THE DONKEY NESTS

A Bird-Watcher’s Guide To Where Democrats Hatch Their Schemes.


 

Sightings from The Catbird Seat

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From Year of the Rat

How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash

Even if composed of hundred dollar bills, $175,000 in cash makes quite a bundle. We can only imagine what went through the minds of Treasury Department officials as Macau criminal syndicate figure Ng Lapseng sailed through the San Francisco airport on June 20, 1994, after declaring that amount of money– in cash.

Within two days Ng was dining at the White House mess with presidential aide and Democratic Party fund-raiser Mark Middleton. Later that evening Ng and his associate Charlie Trie would make honored guest appearances at a DNC-sponsored Presidential Gala. . . .

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From The Buying of the President 2000: . . . Donald Fowler, the national chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was summoned to the family quarters of the White House on Sept 10, 1995, for a 9 p.m. meeting with President Bill Clinton, V.P. Albert Gore, Jr., White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, and Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, among others.

Fowler had become the chairman of the DNC the previous January, not long after the Democrats’ shellacking in the 1994 mid-term elections. While leading his party, Fowler– in the back-door tradition of half the political party chairmen since 1977– was simultaneously working as a registered lobbyist for various corporate interests.

One of his biggest clients: Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc., a nuclear-waste disposal company….

Chem-Nuclear’s investment in Fowler and other lobbyists (about $350,00 in all, including generous campaign contributions to South Carolina lawmakers) paid off big in 1995, when the state legislature agreed to open the company’s nuclear-waste landfill in Barnwell to the entire nation for up to ten years. . . .

That night at the White House, however, Fowler wasn’t being called on the carpet for his mercenary moonlighting. Indeed, his activities as a lobbyist were known and accepted. (“Party chairs,” he told the Center, “have historically done that.”) No, tonight Fowler was being asked to go along with an unprecedented scheme to route tens of millions of dollars in private “soft money” contributions through the Democratic Party for use in a nationwide TV advertising blitz on behalf of the President.

Federal law forbids using party funds in this manner for a presidential election campaign, and before 1996, no incumbent President had ever pushed the envelope so near to– or past– the legal limits….

Weeks later, at a fund-raising dinner at the posh Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, Clinton proudly described the scheme. “We realized that we could run these ads through the Democratic Party, which meant that we could raise money in twenty and fifty and hundred-thousand-dollar lots,” he said. “And run down– you know– what I can spend, which is limited by law. So that’s what we’ve done.”

Many of the excesses of the 1996 presidential campaign, we now know, were directly related to this conscious decision by the President, the Vice President, their White House and campaign aides, and the Democratic Party to subvert the nation’s existing campaign-finance laws.

The only way to raise such huge sums of cash … would be for the President and Vice President to get personally involved in fund raising, even by making cold calls from within the White House itself. The garish images of unabashedly selling access to the icons of our democracy persist today, of systematically rewarding large donors with invitations to White House coffees, overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom and at Camp David, flights on Air Force One, and so on.

Never have we seen such a dubious array of characters plying our nation’s leaders with campaign cash– from an Arkansas restauranteur and an Indonesian billionaire to Buddhist nuns, Chinese arms merchants, and a convicted Colombian drug dealer….

In retrospect, it was destined to become a national scandal– resulting in congressional investigations, hundreds of hours of hearings, tens of thousands of new stories, and an assortment of little-fish types (19 individuals, at most recent count) charged with violating federal campaign-finance laws.

And the President’s first instinct when the scandal initially hit the public consciousness, was to disingenuously fob it off on the Democratic Party, a distinction without a difference. . . .

Presidents have always been the de facto leaders of their respective political parties . . . But in 1996 there was such a blurring of responsibility and authority between the Clinton White House, the Clinton-Gore campaign, and the Democratic Party as to make them all practically indistinguishable from each other.

The same company that handled the Clinton-Gore campaign’s TV commercials … produced the DNC-sponsored “issue ads.” The White House’s mammoth database of contacts, built and maintained with millions of dollars in public funds [i.e., US taxpayers’ money], was meshed with the DNC’s donor database.

The DNC’s Robert Watson was given that sensitive assignment; an internal White house memo revealed that Clinton and Ickes personally wanted it done. Watson, who pleaded guilty in 1992 to distributing an illegally intercepted telephone call of Virginia Governor Doug Wilder– became the DNC’s deputy executive director in 1994; its executive director in 1995, under Fowler; and by 1996 he had left and joined a Washington lobbying firm.

As Morris testified, President Clinton was the “day-to-day operational director” of the DNC-sponsored media campaign. He “worked over every script, watched each ad, ordered changes in every visual presentation, and decided which ads would run when and where.”

Clinton also was deeply involved in operations and personnel at the DNC, insisting, for example, that a man named John Huang be hired to raise money. (More than $2 million of the money he helped raise came from illegal or questionable sources and eventually had to be returned; Huang himself is now a convicted felon.)

The President had approved the appointment of Fowler as the DNC’s chairman. He had also approved Marvin Rosen, a Miami lawyer, to be the DNC’s finance chairman in 1995. Federal regulators had accused Rosen of unethical practices that contributed to the failure of a Florida savings-and-loan institution that he had represented and helped to finance. In 1992 his law firm agreed to pay $8.15 million to the Resolution Trust Corporation, the agency that oversaw the S&L bailout [with US taxpayers’ money].

Apparently no one found it odd that a registered lobbyist for a nuclear waste-dumping company, a convicted political dirty-trickster, and a key figure in an S&L scandal were running the National Democratic Committee as chairman, executive director, and treasurer, respectively….

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Soon after Rosen began collecting campaign cash for Clinton and the DNC, he capitalized on his new status and opened a lobbying office in Washington for his law firm. Among those he hired there were Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown’s son Michael and Senator Edward Kennedy’s wife Victoria . . .

Some major party donors began to retain Rosen’s firm to do their lobbying in Washington, including controversial oil financier Roger Tamraz, who gave $300,000 to the Democratic Party. He had been ordered by a French court to pay more than $50 million for diverting funds from a French bank that collapsed, and he faced a Lebanese arrest warrant for allegedly embezzling $154 million to $200 million from a bank in that country.

Even though he was an international fugitive, Tamraz was invited to six social events at the White House, and he spoke directly with the President about his oil pipeline in the Caucaus, for which he sought U.S. support. He also attended a dinner with the Vice President at the home of Senator Kennedy. “The only reason to give money is to get access,” Tamraz, with brazen candor, later told members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. “I think next time I’ll give $600,000.”

Tamraz had Rosen and Fowler– two of the Democratic Party’s top officials– in his pocket. There is detailed evidence that Fowler contacted officials of the CIA and the National Security Council in his efforts to “clear Tamraz’s name” — contacts later described by the investigating Senate committee as “highly inappropriate.”

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Unfortunately, such intervention on behalf of a donor was no aberration.

The DNC, for example, attempted to influence a decision by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs regarding a group of Wisconsin Indian tribes that were seeking to operate a casino in Hudson, Wisconsin. Neighboring tribes in Minnesota worried about the competition, opposed the proposal. The application was eventually denied, even though career BIA officials at the regional and national levels had recommended that it be approved.

It was a victory for the wealthier Minnesota tribes, which within months gave more than $330,000 to national and state Democratic organizations and hired a former DNC treasurer to be their Washington lobbyist. . . .

The Senate committee’s conclusion: “Political donations to the DNC apparently succeeded in purchasing government policy concessions.”

For more on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, GO TO > > > Bureau of Indian Affairs

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It was widely understood in 1996 that both the Clinton-Gore campaign and the Democratic Party were, for all intents and purposes, being run from the White House . . . Ickes put it this way in his deposition for the Senate committee: “The President … is the CEO of the party. If the President says this is the way I want it, it was up to me to see that it was done, and the [DNC] chairman understood that.” . . .

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And it happened. Various Democratic Party committees raised $345 million, up 61% from $214 million in the 1992 presidential election cycle. The amount of “soft money” tripled.

They couldn’t have done it without the President’s active involvement: In 1996 alone, Clinton attended more than 230 fund-raising events around the nation, which generated at least $119 million in contributions. “I haven’t slept in three days,” Morris recalled Clinton complaining. “I cannot think, I cannot do anything. Every minute of my time is spent at these fund-raisers.”

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Vice President Gore, similarly engaged, reportedly came to be called the “Solicitor-in-Chief” within the DNC.

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The Democratic Party accepted so many contributions of questionable origin that it ultimately was forced to return at least $2.8 million in illegal or improper donations. . . .

And so, Americans watched their political process sink to new levels of crassness and absurdity.

Who can forget the case of Johnny Chung, a Taiwanese businessman who, along with his company, made $366,000 in contributions to the Democratic Party from 1994 to 1996? The money was later returned, and Chung was subsequently convicted of bank fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy.

Chung had been inside the Clinton White House at least 49 times. “The White House is like a subway,” he explained to a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. “You have to put in coins to open the gates.”

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Who knows how many Johnny Chungs were given red-carpet treatment by Fowler and his DNC staff — people and favors that we know nothing about? And, inasmuch as the Freedom of Information Act doesn’t apply to White House records, who know how may lobbyists and CEO’s sat down with the President privately — more subtly working the “subway” system, out of public view?

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In late 1996 and throughout 1997 … we learned that President Clinton was personally involved in raising and channeling millions of dollars in Democratic Party contributions to his own reelection campaign … The Democratic Party accepted millions of dollars in illegal contributions from foreign nationals, many of whom met personally with the President.

Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., spoke at a fund-raising event at a Buddhist monastery in Los Angeles, and everyone from a Columbian drug trafficker to Chinese arms dealers passed through the White House, obtaining access for cash.

Separately, from January 1995 to August 1996, the White House hosted 103 coffees– attended by 1,544 people seeking “face time” with the President, the Vice President, and their spouses– who collectively contributed at least $26.4 million to the Democratic Party for the 1996 election.

Besides being rewarded with overnight stays at the White House and Camp David, in 1995 and 1996, major Democratic Party donors and fund-raisers rode on Air Force One, Marine One, Air Force Two, and Marine Two (the latter two are the Vice President’s aircraft) more than 300 times.

In addition, both the President and Vice President solicited campaign contributions by telephone from the White House … At first Gore said that he dialed for dollars “on a few occasions”; he later acknowledged that he did it 56 times. This was the potentially criminal matter that produced the now infamous statement by the Vice President: “My counsel advises me that there is no controlling legal authority or case that says that there was any violation of law whatsoever in the manner in which I asked people to contribute to our reelection campaign.” . . .

Sadly, Gore was right. None of this unprecedented activity, which certainly had the stench of misconduct and impropriety, was seriously prosecuted by the Justice Department. Only the small fry were pursued. Attorney General Janet Reno steadfastly refused to name an independent counsel to investigate the various 1996 campaign finance allegations.

And when the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee attempted to investigate the 1996 election more than 45 potential witnesses fled the United States or invoked the Fifth Amendment. . . .

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To add insult to injury, the following year Americans suffered through Monica Mania, ending with the first impeachment of an elected President in U.S. history. … In 1998, we reached the lowest point in our nation’s political discourse and decorum, including the most blatant, look-you-in-the-eye-with-a-straight-face lying by a sitting President ever.

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And let us not forget that this whole sordid episode got its start with campaign contributions: Lewinsky became a White House intern in the first place because a friend of her family had given more than $330,000 to the Democratic Party.

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For More: Tenacious Tentacles

For More: Sen. Dan Burton’s Campaign Finance Reform Committee

For More: John Chung Tells About Chinese Campaign Donations

For More: The Buying of the President

For More: Year of the Dragon? Why Congress Should Vote NO!

For More: A Simple Solution to Campaign Finance Reform


 

American International Group – From The Washington Weekly, Mar. 17, 1997:

THE BARBADOS CONNECTION — CORAL REINSURANCE

The link between the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA) and AIG goes beyond $5 million. An AIG affiliate has managed over one billion dollars worth of ADFA’s bonds, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. An allegation that ADFA launders money for U.S. intelligence has repeatedly surfaced but without any direct documentary evidence to date….

Apart from ADFA, where does AIG get its money to fund, among other things, lobbying on behalf of the Chinese government? The answer is not clear, though some indications are available. (1) In 1995, AIG became the first company to be licensed to sell insurance in China. (2) AIG is a client of Kissinger & Associates.

It was Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, who advised against harsh sanctions after the Tienanmen Square massacre. . . . (3) AIG has also been the focus of SEC and BCCI investigator, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau’s attention . . . to explore its ties to the BCCI. (4) And finally, AIG is headed by Maurice Greenberg, one-time chairman of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, and in 1995 a candidate to head the CIA.

Greenberg is chairman of the US-China Business Council and lobbied hard (and successfully) for the Clinton administration to sever the link between China’s human rights record and renewal of China’s Most-Favored-Nation trade status….~ ~ ~

Whatever AIG is, it appears to be tied into that big, bipartisan, ugly network of intelligence, money laundering, Arkansas, and Communist China. . . .

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On Feb 10, 2000, American International Group reported that its net income for 1999 increased 18.1% to $5.06 billion. AIG Chairman M.R. Greenberg reported, among other things, that during 1999: … we opened our new life and general insurance branch office in Shenzhen, China, marking the fourth Chinese metropolitan area where AIG has established wholly-owned, full-service insurance operations.”

“During the fourth quarter, we also entered into an agreement to purchase a 70 percent equity interest in a subsidiary of LIPPO LIFE, Indonesia’s leading life insurance company. The new joint venture, renamed AIG Lippo Life, is the largest life company in Indonesia, marketing life, pension and health products through a multi-channel distribution network. . . .”

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For more, GO TO > > > The Un-American Insurance Group ; The Indonesian Connection


 

Arkansas Development and Finance Administration (ADFA) – From The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: . . .

In 1989 the Arkansas Committee started investigating the alleged nexus of drug-running, money-laundering, and covert activities linked to Mena Airport.

The Arkansas Committee’s lead advocate, Mark Swaney, came to suspect that Dan Lasater and others were laundering funds through the Arkansas Development and Finance Administration (ADFA), a state-controlled investment bank created by Governor Clinton in 1985 to provide “low interest finance for economic development.” . . .

There was no need for Clinton to create ADFA. The state already had the Arkansas Housing Development Agency and the Arkansas Industrial Development Corp (later made famous by a clerk named Paula Corbin Jones). . . .

ADFA gave Clinton a patronage machine that answered to the Governor alone. . . .

