The high number of foreign visitors, as well as some recent investigative cases involving foreign nationals at laboratories, have increased concerns that the laboratories are targets of foreign espionage,'' the report said. Democrats on the congressional panel pointed out in closed sessions that the inadequacies in Energy Department security did not begin with the Clinton administration, which has come under criticism for loosening safeguards that prevent unauthorized technology transfers abroad, sources said. Chinese agents are alleged to have found the neutron bomb data during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Chinese Intelligence Operations,'' by an official of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Nicholas Eftimiades. The FBI investigation determined that several of the visiting scientists had ties to the Ministry of State Security, China's spy agency, or were intelligence officers, the book said.
Nobody has many answers.
But the recent incident in which Taiwan's chemical giant, Formosa Plastics Corp., shipped 3,000 tons of mercury-laden waste to Cambodia led to charges that Taiwan uses poor nations as a convenient dumping ground for unsafe chemical byproducts. Formosa Plastics admitted in embarrassment that it generated the waste a decade earlier and sent it abroad because residents living near the plants objected to its disposal near their neighborhoods. The waste ended up a few days later in Cambodia, where the handling agent dumped it on the open ground near the country's only major seaport, Sihanoukville, to save the expense of creating a landfill. Then a dock worker mysteriously died a day after cleaning the hold of the ship that brought the waste. Residents, some of whom had taken the wrapping bags home, panicked on rumors they may have been exposed to nuclear waste.