Unlimited Chances
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
February 1, 2000
"When you listen to Al Gore speak, you have to listen very carefully, because old politics uses words in a very tricky manner."
Who would say such a thing about poster-boy Al Gore? One of those mean, old right-wing Republicans? Nope. It was good old left wing Bill Bradley. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it is. Remember: "I did not have sex with that women ...Monica Lewinsky!"
Then, of course, there was, "There is no controlling legal authority that says there was any violation of any law" to enforce 18 U.S.C. § 607 when he made fundraising telephone calls from his White House office and the request for an independent counsel to investigate the Clinton-Gore 1996 Campaign Finance scandal. That section of the Criminal Code reads:
Sec. 607. Place of solicitation
* (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to solicit or receive any contribution within the meaning of section 301(8) of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by any person mentioned in section 603, or in any navy yard, fort, or arsenal. Any person who violates this section shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
However, Al Gore's fund-raising at the Buddhist Temple, if he is the candidate, should be a major campaign issue. In fact, John McCain has already brought it up in New Hampshire and he is being questioned about it in campaign stops. Recently he said, when asked about it: "I-I made a mistake in the episode that you ask me about. Uh...I have learned from that mistake."
Senator Fred Thompson whose committee was large sidetracked in its investigation of illegal fundraising by the Democrats in 1996 said: "You cannot hold fund-raising events at churches or temples or other tax exempt organizations." Or, one TV reporter noted, "Except illegal overseas funds."
However, the really dangerous aspects of some of the Clinton-Gore 1996 illegal fund-raising had to do with what appears to be the selling of American security for campaign contributions which was rampant in 1996 and which Janet Reno has consistently refused to investigate. In "The Year of the Rat" author Edward Timperlake, who is on the professional staff of the House Committee on Rules dealing with National security and who has a years of experience in national Security service, and William C. Triplett, former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charge the "Clinton-Gore administration has willingly compromised American Security for millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from foreign businessmen linked to organized crime and military and intelligence agencies of Communist China -the only country currently targeting America with nuclear missiles."
Much of the money that poured into the Clinton-Gore campaign and the Democratic National Committee was not just an illegal contribution, the money itself was suspect. For example, Timperlake and Triplett described Ted Sioeng and his family, who has business interest in China, Singapore, Macau and other Asian countries. "They are DNC donors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of illegally laundered foreign money; they have had close personal contact with Clinton and Gore; they have been identified by the CIA as agents of Chinese intelligence; and they have fled the country or taken the Fifth Amendment - Mochtar and James Riady, Maria Hsia (who is currently on trial for her part in the illegal fundraising at the Los Angeles Buddhist Temple, John Huang, Clinton's crony Charlie Trie, Ng Lapseg, Pauline Kanchanalak (the Thai businesswoman who has been indicted), Chinese Army Colonel Liu Chaoying, and Johnny Chung.
"First, the money:" Timperlake and Triplett write. "At least $400,000 to the DNC, all illegal.
"Second, the personal contact with Clinton and Gore, probably sitting down to lunch at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple with Sioeng to his left, Maria Hsia to his right, and John Huang hovering in the background.
"Sioeng also organized three more major fundraisers at which he sat at the head table with Clinton. On one occasion, he brought forty-eight friends or business associates to a Los Angeles fund-raiser and sat to the president's immediate right. To the president's left was James Riady and his wife Aileen. We do not know if either Clinton or Gore felt comfortable surrounded by Chinese agents or their representatives.
"According to the CIA information given to the Thompson committee, Sioeng (1) works for the Chinese government, (2) communicated frequently with the People's Republic of China's embassy and consulates, and (3) traveled to Beijing frequently for briefings by China's Communist Party officials."
In September of 1998, out of the clear blue sky, Clinton declared a new "monument" consisting of 1.7 million acres in Utah, he included some ordinary desert land which enabled him to halt the mining of a huge reserve of environmentally friendly coal."
While Clinton claimed that his only interest in blocking the mining of coal in the Kaiparowits area was to preserve a "beautiful, exotic place," local residents of the area who had long urged protection for some archeological sites, dispute that statement. According to members of the Western States Coalition, a key archeological site and other important environmental sites the local residents wanted protected were left outside the 1.7 acre memorial, while ordinary desert land with no significance or unique natural features was included solely to block entrance to the environmentally friendly coal deposits.
I reported at the time: "The September 1996 announcement of the Escalante "Memorial" came in the middle of the presidential campaign, on the heels of large contributions originating from the Lippo group, which is owned by the Riadys of Indonesia. Shortly after becoming second in command, after Ron Brown, at the Commerce Department in 1994, John Huang, who became Democratic Party fund raiser in 1996, began immediately campaigning for changes in US foreign policy in areas that would aid his former Lippo employer. The Lippo Corporation in Indonesia is the only other source of the very low sulfur, non-polluting coal, outside the Utah Kaiparowits basin, that is currently available. Coal fueled power plants under construction or planned, in China, Japan and Mexico which were potential customers for the Andalux Corporation, which holds leases on the now unavailable Kaiparowits coal, will have to purchase their non-polluting coal from the multi-billion dollar Lippo group, or use polluting coal sources. The Mexico plant, especially, will either use coal imported from Indonesia, or coal that will add to pollution problems not only in Mexico, but in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest, which is producing electric power to take the place of the nuclear power plants which have been closed down for 'environmental' purposes.'
