Red Star Over the White House
by William Norman Grigg
"It’s just about sex!" runs the refrain of Bill
Clinton’s defenders, and a distressingly large portion of the American public has
been willing to sing along. The second verse, which debuted during the impeachment debate
in the House of Representatives, runs as follows: "Bill Clinton’s conduct in the
Lewinsky affair disgraced the Presidency, but it didn’t rise to the level of
impeachment." By the time the impeachment of President Clinton was an accomplished
fact, the public, suffering from acute scandal fatigue, had lost interest in the entire
sordid affair and desperately wanted Congress to extract itself from what Senator Robert
Byrd (D-WV) called the "salacious muck" of the Lewinsky matter.
Whatever the outcome of the Senate trial, William Jefferson Clinton
has secured his inglorious place in history as the first elected President to be impeached
— and deservedly so. Perjury, obstructionism, and abuse of presidential power to
conceal the sexual exploitation of a young subordinate are offenses of sufficient
magnitude to merit Mr. Clinton’s removal from office. Had the President any respect
for the office he holds, or any concern about the best interests of the country he
purports to lead, he would have resigned no later than January 1998, when the Lewinsky
scandal was first made public.
Tactical High Ground
Yet it must be understood that — improbable though it may seem — the impeachment
of Bill Clinton was a triumph of spin control. By making his personal depravity the
central focus of the impeachment debate (although he was impeached for his subversion of
the rule of law), Mr. Clinton has chosen a battlefield in which he and his "secret
police" have the tactical advantage. This is illustrated by the pre-emptive attack on
former House Speaker designate Robert Livingston (R-LA), and the retaliatory attacks
launched by pornographer and presidential ally Larry Flynt.
Lost amid the superficial tumult that characterizes the
"politics of personal destruction" is the fact that the impeachment of Mr.
Clinton on Lewinsky-related charges deferred a much-needed inquiry into the graver charges
that are pending against Bill Clinton — specifically, treason and bribery, which are
specifically cited in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment. Evidence abounds that
Mr. Clinton, in acts of official perfidy that may be unparalleled in our nation’s
history, accepted bribes from Red China in the form of illegal political contributions,
and in exchange made policy decisions that undermined our national security to the benefit
of that hostile foreign power. The mantra chanted by the President’s lackeys and
partisans is that Bill Clinton’s acts in the Lewinsky matter "don’t rise to
the level" of impeachment or removal from office. Not even the most chauvinistic of
Bill Clinton’s defenders could recite that slogan regarding treason.
As the sides lined up for the "Trial of the Century" in
the Senate, debate raged as to whether witnesses would be heard, and — if so —
who they would be: Monica Lewinsky? Bettie Currie? Vernon Jordan? Sidney Blumenthal? For
those concerned about America’s national security, the crucial fact was that the
witness list would not include John Huang, Johnny Chung, Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie,
Maria Hsia, Ted Sioeng, or others found on the list of the more than 100 potential
material witnesses in the so-called Chinagate affair who have fled, invoked the Fifth
Amendment, or brazenly refused to cooperate with investigators. Therein lies the real
triumph of Clintonite spin-control — and a tragic dereliction of duty on the part of
Congress.
Open Door to the Enemy
In their masterful exposé Year of the Rat — a volume which will be
prominently featured in this issue of THE NEW AMERICAN
— congressional investigators Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II document
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
… [were] associated one way or another with the White House and money."
That such a squalid parade was able to buy access to the most
intimate recesses of the White House is shocking and disgusting. But this is much, much
more than merely an offense against aesthetics:
• The Red Chinese military (the so-called People’s
Liberation Army, or PLA) is now able to deploy much more accurate nuclear-armed missiles
pointed at the United States, in large measure because of policy decisions by President
Clinton that have benefited campaign donors — including one who laundered money for
the PLA.
