Hillary and China Shoot-Down
by Carl Horowitz

Now that Hillary Clinton is running for President, she has questions to answer about the transfer of military secrets to the People's Republic of China through a sophisticated spy ring in return for 1996 election campaign cash.

Only days prior to Mrs. Clinton's announcement, China displayed its military might, when it used a surface-to-air ballistic missile to shoot down an aging weather satellite far above the earth's surface. Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett's book, "Year of the Rat," along with a Senate committee report headed by Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., add up to a powerful indictment of the Clintons' involvement in a "bamboo connection," flouting bans on foreign individuals and corporations contributing or soliciting funds for political campaigns and on federal employees using their office to affect election outcomes. Reporters should jog Mrs. Clinton's memory about three people in particular: Charlie Trie, John Huang and James Riady. Neither she nor her husband mentioned them in their respective post-White House memoirs, Living History and My Life.

Charlie Trie. A naturalized U.S. citizen from Taiwan, Trie owned a restaurant in Little Rock, Ark., one of the Clintons' favorite hangouts during Mr. Clinton's days as governor. But this was no ordinary restaurateur. Trie also owned a Little Rock firm, Daihatsu International Trading, with offices in Washington and Beijing. He also was a bagman for Ng Lapseng, a fellow member of the Four Seas Triad, a Taiwanese crime syndicate allied with Chinese military and intelligence. Trie received anywhere from $1.1 million to $1.5 million in cash from Lapseng, who ran a brothel in Macau, using much of the money for contributions to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the President's Legal Defense Trust. Trie enjoyed easy access to the White House, visiting anywhere from 23 to 37 times, typically for fundraising "coffees."

John Huang. Huang had been a principal fundraiser for Bill Clinton's post-election inaugural committee, greasing the wheels for his July 1994 appointment as the Commerce Department's deputy assistant secretary for international economic policy. Hillary's personal intervention was instrumental in Huang getting the job; his future supervisor later would testify he was "totally unqualified." Huang, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Taiwan, previously headed a Los Angeles-based subsidiary of the Indonesian financial conglomerate, the Lippo Group, whose founder, ethnic Chinese billionaire Mochtar Riady, was a generous contributor to the DNC. During his year and a half at Commerce, Huang, having gained top-secret security clearance, regularly used the Washington office of Little Rock investment firm Stephens, Inc., right across the street, as a safe house, often leaving with classified files. After leaving the department in December 1995, his security clearance intact for a year after that, Huang became DNC vice chairman of finance, raising millions from Chinese-connected commercial and arms-trading fronts. James Riady. The son of Mochtar Riady, James donated about $475,000 to the DNC and various Democrat candidates during the 1992 campaign. He'd sat on the board of failed Worthen Bank in Little Rock, which had been bailed out by Lippo and Stephens in 1984. The younger Riady sat on the Worthen board before being cited by the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency for making "excessive loans at preferential terms."

After Bill Clinton's re-election, a U.S. Senate committee, led by Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., was piqued enough to conduct several months of hearings during 1997. The committee's final report, released March 5, 1998, read in part: "The volume of Huang's contacts with Lippo and the Chinese embassy...is cause for concern. The Committee has found no direct evidence that Huang passed classified information, but he had the opportunity to do so and his activities have not otherwise been adequately explained." The Justice Department investigated the matter, eventually indicting 26 persons and two corporations, all of whom (save for the few who couldn't be found) pled guilty. That included Trie, Huang and Riady. The Democrats had to return more than $2.8 million in illegal or improper campaign contributions, around 80 percent of which had been raised or contributed by Trie and Huang.

And that doesn't even cover the strange case of Loral Space and Communications Chairman Bernard Schwartz, who contributed nearly $600,000 to the Democrats during the 1995-96 election cycle. His generosity won him an antitrust exemption in March 1996 from President Clinton, allowing Loral to transfer authority for satellite export licenses to the Commerce Department, where Johnny Huang still had his security clearance. Could the sophistication of today's Chinese ballistic missiles be connected to the Clinton's pursuit of campaign money? It looks that way.

Carl F. Horowitz is director of the Organized Labor Accountability Project of the National Legal and Policy Center, a nonprofit foundation based in Falls Church, Va. dedicated to promoting ethics in public life.