- Friday's leak through the Washington
Post that the FBI has known since 1991 that the Democrat Party
is infiltrated by Chinese agents is a seminal event. For it offers
sufficient detail to complete the picture of how the entire Chinese
intelligence penetration succeeded. When combining it with other leaks,
intelligence reports, and congressional investigation results, the
following picture can be put together:
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-
- In the 1980s, the People's Republic of
China made a decision to build the most powerful military force in the
world. In less than a decade, China's annual military spending tripled.
In terms of manpower, it already had the largest army in the world. But
to project force, it needed a modern Navy as well. To rival the U.S.
military, it needed advanced U.S. military technology, and it needed
U.S. dollars to purchase such technology. Republican administrations
had permitted trade with China that produced hard currency, but had employed
tight export controls to prevent advanced U.S. military technology
from falling into the hands of Communists. So the Chinese government
bet its money on two Southern Democrats with an expressed and
desperate desire to ascend to the U.S. Presidency.
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-
- THE INGENIOUS DIVERSION
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- It is against the law for a foreign
government to support U.S. politicians, and movement inside U.S. borders
of Communist China agents is watched closely by FBI counterintelligence.
-
- So Communist China set up a diversion
so ingenious that it has confused reporters for years, but has been
known to and kept secret by the FBI. Mainland China used its archrival
Taiwan, as well as Hong Kong, as conduits for the funds paid to Clinton
and Gore. Democratic Taiwan and Hong Kong are the last places you would
look for Communist agents, and the many U.S. subsidiaries of Taiwanese,
Hong Kong, and Indonesian companies and organizations offered
convenient footholds through which to launder money and buy influence
with U.S. politicians.
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- China Resources bought into Lippo Bank
of Hong Kong and Indonesia and placed its officers John Huang and
James Riady in Arkansas. John Huang was born in Mainland China, but had
served in the Taiwanese air force. Ya Long Economic Trading of the
Chinese Hainan province sought influence and legitimacy through the
Hsi Lai temple of Taiwan, through its representative Maria Hsia, born
in Taiwan.
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- Both John Huang and Maria Hsia are known
by the FBI to be agents of Communist China. Together with James Riady,
they formed the Pacific Leadership Council, and invited none other
than then-Senator Al Gore to the Hsi Lai temple headquarters in Taiwan
in 1989. On behalf of the Chinese government, Maria Hsia promised
Al Gore that she would persuade all her colleagues "in the future
to play a leader role in your presidential race." When Al Gore entered
the Hsi Lai temple of Los Angeles seven years later to facilitate the
laundry of donations in a "fund-raiser," he must have known
it came from the Chinese government.
-
- Well, Gore didn't make it to the presidential
race a second time, because of another promising candidate that the
Chinese government had bet even more money on: Bill Clinton, then-
Governor of Arkansas.
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- THE BAG MEN
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- To help Clinton's election for president,
enormous amounts of money was needed. The money flowed primarily
through three channels. Money needed for legitimate spending by the
Clinton campaign flowed through the Lippo- controlled Worthen Bank
of Little Rock, which among other cash transfers granted Clinton a crucial
$3.5 million "loan" to bring him over the top in the New York
primary. Money needed for legitimate spending by the Democrat
National Committee was laundered primarily through the Pacific Leadership
Council. For Clinton's 1996 re-election, additional money for the
DNC and for various committees and funds operating on behalf of Bill
Clinton was laundered though individual bag men like Charlie Trie
and Johnny Chung, who had the money wired to them directly from the Bank
of China.
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- But in 1992, the most significant use
of funds, we suspect, was illegitimate. A campaign such as that of Bill
Clinton cannot succeed without the availability of unlimited cash to
buy off bank regulators and public officials to look the other way.
To pay local, state, and federal police officers to block investigations
and grand jury proceedings. To pay newspaper reporters and editors
to avert their gaze and stop investigating sensitive issues. To throw
around in vote-buying efforts, in the Clinton campaign referred to as "walking-around
money."
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- All these illegitimate uses of campaign
money have one thing in common. The money need not be laundered.
It need only be brought in from the donor. And brought in it was. In
planeloads of cash, brought in through the remote Mena airport
and transferred to the trunk of the Cadillac of bag man Jerry Parks
who, according to the London Telegraph, together with Vince Foster
transported the illegal cash to Little Rock. Both Foster and Parks are
now dead, and we have no idea how much cash was brought in through this
route, though we suspect it surpassed the amount of money that was
laundered into legitimate political spending.
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- Of all the bag men discovered so far,
six are now dead, 36 have pleaded the Fifth Amendment, eleven have
fled the country, and eleven are living in foreign countries and
refuse to cooperate.
