On May 13, 1998 Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) rose in the House of Representatives to address the matter of our national security and the Clinton Administration’s transfer of missile technology to China: "Tonight, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about both of those issues, our national security and a scandal that is currently unfolding that I think will dwarf every scandal that we have seen talked about on this floor in the past six years. Mr. Speaker, this scandal involves potential treason, and if in fact the facts are true as they have been outlined in media reports, which we are currently trying to investigate, I think will require articles of impeachment."

Tough words. And they were echoed last August by House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX). "The more you look into this business of the transfer of advanced, sophisticated technology to the Chinese military, which seems to be clearly for campaign contributions," said Armey, "the harder it is to stay away from words like treason."

Other Republican leaders have weighed in with similarly ominous statements. Even Newt Gingrich sounded the alarm concerning presidential bribery and the compromise of our national security. "This has nothing to do with campaign finance," declared then-House Speaker Gingrich on May 19, 1998. "This has to do with national security. This is a profoundly deeper question than any other question that has arisen with this Administration."

It was almost a replay of the dire warning issued by Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) a year earlier in which he averred that Red China had been involved in a plot to "subvert our election process" through massive infusions of illicit cash into federal campaigns. But Thompson’s Senate investigation fizzled, allowing Mr. Clinton’s defenders to crow that "no evidence" of wrongdoing had been found, that the Republicans were engaged in a purely partisan witch hunt. That wasn’t true, of course; a mountain of damning evidence was available by that time, and mountains more have been added since. Perhaps some might in good conscience argue that the steady accretion of evidence against the President had not attained to the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard that would apply in a criminal trial. But only the willfully blind can maintain that the accumulated information now publicly available does not meet the less stringent "clear and convincing" standard that has applied in impeachment trials.

The Essence of Treason

Chinagate involves not merely a few instances in which clever foreigners sneaked illegal campaign contributions past lackadaisical or errant Clinton underlings. It concerns massive corruption and bribery in which an unprecedented, ceaseless parade of criminals and agents of a totalitarian power hostile to the United States has wended its way through the White House — with tons of unlawful funds in tow. And a grateful President Clinton, in wanton and willful disregard of the obvious threat to America’s vital defenses, dramatically altered U.S. foreign policy, eviscerated our security procedures, and threw open the gates to our most sensitive military secrets and technology. The ensuing flood of technological transfers has enabled the People’s Republic of China, run by a rigid Communist oligarchy that has repeatedly declared the U.S. its enemy, to achieve stunning military advances in a few short years, including the ability to target U.S. allies — and the U.S. itself — with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those who quibble that these astonishing acts do not meet some technical definition of treason must, at the very least, admit that they constitute a criminal disregard of obvious threats to our national security and survival so grave and egregious that they are in essence treasonous.

The mystery is why the Republicans have walked away from this momentous issue. Oh, yes, they sporadically sputter about it whenever a new fact or startling revelation leaks out, but they have not genuinely attempted to inform the American public about the staggering enormity of this scandal and the potential consequences it could entail. They have allowed the Clinton Administration and its media allies to trivialize Chinagate to the level of another garden variety Clinton scandal, completely overshadowed by the Lewinsky story.

The Republicans in the Senate doomed their investigative effort to almost certain failure by setting an unrealistically short life span for the investigation. To make matters worse, the chairman, Senator Thompson, was super generous in giving the Democrats a full week (when the Senate rules required only that the minority have one day) of hearings concerning alleged improprieties in Republican campaign finances. Thus, after the Senate Democrats had wasted much of the Committee’s time arguing and flacking for the President, they (and the Clinton spin machine) were handed an entire week — one third of the Committee’s television time — to make the case for a "moral equivalence" between Republican and Democratic misdeeds.

Chairman Thompson and other Senate Democrats then jumped aboard the Clinton bandwagon which was (and is still) clamoring for passage of the so-called McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill. The impression given the public was that Chinagate was really a scandal about the need to reform our messy and inadequate campaign laws, rather than about flagrant, systematic, criminal violation of existing laws and the betrayal of our national security by the President, Vice President, First Lady, and their minions.

It didn’t help either that the senators inexplicably failed to subpoena, depose, or question some of the most obvious critical witnesses. "One of the great mysteries of the Thompson hearings," write Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II in Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash, "is the kid-glove treatment given the Stephens safe house operation." Jackson Stephens, a Little Rock Clinton crony and Riady associate whose Washington, DC office was regularly used by Riady-PRC agent John Huang, was not called to testify. "From his telephone records," say Timperlake and Triplett, "we know that Huang spoke frequently to a number of Stephens, Inc. officials in Little Rock, but none of them was ever interviewed, deposed under oath, or called to testify."