As James Ring Adams reported in The American Spectator, it was designed with the help of a Boston consultant named Belden Daniels and allowed Clinton to tap into the huge reserves of the Arkansas Teachers Retirement System. At the same time, Clinton steered bond business to Lasater, and low interest industrial loans to the others in the Arkansas group — Seth Ward, for instance, the father-in-law of Webster Hubbel — frequently without due diligence and over the objections of the agency staff.

“They were giving money away like candy to the insiders,” said Mark Swaney. . . .

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Funds had been flowing offshore. ADFA had done at least $250 million worth of business with the Fuji Bank, Grand Cayman Branch . . . It was a nice piece of arbitrage profiteering. . . . Whether the money…came back from Grand Cayman is anybody’s guess….

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In 1987 ADFA borrowed $5.04 million from Japan’s Sanwa Bank to buy stock in a Barbados company called Coral Reinsurance….

The activities of Coral Reinsurance triggered an investigation by the Delaware Insurance Department in 1992, which caused panic at ADFA….

Swaney believes that ADFA was created by Clinton as an instrument for Dan Lasater. What we know is that Lasater wrote at least eight letters to Bill Clinton recommending people for the board of ADFA. Most of them were appointed.

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From FreeRepublic, 12/14/98: Topic: Whitewater Larry Nichols – The Clinton Chronicles:

“There was a hundred million a month in cocaine coming in and out of Mena, Arkansas. They had a problem. They were doing so much money in cocaine, a hundred million, that you create a problem in a little state like Arkansas. How do you clean $100 million a month?”

ADFA until 1989 never banked in Arkansas. What they would do is they would ship the money down to Florida, a bank in Florida which later would be connected to BCCI. They would ship money to a bank in Atlanta, Georgia, which, by the way, was later connected to BCCI. They’d ship to Citicorp in New York, which would send the money overseas. And there was an interesting bank in Chicago. And that bank, by the way, is partially owned by Dan Rostenkowski….

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From: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: . . . ADFA and its directors began either stonewalling or responding with half-truths to questions from the public and media alike, leading to Freedom-of-Information Act lawsuits by a citizens group called the Arkansas Committee. This eventually forced ADFA to turn over at least partial records, which it had tried to hold back. Among these was an internal letter from ADFA’s accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche, revealing some gross irregularities. . .

This letter was intended solely for ADFA’s Board of Directors. After reading the letter, it is easy to see why ADFA wanted to keep it secret. It underscores why ADFA is now known worldwide as “Bill Clinton’s piggy bank.”

Among the irregularities cited were:

(1) The board did not even conform to its own policies regarding review of its loans. . . .

(2) Loans, when reviewed, were reviewed — without oversight — by the same person who had recommended the loan in the first place.

(3) Insider loans were approved even after they were rejected by the ADFA staff.

(4) Few files contained audited financial statements — a gross deviation from normal banking procedure for loans.

(5) The rating system for loan qualification was flawed because it invited favoritism for insiders.

Despite these criticisms, Deloitte & Touche, one of the world’s foremost accounting firms, signed off on the audit anyway.

But even more shocking, and supportive of money-laundering charges, was a 1988 audit by the same firm saying that ADFA had funds of unknown origin….


 

Bank of AmericaFrom The Buying of the President (1996): . . . While the interstate [banking] bill was moving through conference, on Aug 23, 1994, Clinton and [Hugh] McColl (president of NationsBank) were present at the White House Community Development bill signing, and the president declared, “Today, I’m proud to announce commitment from two of the nation’s leading banks to help us in this effort–$25 million from NationsBank and $50 million from Bank of America over the next four years.”

Five weeks later the interstate banking bill was law; the $3.5 million loan to the DNC came two weeks afterwards….


 

China Resources Enterprise – From The Progressive Review: Clinton Scandal Clips Part 15Four of Panama’s ports are controlled by a company partially owned by Hutchinson-Whampoa Ltd., which in turn is owned by Li Ka-Shing, a billionaire so close to the Chinese power structure that he was offered the governorship of Hong Kong.

Another owner of the Panamanian ports is China Resources Enterprise, which has been called an “agent of espionage” by Senator Fred Thompson.

CRE is also a partner of the Lippo Group, owned by the Riady family that has played a central if mysterious role in the rise of William Clinton. According to congressional testimony by ex-JCS chief Admiral Thomas Moorer, Hutchinson-Whampoa has the right to pilot all ships through the Panama Canal, including US Naval vessels. . . .


 

CITIC /CITIFOR – China International Trade and Investment Company owns 37 companies including those in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Germany,.with representative offices in Tokyo, New York and Frankfurt.

CITIFOR Inc is CITIC’s wholly-owned Canadian sister company, located in Seattle, WA. Founded in 1984, CITIFOR’s business is primarily concentrated in the timber industry with investments in timber and timberlands in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Chile and Russia.

The head of CITIC Hong Kong is Larry Yung, the son of China’s vice-president.

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From The American Spectator, June, 1997: While America Sleeps, by Kenneth R. Timmerman:

BONDS AWAY. . . .

Americans wanting to invest in the modernization of mainland China’s military factories have another vehicle for placing their money effectively. Now they can buy Chinese government bonds in U.S. dollars.

And the man who opened the door for China’s entry into the U.S. bond market is Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

As managing director of Goldman Sachs just prior to coming to Washington in 1993, Rubin paved the way for a $250-million bond offering by CITIC, the Chinese government’s lead overseas investment arm, which is chaired by arms dealer Wang Jun.

In all, since the Clintons came to Washington, CITIC has floated four bond issues in U.S. dollars, attracting $800 million.

CITIC Chairman Wang Jun came to the United States in February 1996 originally to discuss further bond offerings with Clinton crony Ernest Green at Lehman Brothers in New York. His coffee at the White House was set up by Green and Charlie Trie to concide with the bond talks.

Roger W. Robinson, Jr., a Reagan administration National Security Council aide and an investment banker by trade, has been tracking China’s penetration of the U.S. bond market. He has found 36 Chinese-government bond issues in the U.S. since 1989, which have raised $6.725 billion for Chinese government-owned banks and trading companies.

All but four of the bonds, worth $420 million, have been issued since Bill Clinton became president.

“There is a tremendous public consciousness on the part of large institutional bond-holders,” Robinson says. “Groups like the California Teachers Retirement Fund or the ATT Pension Fund were instrumental in boycotting South African financial instruments during the apartheid regime. Do they want to be financing the delivery of AK-47 assault rifles to L.A. street gangs? Because that’s what these CITIC bonds are financing.”

Robinson warns that there is currently no screening of the U.S. bond market to make sure that “undesirables” are excluded from raising cash in the U.S. “Without some kind of national-security screening, we’re going to have terrorists, drug smugglers, hi-tech thieves, and the Chinese military borrowing on the U.S. bond market because it’s simply the most accessible and liquid market in the world.”

“The bond market is going to become the principal funding agency for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century. This is a massive global threat to the security of this country.”

He also warns that in the event of a default by CITIC or one of the many local Chinese state-owned banks … they will have to be bailed out — by the U.S. taxpayer!

And the risk is real. A Wall Street Journal editorial recently revealed that 30% of China’s Gross National Product is debt. “So it is simply not true that China is credit-worthy,” Robinson believes. “If they default, you and I default.”

The Chinese government has floated six bonds in the U.S. since Oct 14, 1993, under its own name, raising $2.7 billion. The Bank of China, which transferred cash to Charlie Trie, issued four bonds worth $850 million.

Local banks in Shandong, Shenzhen, Guangdong, Hainan, Shanghai, and Zhuhai have also issued bonds that raised over $1 billion. A number of these bonds, Robinson believes, have been used to fund overseas purchases of dual-use technology needed for military projects.

“China’s military modernization, its blue-water navy, its new generation of ballistic missile submarines and ICBMs are all going to be paid for with supplier credits. And unless we do something to stop it, these are going to come from the U.S. bond market.”…

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From Reason Magazine Aug/Sept, 1999: An Interview Between Reason Magazine and Archibald Cox:

Reason: President Clinton later on did seem very interested in China, particularly in making domestic connections with Chinese who helped fund his soft money presidential campaign. What role, if any, do you think these political connections played in his lack of interest in national security threats from China.

Cox: No one who watches television would think that President Clinton isn’t concerned about gun control. Why then would he meet with Wang Jun, a notorious arms dealer whose company at that very time was under indictment for smuggling over 2,000 AK-47’s into San Francisco?

Reason: When did he meet with him?

Cox: That was one of those notorious coffees in 1996.

Reason: Why did the campaign-contribution connection fall out of the report?

Cox: It did not. We included all of the original material we were able to generate on those points. And specifically the dots that had heretofore been unconnected are now a bright red line leading directly from PLA military intelligence to the 1996 campaign.

Gen. Ji [Shengde], who is the head of the Military Intelligence Division of the People’s Liberation Army, met with PLA Col. Liu [Chaoying] and [Democratic Party donor] Johnny Chung in Hong Kong. It was agreed that $300,000 would be wired to Chung three days later.

That amount of money was wired from Col. Liu’s account at Citibank to Chung’s account in Hong Kong. On that same day, $300,000 was wired into Colonel Liu’s Citibank account from CITIC [China International Trade and Investment Company, headed by Wang Jun and described in the Cox Report as “the most powerful and visible corporate conglomerate in the PRC”]….


 

Coral ReinsuranceFrom: The Strange Clinton – Rubin – Insurance Industry Connection. 6/13/97: . . . As American Deposit Corp. learned the hard way … strong ties exist between Clinton, Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin and the insurance industry.

Insurance industry representatives secretly approached the IRS to issue damaging proposed regulations to the Retirement CD and the Treasury Department pressured the IRS to acquiesce. Some say that campaign fund contributions were at the source of this action. . .

But was this the first time Clinton, Rubin and the insurance industry acted together for a dubious project? Apparently not. A strange and convoluted story begins in Arkansas in 1987.

In that year American International Group, Inc., headed by Maurice Greenburg, founded an offshore reinsurance company in Barbados. For several years, AIG denied being affiliated with Coral Reinsurance, as it was named. . . .

While Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, he founded the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, a government agency empowered to issue industrial bonds. The ADFA came to the attention of the Arkansas Committee, a group investigating rumors of drug trafficking out of the Mena, Arkansas airport.

Observing the adage, “follow the money,” they were lead to the ADFA. And the ADFA had some strange dealings. . . .

The ADFA borrowed $5 million from the Chicago branch of Sanwa Bank. It then purchased slightly over $5 million in stock of Coral Reinsurance, the Barbados insurance company founded by AIG. Coral then deposited the $5 million, along with $55 million in other investors’ stock purchase funds, in Sanwa Bank. The net result was the bank loaned the money and got it all back in days. . . .

This strange deal was the scheme on Goldman Sachs, headed at the time by Robert Rubin.

Goldman also provided guarantees to ADFA, such a put agreement should ADFA not be permitted to own the stock. (It is against the Arkansas Constitution for the government to own stock in corporations.) . . .

Some reporters draw inferences from several facts: Barbados has lax banking regulations and tight corporate secrecy laws preventing outsiders from learning corporate ownership; and when ADFA was set up, the legislation prohibited the state auditors from examining the agency.

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From The Washington Weekly , Mar. 17, 1997:

THE BARBADOS CONNECTION: CORAL REINSURANCE

After Reps. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala) and Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) voted to extend Most-Favored-Nation trade status for China last year, they received an invitation from the China Government to tour major cities in Red China. And who paid for their trip?

Not only the Chinese Government, but also American International Group, with money laundered through the National Committee on United States-China Relations and the Freeman Foundation, reported the newspaper Roll Call last week. . . .

American International Group is headquartered in Barbados and operates Coral Reinsurance.

Where have we heard that name before? Oh yes! In Arkansas. In 1986 the notorious Arkansas Development Finance Authority borrowed $5,000,000 from a Japanese bank’s Chicago branch as part of a $60,000,000 deal to purchase stock in Coral Reinsurance.

The deal was brokered by Goldman Sachs, whose head Robert Rubin is now Treasury Secretary. On the board of directors of AIG is one Lloyd Benson, former Treasury Secretary….

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For More on the Web: Gray Money


 

Dixie Mafia – From: The Secret Life of Bill Clinton : . . . Banned by edict from smuggling drugs, the Italian American Mafia missed out on the most lucrative crime wave of the twentieth century. It was left to others to profit from the $100 billion a year market in cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamines. Those best placed, by geography and criminal tradition, were the loose-knit groupings of the South, known to law enforcement as the “Dixie Mafia.”…

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Less famous than the Cosa Nostra, the Dixie Mafia was, and still is, far more dangerous. During a ten year period from 1968 to 1978 when the Italian Americans were in the headlines for a spree of thirty murders, their redneck counterparts quietly dispatched 156 victims…

“There wasn’t a well from Mississippi to West Texas that didn’t have a dead body floating in it,” said Armistead. . . .

~ ~ ~

The Dixie Mafia formed a ring of interlocking interests that covered Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, and above all Arkansas. . . .

The coat-and-tie yuppies of the modern Dixie Mafia are the children and grandchildren of bootleggers, a provenance they share with Bill Clinton. The trade has evolved. Clinton’s grandfather used to serve moonshine from behind the counter of his store in Hope. Now the business is a high-tech operation involving fleets of aircraft, off-shore banking, and deep reach into the U.S. federal government. . . .

Among the famous names of the Arkansas oligarchy that jumped out from page after page of criminal intelligence files was Don Tyson, the billionaire president of Tyson Foods and the avuncular patron of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. . . .

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From The Progressive Review: The Clinton Stories the Media Still Won’t Cover —

THE DIXIE MAFIA AND DRUGS . . .



 

        In early 1995, the Washington Post suppresses Roger Morris and Sally Denton’s story on The Crimes of Mena, apparently a decision of top management.

        Former FBI director William Sessions says the [Vince] Foster probe was “compromised” from the beginning. Sessions had been fired by Bill Clinton the day before Foster’s death.

        Janet Reno refuses to let independent prosecutor Dan Smaltz expand his probe into areas that might lead to exposing major drug dealing in Arkansas.

        The Tampa Tribune tells its readers about an ex-Mena CIA operative who backs up stories concerning the Arkansas drug/Contra trade in the 1980s. . . . The agent, now in jail, claims he bailed out of black ops after ex-CIA chief William Colby asked him to “neutralize” an American citizen. . . .

        While the press has no problem reporting … about Barry Seal (or Dan Quayle for that matter), it has not told the public about the existence of a police tape of Roger Clinton describing his own cocaine trafficking and saying of his brother, “Got to get some for my brother; he’s got a nose like a vacuum cleaner.” . . .