• In exchange for "hush money" paid to Webster
Hubbell by the Red Chinese-connected Indonesian Lippo conglomerate, Bill Clinton
personally sponsored the appointment of John Huang, a suspected Red Chinese agent, to a
sensitive Commerce Department post, where, as Timperlake and Triplett note, "he could
be a source of priceless military and economic intelligence" for Red China. Huang
proved to be a particularly valuable asset in collecting intelligence on high technology,
including satellite encryption technology that is vital to America’s defense —
and highly coveted by the PLA.
• President Clinton and his subordinates made extraordinary
efforts to facilitate the lease of the former Long Beach Naval Station to the China Ocean
Shipping Company (COSCO), a PLA-connected container shipping fleet that specializes in
drug and weapons smuggling. This followed illegal donations filtered from Red Chinese
sources. A COSCO affiliate has also been granted a lease on the Panama Canal’s
"anchor ports" of Cristobal and Balboa, thereby foreshadowing Beijing’s
control over one of the world’s most critical strategic "choke points."
• Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, a member of a Red
Chinese-linked Triad criminal syndicate, laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars into
both the Clinton-Gore campaign and the President’s legal defense trust. Following a
$460,000 donation to the legal defense trust, Trie — acting as a courier on behalf of
Red China — placed a "strategic memo in front of the President at a time of
international crisis, resulting in a reply that changed a long-established element of
foreign policy," recall Timperlake and Triplett. Mr. Clinton’s reply to the memo
signaled a decisive turn away from previous assurances to the free Chinese of Taiwan that
the U.S. would defend them against aggression from Beijing.
• On dozens of occasions, Mr. Clinton has refused to impose
sanctions on Beijing for its export of military technologies to terrorist states, despite
the fact that he is required by law — specifically, a law co-written by the senator
whom he chose as his running mate, Al Gore — to impose sanctions.
• The Administration has conferred prestige and status upon
both the political and military leaders who ordered and carried out the Tiananmen Square
massacre. PLA General Chi Haotian, who was in operational command of the troops who
conducted the slaughter, and General Xu Huizi, who was in tactical command of the troops
on-site, have been received in Washington, DC with full honors and allowed to tour
sensitive U.S. military installations. For good measure, General Chi’s entourage
included an official who had casually mentioned the possibility that Beijing might attack
Los Angeles with nuclear weapons should the U.S. come to the aid of Taiwan after an
invasion from the mainland.
These are just a few of the ways in which Bill Clinton and his
Administration have undercut our national security and enhanced Red China’s capacity
to pursue aggression.
"The most favorable explanation for this betrayal is
incompetence," point out Timperlake and Triplett. "But it is far more likely
that in order to gain campaign contributions and pay hush money to witnesses, the
Clinton-Gore administration turned a deliberate blind eye to these threats to our national
security."
Congress on the Carpet
Unfortunately, the willful blindness referred to by Timperlake and Triplett is not
confined to the Clinton Administration; Congress has much to answer for as well. Two days
before the full House began the impeachment debate, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) to
urge Congress to examine Chinagate and the role that Bill Clinton played in the
"betrayal of our security."
"President Clinton promised to restrain those who ordered the
Tiananmen Square massacre, but he has now allowed these men whose hands are stained with
the blood of martyrs to freedom into the highest reaches of our military defenses, and
made available to them significant portions of our advanced military technology,"
wrote Admiral Moorer. He pointed out that the Administration’s willingness to allow
the Red Chinese to create a "controlling presence in the Panamanian Isthmus" may
someday allow the PLA "to neutralize our entire forward-deployed military
capability."
Admiral Moorer pointedly observed that the House leadership had
allowed Mr. Clinton to define the terms of his own impeachment inquiry: "I note that
the scope of the present investigation leading up to the proceedings before you was
determined entirely by the President, the man accused of the impropriety. If there is
corrupt foreign influence at the highest levels, is it likely that the investigation of it
would have been assigned to the independent counsel? Indeed, is there not the possibility
that what was assigned to the independent counsel was originally intended as a diversion
from just those improprieties which the President knew the public would not
tolerate?"