We know that the committee was stymied by the fact that at least 18 critical witnesses fled the country and another 79 refused to testify, citing Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, but there were many other important witnesses whom the committee didn’t even try to question. In the case of John Huang, the Senate should have challenged his assertion of Fifth Amendment rights, since by his earlier deposition in the Judicial Watch lawsuit he had waived any Fifth Amendment rights he could have claimed.

House Action

In the House, it was hoped, things might go better. On May 21, 1998 the House approved, by a vote of 364-54, a measure intended to block future exports of satellite technology to China. It also approved, by a vote of 417-4, an amendment to a defense authorization bill stating that presidential waivers issued by Mr. Clinton to allow transfers of sensitive technologies to China had not been in the national interest. And the House created a special select committee headed by Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) to probe the affair. But, whereas the Thompson committee could be charged with cover-up for rushing their investigation, the Cox Committee appears to be taking the opposite approach to cover-up: secrecy, dawdling, and running out the clock. After months of silence, Cox stunned knowledgeable observers by announcing on September 25th that the Chinagate scandal "is simply not a premise for impeachment." "We don’t have much," Cox said. "The problem is, we know as much about these campaign contributions as we’re going to know. Unless we come across a memo that says, ‘This is going to violate national security, but this is so much money, let’s go for it,’ we don’t have much."

Such a stupifyingly inane statement, we thought, must have been taken out of context by a pro-Clinton reporter, for surely Cox, who has one of the more conservative voting records in Congress, must be aware of far more than the already damning evidence in the public domain. In fact, THE NEW AMERICAN knew that he had been provided with a prodigious amount of strong evidence produced through the depositions and legal proceedings conducted by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch. Charles Smith, president of Softwar Corp., who has carried on a relentless pursuit of this issue through Freedom of Information Act requests, had also provided the Cox Committee with considerable evidence concerning the Clinton Administration’s treasonous transfers of hi-tech computer chips, encryption software, and sophisticated telecommunications technology for China’s military command-control-communications system. Mr. Cox’s reported insistence on a "smoking gun" memo was ludicrous. Other than his brief December 30th press conference, where he said very little besides announcing that "national security harm did occur," and that his committee’s declassified report would be released in February or March, Cox has remained silent. From what this writer has been able to learn from inside sources, the report paints a picture of terrible laxness, negligence, and misguided policies, but attributes nothing of a criminal nature to President Clinton.

Something is obviously very wrong here. Bill Clinton is being allowed to skate free, and the breaches to our national security his policies created have not been rectified. The Republicans, having been handed reams of evidence documenting some of the most shocking betrayals of our nation’s security, have elected virtually to ignore the issue and let the nation focus instead on the l’affaire Lewinsky. What gives? Just another grand example of the "Hugh Scott Doctrine" that has governed Republican politics for the past several decades. Back in 1970, as President Nixon was rhetorically feinting right (and going left), liberal Senate GOP leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania gleefully informed his liberal colleagues that there was nothing to worry about. "The conservatives get the rhetoric," noted Scott, but "we get the action." Scott was not formulating a new doctrine; he was merely enunciating a principle that had already been well tested by the Eisenhower Administration.

Some Republican members of Congress undoubtedly take Chinagate seriously and genuinely mean what they say. The GOP leadership, however, is clearly applying the Scott Doctrine, offering the obligatory denunciations of Clinton’s China ventures when appearing before the concerned Republican faithful, but doing nothing effective to hold him accountable or undo the damage. How have so many Republicans been silenced or compromised on this issue? There are several explanations for this, three of the most probable being:

• Fear of Team Clinton’s "Scorched Earth" retaliation.
• Obeisance to corporate contributors who do business with Red China.
• Obedience to Party leadership that is committed to the One-China, One-World doctrines dictated by the political mandarins of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Following the House impeachment vote, President Clinton and his most devoted Democratic House supporters gathered on the White House lawn to piously deplore the "politics of personal destruction" and the "venom" and "incivility" that has fastened itself on recent political discourse. It was, naturally, another bravura performance by the master of mendacity, whose character assassin squad had just carried out a "hit" on House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-LA). In a stunning move just before the impeachment vote, Congressman Livingston announced his resignation from the top House post and from Congress (in six months) due to threats of exposure of his previous marital infidelities. ABC’s Cokie Roberts revealed that a highly placed White House source had tried to shop the story to her a couple weeks prior.

