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Friday January 7, 3:20 PM
Author of Chinese Threat to Nuke L.A. to Visit US
A high ranking Communist Chinese general, who threatened to vaporize Los Angeles with a nuclear attack in 1996, is scheduled to arrive for a two-day visit to Washington, DC on January 24.
Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of the People's Liberation Army General Staff, will meet with senior Pentagon officials to discuss "military ties" and a possible visit to Beijing by Secretary of Defense William Cohen later this year, Reuters reported on Thursday. (See: Chinese General to Visit US in Military Thaw)
Four years ago, when Sino-American relations unraveled after the PLA fired nuclear-capable missiles over Taiwan in a clear attempt to intimidate an American ally, General Xiong was hardly the model of diplomacy. Xiong, then the PLA's Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, began his nuclear saber rattling in a meeting with former US assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Freeman:
"Taiwan is a matter of vital interest to us," Xiong told Freeman. Then the general warned that the days when China could be intimidated by America's overwhelming military power were over. "You could do that then because you knew we couldn't retalliate. Now we can. In the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei."
In his chilling best selling book Betrayal, national security writer Bill Gertz reports that Xiong's threat was dismissed by Clinton administration officials. "There is no outstanding nuclear threat against the United States from China, and it's silly to build this up into anything more than it is," said State Department spokesman Glyn Davis at the time.
That was three years before the Cox Report, and revelations that China had obtained nearly all of America's nuclear secrets thanks, in part, to the Clinton administration's casual attitude towards national security.
The same year Gen. Xiong issued his nuclear threat, his deputy, Gen. Ji Shengde, met with Johnny Chung, then a Democratic Party fund raiser who had developed high level ties to both Beijing and the White House.
"We like your president. We want to see him reelected," Gen. Ji told Chung. The fund raiser later turned whistleblower and told investigators in 1998 that Gen. Ji offered him $300,000 at that meeting to help Clinton retain the White House in 1996.(cont)
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