SIGHTINGS


 
FBI Cover-Up Of Chinese
Infiltration Of White House
Clinton and Gore Funded by Chinese Agents Since 1989
© 1997 The Washington Weekly
From Col (Dr) Byron Weeks
 
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:
 
 
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.
 
 
THE INGENIOUS DIVERSION
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
 
THE BAG MEN
 
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.
 
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."
 
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.
 
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.
 
 
THE PAYBACK
 
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:
 
(*) 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
 
 
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.
 
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.
 
 
THWARTING THE INVESTIGATION
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
 
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:
 
"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]
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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