Democrats looking toward November's
elections are shell-shocked to see the stonewall start to crumble in May.
The White House is in a protective crouch, mimicking its stance in the early
stages of the Lewinski revelations: Promising cooperation, delivering
nothing, and waiting for its critics to overplay their hand and hoping to
escape by defining deviancy downward. A similar result is a danger in the
missile controversy. While we certainly need to establish all the facts, the
worst is not necessarily true. But even so, that is no excuse for the
Presidential depredations.
May 22, 1998
China, Missiles and Clinton
Over the past weeks we learned Janet Reno again rejected
an independent counsel, this time recommended by Charles LaBella, her
handpicked investigator of the scandal. Congressional Democrats led by
Henry Waxman joined the coverup by refusing immunity to Congressional
witnesses cleared by the Justice Department. Though Mr. Waxman found
camouflage in the mistakes of Chairman Dan Burton, Republicans led by
Speaker Gingrich responded by finally finding their voice in criticizing the
White House. While Kenneth Starr's Arkansas grand jury ended, insiders
understood that the statute of limitations had expired on the original
offenses, and the ensuing coverup was still under investigation in
Washington. Meanwhile, the White House suffered the first in an inevitable
string of court defeats on its preposterous claims of stonewall privileges.
Into this mood thudded the latest in an endless succession of falling shoes,
yet another revelation by the indefatigable Jeff Gerth of the New York
Times: That cooperating witness Johnny Chung told Justice Department
investigators that much of the money he poured into Democratic coffers
came from Liu Chao-ying, a woman with an arresting resume: (1) lieutenant
colonel in the People's Liberation Army, (2) an executive of China
Aerospace Corp. and (3) the daughter of Gen. Liu Huaqing, then China's
top military commander. Lt. Col. Liu has now faxed a denial to the
Associated Press, but the Times reported that President Clinton posed for a
photograph with her at one fund-raiser.
This eye-popper dovetails with other recent reports: (1) That there has been
a criminal investigation of two U.S. aerospace firms for illegal transfers of
technology to China after a Chinese rocket launching a U.S.-made space
satellite failed; (2) that a Pentagon panel concluded the transfer harmed
national security; (3) that the President overrode Justice and Pentagon
objections to approve an additional satellite launch by one of the firms,
Loral Space and Communications, whose chairman Bernard Schwartz was
the largest personal contributor to the Democratic Party; (4) that the CIA
reports Chinese intercontinental missiles are targeted on the United States;
(5) that India tested nuclear weapons, perhaps partly influenced by
American aid to China, raising the stakes on all national security issues.
Congress is understandably atwitter, with the House voting to outlaw export
of satellites for launching in China. Democrats looking toward November's
elections are shell-shocked to see the stonewall start to crumble in May.
The White House is in a protective crouch, mimicking its stance in the early
stages of the Lewinski revelations: Promising cooperation, delivering
nothing, and waiting for its critics to overplay their hand and hoping to
escape by defining deviancy downward. A similar result is a danger in the
missile controversy. While we certainly need to establish all the facts, the
worst is not necessarily true. But even so, that is no excuse for the
Presidential depredations.
***
For perspective, we should start with the Chinese missile force. The 18 or
so Chinese intercontinental missiles are liquid-fueled relics of the
mid-1980s. They cannot be ignored as city-busters, and a "detargeting"
agreement would be a constructive symbol. But in military terms nothing
dramatic has recently changed. In terms of broader China policy, a nation of
1.2 billion souls should not be seen as a monolith. China is not the Soviet
Union reborn, this is not the Cold War. Obviously we should be prudent
about exporting military technology, but our long-term interest lies in
allowing a consumer society to flourish.
Arguments about technology transfer are as old as the Cold War, with the
Pentagon wanting to bottle up technology and the Commerce Department
arguing it's available elsewhere anyway and U.S. firms should be allowed to
compete. Perhaps the House vote expresses the right policy, but it is
scarcely an open-and-shut case. There are both commercial and security
interests in American supremacy in space satellite technology, and this
requires launch capacity not available domestically. The uneasy resolution
has been to allow Chinese launches of American-designed satellites under
the supervision of U.S. government agencies.