For more on the web: Rise UP! The Crimes of Mena; Dubious Deals in Arkansas


 

Export-Import Bank – From The Progressive Review:

Clinton Scandal Clips Part 15Investors Business Daily reports: President Clinton’s appointee to a critical seat on the board of the Export-Import Bank has close ties to a crooked fund-raiser linked to China. China is Ex-Im Bank’s second largest customer.

During the Clinton years, the bank has given more than $5.5 billion in loans to China to help it buy U.S. technology and equipment for power plants and other projects. The loans were OK’d despite proof that China sold nuclear-related equipment to Pakistan and other countries that worry U.S. security experts. The White House hopes the Senate will quickly confirm D. Vanessa Weaver to fill one of three vacant seats on Ex-Im’s five-member board….

Weaver and [John] Huang exchanged at least 26 phone calls over a 17-month period in 1994 and 1995, records show….

With administration approval, AT&T sells its secure communications system to the Chinese Army. Thus the Chinese Army gets the secure communications equipment that even the American public can’t. The Chinese call it “Hua Mei.”

Further, the Chinese reconfigure the Hua Mei technology and re-export it to Iraq where it is used for air defense against US aircraft.

While Huang’s name has not been directly linked to this project, it was the sort of thing his Chinese bosses were up to. Among those who were involved along the way was William Hambrecht, a major investor in Salon magazine, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senator Adlai Stevenson….

See also: AT&T


Federal Reserve Board – From Corporate Predators, by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman (with an introduction by Ralph Nader):

 

BOOM AND BAILOUT

So, you’re John Meriwether, the bond trader who was forced to leave Salomon Brothers in 1991 after a trading scandal.

And you leave to start Long Term Capital. And for the first couple of years, you are making 30 percent return on investment for your millionaire friends. And they are loving it. And then you lose the $4 billion.

Who do you call?

The Federal Reserve Board– bailout central.

So it was that on a late August day, New York Federal Reserve Bank President William J. McDonough received a phone call from Meriwether and bailout fix-it man supreme David W. Mullins, Jr, the architect of the bailout of the savings and loans under President Bush.

Big institutional investors in the hedge fund-Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., Bear, Stearns & Co., and Bankers Trust Corpwere also calling begging for a bailout.

These companies were of course seeking to save their own skin. But McDonough put forth the official spin before a House of Representatives Committee earlier this month.

“Everyone I spoke to that day volunteered concern about the serious effect the deteriorating situation of Long Term Capital could have on world markets,” McDonough said.

Ah, yes, world markets. And so McDonough calls Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and a bailout is arranged.

Former Lehman Brothers partner and current financial columnist Michael Thomas is right– it was improper for the Federal Reserve to arrange a private bailout. If Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs want to protect their behinds by arranging for a private bailout, fine. But the Fed should have stayed out of it.

Or, as former Fed Chair Paul Volcker asked in a speech, “Why should the weight of the Federal Government be brought to bear to help out a private investor?”

“Capitalists now all want it one way,” Thomas says. “They want to do whatever the hell they feel like, but let someone else pay. It’s called privatizing the profits and socializing the risks.”

Hedge funds, which make complicated financial bets with millions and billions of borrowed dollars and are almost totally unregulated, do indeed pose risks to the economy. Because of the nature of their gambles, they can lose huge amounts of money, leaving investors holding the bag (absent a bailout).

Even worse, they leverage borrowed money to exert extraordinary influence over markets, and cause serious problems when they overreact en masse to new fads. (That’s a big part of why the value of the dollar has plunged recently, for example.)

But these are reasons why hedge funds must be subjected to regulatory discipline– not an argument for why high rollers deserve government-orchestrated bailouts.

With the global financial system in frenetic disarray, Long Term Capital is not likely to be the last financial player to go bust. If the government is not able to act quickly to rein in hedge funds and other unbridled financial activities, it should at least declare that no bailouts will follow … Each bailout makes the next one more likely, as investors are given implicit assurances that they will not have to face the down side of risky bets gone bad.

The gamblers in Atlantic City don’t get this kind of treatment. Neither should those on Wall Street….


 

Fuji Bank – From Compromised – Clinton, Bush and the CIA: . . . Under Bill Clinton’s leadership, Arkansas has set in place permanent money-laundering industry concealed as their everyday municipal bond business. They do not care where funds come from, in fact, dirtier is better. . .

Regardless of the method used by the money launderer, the common denominator is finding a bank or financial institution along with people in a position of power who are willing to break the law and not ask questions. Money laundering, by definition, involves commingling clean and dirty funds and making both indistinguishable. Arkansas offered this environment under the umbrella of its cooperative bond business.

An example of this is the deposit of $50 million offshore by the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority (ADFA) with Fuji Bank, Ltd., in the Cayman Islands on Dec 29, 1988. This was a very strange transaction, indeed, for an organization chartered and founded on lending money for investment and development within Arkansas, not for moving large sums of funds offshore.

Fuji Bank’s name reappears as the bank that purchased the industrial development loan of POM, Inc., the parking meter company in Russellville, Arkansas, owned and operated by the Ward family . . .

By purchasing the loan from First American Bank of Memphis, Tenn., Fuji effectively retired the loan, and the Ward family presumably continued making their payments directly to Fuji. This was curious behavior on behalf of POM, since they were giving up a long-term, fixed-rate, low-interest loan issued by ADFA, which had a guarantor, the bank in Memphis, to back it up.

Curious behavior, indeed, to forfeit a loan that has a co-signor, since this action would normally reduce a company’s line of credit. Unless, of course, the objective was to move the loan offshore, where repayment ledgers are nearly impossible to attain.

Webb Hubbell, Hillary Clinton’s law partner, was POM’s corporate attorney at the time.

ADFA, being a state authority, is not legally required to publicly divulge its records. And, therefore, the millions of dollars that flow through the Arkansas agency’s coffers can be shrouded in secrecy . . .


General Electric – The world’s most valuable corporation.

 

From Corporate Predators: Can General Electric save America’s treasures?

Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to think so.

But Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner is not so sure.

On July 14, GE Chair and CEO Jack Welch basked in the glow of media flashbulbs and television camera lights as he joined First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in announcing a $5 million contribution by his company to help preserve and restore Thomas A. Edison’s “invention factory” in West Orange, New Jersey.

The donation was made as part of Hillary Clinton’s “Save America’s Treasures” tour, intended to highlight and raise money to address the disrepair into which many U.S. historic sites, buildings and objects have fallen.

Though it did not manage to achieve the media bounce of Ralph Lauren’s $10 million contribution to repair the “Star Spangled Banner,” … GE did garner substantial publicity for its contribution. Notably, GE’s network, NBC, did a segment on the “Today Show”on the Save America’s Treasure tour and GE’s generous participation.

Just days before Welch joined Hillary Clinton for their joint photo-op, EPA Administrator Carol Browner was on a more solemn mission in Albany, New York.

In an unprecedented move during her tenure at the EPA, Browner appeared before a state legislative committee. Testifying before the Environmental Conservation Committee of the New York Assembly, she condemned a GE advertising campaign which she said is endangering the public health.

A million tons of GE-dumped PCBs (polychorinate biphenyls) now line the bottom of a 200-mile stretch of Hudson River, making it the largest Superfund site in the United States. GE is aggressively campaigning against a potential government-ordered cleanup of the area, which could cost the corporation hundreds of millions of dollars.

“GE would have the people of the Hudson River believe, and I quote, ‘Living in a PCB-laden area is not dangerous,'” Browner testified. “The science tells us the opposite is true.” The federal government banned PCBs in 1977 because they are believed to cause cancer and contribute to a range of other health problems.

Browner worried that the GE public relations offensive would undermine health official efforts to deter people from eating fish from the river. PCB contamination has rendered the fish hazardous.

Surely no company doing so much to destroy the natural environment deserves the smiley-face association with a First Lady-led crusade to “Save America’s Treasures.”

The stark contrast between preserving Edison’s “invention factory” and the science-out-of-control PCB trashing of the Hudson River highlights more than GE’s duplicity. It sheds light on the dangers of corporate philanthropy, especially in private-public partnerships. . . .

Typically, the public relations payback on the corporate gift far outdistances the actural amount spent on the corporate contribution.

Too often, the positive PR happy-talk drowns out voices raising concerns about serious corporate misdeeds.

The dynamic is most troubling when the company gains credit for contributing relatively small dollar amounts to quintessentially public functions– like restoring historic sites or funding schools– that simultaneously help justify systemic government under-funding in those areas.

Let the federal government restore Thomas Edison’s invention factory and other historic sites.

Let General Electric clean up the Hudson River.

* * *

NEW > > > From The New York Times, 11/29/00: G.E. SUES OVER SUPERFUND LAW –

General Electric Company filed a lawsuit yesterday asking that provisions of the federal Superfund toxic waste cleanup law be declared invalid.

G.E. is arguing that the Superfund’s provisions give the Environmental Protection Agency “uncontrolled authority to order intrusive remedial projects of unlimited scope and duration in non-emergency situations.”

The company is battling with environmentalists and regulators over the cleanup of the upper Hudson River, where the company discharged polycholorinated biphenyls (PCB) decades ago.

Environmentalists and thePataki administration want the company to dredge the river, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to make a decision on the dredging in the next few weeks.

* * *

From The Buying of the President : . . . Defense Dollars and Deal Making. Despite the president’s previous anti-war inclinations and his much-publicized avoidance of military service, President Clinton has consistently backed policies favorable to the defense industry. In February of 1995, the administration announced that for the first time it would consider the financial state of U.S. defense contractors when negotiating overseas arms sales.

The administration has also pushed to relax export restrictions of high-tech equipment used to manufacture sophisticated weapons systems. Part of what has ingratiated the Clinton administration to weapons manufacturers has been the presence of William J. Perry, first as Deputy Secretary and later as Secretary of Defense. . . .

One of Deputy Defense Secretary Perry’s extra base hits came when he and then-Defense Undersecretary of Acquisitions and Technology John Deutch quietly agreed to provide U.S. defense contractors with taxpayer-financed subsidies for mergers and acquisitions.

That was a dramatic shift in Pentagon policy. Usually, such issues are taken before Congress. Instead, Deutch, in a July 21, 1993 memo, reversed the Pentagon’s ban on the subsidies and underwrote $270 million worth of TSA client Martin Marietta’s acquisition of General Electric’s Aerospace Division. Just seven weeks earlier, on June 3, 1993, industry CEO’s, including Martin Marietta’s Norman Augustine, had sent a letter to Perry and Deutch asking for DOD funding of “restructuring costs” for mergers and acquisitions. . . .

Three weeks before the Augustine letter, General Electric, which had just sold Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) , gave $25,000 in soft money to the DNC. Between 1993 and 1994 the company donated $101,500 to the party. . . .

For more, GO TO > > > General Electric


 

Hughes Electronics – From Betrayal–How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security, by Bill Gertz:

President Clinton has turned upside down President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about a too-powerful military-industrial complex. Using the end of the Cold War as cover, and to please corporate bigshots targeted for campaign contributions, Clinton has loosened export controls on several high-technology sectors, including U.S. high-speed computer manufacturers, software makers, and communications satellite makers who want to sell to China. . . .

Two such companies are Loral Space & Communications, Ltd. and Hughes Electronics, both the subject of a federal investigation to determine how they passed embargoed militarily-useful rocket technology to Beijing without licenses. . . .

Hughes was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, who was named head of the influential President’s Export Council after lobbying vigorously — and successfully — for the easing of U.S. National security export controls. Shortly after the “decontrols” took place, American supercomputers began showing up in both Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons development centers — helping to build nuclear arms that migght one day be turned against the United States.

* * *

This betrayal of American national security so angered some intelligence, defense, and foreign polity officials that they responded in the only way they knew how: by disclosing to the press some of the nation’s most secret intelligence.

The disclosures ranged from secret Chinese arms sales and intelligence operations against the United States to highly detailed reports linking Russian officials with secret arms sales to Iran, from sensitive internal negotiations with Moscow to dangerous foreign weapons developments that have sharply contrasted with Clinton’s misguided belief that the world is growing more peaceful.

Many of these officials, whose anonymity is their only protection from political retaliation, have been criticized by administration political appointees for risking national security by disclosing this information. . . .

But the fact that these unsung heros have jeopardized their careers to expose wrongdoing only underlines the great dangers to our country brought about by the Clinton administration.

* * *

In the appendix of his book Betrayal, author Bill Gertz includes a copy of a letter dated 29 Oct 1993, from C. Michael Armstrong, chairman of Hughes, to William Clinton:

Dear Mr. President:

You asked me to support your economic package. I did.

You asked me to work hard to improve the California economic environment through legislative change. I did.

You asked me to support your changes to export policy and controls. I did.

You asked me to support NAFTA more strongly in California. I am.

I am respectfully requesting your involvement to resolve the China sanctions at the upcoming Seattle APEC meeting November 18-20. PRC State Councilor Song has told me they are “positive to do this”. It’s a tragic situation that potentially thousands of California people could lose their jobs, hundred of millions of dollars of American business lost and a potential strategic alliance forced on our competition in order to send a foreign policy message.

The economic consequences are already beginning to turn into reality. We have recently learned that the Chinese government is now in the process of sourcing two Hughes satellites to the Germans (DASA) that are worth $80-100M and hundreds of California jobs. In addition, we are spending $250,000 a day on another satellite that could be canceled. Due to the circumstances, this will be public and political shortly.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

C. Michael Armstrong

cc: R. Brown; W. Brown; D. Feinstein; A. Gore; J. Harman; P. Wilson

* * *

Michael Armstrong sent a second letter on 16 Nov 1993 to Samuel Berger, Deputy Asst to the President for National Security Affairs, and Leon Fuerth, Asst to the Vice President for National Security Affairs:

Subject: Visit 11/16/93 at Hughes with PRC Vice Premier Qian Qichen

This will confirm my conversation Tuesday AM 11/16/93 with PRC Vice Premier Qian Qichen.

I briefly described that in meetings with the Chinese and the USG over the past several months, it was obvious that both sides were in agreement i.e., (1) the Chinese are committed not to proliferate missile technology (2) and with the Chinese commitment, the USG is prepared to drop sanctions. The problem is who/when takes the first step.

I related the recent press reports that the U.S. was considering initiating a waiver, if serious negotiations could take place. Vice Premier Qian then asked “should we consider these press reports as representative of Washington position”. I replied yes, the press reports are valid. . . .

* * *

The author comments in his footnote: These 1993 letters from Hughes chairman C. Michael Armstrong to the White House reveal that he had discussions with Chinese officials about ending U.S. missile sanctions.


