Midnight Target,
While I'm not in the business of hating anyone except "the serpent of old" there is a lot available on this subject, so it is difficult to know what to offer up. Here is imho one of the best synopses of the situation available online that presents most of the facts. The full report is too long for this board, so you can grab the rest at:
Partners in Crime Partners In Crime
New evidence shows the link that Republicans and Democrats have long ignored: between reckless transfers of defense technology to Communist China and campaign donations to Clinton-Gore.
Kenneth R. Timmerman
The American Spectator
August,1999
New evidence shows conclusively for the first time that the Chinese government's effort to buy political influence in the United States led to concrete decisions by the Clinton administration that have harmed our national security. Uncovered by U.S. government investigators and aired publicly by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Penn.), the evidence includes bank transfer documents making it possible to trace specific campaign contributions back to Chinese military intelligence; corporate documents for Chinese front companies; and transcripts of secret conversations between a Chinese intelligence operative and campaign donor Johnny Chung, which detail a cover- up scheme allegedly agreed upon by President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. "This is the first time in U.S. history that an American president has been compromised by a foreign intelligence service," one U.S. government official involved in the investigation told TAS.
Weldon, one of five Republicans on the bipartisan Cox Committee that examined the high-tech giveaway to Communist China, charged that Clinton administration efforts to liberalize U.S. export controls led to "the wholesale auction of sensitive American technology to the highest bidder," and that these decisions came about "because people could buy influence and make campaign contributions." Unveiled at a press conference on May 27 that was ignored by the mainstream press, Weldon's charges were buttressed with new documents establishing key linkages between the Chinese companies used to funnel campaign contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign and China's Central Military Commission, the highest military authority in the PRC.
The Chinese government became so concerned that its campaign contribution scheme would be exposed that it dispatched an undercover operative to Los Angeles last year to threaten Johnny Chung and his family with physical harm if Chung cooperated with federal prosecutors. The FBI wired Chung for the meetings with the Chinese agent, and eventually struck a deal with Chung allowing him to testify publicly this May before the House Committee on Government Reform. Transcripts of Chung's secret meetings with the Chinese agent, recently posted on the Internet, show the extraordinary efforts by the Chinese government to buy Chung's silence. The Chinese agent, Robert Luu, specifically told Chung never to reveal to U.S. investigators that two U.S. companies selling China critical technology--Hughes Electronics and Loral Space Systems--were tied to Liu Chaoying, who was Chung's link back to Chinese military intelligence. In one taped session, aired on the Fox News Network on May 24, the two discussed a cover-up scheme. "So blame it on the Princelings," Chung said, referring to the sons and daughters of top Chinese Communist Party officials. Replied Luu: "Yes. Chairman Jiang agreed to handle it like this. The president over here also agreed."
Senate investigators have also begun looking into a 76-page confidential report, prepared by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which documents how the Chinese government transferred $92 million to front companies in California through the Far East National Bank in Los Angeles from 1994 to 1996. Government investigators told TAS that the money was used to buy political influence; to finance intelligence gathering and high-tech procurement operations; and more mundanely, to establish overseas investments for various Princelings. The OCC report was sent to the Senate Banking Committee on May 9 by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). In his letter of referral, Shelby said the money was wired to the California bank "either directly or through front companies, by the People's Bank of China," and wound up in accounts "created for the front companies by bank officers." Shelby noted he was "very concerned that some of the individuals and entities involved are reported to be, or believed to be associated with PRC intelligence activities in some manner."
The China Plan
Ever since Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) stunned members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee by revealing the existence of a "China Plan" to influence the 1996 U.S. elections through campaign contributions, the administration and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill have sought to steer the media away from any linkage between illegal campaign donations and administration high-technology export control policies. Similarly, when the Cox Committee began to examine the export of high-technology goods and services to China, it explicitly excluded campaign contributions from its purview. Now, for the first time, these once-separate issues are being linked through documentary evidence, which shows they were part of a concerted effort that can be traced back to the highest echelons of the Chinese government. "This was not some fluke or rogue operation," one U.S. government investigator told TAS. "This leads directly back to Jiang Zemin."
Weldon says he had been helped in his investigation by individuals he calls "patriots," who continue to work inside the U.S. government bureaucracy despite attempts by the administration to destroy their careers. (Five such individuals testified before the House Armed Services Committee on June 24.) These officials have provided unclassified documents tying the campaign contributions to the high-technology giveaway, and provided insight as to how the technology transfers to Communist China have been organized. (Documents provided to TAS included corporate registry information acquired in Hong Kong, and unclassified U.S. government cables detailing the ownership of Chinese government front companies operating in Hong Kong and the United States.)
At his press conference, and during a June 7 floor statement televised by C- SPAN, Weldon presented two color-coded charts describing his findings based on these documents and a series of background briefings from U.S. government officials. A flow chart entitled "The China Connection" shows a welter of Chinese government entities, banks, and front companies engaged in high-tech espionage and illegal campaign contributions in the U.S. Another "Timeline" chart graphically demonstrates how the campaign donations were linked to Clinton administration decisions to liberalize national security export controls, decisions which the Cox Committee report has shown to have seriously compromised U.S. national security.
According to Weldon, the two charts reveal:
* a systematic effort by the Chinese military at the highest levels to target and acquire technology for military modernization;
* that this effort was planned and implemented by Chinese military intelligence through the second department of the Central Military Commission's General Staff Department;
* that despite efforts going back more than a quarter-century, the Chinese military only succeeded in acquiring many of these targeted technologies after 1993;
* that the Chinese military set up a series of front companies and intermediaries to mask its technology targeting efforts and to launder money to hide its origin. As part of this effort, it enlisted the infamous Macao and Hong Kong Chinese Triad;
* that even after the U.S. government learned of the diversion of the W-88 nuclear warhead design in late 1995 and 1996, the Clinton administration continued to liberalize export controls on such sensitive technologies as computers, encryption, machine tools, telecommunications, stealth technologies, space launch technologies, satellites, gas turbine engines, and high temperature furnaces.
In some respects, Weldon's argument is not novel. Congressional aides William C. Triplett II and Edward Timperlake, in their best-selling account of the DNC fund-raising caper, Year of the Rat, alleged that DNC fund-raiser John Huang was a spy for Beijing (See "The DNC's Chinese Money Laundry," TAS, November 1998). A good friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Huang used his influence to obtain a Top Secret security clearance on January 31, 1994, five months before he was officially appointed to a Department of Commerce job, thanks to Hillary Clinton's insistent lobbying. Year of the Rat alleged that Huang's purpose was to gain access to classified U.S. intelligence information of use to the Riady family and their Chinese intelligence service masters. This thesis was given additional weight by Senator Thompson, who acknowledged classified information detailing "a long-term relationship between the Riadys and a Chinese intelligence agency." That agency is known as Er Bu, the Second Department of the People's Liberation Army's General Staff Department, and is the Chinese equivalent of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It is headed by General Ji Shengde, a close political ally of President Jiang Zemin....
The rest of the article is available online at:
Partners in Crime - SEAGOON
PS: If you aren't happy with the source, I can get some other synopses which say essentially the same thing from British sources.
