Me, Charlie Trie and Beijing's Mystery Woman: The White House Visitor Now Sentenced to Death
Johnny Chung
February 14, 2000
The Los Angeles Times reported last week that former Clinton fund-raiser Charlie "Yah Lin" Trie admitted to the FBI that his involvement in the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign finance scandal went much deeper than was previously known, according FBI documents recently obtained by the paper.
It turns out that Trie confessed to investigators that the notorious Buddhist Temple fund-raiser attended by Vice President Gore that April was actually Trie?s idea. Only later, at the request of Chinagate figure John Huang, did he turn the project over to longtime Gore fund-raiser Maria Hsia.
Hsia went on trial last week for election fraud based on charges arising from that event.
Charlie Trie also told the FBI that he had a friendly relationship with First Lady Hillary Clinton. Not only did Mrs. Clinton accept gifts from him, she personally conducted tours through the White House for Trie's friends. If and when it all comes out, his testimony could spell trouble for Mrs. Clinton's bid to be the next US Senator from New York.
But it was something else Trie admitted that most caught my eye. The onetime Little Rock restaurateur also acknowledged that he had a business relationship with an officer in China's Army, Col. Lin Ruoquing.
The Times reported that Col. Lin supplied Trie with license plates registered to the People's Liberation Logistics Department when he was in Beijing. In turn Trie invited her to become a member of the Democratic National Committee's Business Leadership Forum.
I, too, knew Lin Ruoquing. But in all our dealings she kept her position in the Chinese military completely secret from me. To me she was Chairwoman Lin, a simple businesswoman, who headed up China's Three Best Pharmaceutical company. Only later would I learn of Lin's true importance.
It turns out; Chairwoman Lin was no mere Chinese army colonel who controlled a drug company. In reality, as I would later find out, she was one of the most powerful military officers in all of the People's Liberation Army.
Lin Ruoquing was the person in charge of China's one child policy for the entire millions-strong People's Liberation Army. As such, it was she who determined how big the families of China's military class could be. Anyone in the armed forces who wanted a second child had to secure permission from her office. That meant she and her underlings had the power enforce the one child rule with forced abortions when necessary.
But now, five years after I terminated my relationship with Chairwoman Lin, she sits in a Beijing jail ? sentenced to death, according to reports from Hong Kong, after being found guilty on charges of massive corruption.
What the Los Angeles Times reported about Chairwoman Lin barely scratched the surface. My part of her story is another key puzzle piece in the Clinton-Gore campaign finance scandal. I have shared this information with the Justice Department as part of my agreement to cooperate fully with their investigation. Now, for the first time, I can share it with the public.
In the spring of 1995 Chinese businessman Yi-Qiou Chen came to the US with several fellow entrepreneurs. He was part of a delegation headed up by the president of the Chinese Entrepreneur Association in Beijing.
The group included approximately twenty-five businessmen who had come to the US in search of trade opportunities. That's how Chen came to visit the office of my fax broadcasting business in Los Angeles. During that meeting Yi-Qiou Chen took me aside and told me, "Next time you visit China I would like you to come to see my company." I agreed.
As fate would have it, I was scheduled to travel to China just weeks later. It was on this trip to Beijing that Chen introduced me to Chairwoman Lin, whom he identified as chief of Three Best Pharmaceutical. His own company was a subsidiary of Chairwoman Lin's operation.
Having no idea that Lin was a colonel in the People's Liberation Army, I thought I was just dealing with Chinese business people. Just like in Washington, I was the new kid in town in Beijing, too. This was only my second or third visit to the People's Republic.
Looking back on this episode, I see now there were clues that Yi-Qiou Chen and Chairwoman Lin were no mere Chinese business executives.
For instance, my hosts were able to put me up in Beijing's state house, the Diaoyutai ? in building number two, which offered some very prestigious accommodations.
They began to talk to me about big business deals. The most interesting was a proposal to provide each soldier in the People's Liberation Army with Tylenol ? six tablets each. With a potential market of millions of Chinese soldiers, that's a lot of Tylenol.