Admiral Moorer’s analysis is provocative, but sound. Say what
one will about his personal corruption — and, quite frankly, no pejorative is too
pungent for this task — Bill Clinton is a gifted political strategist. He possesses
shrewdness, feline cunning, and a dogged tenacity in clinging to power. He was aware of
what he was doing when he accepted Red Chinese cash, and he was aware of the implications
of his actions when he allowed the export of critical military-related technologies to the
Red Chinese military. Doubtless he was just as aware of the potential consequences, both
in political and personal terms, if Congress were to impeach him on the basis of accepting
bribes from a hostile foreign power. When details of Chinagate began to leak out just
before Election Day in 1996, Mr. Clinton and his damage-control team adopted a stalling
strategy. This strategy helped stymie the work of the Senate’s Thompson Committee
inquiry into "Chinagate." In a sense, the "Monicagate" scandal itself
could be looked upon as merely an extension of the same strategy.
Hubbell Connection
Consider this question: Why was Attorney General Janet Reno, who has tirelessly obstructed
investigations into the Chinagate accusations, willing to authorize Independent Counsel
Kenneth Starr to investigate the Lewinsky scandal? Many apologists for Bill Clinton have
pointed out that Starr’s original portfolio was to inquire into the Whitewater
scandal, and that by investigating accusations rooted in Bill Clinton’s sexual
improprieties the independent counsel had wandered very far afield. His decision to
investigate the Lewinsky affair becomes even more curious in light of the fact that there
is a clear nexus between the Whitewater affair and Chinagate in the person of former
assistant Attorney General Webster Hubbell.
In May 1994, Hubbell, a longtime crony of the Clinton clique who had
resigned from the Justice Department after being charged with fraud in the Whitewater
affair, agreed to cooperate with federal investigators in exchange for a reduced sentence.
By June of that year, Hubbell was destitute — his debts were accumulating, his bank
account was all but depleted, and he was prison-bound. Suddenly a lump sum of $600,000 in
"consulting fees" was thrown at Hubbell from sundry sources, the largest portion
of which came from the Lippo conglomerate, which is tightly involved with the Red Chinese
government. Hubbell pulled an about-face and served his stint in prison in silence —
to the benefit of Bill and Hillary Clinton, both of whom stood to be implicated by
Hubbell’s testimony.
As Timperlake and Triplett observe, "the Riadys would have
extracted a price for their generosity" — namely, the insertion of John Huang
into a sensitive Commerce Department position without the required background check. It
was Huang, acting as vice chairman of finance for the Democratic National Committee after
leaving his post at Commerce, who organized most of the illicit Clinton-Gore campaign
fundraising from suspect Asian sources. More significantly, as former House Rules
Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon (R-NY) has stated, while at the Commerce Department post
which he received through the personal intervention of Bill Clinton, Huang "committed
economic espionage and breached our national security" by passing classified
information on to the Lippo Group and to Red Chinese officials. He also figures
prominently in the transfer of critical missile guidance and satellite encryption
technology to Red China.
Hubbell’s sudden change of heart about cooperating with Kenneth
Starr’s Whitewater investigation, which coincided with the "hush money"
paid to him by the Lippo Group and other shady interests, should at the very least have
provoked Starr’s investigative curiosity — and had Starr pulled on this thread,
the Chinagate scandal may well have come unraveled before much of the damage had been
done. Rather than following a clearly marked trail of evidence, Starr focused his
attention on racking up conviction statistics involving some of the smaller fish in the
Whitewater pond — and eventually took a detour into the Lewinsky scandal.
Reno’s Stonewalling
It is also significant that Starr — who, it must be remembered, is an executive
branch official subject to dismissal by the President — was able to get Janet
Reno’s approval to pursue the Lewinsky matter. Reno’s cooperation in this
instance contrasts sharply with her resolute determination to foreclose any avenue of
investigation that would tie Chinagate scandals to either Bill Clinton or Al Gore.
