YEAR OF THE DRAGON!
Will Someone Please Explain This
to Janet Reno?
WHY THE SENATE SHOULD NOT CONFIRM CLINTON’S NOMINATION OF NORMAN MINETA AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE.
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Excerpts from The Catbird Seat, July 4, 2000
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Blackstone Group – Alleged to be one of the key players in arming China. For more, GO TO > > > The Blackstone Group
Carlyle Group – Another key player.
For more, GO TO > > > Birds that Drink from Cesspools
Lippo Group – From Betrayal – How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security, by Bill Gertz:
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….
Only John Huang, the family’s former U.S. operative, remains in the United States — and he has pleaded the Fifth Amendmennt…
The Riady empire, centered on its Lippo Group, is, as one financial analysis in Jakarta describes it, “a carefully balanced house of cards.”…
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 outside of Wall Street. . . . 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 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.…
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.
For more, GO TO > > > The Indonesian Connection
Lockheed Martin – From The Laundrymen, by Jeffrey Robinson:
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 Rat – How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash, by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II:
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….
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, by Jim Hightower:
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 Lamar $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. (Like being Gore’s campaign manager is more important to the country’s welfare than completing his term as Secretary of Commerce???)
A few days later, PRESIDENT CLINTON announced that NORMAN MINETA was his choice for the new Secretary of Commerce.
* * *
NORMAN MINETA, A FORMER CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN,
IS CURRENTLY AN EXECUTIVE & LOBBYIST
FOR LOCKHEED MARTIN
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For more on the Greed at Lockheed, GO TO > > > Tarnished Wings
For more on Norman Mineta, GO TO > > > The Eagle Awakes; Who’s Guarding the Hen House?
Loral Space Systems – From Year of the Rat – How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash, 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.”…
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 Two Firms’ Ties to China Missile Program” — that linked Loral and its partner, Hughes Electronics, to China….
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 might one day be turned against the United States…* * *
From The Buying of the President 2000, by Charles Lewis and The Center for Public Integrity:
t’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….
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.” …
Unfortunately, far more than Chinese leaders were coddled by the Clinton-Gore Administration and the Democratic Party, under vastly more serious circumstances. . . . 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 Justice Department 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….
# # #
NOW, IF ALL THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO RUFFLE YOUR FEATHERS — DID YOU KNOW THAT FRANCE’S
AXA FINANCIAL COMPANY
IS THE #1 INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR IN
LORAL SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS ?
AND THAT, AFTER MORE THAT A HALF-CENTURY,
INVESTIGATIONS HAVE REVEALED THAT
AXA FINANCIAL
MAY HAVE OBTAINED MUCH OF ITS WEALTH AT
THE EXPENSE OF NAZI HOLOCAUST VICTIMS!
AND, FINALLY, DID YOU KNOW THAT AXA FINANCIAL
IS ALSO THE #1 INVESTOR IN
GOLDMAN SACHS !
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SINOPEC – From American City Business Journals, Inc. – March 27, 2001:
Chinese corruption probe targets Sinopec executive
DALLAS — Six months after China-based oil company Sinopec made a $3.5 billion offering to foreign investors, a top executive has been suspended and is under investigation on corruption allegations related to “economic problems,” The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Among the key investors in the company, also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., is Irving-based ExxonMobil Corp., BP Amoco P.L.C. and Royal Dutch Shell Group.
The Journal said their combined investment in the IPO of the Chinese oil venture exceeded $1.8 billion.
The Journal quoted a spokesman with Sinopec as saying 59-year-old Han Qingzhi, the general manager of wholly owned subsidiary Sinopec Sales Co., was relieved of his duties more than a week ago.
The company official did not elaborate on the focus of the investigation, which reportedly has drawn the attention of Chinese government graft inspectors.
The top official of Hubei Xinghua Co., another Sinopec subsidiary, was given a suspended death sentence last year for embezzling $600,000 from the oil company, The Journal reported.
– Copyright 2001 American City Business Journals Inc.
EPILOGUE:
During her term as Attorney General, Janet Reno steadfastly refused to appoint a special counsel to look into the 1996 Clinton/Gore fund-raising campaign because “in her opinion” she saw no credible evidence of any intentional wrongdoing. Gore was merely UNAWARE that the Buddhist temple “OUTREACH EVENT” was a POLITICAL FUND-RAISER.
Norman Mineta was confirmed as Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce, and China received its ‘most-favored-nation’ trade status.
At the beginning of his term as President of the United States of America in 2001, George W. Bush, Jr. (R), in a highly unusual move, selected Norman Mineta (D) as his Secretary of Transportation.
History might remember Mr. Mineta as being in charge of our nation’s transportation safety on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hi-jacked four airline passenger jets and delivered the most devastating attacks on American soil ever, crippling our nation’s transportation systems and our way of life to an extent never before imagined.
– September 22, 2001, by The Catbird
# # #
FOR MORE FIRE-BREATHING DRAGONS
GO TO
/
The Bribes & Boondoggles of Boeing
A Connecticut Yankee in King Kamehameha’s Court
The Carlyle Group: Birds that Drink from Cesspools
Crouching Dragons ~ Hidden Rats
Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate
Vultures of The Sandwich Isles
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MORE OF THE CATBIRD’S FAVORITE LINKS
THE CATBIRD SEAT FORUM
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Last update November 18, 2005 by The Catbird