probe was launched from the Xichang
Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province aboard a Long March 3A
rocket. The probe is expected to send back its first photos in November
and to conduct exploration of the moon for a year.
The Long March has proved to be a reliable Chinese launch vehicle,
but it wasn't always so. After the failed launch of a satellite built
by Loral Space and Communications Ltd. attached to a Chinese rocket in
February 1996, Loral provided 200 pages of data to China's Great Wall
Industry Corp. to correct the guidance system problems of their "Long
March" rockets, which blew up 75% of the time.
The export of such data, which also are applicable to the guidance
system of ICBMs, had been banned for national security reasons since
the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre — until President Clinton granted a
waiver.
This transfer of licensing
responsibility was made after a request from a man who would be the
Democratic Party's largest donor in 1996 — Loral Chairman Bernard L.
Schwartz. Schwartz would give $1.5 million to the Democratic Party in
that year. Two years later Loral would receive a blanket presidential
waiver to export missile technology to China, even though the company
was under investigation by the Justice Department for similar transfers.
A May 1997 classified Pentagon report concluded that Loral had
"turned over expertise that significantly improved China's nuclear
missiles" and that, as a result, "United States national security has
been harmed." According to the Pentagon, the technology that improved
the Long March satellite launcher has also made the Dong Feng ICBM
series more lethal.
. . . Forget the White House coffees and
renting the Lincoln bedroom. This garage sale of American satellite,
missile and supercomputer technology by the Clintons was the real
impeachable offense, not the Monica Lewinsky affair.