High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton

  Soon the Riadys were enjoying extraordinary access to President Clinton. Huang and the younger Riady began a series of Oval Office meetings with the president. In briefing selected news agencies on November 15, 1996, White House spokesman Mike McCurry admitted that in the first Clinton administration Riady met with Clinton at least six times in a minimum of twenty separate White House visits, and Huang met with Clinton at least fifteen times in ninety-four separate White House visits.

  Indeed, when the Indonesian ambassador sought a meeting with President Clinton, he went to James Riady to arrange it.7

  There is little doubt that President Clinton changed government policy because of campaign contributions from the Riady family, though we cannot be certain he changed policy “solely because of a contribution.” At least not as we go to press.

  In a confidential letter dated March 9, 1993, Mochtar Riady asked the president to extend Most Favored Nation (MFN) status to China.8 (That same month, the elder Riady flew into Little Rock from Indonesia for a March of Dimes banquet for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and donated $50,000 in Mrs. Clinton’s honor.9)

  Reversing his campaign stance against MFN—and his insistence that he would not deal lightly with the “butchers of Beijing”—Clinton did extend MFN to China on May 28, 1993. Soon the president was enthusiastically lobbying Congress to grant MFN permanently to China.

  In May 1993 Clinton met with Indonesian official B.J. Habibie, over the objections of the president’s foreign policy advisers. Riady had requested the meeting. At the meeting Habibie pled his case for President Clinton to meet with then-President Suharto of Indonesia. Habibie must have been persuasive.

  Shortly thereafter, Clinton gave a speech to the Export-Import Bank, where Habibie was in the audience. To the surprise of Clinton’s foreign policy advisers, Clinton at one point diverged from his prepared remarks—and his foreign policy aides’ advice—to discuss Indonesia and declare his intention to meet with Suharto. Referring to Habibie, Clinton said, “I know we have someone here from Indonesia…. We have enormous opportunities there…. I’m going to meet with the president of Indonesia [in Tokyo] to send a signal to the… emerging nations of the world that the United States wants to be their partner in new trade relations.”10

  One of Clinton’s foreign policy advisers later said, “We never figured out how the promise to meet Suharto got in there.”11

  And in fact in July 1993 President Clinton did meet with Suharto in Tokyo. He did so, he later told the New York Times with refreshing candor, because, among others, Mochtar Riady had “encouraged me to see President Suharto.”12 One of Suharto’s top priorities at the meeting was to ask Clinton to preserve Indonesia’s trade preferences with the United States. Since 1992, the year before Clinton took office, the United States had been reexamining Indonesia’s trade preferences under the Generalized System of Preferences in light of that country’s abominable treatment of workers.

  In February 1994, in the midst of a formal governmental review of whether to permit Indonesia to continue to receive trade benefits, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor abruptly terminated the review process and formally announced that the administration was allowing Indonesia to keep its trade privileges, valued at more than $600 million a year to Indonesian companies.13

  Indonesian workers might suffer, but the Lippo Group would benefit.

  COMPANY MAN JOHN HUANG

  At the Riady family’s urging, Lippo executive John Huang joined the Commerce Department in the summer of 1994, leaving his position as vice chairman of the Lippo Bank to become deputy assistant secretary for International Economic Policy at Commerce. According to sources “who asked not to be identified,” the Riadys boasted that they had won the position for Huang on account of their campaign contributions to President Clinton. Just before leaving for his job at Commerce, Huang received close to a million dollars in salary and bonuses from Lippo as well as another $700,000 from another Riady company.

  While maintaining his ties to Lippo, Huang attended 109 Top Secret briefings at Commerce, involving classified information. Huang repeatedly called Lippo following the meetings.14 Huang’s logbooks recorded weekly meetings with Commerce’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) liaison officer, which were weekly intelligence briefings on the PRC. Any materials related to the briefing were under the control of the CIA.15

  In response to congressional inquiries, a Commerce Department official stated, “Mr. Huang received routine intelligence briefings, including intelligence reports. The office that handles intelligence matters does not make a record of each briefing or item provided in the course of briefings. Available records indicate that 37 intelligence briefings were scheduled. Available records show that Mr. Huang saw 15 classified field reports… [and] received 12 finished intelligence reports.”16

  On January 31, 1994, six months after Lippo became full partners with China Resources, the Clinton Commerce Department granted a Top Secret security clearance to Lippo executive John Huang. The normal background investigation required of candidates for Top Secret clearances was waived. Commerce Department security official Paul Buskirk signed a memo stating that the “request for a waiver of background investigation prior to appointment for Huang” had been approved. “Huang has been granted this waiver due to the critical need for his expertise in the new administration for Secretary [Ron] Brown.”17

  During the six months before he formally joined the government on July 17, 1994, as a principal deputy undersecretary of Commerce, Huang simultaneously held a United States government Top Secret clearance and the vice presidency of an Indonesian corporation that was partners with a Chinese company known to provide cover for Chinese intelligence-gathering operations.

