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By Juliet Eilperin Both the Senate and House have begun investigating President Clinton's decision to let two aerospace companies, Loral Space and Communications and Hughes Electronic Corp., export satellites to be launched atop Chinese rockets. The chairmen of the House International Relations and National Security committees first asked the administration for documents in late April after learning that the Justice Department is probing whether Loral improperly gave advice to the Chinese when analyzing a 1996 Loral satellite crash. "To date, the administration has refused to provide so much as one document to refute the evidence put forward in press accounts" of the incident, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) wrote to Clinton on Friday. White House press secretary Michael McCurry yesterday disputed the letter's assertion. "We're willing to make available whatever information they need to satisfy themselves that these decisions have been made on sound national security grounds," McCurry said. Later, a White House official said that the administration has dispatched an "interagency team" to Capitol Hill to discuss with investigators what documents they want and that lawyers are already at work trying to retrieve materials in response to the congressional requests. Though committees have requested documents on the incident from the State, Defense and Commerce departments as well as the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the administration has responded in the past that providing this information would jeopardize the current probe. Lott and Gingrich rejected this argument. "If you are willing to share the relevant information with us, we will ensure that mechanisms are established to secure the documents and prevent any disclosure that might affect any ongoing criminal investigation," they wrote. "But, if our efforts to determine the facts are obstructed, we will use every power we have to procure all of this information so that thorough and complete congressional oversight can be conducted." The dispute centers on allegations, first reported in the New York Times, that a U.S. scientific committee established to satisfy insurers about China's ability to launch commercial satellites ultimately boosted the country's nuclear missile technology. A 1997 classified Pentagon report said U.S. security "has been harmed" by the incident, according to officials who have seen the report. In recent weeks Republicans have begun to explore whether the Clinton administration undermined the ongoing criminal investigation of Loral by issuing a second waiver in February allowing Loral to export another commercial satellite to China. According to a Senate aide familiar with the case, lawmakers are concerned that the license Loral obtained from the administration "was constructed broadly enough to allow for, even implicitly, the kind of activity than went on in 1996 without a license." Though some Justice officials initially protested Clinton's decision, according to sources, they have continued to probe the allegations and do not believe the move would undercut any potential case against Loral. Republicans are particularly interested in whether the administration favored Loral because its chief executive officer, Bernard L. Schwartz, ranks as one of the Democratic Party's top donors. Loral has denied any wrongdoing in the case. Hughes has sought to distance itself from the controversy. In an interview yesterday, Hughes vice president and general counsel Marcy J.K. Tiffany emphasized that Loral controlled the review of why the "Long March" rocket crashed in 1996 and made the decision to share the panel's report with China. "The bottom line is, Hughes did not transfer any technology to the Chinese," Tiffany said.
Staff writers John F. Harris and Roberto Suro contributed to this report.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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