Friday, 17 December 1999 Washington, DC

1. COX REPORT: STANFORD GROUP ISSUES A DETAILED REBUTTAL.
Back in May, after weeks of selected leaks and hype, a House Select Committee, headed by Chris Cox (R-CA), released 700 soporific pages of speculation about Chinese spying (WN 28 May 99) . This week, a group of five Stanford scholars issued a devastating 100- page critique of the Cox Report. While noting that not all of the report was unclassified, the Stanford group found unsupported allegations, unwarranted conclusions, inflammatory language, and factual errors. One of the authors, W.K.H. Panofsky (1974 APS President), notes that while the Cox report fails to specifically link losses to scientific exchanges, it nevertheless alleges that essentially all Chinese visitors to the U.S. are potential spies.

2. SECRETS: LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIST INDICTED FOR TAKING WORK HOME.
It's been ten months since Wen Ho Lee was fired from his job at the weapons lab and publically fingered as the chief suspect in the leak of nuclear weapons information to China. The prime suspect since 1995, Lee was not indicted until this week--and he was not indicted for espionage. He was charged with 59 counts of downloading. He is being held without bail. Mishandling nuclear secrets is a serious offense, carrying a possible life sentence. But there is a slight whiff of something else. The strange case of Richard Jewell and the Olympic bombing in Atlanta immediately comes to mind. The only case against Jewell, it turned out, was that he matched an FBI profile. So, it would appear, does Wen Ho Lee. Others, including CIA Director John Deutch, have downloaded classified information, but they didn't fit the Cox profile.

3. HUBBLE TROUBLE: SHUTTLE RELIABILITY CALLED INTO QUESTION.
The launch of Discovery to fix the comatose space telescope has been postponed for the seventh time. First set for October (WN 12 Nov 99) , it has been rescheduled for tonight to allow fuel line welds to be checked--a contractor used the wrong welding rods. Now the weather looks bad. If it's not up by tomorrow, it must wait till January to avoid possible Y2K glitches. NASA isn't talking about the growing panic over space station construction delays. Three of the four shuttles remain grounded for wiring repairs, and one of them can't reach the high-inclination orbit of the station anyway. With 80 launches to go, one space veteran estimates that assembly could take another 20 years. Meanwhile, Russia's Proton rockets are still grounded while a commission tries to figure out why they keep crashing. Prediction: the critical Service Module, which provides propulsion, will not be launched before Spring.

4. URGENT! SCIENTISTS ARE NEEDED ON CAPITOL HILL.
Things may be nutty up there, but it would be a lot worse if it weren't for a dedicated group of Congressional Science Fellows. I promise you that a year on the Hill is an education. The application deadline is 15 Jan 00. For details, go to <http://www.aps.org>.



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.