 

Lasater & CompanyFrom Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA: . . . The magnitude of the Agency’s (CIA) cash flow through Arkansas, which Reed witnessed firsthand in the mid-1980s, would not be revealed to any major degree until years later.

It was not until 1994 that Independent Counsel Robert Fiske, named to investigate the Whitewater affair, stumbled across a man in hiding who, himself, had not fully realized that he had been a conduit for money laundering on a massive scale. This man, Dennis Patrick, had been a pawn in the Agency’s money-laundering scheme, which had routed over $109 million through Patrick’s bond-trading account managed by Dan Lasater and his firm, Lasater & Company in Little Rock.

But Patrick’s story is far more bizarre than one of just money laundering. Law enforcement officials in Kentucky have documented three attempts on Patrick’s life.

The first involved an attempted “hit” on him in his rural Kentucky home by a professional assassin, who was carrying not only automatic weapons, but photos of Patrick, his family and his car. When arrested, the suspect, who was later convicted, also was carrying a $33,000 cash “down payment” from whoever hired him. The other two attempts involved fire bombings of his home.

The police, like Patrick, were baffled as to why a local court clerk like Patrick would be the target of a “hit,” and were forced to admit that they could not protect him. This forced him to flee with his family to Florida and assume a new identity….

His troubles began in 1985 after he had taken advantage of a personal relationship with a man named Steve Love, a ranking employee of the Lasater firm. At Love’s behest, Patrick had opened a trading account in Little Rock with the Lasater firm.

Patrick, a man of small means, was promised that for the use of his Social Security number on the account, he would be given a percentage of the profits earned on the account’s trading. In 1985, after receiving a $20,000 “commission,” he was called by Patsy Thomasson, now Clinton’s director for administration at the White House, and told he had to sign over control of the account because of pending litigation. Patrick refused, and his troubles began.

Little did he know that his account had created a telltale paper trail, which investigators could follow, showing the $109 million in trades . . . “My account showed more government securities trades than Chase Manhattan that year,” Patrick told author Terry Reed as he shook his head, dumbfounded that he had been had in such a big way.

“There’s certainly reason to kill a man for $100 million, or knowledge of $100 million,” he told Reed….

* * *

From: The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: . . . Nobody was more astonished by the vaulting ascent of Patsy Thomasson than Dennis Patrick, a truck driver in Florida. He was listening to the Rush Limbaugh radio show just before Christmas 1993 when suddenly her name cropped up in the midday commentary. “Rush made some comments about Patsy Thomasson removing some documents from Vince Foster’s office,” he said. “Then he started talking about Dan Lasater,” and I thought “My God!”

The names brought back a flood of confused memories. Dennis went rummaging through boxes of documents at home and unearthed a wad of trading receipts from a brokerage account in his name at Lasater & Company. . . .

The trading tickets showed that “his” account had been buying bonds worth tens of millions of dollars in late 1985 and early 1986. In a single trade on July 31, 1985, Patrick & Associates bought a block of Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation bonds for $6,763,373. On September 18 it bought a block for $9,492,216. It was constantly buying and selling Treasury Bills in blocks of $1 million or $2 million at a time, and GNMA pools for $5 million.

Dennis took the slips to a friend from church, a stockbroker, who told him that these trades were not options trades — where a small sum of money can control large amounts of stock. These were actual buys and sells, face-value transactions by a man who could write a check for $10 million. Lasater & Company had been running huge sums of money through a “straw” account in his name….

In the summer of 1985, he was contacted by an old college friend, Steve Love, who was making a fortune trading bonds at Lasater & Company in Little Rock. Love drove up in his Lamborghini, flush and exuberant, and began to lure Dennis into Lasater’s flashy, vulgar world. In July 1985 he invited Dennis to stay at one of Lasater’s luxurious beachfront condominiums in Destin, on the Gulf of Mexico. Out fishing, Dennis caught a Wahu, which Lasater & Company mounted at exorbitant expense and shipped back to Kentucky.

“When I look back now I realize that I was just a clay pigeon. I was being set up from the beginning,” said Dennis. “We were out on a fishing boat and Steve turned and said ‘I’ve got the inside on this. I can make you a great deal of money, Dennis, and it won’t cost you anything.'” It wasn’t something Dennis wanted to get mixed up in. His income as a Circuit Court Clerk was less than $25,000. … He was in no position to play with the big boys on the bond market. “I should have just said no, but they were being so generous I felt obligated. . . .”

A few days later Steve Love called up and said: “I’ve just earned you $20,000, but I need you to come down to Little Rock and open an account.” Dennis was ecstatic. He jumped into his pickup truck and raced to Arkansas. “My God, I would have ridden rollerblades to Little Rock for $20,000.”

At the Capitol Hotel he was treated like royalty and given the best suite. He was escorted to the First American Bank and $21,932 was deposited in his newly opened account. The money went through Dennis’s fingers like water. “I spent the lot,” he said, sheepishly. “My fear was that they were going to ask for it back.”

Years later Dennis was interrogated about this by the FBI agents working for the Whitewater investigation. Why did he take the money? “Hell,” he replied, “Hillary Clinton took a hundred thousand dollars without asking any questions, didn’t she? And she’s supposed to be one of the best lawyers in America.” This caused considerable mirth at the Office of the Independent Counsel. Indeed, the FBI agents interviewing him had to leave the room until they could control their laughter.

After a grueling cross-examination, FBI Agent Mike Smith told Dennis that he was “a vital witness in the overall investigation of Whitewater.” But he was never contacted again.

Dennis’s trip to Little Rock was a whirl of high-life extravagance, ending at a nightclub where Roger Clinton was playing in the band. “Good to have you aboard,” said Lasater, patting Dennis on the back and promising him that the firm would make him a rich man….

“I was already thinking of buying farms up in Kentucky,” confessed Dennis. He was hooked. When the firm offered to send a Lear jet to London, Kentucky, to fly him to Angel Fire for an elk hunt, he accepted eagerly. He asked whether he could invite his girlfriend Karen (later his wife), who was in the little town of Paducah. The aircraft was put completely at his disposal. So he called Karen from the air phone, and the Lear jet collected her off the tarmac.

During the flight Steve Love repeatedly tried to get Dennis to sign a set of papers that would formalize his relationship as a client of Lasater & Company, and Dennis kept trying to put it off. “I began to get a queasy feeling in my stomach, even then. I don’t know why.”…

Then the music stopped, as abruptly as it had begun. After the trip to Angel Fire, Dennis never heard another word from Lasater & Company….

* * *

For more on the net >>> Dubious Deals in Arkansas; Rise UP! The Crimes of Mena; Arkansas Justice. The Case Against Dan Harmon; Big News from Arkansas; Clinton Scandal Clips


 

Lippo Group – Indonesian conglomerate owned principally by the Riady family.

From BetrayalHow the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security:

Who was the biggest contributor to the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992? Not a corporation, not a labor union, not a Hollywood mogul, but Indonesian businessman James Riady and his wife, who gave $450,000 to elect Bill Clinton. . . .

During the final weeks of the campaign, the Riady family, its associates, and executives at Riady companies gave an additional $600,000 to the DNC and Democratic state parties. . . .

The patriarch of the business empire is Mochtar Riady . . .

Of his three sons, James was a permanent resident of the United States, Stephen was educated here, and Andrew worked in California . . .

All, however, have fled the United States. Any Riady employee with detailed knowledge of the family’s activities in the United Stated has likewise stolen away in the night. Even James Riady’s secretary has vanished. Only John Huang, the family’s former U.S. operative, remains in the United States — and he has pleaded the Fifth Amendment . . .

The Riady empire, centered on its Lippo Group, is, as one financial analysis in Jakarta describes it, “a carefully balanced house of cards.”

Newsweek has noted, “Moving cash around the globe in tangled webs of transactions has always been the Riady way,” and the Asian Wall Street Journal accuses the Riadys of “ramping” — buying large numbers of shares in their own companies in order to support prices. . . .

In 1977, Mochtar Riady tried to buy the National Bank of Georgia. He failed, but one of the brokers in the deal was Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas, who tried to interest a disappointed Riady in joining Stephens, Inc., one of America’s largest private investment banks … and one with which the Riadys would have an extended relationship, as we will see. Mochtar Riady agreed, and his son James, then aged twenty, arrived to intern at Stephens, Inc. . . .

Through Jackson Stephens, James Riady met a rising politician, Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton. Thus began a friendship that has lasted twenty years, and has spread a web of intrigue, financial corruption, and foreign influence into American government. . . .

* * *

From The Progressive Review – Clinton Scandal Clips Part 15 –

WALL STREET JOURNAL: … The FBI questioned [John] Huang extensively about whether Lippo fronted in the U.S. for Chinese government interests because of business ties between the company and government-controlled China Resources Corp., long a subject of interest for investigators.

In 1985, the FBI interrogation record says, China Resources allegedly paid for a Lippo-organized trip to Asia by then-Arkansas Governor Clinton. . . .

The FBI says … that China Resources was controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, the primary lobbying agent for most-favored-nation trade status for China.

Clinton Scandal Clips

For more, GO TO > > > The Indonesian Connection; Nests Along Wall Street


 

Lockheed MartinFrom The Laundrymen : . . . Crooks aren’t the only ones who launder money.

Corporations do it to avoid or evade taxes, to defraud their shareholders, to get around currency control regulations, and to bribe prospective clients. . . .

The Lockheed Corporation laundered $25.5 million through a Liechtenstein trust to pay off Italian politicians.

Lockheed also subscribed to the laundry facilities of Deak-Perera, then an important American foreign exchange dealer, to bribe Japanese politicians.

As Lockheed’s behest, Deak put $8.3 million into the washing cycle, then brought it out in 15 untraceable payments to a Spanish priest in Hong Kong, who hand-carried the cash in flight bags and orange crates to Lockheed’s customers in Tokyo. . . .

* * *

From Year of the RatHow Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash:

THE LOCKHEED-MARTIN AFFAIR

On May 30, 1998, a Chinese Long March rocket sent up a Lockheed-Martin telecommunications satellite called “ChinaStar1.”…

Over the course of the past eight years there has been a steady trend in satellite operators from Australians, to legitimate commercial interests in Hong Kong, to COSTIND in civilian clothes in Hong Kong, to something mysterious in Singapore, and now to a Beijing-registered, PRC government-owned firm, China Orient Satellite Telecommunications (COSAT).

According to published reports, COSAT is a joint venture between the Chlinese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and Polytechnologies.

Polytechnologies is the problem.

It is owned by the General Staff Department of the PLA and headed by Deng Xiaoping’s son-in-law.

POLY IS CHINA’S LEADING ARMS SMUGGLER AND THE CONDUIT FOR RUSSIAN ARMS TRANSFERS TO CHINA.

POLY WAS ALSO ONE OF TWO CHINESE ARMS SMUGGLERS CAUGHT BY U.S. CUSTOMS AGENTS TRYING TO SELL FULLY AUTOMATIC MACHINE GUNS TO U.S. DRUG GANGS IN 1996.

~ ~ ~

With regard to ChinaStar, Poly is alleged to have arranged with Lockheed to ensure that the satellite downlinks “passed through missile launching sites” in western China.

The operating assumption is that this is going to be primarily a command and control satellite for the PLA and for PLA business interests. . . .

We have asked American military sources about COSAT but have been told that it is “too sensitive” to discuss. . . .

If it was known to a foreign wire service as early as 1995 that COSAT was a front for the notorious Polytechnologies, why did the Clinton administration grant approval for the deal?

* * *

From If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates: . . .

Far from opposing the mating dances of corporate Goliaths, Washington actively encourages them.

In 1995, for example, the Pentagon was so pleased that the giant weapons maker Lockheed was going to take over competitor Martin Marietta that it ponied up nearly a billion of our tax dollars to pay for merger costs, including shelling out some $3 million in a bonus to Lockheed CEO Norman Augustine and $31 million more in bonuses to other top executives who engineered the merger– a combination that cost nineteen thousand workers their jobs.

The government payouts to Augustine and the other executives were orchestrated by then-secretary of defense William Perry and his deputy John Deutch– both of whom had previously been highly compensated consultants to Martin Marietta and had a close personal relationship with Augustine.

(An interesting footnote to this government-induced merger is that one fellow who lost his job as a result of it went away with a big grin on his face: Lamar Alexander–the hapless candidate for the Republican presidential nomination! He had been a well-paid, ex-board member. The merged company wanted a smaller board, so it paid Larmar $236,000 for agreeing not to serve on the new Lockheed Martin board.)

* * *

In June, 2000, it was announced that Secretary of Commerce William Daley was resigning his post to become AL GORE’S campaign manager. A few days later, it was announced that PRESIDENT CLINTON had named NORMAN MINETA his choice for the new Secretary of Commerce.

* * *

NORMAN MINETA, a former California congressman, is currently a

LOCKHEED MARTIN executive and lobbyist.

* * *

For more, GO TO > > > Tarnished Wings

For more on the net >>> Could a Traitor Do Any Worse Than Clinton?; Tenacious Tentacles; China Working Group


 

Long Term Capital Management – From Corporate Predators, by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman (with an introduction by Ralph Nader): Boom and Bailout . . .

So you are in charge of investing $4.5 billion.

You hire two Nobel Prize economists to generate computer models on how to invest in world bond markets.

You borrow billions more and put down a big chunk on a bet that differentials between certain world bond prices, out of kilter because of the global crunch, will revert to their historic levels.

They don’t.

You lose $4 billion. . . .

Boom and bust?

Don’t be silly. That’s capitalism for the small guy. If we go to Atlantic City or Las Vegas, make a bundle and then lose it all, then that’s boom and bust. For the rich, it’s boom and bailout.

So, you’re John Meriwether, the bond trader who was forced to leave Salomon Brothers in 1991 after a trading scandal.

And you leave to start Long Term Capital. And for the first couple of years, you are making 30 percent return on investment for your millionaire friends. And they are loving it. And then you lose the $4 billion.

Who do you call?

The Federal Reserve Board– bailout central.

So it was that on a late August day, New York Federal Reserve Bank President William J. McDonough received a phone call from Meriwether and bailout fix-it man supreme David W. Mullins, Jr, the architect of the bailout of the savings and loans under President Bush.

Big institutional investors in the hedge fund-Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., Bear, Stearns & Co., and Bankers Trust Corpwere also calling begging for a bailout.

These companies were of course seeking to save their own skin. But McDonough put forth the official spin before a House of Representatives Committee earlier this month.

“Everyone I spoke to that day volunteered concern about the serious effect the deteriorating situation of Long Term Capital could have on world markets,” McDonough said.