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- THE PAYBACK
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- With Bill Clinton elected president
and John Huang placed with a top secret clearance (without examination)
in the Commerce Department, the Chinese got what they wanted: unlimited
access to the military, civilian and dual-use technology that had been
denied them during Republican administrations:
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- (*) F-16 fighter jets (*) Cray supercomputers
for weapons development (*) Machine tools for cruise missile construction
(*) Global Positioning System technology for missile guidance (*) Satellites
and satellite technology (*) The entire U.S. Patent database. (*) Nuclear
Power plants
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- John Huang used his top secret clearance
to gain access to classified U.S. military and industrial secrets
on encryption technology and its relationship to intelligence gathering
and software marketing across the world. He then took the documents
across the street, to an office run by Riady partner Stephens' of Little
Rock, where he dropped the documents so they could be collected by
Chinese intelligence.
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- And when Chinese military and intelligence
wanted a foothold in America, President Clinton personally met twice
with Long Beach officials to push through a deal to lease the former naval
base to the Chinese COSCO front company on extremely favorable terms
despite vocal national security concerns.
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- THWARTING THE INVESTIGATION
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- The most shocking and devastating revelation
made by Bob Woodward's story Friday is that after Chairman Thompson
announced two weeks ago that he was suspending his public hearings, the
FBI obtained intelligence showing that the Ministry of State Security in
Beijing -- the Chinese equivalent of the CIA -- boasted it had been successful
in "thwarting" the congressional inquiry.
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- How could Chinese agents be able to "thwart"
an inquiry by the U.S. congress? The answer is not hard to find. One
need only look at those who irrationally attacked Chairman Fred Thompson
for his opening statement, where he revealed that there was a Chinese
plot to influence the election. His statement was deliberately
non-partisan, so there would be no partisan reasons to counterattack.
But the interests of the Chinese intelligence agency would be served.
Senator John Glenn said: "I think I have seen everything the chairman
has seen, and I recall nothing to document allegations that China had
done anything illegal." After the FBI offered to show the classified
evidence to any Senator who wished to see it, Senator Glenn fell strangely
silent. Even more shocking was Senator Glenn's offer to negotiate an immunity
agreement on behalf of John Huang. How did John Glenn end up representing
a Communist agent whom Senate staffers had been unable to locate?
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- Senators Carl Levin and Robert Toricelli
displayed similar behavior. Both having accepted cash from John Huang,
they too spoke the case of the Chinese intelligence agency: "I find
the fact that Mr. Huang would maintain an arrangement where he would
make phone calls outside the Department of Commerce not in and of itself
suspicious," Senator Toricelli said of the secret Stephens'
office where Huang dropped his stolen state secrets.
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- We can add to this list Senate Minority
leader Tom Daschle, who has accepted cash from Maria Hsia, and
who personally recommended John Huang to be placed in the Commerce department.
He later was instrumental in imposing a fixed deadline on Thompson's
inquiry, so it could be stalled by Democrat Senators and by the White
House.
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-
- Chairman Thompson's landmark opening
statement included a reference to the U.S. media. He referred to intelligence
showing Chinese agents "attempting to communicate Beijing's views
through media channels in the United States."
-
- It comes as no surprise, then, that network
and cable news anchors took the position of Senator Glenn in
ridiculing Thompson's allegation. And the Boston Globe wrote:
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- "Does anybody really think little
Clinton, raised in that tar-shingled shack in Hope, Ark., with his
gutsy mom going out to nurse the poor for short money, trying to find a
life for herself and her two boys, marrying four times along the way,
learning to take her small pleasures where she could, at the race track
or the cigarette counter, do you really think that her boy grows up to
become president only to sell out the USA to Chinese spies laundering
cash through Buddhist nuns? I don't." [Violin music off]
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- Whether they know it or not, all of those
listed above have been used as instruments of a successful disinformation
and propaganda campaign by a foreign Communist government.
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- Fortunately, the Chinese haven't gotten
to Bob Woodward or to William Safire, or to Tim Russert who repeatedly
has invited them both on NBC's "Meet the Press" to tell what
they know about the Chinese penetration of the U.S. government. Chris
Matthews is another of the few mainstream media commentators who has had
an ear for the gravity of this scandal. And there is at least one FBI
counterintelligence agent who is so outraged by the cover-up of his superiors
that he is now leaking to Bob Woodward.
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- Neither have the Chinese government gotten
to Dan Burton or Bob Barr, the only Congressmen left to take seriously
the threat of Chinese infiltration. Burton, a fervent anti-Communist,
and Barr, a former CIA employee, now form the last line of defense
against a People's Republic of China already occupying the White House.
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