Pornographer/sleazemeister Larry Flynt announced that if Republicans continued their campaign against "his" President (he volunteered that he had voted for Clinton twice and supports him completely), he was prepared to "out" several more prominent Republicans with alleged skeletons in their closets. Geraldo Rivera, who unabashedly proclaims his adoration of the Clinton-Rodham co-Presidency, daily invited Flynt onto his MSNBC television show to underscore his blackmail threats. Simultaneously, all members of the Utah congressional delegation came under attack from State Attorney General Jan Graham, Utah’s only Democrat elected to statewide office, demanding that each member sign an affidavit swearing they have not been unfaithful to their spouses.

All of this was strikingly familiar. Only three months before, in September, as the House impeachment process was heating up, the White House assassins — using friendly media surrogates — trashed three of Clinton’s leading House antagonists with exposure of their sexual affairs dredged up from decades past. The three victims were Congressmen Henry Hyde, Dan Burton and Helen Chenoweth, all Republicans. Congressman Paul McHale of Pennsylvania, the first Democrat to call for Clinton’s resignation, was smeared with a false story (parlayed through Geraldo Rivera) that he had exaggerated his war record. (See "Clinton’s ‘Scorched Earth’ Policy" in our November 9, 1998 issue.)

ABC’s Sam Donaldson stated on his network’s This Week program that Sidney Blumenthal, a top aide to both Bill and Hillary, had tried to peddle the Hyde story to ABC. Rivera publicly admitted that he had received the McHale story from his White House "sources." Another media outlet friendly to the Clinton regime, the ultra-left Nation magazine, reported that Blumenthal had been behind efforts to plant false stories about special prosecutor Ken Starr’s staff.

Carville and Company

Aside from this and other specific evidence of the Clinton hand behind the vicious campaign of "personal destruction," there are the admissions from Clinton confidants James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, and Dick Morris, and pro-Clinton publications Salon and Vanity Fair, that the White House "War Room" was unleashing a "scorched earth" campaign against its foes. Which was completely in keeping with the well-known Clinton modus operandi. In his written responses to the House Judiciary Committee’s 81 questions, President Clinton admitted that he has been using the "investigative" services of Terry Lenzner and Jack Palladino, two bottom-feeding sleuths who are infamous for orchestrating smear attacks on Clinton’s "enemies." Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Dolly Kyle Browning, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Kathleen Willey, Billy Dale, David Hale, Joseph Farah, Christopher Ruddy, and Scott Ritter are but a few of the victims of the iniquitous Clinton smear machine.

Every member of Congress knows that this Administration will do "whatever it takes" to stay in office, including employ "dirt" from the hundreds of FBI files the White House was caught using illegally for "adversary research." Any member with an embarrassing secret in his past is vulnerable to blackmail by the White House "Secret Police." And if, as past experience shows, the Clinton machine is willing to torch its opponents to cover up lesser scandals, it will certainly not balk at the use of even bigger flame throwers to stop exposure of the more serious Chinagate charges.

On Saturday, December 19th, immediately after Bob Livingston announced that he would not stand for Speaker, Cox let it be known he would like the post. A C-SPAN broadcast that day showed Cox being interviewed by a group of reporters. When he was asked if he had any problems in his background similar to those that had caused Livingston’s resignation, Cox grew visibly uncomfortable and evasive. When another reporter pointed out that he hadn’t answered the question, he engaged in still more evasiveness. Does this offer a clue as to Mr. Cox’s odd position on Chinagate? We don’t know, but considering the stakes involved and the unconscionable tactics the Clintonites are employing, that is a possibility that has to be reckoned with.

Corporate Connections

During their week of hearings, the Senate Democrats attempted to make great hay with the admission by former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Haley Barber that he had secured a $2.1 million loan guarantee from Hong Kong businessman Ambrose Young for the National Policy Forum, a front for the RNC. The loan arrangement may or may not have been improper, but it apparently was not illegal, or connected with a foreign government, espionage, threats to national security, or any change in foreign policy. There also is no indication of any congressional GOP foreign fundraising that could compare with the blatant harlotry of the Clinton Administration with regard to Beijing.