Ah, yes, world markets. And so McDonough calls Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and a bailout is arranged….

The gamblers in Atlantic City don’t get this kind of treatment. Neither should those on Wall Street….


 

Loral Space Systems – From Year of the Rat, by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II:

In the early morning hours of February 15, 1996, a Chinese Long March 3B space launch rose a short distance off the launch pad and then fell over onto a local village with an incredible explosion. According to an Israeli engineer who witnessed the disaster, thousands of corpses were loaded in dozens of trucks and buried in mass graves.” A COSTIND spokeswoman denied the Israeli’s charge….

But an American aerospace official we interviewed at the time confirmed the Israeli’s account….

Loral Space Systems, the builder of the February 15 satellite, had a problem. So did the Chinese launchers, who had such a poor reputation for reliability that they were uninsurable. Without insurance, Loral and the other U.S. firms could not use Chinese rockets to launch their satellites. Something had to be done to make the Chinese rockets more reliable if the satellite makers were going to save a dollar or two on launch fees….

On April 14, 1998, the New York Times ran a major story by investigative reporter, Jeff Gerth — “Grand Jury Probes 2 Firms’ Ties to China Missile Program” — that linked Loral and its partner, Hughes Electronics, to China….

Policy-makers in Washington take Gerth seriously, and by mid-May the White House was reeling. Under pressure from Congress, the National Security Council was forced to release a series of documents it would have preferred to keep secret. The substance of the allegations is as follows:

 

        Without obtaining a proper license from the State Department, engineers for Loral and Hughes helped the Chinese make their rockets reliable. Not only did the engineers solve the immediate cause of the February 15 accident, they also recommended improvements to other areas of weakness in the Long March.

        In May 1966, after the federal government found out about this, the U.S. Air Force did a classified study of the event and concluded that “United States national security has been harmed.”

        After a number of delays, the Justice Department began a federal grand jury investigation.

        In February 1998 the Justice Department was closing in on Loral and Hughes when President Clinton approved a waiver allowing the free transfer to China of the same technology that Loral and Hughes were accused of transferring under the table. This severely undercut Justice’s case.

        National Security Council documents show that, although at the time of the February waiver National Security Adviser Sandy Berger knew Loral’s conduct was “criminal, likely to be indicted, knowing and unlawful,” he did not recommend against what amounted to a get-out-of-jail-free card for Loral.

        Adding to the overall concern, the encoded portion of the Loral satellite was missing when the Chinese returned the debris from the February 1996 explosion. NBC has shown pictures of PLA soldiers picking through the crash site while U.S. officials were kept away for five hours.

        Finally, after the Loral-Hughes fixes, the Chinese launch program now has a perfect record for reliability.

Then there is the question of the money. Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz claims that it is only a “coincidence” that he, his family, and his employees were large donors to the Clinton-Gore cause and subsequently received favorable treatment from the administration . . .After Clinton and Gore were elected, they had something Schwartz wanted. In the summer of 1994 he wrote a check to the Democrats for $100,000. Two months later he was on Ron Brown’s trade delegation to China. Brown arranged meetings between Schwartz and Chinese officials. In the 1993-1994 cycle, Schwartz contributed a total of $112,000 to the Democrats. . . .

Then, in the 1995-1996 cycle, three things came together: (1) Clinton desperately needed money for Dick Morris’s TV advertising blitz, (2) Schwartz needed antitrust approval from the Clinton administration’s Justice Department for his spinoff of some parts of Loral to aerospace giant Lockheed, and (3) Schwartz desperately needed Clinton support (and later, cover) for his China satellite program. He wanted granting-authority for the export licenses he needed transferred to the user-friendly Commerce Department. He also wanted regular waivers of the Tiananmen sanctions on satellites, and, to avoid the proliferation sanctions, he had to persuade the Clinton administration to ignore Chinese missile sales to Iran. . . .

Everyone got what he wanted. Bernie wrote a lot of checks. His personal contributions rose to an amazing $586,000 in the Clinton-Gore reelection cycle of 1995-1996. As of May 1998 Schwartz had contributed $421,000 to the Democrats’ 1997-1998 campaign cycle. That makes him the number one contributor to the Democrats in both the 1995-1996 and 1997-1998 campaign cycles.

Between 1992 and 1998 he has given the Democratic Party $1,131,000. His family, his companies, and his executives have given another $881,565 to Democratic candidates. Finally, he has contributed $217,000 to the Democratic Leadership Conference, a Clinton-associated think tank.

Grand total: More than $2.2 million to the Clinton-Gore ticket. . . .

Bernie got his antitrust exemption for Loral. On March 12, 1996, Clinton overturned an October 1995 decision by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and transferred authority for satellite export licenses to the Commerce Department. Tiananmen waivers became routine for Clinton. . . .

America’s first line of defense against missile proliferation was dismantled. Loral would have gotten off the hook with the February 1998 Clinton waiver if somebody hadn’t tipped off Jeff Gerth of the New York Times….

Equally important, Clinton and Gore were reelected….

* * *

From: Betrayal-How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security: . . . President Clinton has turned upside down President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about a too-powerful military-industrial complex.

Using the end of the Cold War as cover, and to please corporate bigshots targeted for campaign contributions, Clinton has loosened export controls on several high-technology sectors, including U.S. high-speed computer manufacturers, software makers, and communications satellite makers who want to sell to China. . . .

Two such companies are Loral Space & Communications, Ltd. and Hughes Electronics, both the subject of a federal investigation to determine how they passed embargoed militarily-useful rocket technology to Beijing without licenses. At the time of the weapons technology transfers, Loral was headed by Bernard Schwartz, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Clinton and the Democratic Party. . . .

Shortly after the “decontrols” took place, American supercomputers began showing up in both Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons development centers — helping to build nuclear arms that migght one day be turned against the United States….

* * *

From The Buying of the President 2000: . . . It’s one thing to macromanage the national political party from the White House in unprecedented fashion, and unabashedly sell access to the White House, Air Force One, Camp David, and so forth, to the party’s biggest patrons. . . .

But what if a President’s naked malleability, his willingness to bend policies to money, actually violates and jeopardizes our national security? What if a U.S. company headed by the Democratic Party’s most generous individual patron in the 1990s violates federal laws involving national security? And after this happens, what if the company continues to get government contracts and even an export waiver signed by the President himself, worth millions of dollars– over the objections of the Justice Department prosecutors?

All of this did in fact occur, against a backdrop of espionage and intrigue, of dozens of illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals with no real assets, of nuclear secrets systematically stolen from our most advanced laboratories over many years, and all of it led back to one country– China.

America, however, has barely noticed. While most of the country was distracted by the news media’s frothy coverage of the Monica Lewinsky affair in 1998, investigative reporter Jeff Gerth and his colleagues at the New York Times uncovered something quite remarkable. Their findings prompted several government investigations and won the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. But hundreds of unanswered questions remain, and, unfortunately, no one seems particularly eager to answer them.

After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the export of American satellites for launching on Chinese rockets was suspended. Since then, such a commercial deal can occur only if the President of the United States concludes that the export is in the national interest and a waiver is granted.

In 1992, after President Bush had approved a waiver, and an American satellite was subsequently launched on a Chinese rocket, several senators, including Al Gore, wrote to the Bush Administration to complain that China was using the launchings to “gain foreign aerospace technology that would be otherwise unavailable to it.”

In the final days of the 1992 presidential campaign, Gore … charged that Bush “has permitted five additional American-built satellites to be launched by the Chinese. … President Bush really is an incurable patsy for those dictators he sets out to coddle.”

Unfortunately, far more than Chinese leaders were coddled by the Clinton-Gore Administration and the Democratic Party, under vastly more serious circumstances. More chilling, it appears there were no “patsies” involved, only consenting adults. In its first four years, the Clinton Administration awarded ten waivers to China, one more than Bush. But the number of waivers in not really the issue.

Almost as soon as Clinton and Gore took office in January 1993, the Chinese and U.S. corporations doing business in China began lobbying intensely to “educate” the new administration to look beyond the country’s poor human-rights record. In the 1992 election, dozens of U.S. companies active in China had given millions of dollars to the Democratic Party.

By May 1993 the President reversed his campaign posture and awarded China most-favored-nation trade status….

One of the most aggressive of those companies was Loral Space and Communications Ltd., which manufactures satellites and is headed by Bernard Schwartz. Loral and Schwartz have contributed at least $1.9 million to the Democratic Party since 1991…

In 1994, Schwartz was awarded one of the coveted seats on the late Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown’s trade mission to China. Brown helped Loral seal a multimillion-dollar mobile telephone satellite network deal in Beijing….

During the 1990s the Chinese government courted companies like Loral to launch its satellites. Both Chinese and American companies wanted the U.S. government to loosen its export licensing rules regarding satellites. Specifically, they wanted satellite export licensing decisions to be made by the Commerce Department, not the more restrictive State Department.

Billions of dollars were at stake— an estimated 14 commercial communications satellite launchings annually, each costing several hundred million dollars. C. Michael Armstrong, then the CEO of Hughes Electronics Corporation … met with then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and requested that satellites be regarded as commercial, as opposed to military, goods. Christopher agreed to conduct a detailed interagency review with officials from the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other agencies.

Soon, however, a majority of the interagency group, including Christopher, had concerns about the security ramifications; disagreeing with Loral, Hughes, and the aerospace industry generally. They thus recommended that satellites continue to be categorized as military on the State Department’s munitions list.

Commerce Secretary Brown, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a prolific fund-raiser, appealed the decision to the President.

Clinton sided with Loral and the industry, in a decision that was publicly announced in March 1996. The Commerce Department thus was entrusted with the national security issues surrounding satellite technology.

Worse, weeks earlier a Chinese rocket carrying a $200 million Loral satellite had crashed seconds after liftoff in southern China, killing and injuring civilians on the ground. The China Great Wall Industry Corporation the Chinese government’s missile, rocket, and launch provider— asked Loral to help pinpoint the cause of the accident.

In the collaboration that ensued, engineers from Loral and other companies identified potential causes that the Chinese engineers had overlooked. As a result, China may be able to improve the accuracy of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 12 of which are aimed at U.S. cities (including Honolulu and Pearl Harbor?)

The Pentagon and the CIA found that both Loral and Hughes had “greatly damaged U.S. national security.” The State Department warned White House aides that Loral had engaged in “unlawful” and “criminal” activity. The companies have steadfastly denied any wrongdoing. The Justice Department (under Janet Reno) began a formal criminal investigation into the matter.

Amid all this, in the chutzpah department, Loral had another satellite deal pending with the Chinese, and once again wanted a waiver from the President. “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, and other administration officials recommended that Loral be given the green light, although they acknowledged in a memo to Clinton that such a decision might be perceived as letting Loral “off the hook on criminal charges for its unauthorized assistance to China’s ballistic missile program.” Meanwhile, Justice Department prosecutors warned that approving the waiver request would seriously jeopardize the Loral investigation.

On Feb 18, 1998, the President approved the deal and signed the waiver. . . .

The wheeling and dealing were not occurring in a vacuum. Months earlier, in July 1997, the President had been briefed that China, through years of spying and outright theft, had obtained some of the most sensitive U.S. military technology, including nuclear weapons design.

And the Democratic Party was deeply embroiled in scandal over illegal contributions from China, part of a systematic campaign to influence the 1996 U.S. presidential election. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee had recently found “strong circumstantial evidence that the Government of the People’s Republic of China was involved in funding, directing, or encouraging some of these foreign contributions.”

Clinton had been criticized for months for repeatedly stonewalling requests from the Senate committee and the news media for information, and more than 45 witnesses had fled the country or invoked the Fifth Amendment. The President and his administration, the Senate committee found, “took no action whatsoever to persuade such individuals to cooperate.”

More foreboding, 80 percent of the illegal foreign contributions had been raised by two longtime Clinton friends, John Huang and Charlie Trie. Huang took the Fifth and Trie fled to China. (Huang later decided to cooperate with the Justice Dept and pleaded guilty to one felony charge. Trie voluntarily surrendered to U.S. authorities in Feb 1998 and pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws the following May.)

At the very least, it strains credulity that any President, including Clinton, would have approved the multimillion-dollar waivers to this company under all these troubling circumstances in no money had passed into the party coffers. In fact, well over $1 million was lavished upon the Democratic Party….

In 1999, a select House committee chaired by Representative Christopher Cox, a Republican from California, produced an 872-page report that was unanimously approved by its five Republican and four Democratic members . . . The committee found that China’s “acquisition efforts [of American military technology] over the past two decades” had been a “serious, sustained” activity.

The committee specifically criticized Loral and Hughes for passing “illegally transmitted” information to the Chinese that was “useful for the design and improved reliability” of future Chinese ballistic missiles.

The report said that the Clinton Administration’s policy of permitting businesses to police their own technology sales abroad has not worked, because the national security interest “simply may not be related to improving a corporation’s ‘bottom line.'”

But it sure worked well for the companies, China, and the Democratic Party….

* * *

And, to this date, Janet Reno still refuses to appoint a special counsel to look into the 1996 Clinton/Gore fundraising because “in her opinion” she sees no credible evidence that any wrongdoing was intentionally committed. Gore was merely unaware that the Buddhist temple affair was a political fund-raiser.

* * *

NOW, IF ALL THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO RUFFLE YOUR FEATHERS — ARE YOU AWARE OF THE FACT THAT FRANCE”S AXA FINANCIAL COMPANY IS THE NUMBER ONE INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR IN LORAL SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS . . .

AND THAT, AFTER MORE THAT A HALF-CENTURY, IT HAS FINALLY BEEN DISCLOSED THAT AXA FINANCIAL MAY HAVE OBTAINED MUCH OF ITS WEALTH AT THE EXPENSE OF NAZI HOLOCAUST VICTIMS!

AND DID YOU KNOW THAT AXA FINANCIAL IS ALSO THE NUMBER ONE INVESTOR IN GOLDMAN SACHS?

* * *

For more >>> Tenacious Tentacles

For more >>> Could a Traitor Do Any Worse Than Clinton?

For more >>> Dan Burton’s Committee on Government Reform – Pled or Fled List

For more >>> John Chung Tells of Chinese Donations

For more >>> Tripping with Secretary Ron Brown

For more >>> China Working Group


 

NationsBankFrom The Buying of the President: . . . In Dec 1994, the Wall Street Journal reported, “The Democratic party expects to close … with a near-record financial debt …” The debt was $5 million, the biggest debt for the party since 1968 …

But the Center for Public Integrity has learned that the party’s debt was evident to the White House in late 1993 and … President Clinton was “furious over the shortfall” …

“Fund raising is still going strong,” Terrance McAuliffe, the DNC finance chairman, told the Wall Street Journal, “and we are very optimistic about the future because of the fund-raising base, especially from the business community…”

Part of that was a $3.5 million loan from NationsBank at a very favorable rate of prime plus 1.5 percentage points.