  Despite the fact that he was born in mainland China, was educated in Taiwan, had served in the Taiwanese military, had worked in Hong Kong, and was employed by a foreign company, Huang was never given a full field FBI background check prior to receiving, or while holding, a Top Secret security clearance. Instead his interim background check was conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. It did not involve checking his overseas contacts.18

  Commerce Undersecretary for International Trade Jeffrey Garten tried to prevent Huang from dealing in U.S.-Chinese relations. He assigned Huang to work with Assistant Secretary of Commerce Charles Meissner on boosting U.S.-Taiwanese trade. Garten explained his decision: “Neither Meissner nor Huang have traveled to Beijing nor have they played a high profile role in the JCCT [U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade] process. We plan to keep this separation of function.”

  Although Huang was supposed to promote U.S.-Taiwanese trade, he tried to spike action on a strategy to do just that out of concern for the reaction of the Chinese government. In a handwritten memo attached to his draft “Proposed Country Strategy for Taiwan,” Huang said, “Anything we need to do to delay program with Taiwan, we should do it (to protect what we have accomplished so far in China). Regardless, we need to take a lowkey approach with Taiwan at least before the spring [is] over. We have so much planned with China during this period of time.”19

  According to his appointment logs, the day after returning from a January 1995 trade trip to Taiwan, Huang had dinner with Beijing’s ambassador to Washington, Li Dao.

  Even though Undersecretary Garten had assigned Huang to work a Taiwan portfolio because Huang had never traveled to Beijing and was not expected to, Huang planned a trip to China in the spring of 1995. According to Commerce Department documents released to House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon (R-NY), this trip was abruptly canceled the same week Huang submitted the South Korean and Chinese visa applications on which he certified a birthdate different from the one on his security clearances.20

  On September 13, 1995, Clinton met with James Riady, president of Lippo; John Huang, former Lippo employee; and Joseph Girior, FOB and then-Lippo consultant. The Riadys and Huang lobbied the president for a transfer from the Commerce Department to a senior fund-raisi
ng position with the DNC. Clinton accommodated the request, directing Bruce Lindsey and Harold Ickes to work out the details.

  The White House repeatedly described the September 13 meeting as a “meet and greet” social visit, neglecting to mention that it was decided at the meeting that Huang would become a DNC fund-raiser.21

  On December 3, 1995, one day before Huang left Commerce for the DNC, his boss, Charles Meissner, formally requested that Huang be retained at Commerce as a “consultant” even while he worked for the DNC. Meissner also requested a new Top Secret clearance for Huang for his consultancy. Huang never became a consultant, but on December 14, 1995, the Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office approved his new Top Secret clearance. It was not terminated until December 9, 1996, after numerous stories had been published about Huang’s fund-raising activities.22

  In the 1996 election cycle John Huang raised approximately $3 million for the DNC, about $1.5 million of which the DNC has deemed questionable or improper and has returned. Huang even took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to cooperate with congressional investigators.

  President Clinton has defied subpoenas from the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee asking him to turn over government documents detailing his dealings with Riady and Huang. The president is claiming that “attorney-client” privilege exempts him from fulfilling these congressional subpoenas.

  CHINA CAT JOHNNY CHUNG AND COSCO

  “I see the White House is like a subway: You have to put in coins to open the gates,” Johnny Chung, a Taiwan-born international businessman, told the Los Angeles Times in a July 1997 interview.23

  Despite being described as a “hustler” by one of Clinton’s own National Security Council advisers, Chung was granted a meeting with President Clinton in March 1995. By coincidence, the meeting came just two days after Chung had handed a $50,000 check to Maggie Williams, the first lady’s chief of staff. Chung brought five Chinese businessmen to meet with Clinton.

  One of Chung’s “friends” was Zheng Hongye, a representative of the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), which had a strong interest in leasing the Long Beach Naval Station.

  Soon after chatting and picture-taking with the COSCO representative, Clinton met with Long Beach officials in the White House to encourage them to lease the station to COSCO. Several months later, Clinton flew to Long Beach himself to lobby for the COSCO deal. Finally, the day before the November 1996 election a Clinton administration official placed a “highly unusual” call to local officials in Long Beach stating that lease of the terminal to COSCO “was the preference of the White House” and not something “the White House wanted studied further,” according to one Long Beach official quoted in the New York Times.24

  YOU GOT ME

  By early February 1997 FBI Director Louis Freeh had assigned twenty-five agents to a special task force to investigate espionage against the United States, including the Lippo Group’s partnership with China Resources, and the close linkage in time between intelligence briefings Huang received from the CIA while at Commerce and calls he made to the Lippo Group from his Commerce Department telephone.25

  When the FBI investigation came to light, the White House immediately requested information from the FBI about what federal investigators knew or suspected about Chinese attempts to influence American politics. Then-White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff sought the sensitive counterintelligence information in a February 18 letter to Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, but Director Freeh intervened from abroad to block release of the information to the White House. Freeh was concerned, his spokesmen said, that the White House would leak the information and he would come under attack for having passed on sensitive intelligence to the president of the United States.26

  The most interesting aspect of this episode is that the president did not kick up a huge fuss. Rather, the White House response was not unlike Clinton’s response, about one year later, to Wolf Blitzer’s famous question about Monica: Okay, you got me.27

  In fact, President Clinton had admitted in 1996 that he knew that things he said to James Riady might be passed back to the Chinese government. Despite that, he said there were no notes of any of his meetings with Riady. “I don’t have any notes or anything from the conversations [with Riady], but I think I have reasonable memory of it,” Clinton said.28 The president did not, however, have a “reasonable memory” of at least one meeting with Riady—the September 13, 1995, meeting when Clinton acceded to Riady’s request that Huang be moved from Commerce to the DNC.

