AMERICA, with its vast technological accomplishments offers inviting targets for spies. The latest espionage case involves spying by China. The allegation focuses on a computer scientist described by the media as a Chinese-American at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (he has since been dismissed). The accusation is that he gave Beijing secrets about nuclear warheads.

Any deterioration of U.S. technological advantages can erode the bedrock of U.S. military security, of course. But an especially troubling issue in this instance may be the Clinton administration's apparently lethargic response to the initial suspicions about the Los Alamos scientist. If there was an incompetent security response, not to mention a cover-up, the American people should be told about it, via an appropriate congressional probe.

Is our national security secure enough? Spying is not only one of the oldest professions but also, in America, it doesn't even appear to be one of the more difficult. We're such an open society that everybody, friend as well as foe, does it to us.

Here are some recent spying highlights: In 1996, an FBI veteran got nabbed after years of passing secrets to Russian intelligence; that same year, a former National Security Agency staffer was collared for spying. Two years earlier, a CIA official admitted to spy activities for Moscow that had led to the deaths of U.S. agents over the years. In 1986, a Navy officer was convicted of spying for our longtime ally, Israel. And these are just the cases we know about.

No 'Red' scare

So what's new? Certainly not spying by China, which resents U.S. power in Asia and dreams of rivaling it someday. In 1986, a CIA translator was convicted of having worked for Beijing for decades. Two years ago, a U.S. physicist admitted giving China classified laser data. Even today, no doubt, there remain Chinese moles buried in the United States, as well as double agents from other foreign services. But perspective must be maintained. Let us not make the mistake of mushrooming a spy scare into a "Red scare."

Beijing can field only a handful of missiles against a phenomenal U.S. arsenal that includes a full fleet of nuclear submarines, strategic bombers and 500 long-range missiles. As Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the new U.S. Pacific commander in chief, bluntly put it in testimony before Congress, "China is not a military threat to U.S. interests. It will be many years before the People's Liberation Army presents a major challenge to U.S. forces."

"What is extraordinary," comments Richard Baum, a China scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, "is not the fact that some Chinese nationals snoop around American research labs trying to pick up technical information on the cheap, but that some American journalists, politicians and congressional aides seek to portray such activity as a massive, coordinated Chinese government assault on American security. They whip up a Red scare that is far out of proportion to the problem's actual dimensions."

Indeed, this latest Commie scare, surely to be wrapped into one big frightening bundle by Congress, could damage President Clinton a lot more than the uproar over the Lewinsky scandal.

Spies abound

"The point needs to be made," says Stan Rosen, a China expert at the University of Southern California, "that China, the U.S. and everyone else is constantly engaged in such activities. The issue is how serious this case is and how we should protect those military research labs."

Security worries about technology transfers to China are not unique to Mr. Clinton. In 1983, President Reagan made the decision, correct at the time, to let China buy a then-sophisticated Hyshare 700 computer. Was Mr. Reagan really so naive about communism?

America appears to be gearing up for a major bout of anti-Communist, anti-China hysteria.

A patriotic former U.S. secretary of state advised in his 1993 memoirs: "We should avoid the extreme shifts in American attitudes toward China that have characterized much of our past relationship. We had a tendency to become euphoric at times and then, when events did not go as well as we expected, to become depressed and to overreact. The swings in the pendulum were too exaggerated."

That was George P. Shultz, Mr. Reagan's secretary of state when technology transfers to China were approved. With Congress gearing up to jump into the China issue big time, not to mention with a fierce presidential campaign on the horizon, that pendulum is about to swing back with a vengeance.

This prospect frightens Asian leaders. They insist that the most important contribution Washington can offer Asia is a stable, nonconfrontational relationship with Beijing.

But such a prospect may be waning, and they worry that a decline of level-headed common sense in discussions about China will trigger new tensions between Beijing and Taipei, Taiwan, lead to more dissident roundups and perhaps even pressure Japan into rearmament gestures, if not steps.

So let's get to the bottom of the China spy story. But let's not jettison engagement until we're extremely certain there's absolutely no other alternative.

Tom Plate is a Los Angeles Times columnist.

Pub Date: 3/12/99