OT(?)
Column Clinton and
British
intelligence
The New Australian
No. 125, 28 June - 4 July 1999
Readers keep pleading with me to tell them more while others, though not hostile, are somewhat suspicious, if not about me, at least about my sources. Once again I shall try and explain my situation. I am not on any government payroll and I do not have direct access to any intelligence agency. As I have tried to make clear on several occasions I am a listener. I don't pry, I don't question and I don't send or receive coded messages. But people are people, wherever they are and as such share the same weaknesses. A common weakness is talking, especially after a few drinks. The trick is to sift the wheat from the chaff, as my English teacher was prone to say. One very important way of doing this in China is by assessing the other person's political status. Obviously a member of Chinese intelligence who has just returned from America has far more interesting things to say than a lowly local Party official who spends all day stamping forms.
That some readers are suspicious of what I write is only to be expected and certainly not condemned. In my own defence I can only say that I have not revealed anything that was not later supported by independent sources. But this is because I only try to write that which I have good reason to believe will be confirmed by future revelations. Making statements, no matter how accurate I know them to be, that will never be proven, even with circumstantial evidence, is not guaranteed to strengthen my credibility. For this reason there are times when some things are better left unsaid. Nevertheless, there are also times when certain facts should be made known notwithstanding the absence of supporting evidence. When that happens I am perfectly prepared, as your Americans say, to put my credibility on the line.
Now that I have, I hope, cleared the air I think it might be time to return to the Manchurian Candidate or clone as I called Clinton in an earlier article. Something that the American public has not been told, though it is no secret, is that when Clinton, aka "nanren men zai hua sheng dun"1, abolished COCOM (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) in 1993 he outraged the British who warned Clinton that his decision to permit the export to China of high-tech material with military applications would allow Beijing's military machine to leapfrog years of military research and spending and put the West at risk.
I cannot say whether 10 Downing Street was really surprised by Clinton's decision but I can say with a considerable degree of certainty that British intelligence was not. It should go without saying that British intelligence gave Blair a complete assessment of Clinton's actions and apparent motives. I suspect this assessment had more to do with London's outrage rather than Clinton's action. But this, I admit, is pure speculation on my part. Nevertheless, that British intelligence has taken a keen interest in Clinton's behaviour, an interest that goes back to his student days, is something that would, in my opinion, have helped alert thinking Americans to the true nature of Clinton's character.
What the vast amount of Americans wouldn't know (and might even be appalled by it) is that Special Branch2 supplies British intelligence with dossiers detailing the activities of every foreign student's political activities and has done so for a number of decades. (No wonder the CIA envies the latitude granted to its British counterparts.) Whether Clinton's dossier was officially passed on to American intelligence is another matter. That American intelligence would have been given unofficial access is something I do not doubt for a moment. Once these facts are understood, London's reaction becomes more understandable. Naturally, this has not stopped Blair from glad-handing his good mate Bill.
The irony is that not only did the British know well before the American public that Clinton's action would enable China to buy American supercomputers that would be used to build sophisticated nuclear-guidance systems they also knew the details of those agreements. There is nothing in the agreements between Beijing and Silicon Graphics, Loral Corporation, the Hughes Corporation, etc, that British intelligence doesn't know down to the last comma. What is more important is that I have good reason to believe that British intelligence is equally acquainted with any unofficial arrangements these 'patriotic' American executives may have made with Beijing. This, of course, raises the question of whether American intelligence has give the British a free hand in this matter in order to save itself from any possible embarrassment or whether the British have acted entirely on their own. Though the circumstances of my education allowed me to make interesting British friends I still cannot provide a definitive answer. Anyhow, I don't doubt that the irony of the situation will not be lost on my readers.
How does one deal with the treasonable activities of executives whose favourite colour is green without exposing the president? One doesn't. These executives will stay rich and Clinton's treason will go unpunished. I believe this will happen because Americans simply cannot face the trauma of accepting the fact that their president is a traitor.
1Nanren men zai hua sheng dun translates as our man in Washington.
2Special Branch deals with subversion and potential subversion and has powers of arrest. It also acts as the executive arm of MI5.
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