By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources Website - http://www.originalsources.com
August 3, 1998 The headline said Sen. Hatch "Pledges Leniency if Clinton Tell the Truth." That doesn't really describe what the man who would play a key role in an impeachment trial actually said yesterday on Meet the Press. What he said was, ""If he comes forth and tells it and does it in the right way and there aren't a lot of other factors to cause the Congress to say this man is unfit for the presidency and should be impeached, then I think the president would have a reasonable chance of getting through this."
Orrin Hatch, who was endorsed by President Ronald Reagan as a man of quality, courage, discipline and integrity," carefully limited any hint of leniency with four very restrictive "ifs" - one of which was "other factors" that would cause the Congress to say he is unfit for the presidency.
Now, what might he be thinking?
Other reports tell us that Clinton team is going to do something really desperate to try to keep this issue safely where the media has put it - on sex. Something hasn't surfaced yet. Whatever it is I strongly suspect that it's far more serious than Clinton merely committing perjury over his sex exploits.
A hint of what that may be also came out of the same program when Senator Hatch was surprisingly blunt over Janet Reno's refusal to take the advice of her own top investigators and call for an independent counsel to examine the president's fund raising activities during the 1996 campaign.
Attorney General Janet Reno could come under enough pressure to prompt her resignation if she continues to defy the advice of her top investigators and refuses to call for an independent counsel to examine alleged White House wrongdoing during the 1996 presidential campaign, Sen. Orrin Hatch said Sunday.
Under fire by Republicans on Capitol Hill, Reno is being pressured to seek a special prosecutor to investigate campaign fund-raising practices by the Clinton administration. She recently defied a subpoena by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to turn over two internal Justice Department documents that recommended she seek an independent counsel.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., has threatened to bring contempt charges against Reno for ignoring the subpoena to turn over two internal Justice Department Documents that recommended that she seek an independent counsel. .
One of the documents being sought is a November 1997 memo from FBI Director Louis Freeh. The other was submitted last month by Charles LaBella, who headed a Justice Department campaign finance task force. Both memos, Justice officials have said, recommended the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the alleged violations. Reno rejected Freeh's request last fall but she is still considering LaBella's advice.
Sen. Hatch said yesterday that Reno has agreed to meet with him and his House counterpart, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., after she takes a few weeks to review LaBella's memo. "We are not going to subpoena those (memos) until we sit down with her probably toward the end of the month. ... If she doesn't do the right thing here she will lose credibility, because I believe you cannot ignore the top investigators." Hatch said. "By ignoring the top people in her administration, she is going to start losing credibility with the American people and I think it probably would have to lead to her resignation," Hatch added.
Orrin Hatch is not given to bluster or empty threats. This development indicates that there is something very serious going on over the Campaign Finance Scandal issue. Congress has already held extensive hearings on the illegal foreign contributions to the Democratic Party during the 1996 election. However, the White House has tried desperately to deflect the investigations. No less than 90 persons who have been subpoenaed have either taken the Fifth Amendment or fled the country.
Top Democrats have given speech after speech urging a new campaign finance law in an obvious effort to convince the public, through the media, that somehow the problem is all in the law - not whether or not they were ignoring the law, but how the law was written.
President Clinton and other senior officials violated campaign contribution laws by asking for donations from White House phones or using visits or overnight stays at the White House to solicit contributions. On Friday, the deputy majority leader in the Senate called for Reno to resign if she fails to appoint a campaign finance special prosecutor.
"I don't think she's doing her job," Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., said in a floor speech. "I think she's more involved in more of a cover-up of the president's activities or the White House's activities than she is enforcing the law."
House Speaker Newt Gingrich has indicated, as long ago as October 1996 campaign, that, "The president has been soliciting money from foreign nationals? The greatest power in the world being rented to foreigners? This is a scandal that has historic implications. It makes Watergate look trivial!"
Gingrich was referring to a $425,000 contribution to the Democratic Campaign from an Indonesian couple that was uncovered shortly before he made that statement. He also charged that the president was "central figure in a political scandal of historic proportions."
A scandal of historic proportions? Pressure for Reno to resign? Reno has approved the extension of Starr's investigation into the Lewinsky matter, but has stubbornly refused to consider looking into the foreign money situation?
I smell a rat. I think she has led the investigation away with the sex angle to cover up something far more serious.
Gingrich said in October 1996, "This is the undermining of the American constitutional process by foreign money illegally penetrating our system." The Washington Post had reported that the couple gave the money to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after meeting with Commerce Department official John Huang. Huang not only worked under Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown before becoming a fund raiser for the DNC, he maintained very close ties with the Lippo Corporation, an Indonesian conglomerate, in which one of the couple's relatives owns a major stake.
The Lippo Company controls the largest producing low-sulfur coalmine in the world. Low sulfur coal is in huge demand by energy producing companies trying to comply with environmental mandates. The only other easily accessible large deposit of environmentally friendly low sulfur coal is in Utah. But, a mere one month before the large contributions to the Clinton Campaign from the Lippo group were reported, Clinton suddenly, with no advance discussion, even with the Democrat Congressman in whose district the property lay, designated 1.7 million acres which contained the coal "a national monument."
The Associated Press noted on December 26, 1996, "When President Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of Utah wilderness as a national monument, he dashed plans to tap a huge reserve of environment-friendly coal." She also commented on previously reported business interests of the Lippo group in worldwide markets, which would be the prime competitors for the Utah 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, scoffed at 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. However, ordinary desert land with no significance or unique natural features was included solely to block entrance to the environmentally friendly coal deposits.
Did Clinton promise to block the mining of the coal in return for huge contribution from the Lippo Corporation in Indonesia? With the closure of the Utah competition, 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 in Utah, 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 also in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. The winds bring the pollution up from Mexico..
So, Clinton cannot have been motivated by environmental concerns. Even the most ardent environmentalists in Utah were surprised and puzzled by the sudden, huge "memorial" that took Utah coal out of the competition with Lippo low-sulfur coal.
Lippo Corporation founder, billionaire Mochtar Riady, his family members and associates at least a couple of million dollars to Clinton and the Democrats. Bill Clinton admitted after the election in 1996 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.
"In the Utah connection, Andalux 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 reported. "Our position is that the monument designation makes the coal mine project unfeasible," said David Shaver, project manager at Andalux. 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 that 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.
I rather suspect that Clinton will do whatever he thinks he has to do to keep the Congress from finding out what ELSE he promised Lippo, besides the squelching of their competition from Utah. With the Indonesian currency at about 25% of what it was when Clinton was getting contributions for his campaign from them, their stock market mostly dead and unemployment growing rapidly, watch for efforts by Clinton to repay them with US Taxpayer funds funneled through the IMF. <