The failure of this process is at issue in the criminal investigation and
Pentagon report and so on. The second company involved, Hughes
Electronics, has been carrying its version of events around Capitol Hill and
elsewhere, protesting that it's a proud member of the military-industrial
complex. When a Loral launch failed in February 1996, the Chinese
conducted their own failure investigation. The next scheduled launch was by
Hughes, insurers insisted on an independent review, and scientists from
Loral and Hughes reviewed the Chinese study. Their report was sent to
China while the required State Department clearance was still pending. The
cover letter was signed, perhaps under some mistaken impression, by the
study's chairman, Dr. Wah Lim, an American citizen born in Singapore and
then a Loral vice president but since hired by Hughes.
This was a clear procedural violation of the export-control laws, but it
remains an open question how much technology was actually transferred,
and how much it helped the Chinese missile program. The American
scientists agreed with the Chinese conclusion that the problem was an
improperly soldered electrical connection. However, the most sensitive
issue in the satellite launches concerns the encryption devices used in
communication with satellites, and after one launch failure the device was
not recovered. These are surely issues a Congressional investigation should
cover patiently and carefully.
***
Given the overlay of legitimate debate, however, it may be difficult to
determine the precise role of political contributions from Ms. Liu and Mr.
Schwartz. It is probably not provable, and may not even be strictly true,
that the President of the United States deliberately sold missile technology
for political contributions. The most impressive point is that President
Clinton's decision to transfer satellite launch licensing from State to
Commerce was announced smack in the middle of the crisis over Chinese
missile firings around Taiwan. Passing strange! Our own reading of the
President's mind is not that this will give the Chinese their guidance systems.
But rather, this gives Bernie what he wants and I'm paid up.
Then too, this transfer of authority, beyond the usual
State-Pentagon-Commerce turf war, was to a Commerce Department
headed by the late Ron Brown. That is to say, like seats on foreign trade
promotion trips, satellite launch licenses were an ongoing ticket for political
contributions. What lines would be drawn in this ongoing effort is evident in
the careers of John Huang and the Lippo Group, Charlie Trie and Ng Lap
Seng of Macau, Johnny Chung and Lt. Col. Liu.
Along the way, those who raised warnings have been repeatedly savaged.
Gary Aldrich, the White House FBI agent, wrote a book about how
security there had collapsed, and was castigated for speculations about
Presidential sex. Senator Fred Thompson took the heat for not definitively
proving his suggestions of Chinese campaign influence. After Monica
Lewinsky and Lt. Col. Liu, both are owed apologies. Whatever Chairman
Burton's verbal miscues, he is right that 90 witnesses have fled or taken the
Fifth Amendment.
Even now Attorney General Reno refuses an independent counsel on
campaign contributions. The President met with an indisputable Chinese
agent in a campaign fund-raising context; this itself is, in the words of the
statute, "specific" information from a "credible" source that the President
"may" have committed a crime. If the President knew who Lt. Col. Liu was
and posed to thank her for contributions, he was party to an illegal
conspiracy. Precisely what he knew when is for an independent counsel to
determine. With more rationalizations, Ms. Reno will further disgrace her
high office. Congress also has a responsibility to make clear what has gone
wrong, a duty it has discharged poorly. The most serious approach would
be perhaps with a joint House-Senate committee as investigated the
Iran-Contra imbroglio.
***
Even if the Loral transfers do not prove to be the key to incinerating
American cities, can all this be dismissed as no harm, no foul? There is a
pattern of behavior here reaching back at least to Hillary Clinton's
$100,000 commodity coup--the Tyson empire's speculative investment in a
rising politician. In the end, perhaps the satellite launch licenses were not a
quid pro quo for Chinese military contributions, but at this point in the
Clinton Presidency few people not on the White House payroll are willing to
dismiss this possibility. In the end, the arresting thing is this loss of
credibility.
With the involvement of at least potential national security issues, we are
learning that Presidential character matters after all. We depend on
Presidents, as we depend on chief executives, military officers, clergymen
and other responsible leaders, to subordinate their own immediate interests
to some larger purpose. If a President has no control over his own appetites
and ambitions, he will contaminate his own administration and our
government. It is up to other men and women of responsibility to limit the
ongoing damage to our institutions.
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