Strategic Weapons: December 22, 1999

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Jay Davis, head of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said that even if China got the blueprints for the W88 nuclear warhead from Wen Ho Lee, it would still need years of experiments and engineering before it could build one. The problem is not just knowing what to build, but how to build it, not to mention how to build the tools needed to build it. Critics of the Clinton Administration dismiss the statement as a whitewash intended to cover up the extent of the damage caused by sloppy security. --Stephen V Cole