Seems a more objective analysis concludes otherwise:
May 26, 1999
Review & Outlook
The Banquo Report
A ghost sat at the end of the table yesterday as the Cox Committee served up a Chinese menu of espionage coups. As inexplicable as the American security blunders seemed, the diners kept averting their eyes from the Clinton campaign finance scandal.
It is of course true that the first security breaches occurred under earlier administrations, including Republican ones. And also true that there is important work to be done redressing failed procedures, and that this enterprise will be helped by a bipartisan recognition of the problem. Indeed, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, one of this Administration's adults, has by all accounts made a credible start with this project. The Cox Committee can be forgiven for soft-pedaling campaign finance in the interests of bipartisanship, though this means the report stops short of complete understanding and real accountability.
All nations support spies, after all, and by the law of averages they will sometimes succeed. Despite earlier leaks to the contrary, the report makes clear that carelessness with military secrets clearly reached a crescendo in the Clinton years. We know, in particular, that the discovery of the Los Alamos leak first came to light in 1995, when the CIA received a document detailing China's use of U.S. designs in their latest warheads. We know that the Justice Department repeatedly refused the FBI permission to wiretap Wen Ho Lee, suspected of providing China with much of the information. We know too that the Energy Department, which has authority over U.S. nuclear laboratories, briefed then deputy national security adviser Sandy Berger about the problem in 1996.
Which is to say, in the midst of the President's re-election campaign, not to mention in the wake of the Senate Banking Committee hearings on Whitewater. We're told that President Clinton himself was not let in on the secret until 1998. If true, this is itself reason enough for Mr. Berger to be sacked. We further know that Mr. Lee himself was not fired until this newspaper and the New York Times published stories about the leaks. And that no corrective plan was put into place until last fall, which is to say more than three years after wholesale spying was detected.
All of this, as the Marxists were wont to say, was no accident. There was, first of all, the peculiar environment the White House allowed to be created with talk of a "strategic partnership" with China, and with the late Ron Brown ferrying corporate fat cats over to China to ink their multimillion-dollar contracts. From his National Security Council post, Mr. Berger, a former China trade lobbyist, sat in on the weekly campaign strategy meetings where fund-raising was discussed. These appearances already show an aura of carelessness.
But worse, from the first, campaign finance and espionage have been intertwined. Indeed, the Cox panel itself was convened in response to a request from Newt Gingrich, who wanted a committee to investigate reports whether contributions to Mr. Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign by Bernard Schwartz, head of Loral Space and Communications and the Democratic Party's biggest contributor in 1996, influenced subsequent White House decisions on technology exports to China. Mr. Clinton himself happily approved waivers allowing space launches even though he'd been warned about the potential threat to national security, and later acceded to requests from Hughes Electronics to transfer export approval authority to Commerce from the State Department. And the report concludes that Loral and Hughes knowingly and illegally passed sensitive information to the Chinese without first securing required licenses.
Around the same time, money for the Clinton campaign was coming from Liu Chaoying, daughter of China's retired senior military officer and a lieutenant colonel in the People's Liberation Army in her own right. The report concludes that Miss Liu's transfer of $300,000 to Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung in 1996 "was an attempt to better position her in the United States to acquire computer, missile and satellite technologies." There are many more of these stories, for example the financing for fund-raiser Charlie Trie from Ng Lap Seng of Macau. We know that Al Gore passed the hat at a Buddhist temple, and a bigwig PLA gunrunner sipped coffee with the President at the White House. But the report merely says it was unable to interview witnesses who took the Fifth Amendment or fled the country, so "no significance should be attributed, one way or the other" to its lack of findings on campaign finance. Many of the fleeing witnesses landed in China, were they became at least implicit bargaining chips in negotiations with Mr. Clinton.
Still worse, it is not clear where bribery ended and extortion began. John Huang was transferred from his perch at Commerce to fund-raising in the Oval Office after a September 13, 1995, meeting in the Oval Office with the President, Lippo scion James Riady, senior Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey and Arkansas/Jakarta businessman Joseph Giroir. This looks like the beginning of a Chinese fund-raising conspiracy, but Attorney General Janet Reno has steadfastly refused to appoint an independent counsel to find out despite the urging of FBI Director Louis Freeh and her own handpicked investigator Charles La Bella.
Ms. Reno's own Justice Department investigation has secured cooperation from Mr. Chung and Mr. Trie, and a plea bargain with Mr. Huang is reportedly impending. This is either progress or completion of a coverup. Reports of the Huang agreement say Justice will specify that there is no evidence that he engaged in espionage or any violations of national security laws,
Meanwhile, Carl Cameron of Fox News Channel has obtained interesting leaks of wiretap transcripts between Mr. Chung and Robert Luu, a Los Angeles lawyer who, Mr. Cameron reported, represented Chinese intelligence. Mr. Luu told him not to worry too much about the contributions, but "the important thing is not to touch Hughes and Loral." And in a discussion of concocting a cover story blaming contributions not on the Chinese government but on "princelings"--the privileged children of China's elite. Mr. Luu says, "Chairman Jiang agreed to handle it like this. The President over here also agreed.'" Fox reported the White House denial of any such agreement.
There is plenty of reason to believe, in short, that Chinese political contributions to Mr. Clinton importantly intersected with spectacular intelligence failures by his Administration. The details we do not yet know, but what is altogether too clear is the climate and culture set from the top of this Administration. As we asked when the President stumbled into a war he still does not have the will to win, does character matter yet?
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