That much-needed loan…was made two weeks before the mid-term elections, on Oct 14, 1994, and two weeks after the Democratic Congress passed the Fair Trade in Financial Services Act, signed into law on Sept 29 by President Clinton, who had worked hard for passage. Stalled for years, the new law allowed financial institutions to operate a single national bank . . .

No one wanted it more than NationsBank and its president and CEO, Hugh McColl. Indeed, NationsBank lobbyists reportedly helped to draft the legislation. McColl calculated it would save his bank $50 million a year. Critics of the law said big banks would just swallow up small ones.

We learned that candidate Clinton’s openness to considering NationsBank’s interstate banking legislation apparently was a fundamental condition of support for McColl, who endorsed Clinton late in the 1992 campaign after the two had breakfast, and sent a personal check to the campaign for $1,000. . . .

In 1992, prior to the breakfast, Clinton campaign officials had unsuccessfully solicited a major Democratic party contribution from NationsBank representatives . . .

McColl has become one of Clinton’s closest advisors on banking issues and Clinton has called McColl “the most enlightened banker in America.”

On July 15, 1993 … McColl spoke at a White House media event to promote Clinton’s community development lending program. An American Banker editorial at the time groused that McColl had appointed himself banking’s “official mouthpiece . . . on behalf of bankers everywhere, he endorsed the lending plan, which is about as bank-friendly and John Dillinger … McColl would endorse any half-baked Clinton idea in return for the White House’s support for interstate branching legislation.”

McColl left nothing to chance with Congress either. NationsBank significantly increased its PAC contributions, giving $626,800 to congressional candidates in 1993-94 . . .

When McColl and Clinton were seen sitting together in the NationsBank box at the 1994 Arkansas-Duke NCAA basketball finals in Charlotte, NC, one banking industry commentator said of McColl, “Based on what the president has done for him lately, I would have expected to see Hugh sitting on his lap . . . In days gone by, political quid pro quos were usually paid off with stuffed ballot boxes. Laws were passed to stop that sort of chicanery. Now it’s done with money.”

While the interstate bill was moving through conference, on Aug 23, 1994, Clinton and McColl were present at the White House Community Development bill signing, and the president declared, “Today, I’m proud to announce commitment from two of the nation’s leading banks to help us in this effort– $25 million from NationsBank and $50 million from Bank of America over the next four years.”

Five weeks later the interstate banking bill was law; the $3.5 million loan to the DNC came two weeks afterwards.

~ ~ ~

At the same time the interstate branch legislation was being lobbied by McColl and NationsBank, in May 1994 Clinton White House Senior Adviser George Stephanopoulos, who makes $125,000 a year, received a controversial 25-year, $668,000 loan at 6.375 percent interest from NationsBank. . . .

~ ~ ~

The NationsBank relationship with Clinton is just one example of what to look for with respect to the financial industry’s influence on the president and his party generally in 1996. In 1992, the Clinton/Gore campaign received more than $800,000 from financial interests.


 

People’s Republic of China – From Year of the Rat: . . . Our thesis is simple. The Clinton administration has made a series of Faustian bargains and policy blunders that have allowed a hostile power to further its aims in Washington. In the main, Bill Clinton and Al Gore did it for money. . . .

The hostile power is the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is the only foreign regime currently targeting American cities for nuclear destruction.

The PRC, under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is engaged in four major lines of activities, all of which are contrary to the interests of the Chinese people, neighboring countries, U.S. friends and allies around the world, and ultimately the American people.

First, arms dealers associated with the CCP’s military arm, the Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA), have transferred weapons of mass destruction and the means to produce them to terrorist nations, threatening Israel, our Gulf allies, and even Europe.

Second, the PLA itself is suppressing the Chinese people’s legitimate desire for democracy and human rights.

Third, the PLA has a history of aggression against neighboring countries, including Tibet and India, and in recent times has shown a willingness to bully others, including Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Finally, the PRC’s unjustified military modernization and expansion program threatens America’s foreign policy interests and national security.

Before Bill Clinton took office, the United States was the prime obstacle to the CCP’s ambitions to dominate East Asia. After he was elected, the CCP expressed two major needs — political and economic intelligence on the United States, and assistance with its military modernization program. The Clinton administration has met both Communist Chinese goals.

In these pages, we will show that, in order to gain and hold onto power, the Clinton administration has acted recklessly, allowing the wrong people to gain access to our most important political and economic secrets. Any number of Chinese arms dealers, spies, narcotics traffickers, gangsters, pimps, accomplices to mass murder, communist agents, and other undesirables will appear in these pages … all associated in one way or another with the White House and money. . . .

~ ~ ~

“FACILITATING” FOR COSCO – Why Johnny Chung? The reason for his selection by COSCO appears to be his pattern of success in parlaying campaign contributions into photo ops that, in China, are very useful for establishing that the person depicted with the president is someone with lots of access and, therefore, a good person to hire as a consultant. Chung had done this for himself and others.

For instance, at a 1994 White House Christmas party Chung had some photos taken of himself with Mrs. Clinton and Secretary John Dalton — who would be so accommodating to COSCO. Chung wrote Dalton in January 1995 to tell him that the pictures “came out really nice.” Chung then revealed that his own cousin was on Dalton’s staff: “I have already asked Dr. Wen-Chen Lin, my cousin who is also a member of your Research Department, to personally deliver them to you.” The secretary of the navy responded with a glowing letter of appreciation. After thanking Chung for the “wonderful” photos, Dalton wrote, “Please let me know the next time you are going to be in Washington. I would love to have you come by the office for a cup of coffee.” . . .

After successfully bringing Chairman Chen of Tangshan Hamen Group, China’s second largest brewmaster, to the White House– following a $40,000 donation to the DNC — Chung needed access for senior PRC officials, who expected him to do for them what he had done for Chen.

* * *

On Feb 27, 1995, Johnny asked DNC Finance Director Richard Sullivan to arrange for his next round of PRC guests:

 

        A meeting with President Clinton.

        A meeting with Vice President Gore.

        Lunch at the White House mess.

        A meeting with Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

Chung and his delegation met with then-DNC Chairman Don Fowler, who sent a note to one of the delegation members, Zheng Hongye– a senior adviser to COSCO— describing Chung as “an excellent facilitator.” But Chung’s four-point request was still not granted– so he went directly to Hillary Rodham Clinton and was more successful. His wish list had actually expanded. He asked the first lady’s office to arrange for:

 

       A tour of the White House.

        Lunch in the White House mess.

        A photo op with the first lady.

        An invitation for him to attend the president’s radio address with his delegation.

And so on March 11, 1995, Johnny Chung and his PRC friends attended President Clinton’s weekly radio address.

It all fell into place after Chung handed a check for $50,000 made out to the DNC to Hillary’s chief of staff, Maggie Williams, following a March 9 photo op with the first lady….

~ ~ ~

COVERING UP THE TRIE DONATION…

Meanwhile, back at the Presidential Legal Trust, an innovative cover-up was in progress.

Cardozo and the fund trustees had cause for alarm. Cardozo and his board were smart Washington players . . . A large donation from a Little Rock fry cook turned clientless consultant was not something they could accept in the ordinary course of business. But rather than go to the U.S. attorney, or to outside counsel, they seem to have gone to Hillary Clinton.

In an April 4, 1996, White House meeting, the first lady began by pretending not to recognize [Charlie] Trie’s name, but then, according to the Thompson report, she “recalled him as the owner of a restaurant in Little Rock frequented by then-Governor Clinton.” The impression left is that the governor and Trie were close, but that the Arkansas first lady did not like Chinese food. Or perhaps it was just Charlie’s cooking.

But Mrs. Clinton’s vagueness was a clever ruse. Trie had interacted frequently with Bill and Hillary alike, both in Little Rock and later in Washington, including at White House and DNC dinners where they were at the president’s table. . . .

But the most telling Trie/HRC connection was a 1995 phone message in the White House just before the first lady’s Beijing trip: “Mr. Charlie Tree [sic] of Little Rock called, spoke with HRC in Little Rock about going to Beijing. Wants to know if he can go with her.”

So Hillary knew Charlie a little better than she let on. All the more reason why she would recognize that his check-stuffed envelope was indeed the sort of thing that Clinton loyalists had better investigate before an independent counsel did. So the fund trustees decided to investigate the source of Trie’s money, and for that purpose they hired Terry Lenzner and his firm, Investigative Group, Inc. But Cardozo put one condition on the investigation: It should not look into Trie himself, because he was close to the Clintons. The investigation turned up some allegations of money being transferred through a Buddhist sect (not the famous Al Gore fund-raiser), but Trie was kept out of it. Eventually, however, the Clinton Legal Defense Trust returned the entire $640,000 that Trie had delivered. . . .

We do not yet know, with precision, the source of Trie’s donation to the Clinton Legal Defense Trust, but given what we know of Trie’s background, the probability that his cash came either from the Chinese government or from Triad crime activity through his business partner Ng Lapseng, or from both working together, is high. This cash bought Trie access for his letter and respect for its message; that message in turn brought about a critical and long-sought change– long sought by the PRC, that is– in U.S. foreign policy.

Bill Clinton sold Taiwan’s security to the PRC.

In Jan 1998 the Dept of Justice handed down an indictment of Trie for campaign finance violations. But don’t expect Trie to tell very much. For one thing, Janet Reno’s Justice Department is not asking very much: the indictment avoids references to the Chinese government and makes Clinton’s DNC sound like a passive victim of Trie’s machinations.

~ ~ ~

But there is another reason why Trie will clam up. A Triad ceremony called “The Thirty Six Oaths of The Hung Mun” sets forth in detail the rules for a member of a Triad.

Rule #18: “If I am arrested after committing an offense I must accept my punishment and not try to place the blame on my sworn brothers. If I do so I will be killed by five thunderbolts.”

~ ~ ~

For more >>> Dubious Deals in Arkansas

For more >>> China Working Group

For more >>> Sen. Dan Burton’s Oversight Committee

For more >>> Johnny Chung Tells of Dealings with Chinese Donors

For more >>> Tripping With Secretary Ron Brown


 

PIE Mutual Insurance Co. – From The Courier-Journal:

Ex-insurance Executive Admits to Campaign Violations

by Tom Loftus

FRANKFORT, Ky. – A former insurance executive admitted in a plea agreement yesterday to laundering thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to the Kentucky Democratic Party and Brereton Jones’ 1991 campaign for governor.

The contributions were part of at least $500,000 in illegal campaign contributions that Larry E. Rogers, former president and chief executive officer of PIE Mutual Insurance Co. admitted he orchestrated.

Rogers’ signed plea agreement, filed in federal court in Cleveland, involved three felony charges brought by the U.S. attorney’s office there. The agreement ended a four-year investigation of Rogers that began with PIE Mutual’s collapse in 1997.

The company sold medical malpractice insurance to doctors.

Rogers, 63, a native of Henderson, was a major political contributor as well as a big financial backer of University of Kentucky athletics during the 1990s. . . .

Rogers is to be sentences within 10 weeks, said Jim Moroney, an assistant U.S. attorney in Cleveland. Rogers faces a prison term of 37 to 46 months, Moroney said.

Rogers admitted to conspiring to violate federal campaign finance laws; misappropriating insurance funds; and willfully filing a false income-tax return.

The conspiracy charge said Rogers used various methods to divert corporate money to political contributions that were made to candidates and committees of his choosing in names of employees, family members and others.

Rogers made – or caused to be made – “over $500,000 in political contributions through at least 62 nominee or conduit donors,” according to the charge, which itemized 36 instances in the 1990s of contributions in Kentucky, Ohio and other states.

One instance involved at least $50,000 in contributions made in September 1990 to “a candidate for governor of the state of Kentucky,” according to the charge. The candidate was Jones, a Democrat who was elected governor the next year. . . .

According to reports in The Courier Journal at the time of the campaign, contributions from people affiliated with PIE to Jones totaled about $100,000, and Jones came under criticism by opponents in the race for taking that much from contributors tied to an insurance company regulated by the state….

The insurance-funds charge said Rogers “willfully misappropriated” approximately $6.8 million of PIE funds and assets in late July and early August 1997 when he approved and paid himself a severance agreement without approval of the board of directors, according to the U.S. attorneys office….


 

Sanwa Bank The Chicago branch of this Japanese bank played an interesting role in the Clinton – Rubin – Goldman Sachs – American International Group – Coral Reinsurance – and Arkansas Development & Finance Authority shell game in 1987.

Watch carefully! Sanwa loaned $5 million to ADFA. ADFA then purchased slightly over $5 million in stock of Coral Reinsurance, the Barbados company founded by AIG. Coral then deposited the $5 million, along with $55 million in other investors’ funds, in Sanwa Bank.

Under what shell is ADFA’s $5 million???

Surprise! It never left Sanwa Bank (at least not until it found its way into some of the executives’ pockets).

This strange deal was the scheme of Goldman Sachs, headed at the time by Robert Rubin.

For more, GO TO > > > Dirty Gold in Goldman Sachs?


 

Schools and Libraries Corporation – From The Buying of the President 2000: . . .

On Jan 1, 1998, the federal government imposed a flat tax of 3% on every telephone call as a means of raising money to make every school in the nation Internet-accessible. Gore and Reed Hundt, then the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, had dreamed up the idea the year before. (Gore and Hundt are old friends, having been classmates at St. Albans.)

The tax raises upward of $2.3 million a year, which is to be released to the nation’s schools through a program called “E-rate.” Gore and Hundt didn’t have to fight with Congress to get the extra money; the FCC imposed the tax by an act of bureaucratic fiat….

The tax costs the average American about $30 a year. The money goes to schools, eventually. Before it gets there, it sits at something called the Schools and Libraries Corporation, one of three not-for-profit operations set up by the FCC to administer the “E-rate” program.

From its inception in Nov 1997 until Sept 1998, Ira Fishman, a fund-raiser for Gore and a former White House lobbyist, was the president of the Schools and Libraries Corporation. His salary was $200,000 a year — the same as President Clinton’s.

But Fishman had trouble getting the operation off the ground, and when he resigned after just nine months on the job, the Schools and Libraries Corporation had yet to release any funds to the schools.