In July of last year, Charles LaBella, the head of the Justice
Department’s campaign finance task force, sent a memo to Reno urging the appointment
of an independent counsel to investigate the fundraising activities of the 1996
Clinton-Gore campaign. FBI Director Louis Freeh made the same recommendation to Reno in a
memo of his own. Reno simply chose to ignore the recommendations. On July 24, 1998, the
House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, under the leadership of Congressman Dan
Burton (R-IN), subpoenaed the memos as part of its own ongoing inquiry into
"Chinagate." Reno refused to provide them, claiming that to do so would
"compromise" her Department’s investigation — which is better
described as a thinly disguised cover-up.
On August 6th, the Burton Committee put teeth into its legitimate
request by voting 24-19 to charge Reno with contempt of Congress, a charge that — if
upheld by the entire House — would carry a prison term of one year and a $1,000 fine.
"It looks to me like the Attorney General is trying to protect the President,"
remarked Burton. Why is it that Reno is willing to run the risk of imprisonment to
obstruct the Chinagate investigation, yet she readily authorized Ken Starr’s Lewinsky
investigation, which resulted in impeachment?
The issue of the LaBella and Freeh memos surfaced anew on December
2nd, when the House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 20-15, issued yet another subpoena
for them — prompting a seizure of theatrical indignation from some of the
President’s most feckless partisans in the House. "This is the last determined
gasp of a group of people who were determined to impeach the President and haven’t
yet gotten their way," whined Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA). Congressman (now
Senator) Charles Schumer (D-NY), another Democratic partisan renowned for his brazenness
and bile, complained that the impeachment investigation had become a "runaway
train." Bill Clinton’s defenders, who heretofore had sneered that the Lewinsky
affair was trivial, were even more determined to avoid an examination of the more
substantial matters implicated in Chinagate — and, curiously enough, Judiciary
Committee Chairman Henry Hyde apparently shared that determination, since the subpoenas
were never followed up and Chinagate was shunted aside once again.
Hyde’s seemingly inexplicable actions become all the more
mystifying in light of the fact that a year and a half before the impeachment of Bill
Clinton — long before Monica Lewinsky had arisen from obscurity to infamy — Hyde
had written to the Justice Department to urge an investigation of the China issue. When
given the opportunity to broaden the impeachment investigation to include the very matters
about which Hyde had pressed Reno, the Judiciary Committee chairman balked — and, as
a result, those grave matters remain unaddressed.
Changing the Focus
Once again it is important to recognize how the public at large has been tranquilized by
the establishment media cartel into believing that, where Bill Clinton’s crimes
against the Constitution are concerned, "It’s all about sex!" Thus,
congressional efforts to investigate the undermining of our national security are
frustrated by a combination of the Administration’s tireless obstructionism and
carefully cultivated public apathy.
"But if the discretion of the people has not been informed, as
Thomas Jefferson would have said," wrote Admiral Moorer in his letter to Congressman
DeLay, "how can their will be determinative? If the people knew of all the other
falsehoods that have been engaged in [regarding the undermining of our national security],
would their opinion be the same?" It is our belief that if Bill Clinton’s
calculated, cynical sellout of our national security had received a significant fraction
of the media attention that was lavished on the Lewinsky affair, the President may well
have been removed from office by now — for the right reasons — and Al
Gore might be facing serious questions about his own role as the Administration’s
"bag man" in collecting illegal foreign contributions.
This can still happen. Indeed, it must happen. It is not as
if congressional leaders cannot assemble a convincing case: The public record abounds in
critical evidence regarding the treasonable actions of Bill Clinton and his corrupt
clique, much of it taken from congressional sources. Judicial Watch, the public interest
legal organization whose investigations have exposed much of the Chinagate evidence, has
submitted its detailed and compelling Interim Report on impeachment to both houses
of Congress; Year of the Rat provides a comprehensive and readable summary of the
scandal, supplemented with crucial details exhumed by the authors during on-site visits to
Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
What is lacking is congressional will, and this can only be
generated by an informed, motivated electorate that knows the facts and will hold Congress
accountable to do its duty. Accordingly, we invite the public to examine the evidence
contained in this issue and share it with their friends, associates, and — most
importantly — their elected representatives.