April 1997: Official Tells Senate Committee Administration Is Covering Up Chinese Missile Sales to Pakistan

Gordon Oehler, the US national intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction, appears before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. At a closed hearing he tells it that the administration has intelligence showing that China is shipping nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, but the administration is covering this up (see (April 1992), (Mid-1990s), Early 1996, May 1996, and September 1996). Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will say that by this time Oehler has “had enough” of the administration ignoring his work documenting the deals between China and Pakistan. “There was no consistent policy emerging,” they will write. “There was no strategy even. There was no considered attempt to rein China in or to tackle Pakistan, which was getting increasingly out of hand. There was just a steady drip, drip of doomsday technology from China to Pakistan and from Pakistan to—no one was exactly sure how many countries.” Therefore, Oehler makes the attempt to get the Senate to do something. Levy and Scott-Clark will say he found “the softest way he could to contradict his superiors short of becoming a whistle-blower.” However, no action is taken against China or Pakistan, and Oehler soon resigns (see October 1997). [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 259-260]