Fishman did, however, find ways to spend money. In the first quarter of its existence, Schools and Libraries Corporation projected its expenses to be $2.7 million; when the receipts were added up, the cost of administering the E-rate program– which hadn’t done anything yet– came to $4.4 million….

Now that the “E-rate” program is up and running, some of Gore’s top patrons have climbed aboard the gravy train. BellSouth and Bell Atlantic each made millions of dollars from providing telephone lines to schools.

So did software companies like The Learning Company (Gore’s No. 7 career patron), a division of Mattel, Inc., which makes educational software….


 

Stephens & CompanyFrom Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA“. . . I’m curious; how did Mr. Clinton and company gain access to our funds in First American?”

“Through bond business here in Arkansas. It seems this was brainchild of Mr. Dan Lasater. But with Mr. Lasater out of way, state has implemented the plan through biggest firm here in Arkansas, Stephens & Company.

“Let me get this straight,” Johnson said. “Clinton needs money in order to keep his promises to bring industry to Arkansas. So, Stephens issues a municipal bond or whatever, and our bank, First American, buys or underwrites the goddamn thing. So our offshore money is laundered right here in Arkansas through legitimate industrial loans, and Clinton benefits?”

By “offshore” Johnson was referring to CIA money held in foreign banks to disguise the fact that it was money used to fund intelligence operations. This was a Cold War technique designed to prevent the money’s source from being traced back to Washington….

Having run short on “laundry,” Clinton and his friends had tapped into other sources of “dirty money.”

* * *

The public would learn years later of the tenebrous connection between Stephens, First American Bank and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, later to have its acronym, BCCI, emblazoned in headlines throughout the world. CIA Director Robert Gates later labeled it the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals, Inc.,” but admitted to its extensive use by the Agency.

And Jackson T. Stephens, the chairman of Stephens & Company in Little Rock, who would later be identified as the one who helped BCCI get its financial foothold in America, had replaced Lasater as the state’s investment banker of choice to attract new capital. . . .

* * *

For More >>> Dubious Deals in Arkansas

For More >>> Rise UP! The Crimes of Mena

For More >>> Clinton Scandal Clips

For more on BCCI, GO TO > > > The Strange Saga of BCCI


 

Technology Strategies and Alliances – From The Buying of the President:

Defense Dollars and Deal Making. . . . In Feb of 1995, the administration announced that for the first time it would consider the financial state of U.S. defense contractors when negotiating overseas arms sales. The administration has also pushed to relax export restrictions on high-tech equipment used to manufacture sophisticated weapons systems. Part of what has ingratiated the Clinton administration to weapons manufacturers has been the presence of William J. Perry, first as Deputy Secretary and later as Secretary of Defense.

Perry is a former defense consultant who headed Technology Strategies and Alliances (TSA) between 1985 and 1993. TSA’s 1994 clients included Boeing, Grumman, Lockheed, Martin Marietta, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop, Textron, Texas Instruments, TRW, Westinghouse, and 20 other defense contractors.

While Perry severed his ties with the company, he had amassed more than a million dollars in consulting fees from TSA’s clients. Not long after he joined the Defense Department, Perry began going to bat for the industry.

One of Deputy Defense Secretary Perry’s extra base hits came when he and then-Defense Undersecretary for Acquisitions and Technology John Deutch quietly agreed to provide U.S. defense contractors with taxpayer-finance subsidies for mergers and acquisitions.

That was a dramatic shift in Pentagon policy. Usually, such issues are taken before Congress. Instead, Deutch, in a July 21, 1993 memo, reversed the Pentagon’s ban on the subsidies and underwrote $270 million worth of TSA client Martin Marietta’s acquisition of General Electric’s Aerospace Division.

Just seven weeks earlier, on June 3, 1993, industry CEOs, including Martin Marietta’s Norman Augustine, had sent a letter to Perry and Deutch asking for DOD funding of “restructuring costs” for mergers and acquisitions. Perry also approved Northrop’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Grumman. Both were TSA clients. The Pentagon called the policy shift a “clarification” that did not require congressional consent. . . .

The policy shift required both Perry and Deutch to seek ethics waivers from rules that call for a one-year “cooling off” period before Pentagon officials can deal with former clients. They got them from then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, whom Perry replaced in February 1994. Paul Kaminski got an ethics waiver in November of 1994, when he was named to head the Pentagon’s Acquisitions and Technology Department, replacing Deutch.

Deutch remained in the Pentagon loop a while longer and became Deputy Secretary of Defense before moving to the CIA.

Kaminski, who worked at TSA, is responsible for awarding $43 BILLION in defense programs to Pentagon contractors.

The Kaminski appointment marked the first time former defense industry consultants filled the Pentagon’s top three policy posts….


 

The Communist PartyFrom The American Spectator, June, 1997: While America Sleeps.

Since 1993, front companies for Communist China have been actively buying up (and spying on) the U.S. — which is fine by Washington and Wall Street.

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

What else is Bill Clinton willing to do to aid Communist China?

So far the President of the United States has accepted campaign contributions from mainland Chinese donors, sponsored questionable investments for them in the U.S., approved the sale of sophisticated technology to the Chinese military, failed to enforce U.S. laws when the Chinese sell cruise missiles to Iran by sanctioning the Chinese firms involved, welcomed the most notorious Chinese arms dealer into the White House, and encouraged the man’s firm to raise money in U.S. capital markets.

It’s an appalling record by any standard — and there’s apparently no end in sight for Clinton’s open-arms policy toward Peking….

While federal investigators are just beginning to untie the knots of Chinese government attempts to influence the White House and other elected officials through campaign contributions and other means, it is overwhelmingly clear that Peking has recognized that the U.S. is easy enough to infiltrate. Chinese state-run companies are snatching up strategic real estate in places like Long Beach, California, where they plan, with Clinton’s warm approval, to turn a former U.S. Navy base into a container port to be used by a company identified by U.S. counterintelligence officials as a front for Chinese espionage efforts.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government’s leading business conglomerate, CITIC, has been floating bond issues in the U.S., tying the knot with major U.S. investment banks who are lobbying Congress against revoking China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) weapons firms have set up shop on our shores through a variety of front companies and obscure subsidiaries.

China’s “stealth” invasion has also included old-fashioned influence peddling. The Wall Street Journal revealed in March that the state-owned Bank of China made wire transfers “in increments of $50,000 and $100,000 to Clinton crony Charlie Yah Lin Trie, who then donated large sums to the DNC and Bill Clinton’s Legal Defense Fund.

In exchange, Trie was granted direct access to the White House and an appointment to a presidential Commission of U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy.

In Feb, 1996, he brought Wang Jun, the head of China’s notorious state-run arms company, Poly Technologies, to the White House for coffee with the president. . . .

Trie is not the only White House visitor with direct business ties to the PLA. Johnny Chung, the California businessman who contributed $366,000 to the DNC is exchange for open access to the Clinton White House (which he visited no fewer than 51 times) has brought a number of questionable visitors to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In March 1995, Chung brought along Jichun Huang, identified in White House records as a CITIC v.p….

On Dec 24, 1994 (Christmas eve), Chung brought Chen Shizeng, the president of a Chinese beer company, Haoman, to meet with Clinton. After the meeting, Chung squired his Chinese guest over to the Commerce Dept to discuss how to facilitate the sale of Haoman beer in the United States.

Chung also set up a meeting with Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary for the head of China’s state-run petrochemical company, Sheng Hauren, in Oct 1995.

Chung also happens to be the American representative of the daughter of a senior Chinese general, Liu Huaqing, who may have been hoping to use Chung’s influence with Clinton to gain favors and access to U.S. technology. General Liu sits on virtually every leadership panel of the People’s Republic of China, including the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. (He is also the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, which overseas the PLA’s vast empire of defense, industrial, and trading companies.)

His daughter, Liu Chao Ying, is a managing director of China Aerospace International Holdings Ltd. (CASIL), a Hong Kong subsidiary of China Aerospace Corp. Controlled by China’s Ministry of Aerospace Industry, CASIL manufactures everything from missiles to semiconductors, telephone switching equipment, and fax machines.

In its 1997 annual report, the company boasts that it has become “the largest ‘window company’ of China Aerospace Corp both in Hong Kong and overseas,” and soon plans to open up a major U.S. operation, CASIL (America).

It also has joint investments with the notorious Lippo Group….

* * *

From Reason Magazine Aug/Sept, 1999:

An Interview Between Reason Magazine and Archibald Cox:

Reason: President Clinton later on did seem very interested in China, particularly in making domestic connections with Chinese who helped fund his soft money presidential campaign. What role, if any, do you think these political connections played in his lack of interest in national security threats from China.

Cox: No one who watches television would think that President Clinton isn’t concerned about gun control. Why then would he meet with Wang Jun, a notorious arms dealer whose company at that very time was under indictment for smuggling over 2,000 AK-47’s into San Francisco?

Reason: When did he meet with him?

Cox: That was one of those notorious coffees in 1996.

Reason: Why did the campaign-contribution connection fall out of the report?

Cox: It did not. We included all of the original material we were able to generate on those points. And specifically the dots that had heretofore been unconnected are now a bright red line leading directly from PLA military intelligence to the 1996 campaign.

Gen. Ji [Shengde], who is the head of the Military Intelligence Division of the People’s Liberation Army, met with PLA Col. Liu [Chaoying] and [Democratic Party donor] Johnny Chung in Hong Kong. It was agreed that $300,000 would be wired to Chung three days later.

That amount of money was wired from Col. Liu’s account at Citibank to Chung’s account in Hong Kong. On that same day, $300,000 was wired into Colonel Liu’s Citibank account from CITIC [China International Trade and Investment Company, headed by Wang Jan and described in the Cox Report as “the most powerful and visible corporate conglomerate in the PRC”] Industrial Bank. CITIC is described in rich detail in our report.

Beyond this, we included in our report, for the first time for the American public, information about the possible connection of Charlie Trie to bribery scandals involving the PRC government and satellites manufactured by Hughes for foreign launch in the PRC.

We also attempted to include in the unclassified version of the report … information on John Huang’s access to classified information, which was extensive. And his maintenance of an office a few blocks away, unbeknown not only to his boss at Commerce but also to his secretary, where he had constant telephone and fax contact with the Lippo Group. And we described the Lippo Group’s affiliation with China Resources, a known [Ministry of State Security] front. . . .

Reason: How do we need to adjust our strategic thinking?

Cox: There has been manifest change in the PRC’s approach to geopolitics since 1991.

The Communist Party has decided to fill the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has aligned itself with opponents of the United States around the globe. It is stitching together an alliance of misfits. It is engaging in extensive military cooperation with Russia.

One of the main objects of our China policy over the last several decades was to prevent military cooperation between the Soviet Union and the PRC.

The Clinton administration’s current China policy is producing as one of its most significant results military cooperation between the PRC and Russia.

That cooperation, incidentally and importantly, is not in Russia’s national interest. Almost no one in Russia thinks it’s in Russia’s national interest.

But the reason it’s happening is because massive hard currency reserves in PRC are being used to bribe individuals who are willing to sell the crown jewels of Russia’s military….

* * *

For More >>> Could a Traitor Do Any Worse Than Clinton?

For More >>> Tenacious Tentacles

For More >>> A Simple Solution to Campaign Finance Reform

For More >>> Year of the Dragon?


 

The Justice Department – From Sellout : The Inside Story of President Clinton’s Impeachment, by David P. Schippers:

Our oversight investigation began by analyzing more than a dozen separate allegations concerning the Department of Justice and its subagencies. We knew our time was limited and that once Judge Starr’s referral on impeachable offenses was received, we would have to abandon our efforts in other areas. So we quickly narrowed our scope.

It was narrowed further because the Justice Department flat-out wouldn’t cooperate with our investigation.

We asked to talk to some people in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They said, “No.”

We asked to talk to some Assistant U.S. Attorneys. They said, “No.”

And so on.

Henry Hyde arranged a meeting between me and Attorney General Janet Reno and members of her staff so that I could talk this through with her. She promised to cooperate fully– but then added that we would have to clear any interviews with the department.

I reminded her: “We have people who are claiming that their own bosses are doing illegal activities. We’re not going to go through you. We’re going to talk to these people.”

“They’re not allowed to talk to you.”

“If we have people who are Justice Department employees who have information about illegal activity in the Justice Department, I’m not going to go to the Justice Department and tell them who we’re talking to and what they’re telling us.”

“They’re not supposed to talk to you.”

“I really don’t care. We’re going to do it.”

After that meeting, a Justice Department staffer told me: “Dave, you’re not from Washington. You don’t know how we operate out here.”

“You’re right, I’m not from Washington– but you don’t know how I operate. We’re going to get this stuff … If you try to stop us, you may find yourself involved in obstruction of Congress.”

I did this without approval from anybody; I didn’t think I needed it. When I told the Judiciary Committee staff, they were appalled.

All they could say was, “You can’t do that!”

And all I could say was, “I just did.”

~ ~ ~

INJUSTICE FOR ALL

My staff and I agreed that we needed to focus on the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which appeared to be running out of control.

By the time we came to the subject, investigations by the General Accounting Office and congressional committees had already indicated that the White House used the INS to further its political agenda. A blatant politicization of the agency took place during the 1996 presidential campaign when the White House pressured the INS into expediting its “Citizenship USA” (CUSA) program to grant citizenship to thousands of aliens that the White House counted as likely Democratic voters.

To ensure maximum impact, the INS concentrated on aliens in key states– California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Texas– that hold a combined 181 electoral votes . . .

The program was placed under the direction of Vice President Al Gore. … He was responsible for keeping the pressure on, to make sure the aliens were pushed through by Sept 1, the last day to register for the presidential election. . . .

The White House, the INS, and the Justice Department publicly denied any political motive in the CUSA program to expedite the citizenship procedure. What the United States got is undeniable:

 

1.More than 75,000 new citizens who had arrest records when they applied;

2.An additional 115,000 citizens whose fingerprints were unclassified for various technical reasons and were never resubmitted; and

3.Another 61,000 people who were given citizenship with no fingerprints submitted at all….

What we had here was a perfect example of the Clinton-Gore administration’s overarching political philosophy: “The ends justify the means,” coupled with “win at any cost.”

It was a philosophy of governance that, as our investigations into other areas proceeded, we would find repeated again and again….

In June 1998, as part of our oversight investigation of the Justice Department, we continued the investigation of CUSA. Our interest intensified when we heard unconfirmed reports that a similar plan was in the works for the next presidential election….

In the course of our investigation, we discovered that FBI arrest records were still missing from the proper files; many were still in boxes. We unearthed that several individuals who had been naturalized illegally were now trying to sponsor their relatives fro citizenship. We found sponsors who were unable to speak a word of English, a condition that should have prevented naturalization.