"The Lippo corporation founder, billionaire Mochtar Riady, his family members and associates gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Clinton and the Democrats. Earlier in December, Bill Clinton admitted that he received a letter from Riady urging him to "normalize" trade relations with Vietnam at a time when Riady was moving its $6.9 billion real estate and investment empire into the country. Shortly thereafter, in 1994, over protests from veterans and family members of American soldiers missing in action in the Vietnam War, Clinton ended the 30-year Vietnam trade embargo."
John McCain was one of the main moving forces behind ending the Vietnam Trade Embargo, oddly enough. In fact, it was during this period that several POW/MIA groups became very angry at John McCain and McCain, in turn, asked for an "investigation" of the groups.
"In the Utah connection, Andalex Resources, a U.S. mining company owned by a British family, was nearly ready to break ground on a Kaiparowits mine that would produce about 3 million tons of coal. It reversed course with Mr. Clinton's announcement in September," the Associated Press report noted today. "Our position is that the monument designation makes the coal mine project unfeasible," said David Shaver, project manager at Andalex. The now un-mineable coal is known as "super compliance" coal because its properties meet Clean Air Act standards.
"The whole industry was expecting to move into Kaiparowits," Lee Allison, director of Utah's geological survey said. Allison noted that, while cleaner burning coal is also found in other deposits in Columbia, Wyoming and South Africa, the Utah and Indonesia coal are the cleanest burning deposits which are immediately marketable. Clinton's actions have created a worldwide monopoly for the Lippo Conglomerate coal, while leaving Utah without a source of clean burning coal to provide the state's energy needs when its present mines are depleted, twenty-five years from now. Although labor costs are low in Indonesia and much of the Lippo coal is extracted by surface strip mining, the Kaiparowits coal would still be very competitive, although is would not be strip mined. Andulux would use modern environmentally sensitive mining methods in Utah which, combined with lower transportation costs for customers such as the Atlanta based Southern Company, would make the Utah coal a worthy competitor. The Southern Company purchases Indonesia coal for its plant in Chili. The 62 billion tons of coal in southern Utah's Kaiparowits Plateau would provide thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in school funds under the State's 1896 agreement with the Federal Government under the Utah statehood enabling act, and enough coal to keep Utah power plants burning for another 400 years.
The Associated Press reported: "In the Vietnam connection, a key player in the Democratic Party contributions scandal - who left Lippo with a $780,000 bonus to join the Commerce Department - is linked to an effort to help companies, including Lippo, expand into Vietnam. John Huang began aggressively arguing for a new U.S. trade policy toward Vietnam only one day after his July 1994 appointment as a top Commerce official."
Among the questions that candidate Al Gore, the supposed "environmentalist" should be asked is why he went along with blocking America's best source of low sulfur coal, when he knew that the action would increase pollution in America's west. The power plants in the West's four-corner area will now be denied a near by source of low-sulfur coal.
Another question he, and perhaps John McCain should be asked, in view of their bi-partisan Iran-Iraq Non-Proliferation Act of 1992 is why they never pushed for its implementation. It was supposed to place sanctions on foreign countries that exported advanced conventional weapons, including cruise missiles, to Iran or Iraq. Yet the State Department has admitted to Congress that there is evidence of Chinese shipments of C-802 cruise missiles to Iran. Nothing was done to enforce the law Gore and McCain sponsored and got passed.
Also, in the Spring of 1993, Timberlake and Triplett report, the Clinton-Gore began to dismantle COCOM; the Western Powers' long standing system of export controls, first established in World War II and later expanded to prevent American advanced technology that could be used by terrorist states. Cllinton-Gore extinguished COCOM at the end of March 1994 and in January 1995 the Wall Street Journal reported "High-Tech Goods Flood into China As Controls Ease." AT&T immediately moved in to sell previously restricted high-speed telecommunications equipment to China. In September 1993 President Clinton announced a massive lifting of controls on the sale of supercomputers, the sale of which evidently made it possible for China to make use of nuclear information they were getting from leaks from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratories and enabled China to accurately target American cities with their missiles. So far none of these serious charges are being addressed in the primary campaigns, and if they are not asked, the American people could vote in a Clinton Clone they will later regret voting for.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
"The Year of the Rat" by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II - (Published 1998, Regnery Publishing ISBN -0-89526-333-05 )
To Subscribe to the Reagan Monitor, the newsletter that gives you news FACTS you can USE to make your life, and the world, better go to:
Start Your Subscription