Wash. Post
3-21-99 Editorial
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's propensity for deflecting blame upon his predecessors is becoming legendary. Asked about the Clinton administration's unconscionable failure to address alarming reports about Chinese espionage at the nation's nuclear-weapons laboratories, Mr. Berger changes the subject and reflexively responds that the theft of the design of America's most advanced nuclear warhead did not occur on his watch. Such a knee-jerk response should hardly be surprising, coming as it does from arguably the most politicized national security adviser in postwar history. Never mind that the counterintelligence officials who detected the warhead-design theft also concluded that China was continuing to steal nuclear secrets from U.S. weapons labs during the Clinton administration.
But it was not the first time Mr. Berger had responded to questions about National Security Council malfeasance by blaming the policies of his predecessors. In September 1997, during the Senate hearings into the campaign-finance scandal, Sen. Fred Thompson queried Mr. Berger about the rogues' gallery of unsavory characters who frequently visited the Clinton White House. The absence of any vetting process was obvious. "That has not been the practice of NSCs or White Houses as far as I can tell for the past 30 years," Mr. Berger responded. To which Mr. Thompson replied: "As far as you know, for the past 30 years, there has not been anything like the number of questionable characters going in and out of the White House." "Well," Mr. Berger lamely retorted, "I'd rather not make those comparisons."
And for good reason. During Mr. Berger's tenure as deputy national security adviser during Mr. Clinton's first term, the welcome mat at the White House was repeatedly trampled by some of the most questionable characters ever to visit there. Time and again, their visits were inextricably linked to massive campaign contributions, many of which, bearing Chinese fingerprints, proved to be illegal.
Consider Wang Jun, the chairman of an arms manufacturing company owned by the People's Liberation Army and the son of one of China's most reactionary leaders, the late Wang Zhen, who advocated the massacre at Tiananmen Square. The owner of a huge stake in a Hong Kong satellite company, Mr. Wang attended a White House coffee on Feb. 6, 1996, the same day President Clinton signed controversial waivers for four satellite launches by Chinese rockets. Accompanying Mr. Wang were two Arkansas cronies, Charlie Trie and Ernest Green. The next day Mr. Green, who was seeking investment-banking business with Mr. Wang's financial corporation, donated $50,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). A month later, Mr. Trie delivered $640,000 to the president's legal defense fund. To the DNC, Mr. Trie had also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars, money wired to him from Chinese banks by Macao businessman Ng Lap Seng, who visited the White House at least a dozen times. The NSC never raised a red flag.
Then there was Florida computer executive Mark Jimenez, who escorted a senior adviser to Paraguay's president to the same coffee attended by Mr. Wang. Mr. Jimenez had previously met with the NSC's chief Latin American staffer. He and his company have donated more than $800,000 to the Democratic Party since 1993, including $225,000 within weeks of the coffee. A month after the coffee, President Clinton issued a waiver to Paraguay cancelling U.S. sanctions for cocaine smuggling.
The NSC was also actively involved with Pauline Kanchanalak, a Thai businesswoman who was feverishly seeking permission to hold the inaugural session of the U.S.-Thai Business Council in the White House. As she was showering the DNC with more than $250,000 in contributions in 1996, Ms. Kanchanalak met twice with Sandra Kristoff, the NSC's top Asia staffer, to lobby on behalf of the business council she was helping to create. No political connection there, Mr. Berger would have you believe.
Grigori Loutchansky, a notorious Russian businessman linked to organized crime, nuclear smuggling, drug trafficking and money laundering, managed to dine with Mr. Clinton in 1993 and was invited to a major fund-raiser at the Hay-Adams Hotel in 1995. After making a $20,000 donation to the DNC, Jorge Cabrera, a convicted felon, attended a 1995 White House Christmas party with Mr. Clinton and a Miami fund-raiser, where he and Al Gore were photographed together. Not a peep was heard from the NSC.
Then there is Johnny Chung, a bankrupt California businessman who managed to donate nearly $400,000 to the DNC and whom the NSC called a "hustler." As it turned out, Chung got much of his money from a lieutenant colonel in Chinese military intelligence. Her father was the general in charge of acquiring advanced U.S. military technology. Amazingly, Chung managed to visit the White House 20 times after the NSC wrote a memo identifying him as a "hustler." On one of those occasions, after handing a $50,000 check to Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Chung escorted several Chinese businessmen to the president's Saturday radio address. One of them was a Chinese arms dealer.
