From his office overlooking the U.S. Capitol, Douglass said that the Cox report on Chinese space technology transfers did not address what the U.S. defense establishment gains from the exports. "When you listen to the rhetoric, the impression is that they’ve somehow reverse-engineered our satellites and have learned an enormous amount of information," Douglass said. He finds it unlikely that any scientists would be capable of such a process, which would require them to be able to glean details about how a satelllite works by seeing how it was put together.

"Do you seriously believe that their technicians looking at our technology as they integrate it gives them the capability to reverse-engineer it?" he asked. "Certainly after they launch it and it’s in space they don't have that capability."

"On the other hand, what have we learned about the Chinese that we didn’t know?" Douglass asked rhetorically. He claimed militarily useful data on Chinese missiles was obtained from allowing the launch of American satellites aboard Chinese rocket boosters.

"We learned their launch equations, their missile’s horizontal and vertical G-forces, we learned their launch sequence, command destruct procedures, we learned an enormous amount of information that’s valuable from a national security point of view," Douglass said.

But he stressed that most of that list of technical space data was classified. "In this whole debate you’ve only heard one side of the story" as a result of the security, he claimed.

Yet while critical of the rhetoric that followed the release of the report, Douglass said that AIA accepted most of the recommendations of the report itself. The Cox panel claimed illegal space and missile technology had been transferred to China as a result of several commercial satellite exports and other space data exchanges.

"We don’t agree with every single thing in their report, but in general we think the report had responsible recommendations," Douglass explained. "Where people made mistakes and violated their licenses, clearly there should be some penalty for that," he added. "But nobody intentionally did that, in my opinion."

He stressed that any resulting damage to U.S. defense and space programs was limited. "My belief is that the whole thing has been overblown. A lot of people believe that the way to energize the public is to tell them the boogieman is coming-that’s as old as democratic politics," Douglas said. "It’s not evil or wrong, it’s just politics."

Douglass believes it is more likely that China was obtaining western space science and technology through educational exchanges than technology transfer. "There are 25,000 Chinese graduate students in the U.S. from the PRC," Douglas said, "and the overwhelming majority are in engineering and the advanced sciences." Those who believe that China is getting technology "out of espionage as opposed to that system do not know much about where technology comes from," Douglass said.

The Cox investigations prompted Congress to transfer authority for licensing satellites from the Commerce to the State Department, a move that Douglass criticized. "They’ve taken the satellites out of the ‘yes’ bag and put them in the ‘no’ bag... along with bombs and rockets," he said. "This hurts America."

Douglass predicted Congress will be quietly working to undo the effects of that action in this and next year’s budget process. "There are a lot of people in this town that realize they made a mistake," Douglass said. "They’ll work to fix it."