Similarly, we uncovered arrest records or other information that should have been disqualifiers for naturalization. But … INS agents who had found these irregularities were ordered to ignore them and to revoke citizenship only in cases ordered by the auditors….

We received no cooperation from either the Justice Department or the INS. Instead we received nothing but complaints about not going through proper channels, investigating old news, being partisan– if not racist– and so on. But we reasoned that if criminals were given citizenship in 1996, at least some of them had probably continued their criminal activity in the two years since.

We asked the GAO … to give us FBI arrest records related to the CUSA program….

We reviewed every document in those boxes, pulling out about a hundred of the most violent or serious crimes committed by aliens prior to naturalization and documented by arrest records. … I asked the staff to search for drug trafficking and violent crimes such as rape and child abuse….

After a few days … we had our basic 100 heinous crimes, including one criminal who was actually in fail at the time he was naturalized.

We asked the FBI if it had arrest records for crimes committed by the same aliens in this country since 1996 and sent them our 100 profiles. Less than a week later, the FBI sent the updated arrest records to the Justice Department. (Per an agreement between the FBI and the Justice Dept, all materials requested from the Bureau must go through Justice.) But when we inquired about them, the department claimed that it hadn’t yet received the records. An hour later, however, Justice called back to say that the “misplaced” reports had been located.

Of those one hundred arrest records updated by the Bureau, some 20 percent showed arrests for serious crimes after the subject was given citizenship. . . .

Based on these random results, we asked for updates on every arrest record in our 20 boxes. … Unfortunately, before we could go further, the referral from Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr arrived. Had we been given sufficient time to develop evidence and witnesses, the CUSA matter might have been included in the abuse of power impeachment article.

The 1996 arrest records are still available, and I am sure the FBI is still willing to update all of them. In the meantime, thousands of criminals are now citizens of the United States because it was assumed they would vote for Bill Clinton and Al Gore….

~ ~ ~

That was just one of the things we were doing during the summer months of 1998. We had investigations opened on the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Prisons, where allegedly a prison employee had killed an inmate in jail and officials had covered it up.

We were also looking into the many referrals to the Justice Dept that had been ignored. There were accusations that lies had been told about who was on Hillary Clinton’s health care task force. A judge had recommended that the Justice Dept investigate, but nothing had been done.

Allegations of serious campaign abuses in New York had been brought to the Justice Dept, but again no action resulted….


 

Tyson Foods – In his remarkable book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton , investigative reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: . . .

I had been given comprehensive intelligence files from the Criminal Investigations Division of the Arkansas State Police, going back as far as the early 1970’s . . . I was scarcely able to believe what I was seeing. Among the famous names of the Arkansas oligarchy that jumped out from page after page of criminal intelligence files was Don Tyson, the billionaire president of Tyson Foods and the avuncular patron of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton….

The documents I was looking at made me wonder about the origins of his liquidity. Here were files from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, marked DEA SENSITIVE, under the rubric of the Donald TYSON Drug Trafficking Organization.”

One was from the DEA office in Oklahoma City, dated December 14, 1982. It cited a confidential informant alleging that “TYSON smuggles cocaine from Colombia, South America inside race horses to Hot Springs, Arkansas.”…

A second document from the DEA office in Tucson, dated July 9, 1984, stated that “the Cooperating Individual had information concerning heroin, cocaine and marijuana trafficking in the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri by the TYSON organization.” The informant described a place called “THE BARN” which TYSON used as a “stash” location for large quantities of marijuana and cocaine….

~ ~ ~

A memo by the Criminal Investigative Section, dated March 22, 1976, states that Don Tyson “is an extremely wealthy man with much political influence and seems to be involved in most every kind of shady operation, especially narcotics, however, has to date gone without implication in any specific crime . . .”

The memo was triggered by a dispute between Tyson and the Teamsters Union over allegations of drug dealing and prostitution at a Teamsters-owned hotel leased by Tyson. Two sets of documents refer to alleged hit men employed by Tyson to kill drug dealers who owed him money. Another report alleged that Tyson was using his business plane to smuggle quart jars of methamphetamine. All told, it was a staggering portrait of a drug baron.

None of the allegations led to criminal charges, and it would soon become clear why. Police officers who tried to mount a case against Tyson were destroyed by their superiors in the State Police. The first to try was Beverly “B.J.” Weaver, then an undercover narcotics officer in Springdale. Working the streets and bars of northwest Arkansas, disguised as a deaf woman, she collected detailed intelligence on Tyson’s alleged smuggling network. . . .

There were loads going out with the chickens,” she explained. “They’d put the coke in the rectums of the chickens, live chickens. That’s how they’d move it.

As the allegations from her informants mounted, she requested the intelligence files on Don Tyson. That is when her problems began. Her colleagues in the Springdale office — who she now believes were “on the take” from the Tyson machine — put out the word that she was “not stable,” that she had “flipped out.” Then it got rough. “They started passing out my photo on the streets, which put my life in danger. I became paranoid. I didn’t trust my phone line. There was nobody I could really trust.”…

By 1987 her position was untenable. Her career in ruins, she resigned from the police and found a job as a security guard in the Bahamas….

* * *

From The Buying of the President : . . . Four independent counsels have been appointed to investigate members of the Clinton administration and the president himself. The Whitewater investigation has resulted in at least a dozen indictments.

As Bill Clinton found his political career ironically bookended from Watergate to Whitewater … his old friend from Arkansas, Don Tyson, was counting his chickens as they hatched in Washington. In 1992, Tyson family members and company executives contributed $29,000 to Clinton’s presidential campaign and Tyson was one of the few corporate executives who spoke at the Clinton transition economic summit in Little Rock….

After Clinton took office, Tyson, as he had done for Governor Clinton, provided Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy with plane rides, meals and lodging, as well as $6,000 from Tyson and company employees to help retire the campaign debt of Espy’s brother, Henry, who lost a bid for Congress in 1993….

That same year the Department of Agriculture shelved work on new poultry inspection regulations.

As Time magazine reported, “an uncooked chicken has become one of the most dangerous items in the American home. At least 60 percent of U.S. poultry is contaminated with salmonella, campylobacter or other micro-organisms that spread throughout the birds from slaughter to packaging, a process that has sped up dramatically in the past twenty years. Each year at least 6.5 million … people get sick from chicken . . .”

Espy was forced to resign his position in the Clinton cabinet and an independent counsel began to investigate him. Espy has denied any impropriety, and Tyson company officials maintain they favor stricter inspections and were certainly not trying to influence secretary Espy or the Clinton administration….

To Don Tyson, who has reportedly again become disenchanted with Clinton and is giving money to Bob Dole in the 1996 campaign, the business of politics has never been particularly complicated. It consists of “a series of unsentimental transactions between those who need votes and those who have money … a world where every quid has its quo.“…

* * *

From The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: . . . But the past is beginning to catch up with Don Tyson. He has been named as an official target in the criminal probe by Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz, who was appointed to investigate bribery allegations against Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was later indicted.

His chief lobbyist, Robert Greene, has been indicted for lying to investigators in the case. From small beginnings, the Smaltz investigation has widened into a full-scale probe of the Tyson business empire, provoking vehement accusations that it is a “politically motivated witch hunt.”

The Espy affair is a textbook case of Arkansas mores penetrating the U.S. federal government. CBS News’ 60 Minutes reported that Espy was flown to Arkansas to seek the blessing of Don Tyson before he was nominated to his cabinet post.

Once installed at the Agriculture Department, Espy proved to be a friend of the chicken industry. The department scuttled a plan for tougher standards on poultry fecal contamination. This required shifting the bureaucratic machinery into reverse gear. The plan had already been drawn up, approved, and was set for implementation. The effect was to reduce the likelihood that Tyson products would face random inspection.

~ ~ ~

The Smaltz probe has produced a surprising spin-off.

In Dec 1994 Time magazine reported that Joseph Henrickson, the number two pilot of the company’s aviation division, had been interviewed for three days by Smaltz and a team of FBI agents about alleged deliveries of cash to the Governor’s Mansion. Henrickson said that he carried sealed white envelopes containing a 1/4 inch wad of $100 bills, on six occasions, from Tyson’s headquarters to Little Rock. He was led to understand that the envelopes were going to Bill Clinton.

In one case, a Tyson executive handed him an envelope of cash in the company’s aircraft hangar in Fayetteville and said, “This is for Governor Clinton.”

“I nearly fell off my chair when I heard Joe make the allegation …,” Smaltz told Time.

But Smaltz did not have the mandate to investigate Bill Clinton. His probe was confined to the alleged “gratuity giver,” Tyson Foods. After Henrickson was called to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington in early 1995, Smaltz made a formal request to the Justice Department for broader jurisdiction.

Attorney General Janet Reno refused, ordering Smaltz to stick more closely to his original brief….

* * *

From Boy Clinton: . . . The Arkansas Poultry Federation recently had on its payroll the chairman of the state’s Senate Agriculture Committee. In fact, lobbyists for the state’s chicken producers are regularly members of the state legislature. Don Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, Inc., has bragged publicly that he contributed to Bill Clinton’s first gubernatorial campaign in 1978 in return for Clinton’s promise to raise the ceiling on the weight that a poultry truck may bear in lugging its feathery products over state roads….

At the end of the 1980’s Tyson Foods was the world’s largest producer of chickens; its climb to the top had been neatly facilitated by Tyson’s ability to flout Arkansas law.

Throughout the 1980’s Tyson Foods was polluting Arkansas rivers with fecal bacteriain blatant disregard of Arkansas’ environmental regulations. Tyson had a friend in the governor’s office. Objections were filed, but the chicken excreta kept coming.

Tyson continued supporting Clinton throughout the 1980’s. When Clinton ran for the presidency, Tyson and his business associates were there, checkbooks open. He, his family, and his corporate executives contributed at least $29,000 to Clinton’s presidential campaign.

His rewards were almost immediate, as was the ensuing scandal. Don Tyson was tapped to speak at the president-elect’s “Economic Summit.” Soon Tyson was schmoozing with the Clinton administration’s Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy.

Then both were dodging indictments for practicing Arkansan politics outside Arkansas. …


 

Walt Disney Corporation – Oh, no! Et tu, Pluto?

From The Buying of the President (1996 ed): . . . Bill Clinton: The Telecommunications Companies

Of course, the financial industry has not been the only business group to capitalize on the Clinton Washington bonanza. . . .

Of all the companies that will benefit from the new telecom laws, perhaps none has sought to become more “vertically integrated” than the Walt Disney Company. In the summer of 1995, Disney bought Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion. . . .

“Most significantly,” the New York Times reported, “the move concentrates power even further among a handful of men, who will control not just the movie and television businesses but also enhance their influence over broader popular culture through their dominance of theme parks, publishing, and emerging new forms of interactive home entertainment expected to blend films, computer services, and telecommunications.”

In 1992 … four executives of the Walt Disney Corporation– Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg (who has since left), John F. Cook, and the late Frank Wells— together contributed $158,672 to the DNC.

* * *

From The Buying of the President 2000 : . . . In late Oct 1995, Sally Aman, Tipper Gore’s chief press aid, telephoned John Cooke, then the executive vice-president of the Disney Channel, to ask for a favor. The Gores had no costumes for their annual Halloween costume party, she explained. Could Disney help them out?

Disney did just that. A team of costume makers in Los Angeles made a pair of outfits, based on the main characters in Disney’s motion picture version of “Beauty and the Beast,” to the Gores’ exact measurements. The day before the party, the costumes arrived in Washington, along with a makeup artist to apply the mask that the Vice President would wear.

The total tab for Disney’s end of the Gores’ Halloween party topped $8,600. But the Gores didn’t ask for a bill, and Disney didn’t bother to send one. At the time, Disney was awaiting approval for its $19 billion acquisition of American Broadcasting Company, Inc. from the Justice Department and the FCC., chaired by Gore’s longtime friend Reed Hundt.

When the Washington Post reported on the gift of the costumes, the Gores claimed they had no idea what the costumes were worth and blamed an unnamed staff member for not finding out whether the gifts were improper. Under the Ethics in Government Act, neither the President nor the Vice President may solicit gifts. After they got caught, the Gores announced that the costumes would be paid for– by the Democratic National Committee.

The FCC approved Disney’s acquisition of ABC in February 1996….


 

Westinghouse Corporation – From The Buying of the President (1996): . . .

In 1993, the Ex-Im Bank’s Advisory Committee was headed by Warren H. Hollinshead, CFO of the Westinghouse Electric Co. During that same year, Ex-Im awarded $98,075,505 to Westinghouse. Ex-Im also provided financing for and loan guarantees to the Westinghouse Corporation from 1993 through mid-1995 worth a total of $572,774,329….

Defense Dollars and Deal Making – Despite the president’s previous anti-war inclinations and his much-publicized avoidance of military service, President Clinton has consistently backed policies favorable to the defense industry….

The administration has also pushed to relax export restrictions on high-tech equipment used to manufacture sophisticated weapons systems. Part of what has ingratiated the Clinton administration to weapons manufacturers has been the presence of William J. Perry, first as deputy secretary and later as secretary of defense….

Perry is a former defense consultant who headed Technology Strategies and Alliances (TSA) between 1985 and 1993. TSA’s clients included … Westinghouse … While Perry severed his ties with the company, he had amassed more than a million dollars in consulting fees from TSA clients. Not long after he joined the Defense Department, Perry began going to bat for the industry….

~ ~ ~

Or take the case of Vice President Al Gore and Export-Import Bank chairman Ken Brody, who in 1994 along with others in the administration urged the Czech Republic to award Westinghouse a contract to finish building a nuclear power plant.

The Czechs are funding the overhaul using a U.S.-backed [aka US taxpayers-backed] loan worth $317 million from the Export-Import Bank. Gore, who as a senator wrote a best-selling environmentalist book entitled Earth in the Balance, supported the loan and contract, reasoning that if Westinghouse did not get the contract, it would have gone to a Western European firm instead. The contract caused some tensions, not only between the administration and environmentalists, but also with the government of Austria, which believed the facility, located roughly 100 miles upwind from Vienna, posed an environmental hazard.

Westinghouse contributed $140,000 to the Democratic party in 1991-1992….

# # #




For a closer look at some of the birds in these nests, GO TO > > >

A FLOCK OF DONKEYS

~ ~ ~

And for a bipartisan look just over the fence, you won’t want to miss >>>

A FLOCK OF ELEPHANTS and THE ELEPHANTS NESTS




 

Last Updated on January 13, 2002, by The Catbird



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