As deputy national security adviser, Mr. Berger attended the president's weekly campaign-strategy meetings in 1996. That is not only unprecedented, it is inexplicable. Mr. Berger insists that the NSC never involved itself in politics, but even he responded to fund-raising favors requested by White House and DNC politicos. An October 1995 e-mail from an NSC staffer informed him that "a request has come in from [White House director of political affairs] Doug Sosnik's office for you to have a five-minute photo-op with Eric Hotung. Sosnik's office got the request from [DNC] Chairman [Don] Fowler. If you don't know Hotung, he's a fabulously wealthy Hong Kong businessman." As it happened, his American wife had promised the DNC a $100,000 donation. Within 10 days of the photo-op, the wife of the "fabulously wealthy" Mr. Hotung made good on her promise.
Asked by Sen. Thompson at the campaign-finance hearings about NSC staffer Robert Suettinger's private meeting with Mr. Hotung at his lawyer's office, Mr. Berger seemed indignant at the mere hint of impropriety. "Mr. Suettinger is a career employee in the diplomatic area who's assigned to the NSC, not at all political," Mr. Berger retorted. However, here is how Mr. Suettinger replied to a question about the propriety of disseminating photos featuring the president, Chung and the Chinese businessmen -- one of whom was an arms dealer -- who visited the White House for that infamous radio address. Commenting on "the joys of balancing foreign policy considerations against domestic politics," the so-called apolitical Mr. Suettinger wrote, "to the degree it motivates him to continue contributing to the DNC, who am I to complain?" Within days of seeking the photos, Chung donated another $125,000 to the DNC.
Even when the NSC was confronted in 1996 with evidence from the FBI that China was illegally funnelling money into U.S. electoral politics, it withheld -- ever so conveniently -- the information from the president. In June 1996, two months after Mr. Berger was first briefed about China's nuclear espionage, the FBI briefed two mid-level NSC intelligence officials about China's interference in the 1996 campaign. The White House implausibly insists -- and the FBI emphatically denies -- that the FBI briefers told the NSC staffers not to share the information. Pouring cold water on the White House's claim, Attorney General Janet Reno, who supervises the FBI, revealed that she tried to contact then-National Security Adviser Anthony Lake by telephone in May 1996 to warn him of the illegal Chinese contributions. He failed to return the call, and she failed to follow up.
Mr. Berger's interference with the Justice Department's criminal investigation of Loral Corp. for its unauthorized transfer of missile-guidance technology to China is even more disturbing. As it happens, Loral chairman Bernard Schwartz was the Democratic Party's largest individual soft-money contributor during the 1995-96 cycle. In 1995, he shrewdly hired former NSC spokesman Tom Ross, who helped lobby the White House to transfer satellite-waiver authority from the State Department to the Commerce Department. Against the recommendations of the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Agency, the president transferred the waiver authority in March 1996. Two months later, without approval, Loral shared its report on the causes of a failed Chinese rocket launch with China. By doing so, Loral helped China to design long-range missiles carrying nuclear warheads aimed at U.S. cities.
In February 1998, while the Justice Department was investigating Loral, Mr. Ross was placing urgent calls to his former NSC colleague Gary Samore. Loral needed another waiver. The State Department warned the NSC that Loral's earlier actions were "criminal" and "knowing and unlawful" and that Loral was "likely to be indicted." Mr. Berger nontheless recommended that the waiver be issued, and it was. He did so, it is now clear, knowing that China had been accused of stealing nuclear secrets enabling it to design powerful, miniature warheads that could, as a result of Loral's unauthorized technology transfer, be launched in multiple numbers on a single missile and aimed at multiple U.S. targets.
Mr. Samore, the NSC official whom Mr. Ross had been intensely lobbying, had been arguing since 1996 that the Energy Department's counterintelligence officials were wrong in asserting that China's advances in nuclear warhead design stemmed from nuclear secrets it had stolen from U.S. weapons labs. Mr. Samore further insisted that the case should have no bearing on U.S-China relations. Until very recently, his view prevailed in Mr. Berger's NSC.
In December, a House select committee investigating China's acquisition of U.S. military technology issued its unanimous report demolishing the NSC's view and endorsing the position of Energy Department counterintelligence officers. The Cox committee unanimously concluded that China's nuclear espionage damaged U.S. national security.
Mr. Berger has participated in the unprecedented politicization of the National Security Council. He misread the dire consequences of Chinese espionage. He delayed corrective action. And he compounded the espionage with harebrained decisions facilitating the transfer of sensitive missile guidance and control technology to China. In short, he has done enough. More than enough. His last official act must be resignation. The sooner the better. |