  THOMPSON COMMITTEE

  Senator Thompson, chairman of the Senate Government Oversight Committee, dramatically opened the hearings on campaign finance abuses referring to allegations of “a plan hatched during the last election cycle by the Chinese government and designed to pour illegal money into American political campaigns.”29

  Soon Thompson would be ridiculed for overreaching. Senator John Glenn of Ohio, the committee’s ranking Democrat, promptly declared he did not believe there was “any real evidence” that China had carried out such a plan. One columnist gave a typically ironic title to his piece on the hearings, “The Chinese Commies Are Coming!” and termed Thompson’s opening gambit a “wonderful ploy.”30

  All this was difficult for the public to evaluate. In the monthslong investigation, the committee had access to classified FBI and CIA intelligence information, but the classified information could not be made public. Remarking that he had “read the same material,” Senator Glenn announced, “I refuse to play around with intelligence information loosely,” and said Senator Thompson’s remarks went “beyond what I can say.”31

  On the other hand, Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut had essentially concurred with Thompson’s approach and conclusions throughout the investigation. But the normally nonpartisan Senator Glenn had been at loggerheads with Thompson from the very inception of the investigation. Glenn had vigorously objected to the breadth of the investigation and the amount of money being spent. Senator Glenn was a former astronaut: he had been the first American to orbit the earth. He wanted to go to space again.

  As the Thompson committee was putting the finishing touches on its report in January 1998, the Clinton administration announced that it was granting Senator Glenn’s long-hoped-for request to fly on a space-shuttle mission scheduled for later in the year. At $10,000 a pound, just adding Glenn to a previously scheduled mission would cost about $2 million. The entire launch would cost taxpayers half a billion dollars.32 The theory for sending Glenn into space was that it would help scientists look at the effects of space travel on the elderly. Many scientists questioned the value of NASA’s foray into gerontology.33

  Then in May 1998 inside sources at the Pentagon began leaking information to Jeff Gerth at the New York Times. American intelligence sources had intercepted phone calls indicating that China had been interested in influencing American elections. Then “hustler” and FOB Johnny Chung admitted his own role. Chung had been the conduit for tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrats directly from the Chinese military.34

  LORAL

  Interestingly, one of Clinton’s most alarming foreign policy decisions happened to coincide with campaign contributions from American capitalists, rather than from the Red Chinese.

  In 1996 the Pentagon began investigating two U.S. firms suspected of giving vital missile technology to China. The technology would be a great help to China, particularly for the twelve ballistic missiles China had targeted at the United States. After a one-year investigation, the Pentagon issued a report in 1997, concluding that “United States national security has been harmed.” The Justice Department impaneled a grand jury.

  Then the commander in chief stepped to the plate. President Clinton derailed Justice’s investigation, giving the firms, in the words of one Senate aide, “a get-out-of-jail-free card.”35 The firms at issue, it seems, were major campaign contributors to Clinton.

  Jeff Gerth of the New York Times broke the story
on April 4, 1998.36

  Gerth’s breathtaking story was that in 1996 the Chinese launched a rocket carrying a commercial satellite owned by an American company, Loral Space and Communications. The rocket, designed by a Chinese company, crashed and burned shortly after take-off, killing hundreds of Chinese. (Consistent with its human rights record, the Chinese government denied the death toll.) This opening permitted sensitive rocket-guidance technology to be transferred to the “butchers of Beijing,” as Clinton called them back when he was campaigning.

  Two U.S. aerospace companies, Loral and Hughes Electronics, a General Motors subsidiary, rushed in to review the problem. They concluded that an electrical problem had caused the crash. In the review process they turned over two hundred pages of sensitive data to the Chinese, including information that would help the Chinese with rocket guidance and control.

  The guidance technology used for satellites is the same technology required to launch multiple warheads from a single missile. Loral and Hughes were handing over just the technology China needed to perfect its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

  The State Department immediately ordered the Pentagon to review the incident. The Pentagon issued its report in May 1997, concluding that Loral and Hughes had given China “crucial assistance in improving the guidance systems” of its intercontinental ballistic missiles. The companies, the Pentagon found, had “turned over expertise that significantly improved China’s nuclear missiles.” U.S. national security had been harmed. And not just with regard to the “butchers of Beijing”: China had already been caught selling nuclear weapons and missile technology to Iran and Pakistan.