Cox Report -- Damage Assessment

In submitting the Top Secret Committee Report to the Administration on January 3, 1999 for "classification review," Chairman Cox also asked that the Administration assemble an interagency group of "intelligence" experts and nuclear weapons designers to conduct a "damage assessment," to review what the US Government knew or supposed it knew about the PRC's nuclear weapons programs and to attempt to identify whether the information set out in the Top Secret Reports, which was alleged by the Committee to have been obtained by the PRC by "hook or crook" from the US, had resulted in observable advances in PRC nuclear weapons development.

Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet convened such an inter-agency group(www.cia.gov/cia/public affairs/press release /ps042199.html) and when the group had finished its "net assessment," Tenet asked a Panel of Experts to review the group 's "net assessment " and its Top Secret "Findings." (Chaired by Admiral David Jeremiah,panel members were Brent Skowcroft,.Johnny Foster,Richard Kerr,Roland Herbs and Howard Schue),  The  Panel of Experts concurred in the Top Secret Findings and worked with the interagency group to develop a set of unclassified "Key Findings" that were made public on April 21, 1999. The "redacted" Cox Committee Report was finally made public in May, 1999.(See Appendix B or http//www.cia.gov/cia/public.affairs/press release/0421kt.html)

The "Key Findings" of the Panel of Experts assume particular importance when it is realized that no "panel of experts" ever examined the Cox Committee Report before it was issued. Therefore, it would be prudent--in making law and policy--to rely on conclusions reached in the "redacted" Cox Committee Report only when confirmed by the unclassified "Key Findings" of the Panel of Experts, which did have access to all the information available to the Cox Committee.