Cox Reports

Jeff Taylor & Michael W. Lynch from the August/September 1999 issue

Since coming to Congress in 1988, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) has been a hard man to pigeonhole. When he talks about taxes, government bloat, and the defense of freedom, he sounds like the man he served as a White House counsel, Ronald Reagan. When talk shifts to the policy intricacies of the federal budget or tort reform, Cox's Harvard Law School and MBA background peek through. When he works on cyberspace issues--a moratorium on Internet taxes, a free speech alternative to the Communications Decency Act--he's the entrepreneur who went online in the mid-'80s. (That business translated Pravda into English, reflecting Cox's anti-communism and his interest in foreign relations.)

Nor has Cox limited himself to high-profile issues. In the early '90s he took up the cause of Lithuanian independence, traveling to Russia in 1991 to deliver a speech on freedom--in Russian. Cox's efforts helped focus world attention on the tiny Baltic state at a time when it was not at all clear if Moscow would accede to independence or roll tanks. In May 1998, Cox was presented with the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the highest honor the Republic of Lithuania can give to a living noncitizen.

In the spring of 1998, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich was looking for someone to head a select committee investigation into technology transfers to the People's Republic of China. Given the campaign finance scandals of 1996, China was a hot topic, requiring some tact if the enterprise was to do anything except dissolve into partisan squabbling. Every other congressional investigation in the Clinton era had ended that way. The committee also needed someone capable of attending to details inside a very large picture. Few could have foreseen what the Cox panel would find.

In a few months the select committee found evidence of the theft of U.S. nuclear secrets by China stretching back decades. Further, it found that the Clinton administration's safeguards against the transfers of advanced military technology to China had been lax or nonexistent. Significantly, every Democrat on the panel signed on to the conclusions, and no minority report taking issue with the findings was generated.

Although the final report was given to the Clinton administration on January 3, the public got a look at the findings after months of delay--and once impeachment was safely in the national rearview mirror. The full report probably will never be released. Administration concerns about exposing U.S. sources of intelligence are the official reason.

Following the release of a declassified version of the report, Cox found himself very much in demand to explain what his committee had found. It was a big boost in visibility for a member often described as "thoughtful" or "cerebral," peculiar Washington epithets referring to someone smarter than the reporters who cover him.

In the attention deficit world of the Beltway, the "Cox report" brought him back into the national spotlight. Only months earlier Cox had suffered a political setback when he had to quickly fold his bid to become speaker after it was clear he did not have the votes. He remains the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, a key leadership slot which helps shape the GOP agenda.

Cox sat down with Washington Editor Michael W. Lynch and Reason Express writer Jeff A. Taylor in early June, as he was busy passing an amendment to the Pentagon budget which requires the administration to report to Congress by November on the status of China's missile technology.

Reason: This report has been a model of bipartisanship. How did you achieve it?

Christopher Cox: There were two [factors]. The first is that the members were handpicked, on both the Democratic and Republican sides. They were selected for a serious commitment to hard work, their willingness to use discretion in sensitive areas, their expertise, and their sound judgment. Put another way, the variation about the mean that one normally sees among politicians was quite narrow here.

The second difference was the subject matter. It was much easier for us all to decide to be on the same team than if we were working on taxes or spending or the usual things that divide liberal from conservative, Republican from Democrat. The question before us was the extent to which United States national security was undermined by transfers to another country that, whatever one may think of it, certainly does not always have America's best interest foremost in mind. As a result, we all decided early on that we were not going to be on the Republican or Democratic team but the American team.

Reason: What caused the bipartisanship to break down after the report?

Cox: The reason that our report was unanimous was that we stuck to the facts. Because the facts spoke so loudly for themselves, there was no need to spin the report with inferences. But anyone reading the report will be led to his or her inferences very rapidly. Once the report was published, demands were made for the resignation of the attorney general, the national security adviser, and others. Apparently there will be significant firings in the Department of Energy. The Clinton administration is under fire--that has changed the political calculus.

Reason: Have you been happy with the way this report has been received by the media?

Cox: It has been received well throughout the country, including on television, and indeed it's received positive press throughout the world. The one pocket of negative press has been the Los Angeles Times. It looks a hell of a lot more like The People's Daily. One can read the People's Daily party line on the Internet. About a day before The People's Daily said our report was racist, the Los Angeles Times wrote an article saying this was breeding racism. It is an astonishing charge, inasmuch as I have been working for 11 years with the democracy movement in the People's Republic of China.