But, as we mentioned above, a second explanation for GOP reluctance to press the China issue might be found in the potent influence, on both Republicans and Democrats, from major U.S. corporations doing business in China. The scandalous revelations about the huge contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from corporate titans at Loral and Hughes Aerospace in exchange for favorable treatment on China-related policies have demonstrated the tremendous potential for danger and abuse in this area. Other U.S. companies with large investments in China may have exerted similar influences on members of Congress, either on their own initiative or under pressure from Beijing. Washington Post writer Bob Woodward reported in November 1997 that a "senior official" in the U.S. government had informed him that the FBI found the Chinese equivalent of the CIA boasting it had "thwarted" the Thompson hearings. If that is so, did the PRC use corporate pressure or bribes to accomplish its "thwarting"?

CFR "Leadership"

As we also mentioned above, there is an even more troubling explanation for the Republicans’ China cave-in. The guiding hand behind U.S.-China relations over the past three decades — for both Republican and Democratic Administrations — has been Henry Kissinger, foreign policy super savant for the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR, which sees nationhood (including U.S. national sovereignty) as an unacceptable impediment to its vision of global convergence in a one-world government run by an oligarchy of "wise men" (drawn from its ranks, naturally), is not unduly bothered by the PRC’s manifestations of totalitarian brutality. Shortly after becoming House Speaker, Newt Gingrich (a CFR member) named Kissinger to his "kitchen cabinet," and stated in a magazine interview that "there is probably no single person in America who is smarter about the world than Henry Kissinger."

When Gingrich made the faux pas of suggesting that the U.S. should recognize Taiwan as a free and independent country, he received a quick dressing down by phone from Kissinger, who was in Beijing. The New York Times recounted that Kissinger "called to lecture the Speaker of the House sternly on the need to uphold the delicate one-China policy — which Mr. Kissinger himself had invented long ago — and to keep quiet." Gingrich immediately complied.

Other top figures from Republican Administrations, such as former Secretary of State Al Haig (CFR), or Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger (both CFR and partners in Kissinger Associates, Inc.), are powerful "Republican" advocates of Clintonian appeasement of Beijing and massive technological and financial aid to the PRC. In fact, Kissinger actually serves as an adviser to Bill Clinton (CFR). And David Rothkopf (CFR), who was one of the Clinton appointees supervising Red Chinese agent John Huang at the Commerce Department, is now helping run China operations for Kissinger Associates. With this kind of "leadership" is it any wonder that the Republican Congress has mounted little more than mock efforts to expose Bill Clinton’s treasonous dealings with China?

This dangerous situation will only grow worse unless members of Congress begin to feel real and sustained heat from the home districts over their shameful abdication of responsibility in the face of this threat to the Constitution and our nation’s security. They must be put on notice that their constituents take the Constitution seriously, even if the congressmen themselves do not. They must be told that if they are hostage to dark, personal secrets, they must publicly come clean or resign, rather than yield to political blackmail. We, the people of the United States, have both the ability and the awesome responsibility to force Congress to take up this momentous challenge. It is up to us.

Running Interference: Janet Reno Covers for Clinton Crimes

Over the past several years, Republican members of Congress have regularly stepped before the media microphones to denounce President Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno for her obtuse blindness to Clinton wrongdoing and her repeated refusal to name Independent Counsels to investigate various scandals. On August 6, 1998 the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee took an unprecedented step in voting to hold Ms. Reno in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents requested by the committee. However, aside from their ritual condemnations, the GOP leadership in the full House and Senate has done nothing to hold Reno accountable for an unbelievable record of corruption, obstruction, and cover-up. Here is a partial litany of offenses by Reno and her Department of Justice (DOJ) relative to Chinagate:

• Ignoring calls from Congress, Common Cause, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and others to appoint an Independent Counsel (IC), Janet Reno instead formed a task force in November 1996 to probe 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising abuses, including Chinagate charges.
• Reno appointed DOJ Criminal Division Chief John Keeney to head the task force, even though his son is a DNC lawyer who represents fundraiser John Huang, a central target of the investigation.
• By July 1997, a year after Chinagate had become a major scandal, neither the FBI nor the DOJ had called one Clinton Commerce Department official before a grand jury and almost none had even been interviewed. Not even John Huang’s secretary, Janice Stewart, had been interviewed.
• Two years after launching its investigation, DOJ and FBI investigators still had not even interviewed John Huang.
• Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Hegyi has been repeatedly sanctioned by the Court for misconduct. In one instance, Hegyi illegally provided the court-sealed affidavit of Chinagate witness Nolanda Hill to “Main Justice” (i.e., Janet Reno) for apparent retaliatory action aimed at silencing Ms. Hill. Reno’s DOJ quickly indicted Hill on tax charges before her next testimony date.
• Bruce Hegyi obstructed justice by unilaterally terminating the court-ordered depositions of Chinagate witnesses at the Commerce Department, Anthony Das and Ginger Lew. Hegyi was sanctioned by the Court for this outrageous conduct.
• The Clinton-Reno DOJ lawyers have been repeatedly subject to court reprimand for improperly tipping witnesses on how to respond during depositions.
• Ira Sockowitz, an associate of John Huang at the Commerce Department, removed 136 files containing classified satellite encryption data and highly sensitive intelligence on Russia and China from his Commerce office. Without conducting any serious investigation (including not questioning his closest associates at Commerce), DOJ “cleared” Sockowitz.
• Reno’s former deputy, Philip Heyman, has stated that Reno should appoint an IC to investigate the Chinagate scandal.
• FBI Director Louis Freeh said that the FBI had found evidence implicating Clinton and Gore. Freeh told Reno she had a political conflict and should turn the Chinagate investigation over to an IC.
• In September 1997, Reno appointed Charles LaBella to head the task force. After a nine-month investigation, LaBella recommended that Reno appoint an IC. LaBella said that Chinagate is much bigger than previously reported, that “the media has only one percent of the story.” Two weeks after making his report, Reno’s DOJ canceled LaBella’s nomination for a U.S. attorney post.
• Reno has repeatedly refused to turn LaBella’s 100-page report and Freeh’s 22-page memo over to the House panel investigating the fundraising abuses.
• Instead of investigating the more obvious abuses by her boss and Vice President Gore, Reno launched an investigation of Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), GOP chairman of the House panel probe. Reno sent FBI agents on an expensive investigation in Pakistan of alleged foreign campaign fund activities by Burton.
• Robert Adkins and other Commerce employees testified that wholesale shredding of relevant documents took place after Judicial Watch won a court order for the documents to be produced under the Freedom of Information Act. DOJ pursued no obstruction of justice charges against those doing the shredding.
• IC Donald Smaltz, who was appointed to investigate former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, testified to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee that DOJ officials had relentlessly impeded and delayed his investigation.
• Reno’s DOJ has failed to pursue officers and principals involved in the Beijing Enterprises stock scheme in which nearly $1 billion was bilked from investors by Lippo and the PRC.
• Reno has repeatedly stymied congressional investigations by denying committee requests to grant limited immunity to lower-level Chinagate witnesses, but then reportedly offered full immunity to John Huang.
• Even after discovery of a 1995 memo from DNC Chairman Don Fowler to “Janet” asking Reno to help raise $100 million for Democratic victory in 1996, Reno refused to acknowledge that she is compromised and conflicted, and continued to say she has no “credible and convincing evidence” to appoint an IC.
• In October 1997, after months of telling Senate investigators that it did not have videotapes of Clinton coffees featuring foreign contributors, the White House suddenly “discovered” many of the subpoenaed videotapes. Even most of Clinton’s media allies recognized this as another example of blatant obstruction, but Janet Reno found no Clinton wrongdoing.
• In November 1997, seven days after the Senate concluded its Chinagate hearings, Reno informed Committee Chairman Fred Thompson (R-TN) that the FBI had just “discovered” evidence in its own files going back to 1991, but which had been earlier “overlooked,” showing the magnitude and means by which Red China plotted to influence U.S. elections.
• Following the apparent DOJ-FBI cover-ups (or incredibly gross incompetence) revealed in the September and October 1997 incidents mentioned above, Reno appointed Eric Holder to head her task force. Holder, a protégé and friend of Ron Brown, had an automatic conflict of interest, and constantly fought and delayed the release of court-ordered documents.
• Johnny Chung, a key DNC fundraiser and central Chinagate suspect, was given an unbelievably light sentence of probation and 3,000 hours of community service as part of a DOJ plea bargain in December 1998. Chung could have been imprisoned for 37 years and fined $1.45 million. It is difficult to avoid the obvious impression that Janet Reno’s DOJ actions saved Clinton and Gore from whatever evidence Chung might have been able to give against them.
• Reno’s DOJ plea agreements have let other Chinagate witnesses off easy who could have provided Congress with key information. These include: Red Chinese agent, Triad crime figure, and Clinton fundraiser Yah Lin Trie; Michael Brown, son of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown; and Eugene and Nora Lum, Michael Brown’s business partners, who are also associates of the Riady family’s Lippo Group. Did Reno’s DOJ “buy” their silence with light sentences? It certainly looks that way. 

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