Mr. Chen suggested I invite Chairwoman Lin to the US to tour the White House and the Democratic National Committee. Again, at this time, I had no idea she was a colonel in the Chinese Army. Since I had already invited the businessmen from Haomen Beer Company to the White House, this would be no different, I figured. To me it was just another business opportunity.
In order for her to get a passport from the Chinese government, I had to personally write her an invitation to tour the White House and the DNC. That's how it's done in China. You have to obtain a formal invitation first or they won't let you out of the country.
I invited only three people for White House and DNC tours: Chairwoman Lin, her assistant and her son. When Chairwoman Lin's party arrived in America, I was stunned to see that my three-person guest list had suddenly expanded to seven people.
It was during her visit to America that Chairwoman Lin told me about Charlie Trie, and how he had tried to strike up a business arrangement with her. She said that Trie had invited the general manager of her company to come to the US. Trie was very anxious to do business with her but I don't know what kind of deal he proposed.
I decided I would introduce Chairwoman Lin to then-DNC Chairman Don Fowler and DNC finance chairman Richard Sullivan. At the time, I thought that deals such as Lin's Tylenol proposal would be good for my business and enable me to contribute even more money to the DNC.
I told Sullivan and Fowler that Chairwoman Lin was the wife of a retired Red Army General, which was true. The Red Army has been defunct since Mao Zedong's 1949 revolution. I still had no idea that Lin herself had ties to its modern day successor, the People's Liberation Army.
But during Chairwoman Lin's stay in the US, I began to grow more and more uneasy about my relationship with her. I had several concerns.
First, the fact that she showed up with a party of seven when I had invited only three weighed heavily on my mind. Where did she get the other four invitations, I wondered?
When it came time to take Chairwoman Lin on her visit to the White House and DNC, she did not dress appropriately. Her outfit looked like silk pajamas. That's fine for Beijing, but she looked sloppy to Western eyes. To make matters worse, Washington's heavy rains that day had drenched the Chairwoman's outfit to the skin, leaving her a complete mess. Under the circumstances, I decided I would take her only to the Old Executive Office Building next door, then straight back to her hotel.
By then, I had pretty much decided not to do business with Chairwoman Lin and her associates. They talked big about huge business deals, but nothing they said ever seemed to pan out. My decision to end this relationship turned out to be extremely fortunate for me.
When we got back to her hotel, a message awaited saying that she was to return to Beijing immediately. I saw a look of panic in her face, but I did not know what it meant. Later, I would learn that Chinese authorities arrested Chairwoman Lin the minute she stepped off the plane.
During this same period, President Clinton himself asked me to make a special return trip to China. This had nothing to do with business deals or campaign contributions. My mission would be to use whatever influence I had with the Chinese government to secure the release of Harry Wu, the human rights activist then imprisoned by Beijing as a dissident.
Like myself, Wu was an American citizen. And his imprisonment was one of several hot button issues that were putting a strain on Sino-American relations at the time.
DNC Chairman Don Fowler wrote me a letter to show top officials in Beijing, saying that the President of the United States endorsed my visit. Fowler also wanted me to keep him updated regularly on my progress.
But in his letter, Fowler made a significant mistake. He mentioned my relationship with Chairwoman Lin, identifying her as the wife of the Chief of Staff for the People's Liberation Army. That was wrong. As I noted earlier, Lin's husband was actually an old Red Army general, an important distinction for Chinese officials.
Because of the error, I had to delete Fowler's reference to Chairwoman Lin altogether, since the mistake could have complicated my bid to win Harry Wu's freedom.
Just hours after I arrived in China, I was surprised by Chairwoman Lin's assistant; who suddenly appeared at my hotel. She even knew my hotel room number, which I thought was quite amazing.
She had come to beg me to help rescue another important Chinese figure; her own boss, Col. Lin Ruoqing, the person I knew only as Chairwoman Lin. It was then that I learned she had been arrested.
I told her I was busy on another project, the Harry Wu mission, but the Chairwoman's aide persisted. For the first time, she admitted to me that Lin was a colonel in the People's Liberation Army. But there was more.
Because she was desperate for my help, Lin's assistant also came (cont)
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