Sen. Clinton made the promise earlier this month, on the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, as part of her plan to reclaim America’s lead in science and technology.

The irony is, that lead is now being challenged by China, whose great leap forward in missile and space technology was aided by the Clintons in exchange for campaign contributions.

Last Wednesday, China launched its first lunar probe, the Chang’e 1 lunar orbiter, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon. The 5,070-pound probe was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province aboard a Long March 3A rocket. The probe is expected to send back its first photos in November and to conduct exploration of the moon for a year.

The Long March has proved to be a reliable Chinese launch vehicle, but it wasn’t always so. After the failed launch of a satellite built by Loral Space and Communications Ltd. attached to a Chinese rocket in February 1996, Loral provided 200 pages of data to China’s Great Wall Industry Corp. to correct the guidance system problems of their “Long March” rockets, which blew up 75% of the time.

The export of such data, which also are applicable to the guidance system of ICBMs, had been banned for national security reasons since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre — until President Clinton granted a waiver.

On March 14, 1996, the Clinton administration transferred licensing responsibility for technology exports to the Commerce Department from State and Defense. As a result, our formerly strict export controls were effectively eviscerated.

This transfer of licensing responsibility was made after a request from a man who would be the Democratic Party’s largest donor in 1996 — Loral Chairman Bernard L. Schwartz. Schwartz would give $1.5 million to the Democratic Party in that year. Two years later Loral would receive a blanket presidential waiver to export missile technology to China, even though the company was under investigation by the Justice Department for similar transfers.