| Overview Important Note: This declassified report summarizes many important findings
and judgments contained in the Select Committee's classified Report, issued January 3,
1999. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies within the Clinton administration
have determined that other significant findings and judgments contained in the Select
Committee's classified Report cannot be publicly disclosed without affecting national
security or ongoing criminal investigations. 1. The People's Republic of China (PRC)
has stolen design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons.
The Select Committee judges that the PRC's next generation of thermonuclear weapons,
currently under development, will exploit elements of stolen U.S. design information.
PRC penetration of our national weapons laboratories spans at least the past several
decades and almost certainly continues today.
A. The People's Republic of China (PRC) has stolen design information on the United
States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has stolen classified design information on the
United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons. These thefts of nuclear secrets from
our national weapons laboratories enabled the PRC to design, develop, and successfully
test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible. The
stolen U.S. nuclear secrets give the PRC design information on thermonuclear weapons on a
par with our own.
The PRC thefts from our National Laboratories began at least as early as the late
1970s, and significant secrets are known to have been stolen as recently as the mid-1990s.
Such thefts almost certainly continue to the present.
The stolen information includes classified information on seven U.S. thermonuclear
warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ballistic
missile arsenal.
The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced
radiation weapon (commonly known as the "neutron bomb"), which neither the
United States, nor any other nation, has yet deployed.
The PRC has obtained classified information on the following U.S. thermonuclear
warheads, as well as a number of associated reentry vehicles (the hardened shell that
protects the thermonuclear warhead during reentry).
U.S. Warhead U.S. Nuclear Missile Currently Deployed
W-88 Trident D-5 SLBM Yes
W-87 Peacekeeper ICBM Yes
W-78 Minuteman III (Mark 12A) ICBM Yes
W-76 Trident C-4 SLBM Yes
W-70 Lance SRBM No
W-62 Minuteman III ICBM Yes
W-56 Minuteman II ICBM No |