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Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 20:37:41 -0800
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Roadmap through Scandal (fwd)
>Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:27:38 -0800 (PST)
>To: tpd@callamer.com
>From: Wayne Mann <tpd@callamer.com>
>Subject: TPDL 3-040597-SPECIAL PART 1 of 2
>
> I ran across the enclosed and think it lays things out in a logical
>and factual way. It might be of use in showing friends to enlighten them?
>It is in two e-mails because it won't fit in one. Thank you.
>
>
>MEMORANDUM
>
>DATE:
> April 4, 1997
>TO:
> Interested Parties
>FROM:
> Peter Wehner
> Director of Policy
>SUBJECT:
> The Clinton Administration:
> A Roadmap Through the Scandals
>
>
>
>
>There is a lot of talk these days about "Clinton administration scandals,"
>the "money trail" and the "China connection." But these are
>complicated stories, and I found that I, and others I know, had only a
>cursory knowledge of what is involved in each of these scandals and
>controversies; who the key actors are; which ethical breaches are most
>troubling; how the various pieces may fit together; and what the
>potential legal violations might be.
>
>So I spent a few days on a research project, the purpose of which was
>to lay out -- in a straightforward, factual, easy-to-follow way -- what
>has been reported about individuals and topics like Webster Hubbell;
>John Huang; Johnny Chung; Charles Yah Lin Trie; Roger Tamraz;
>Susan McDougal; fundraising involving the White House and the DNC;
>the questionable use of the White House computer database; the
>potential misuse of the Immigration and Naturalization Service; the
>Cheyenne-Arapaho Indian tribe in Oklahoma; the firing of the White
>House Travel Office; the requisitioning of 900 confidential FBI files; the
>swirl of activity in Vince Foster's office following his suicide; the
>disappearance and reappearance of subpoenaed billing records from the
>Rose Law Firm; the RTC investigation; the Madison Savings and Loan;
>and Hillary Clinton's commodity trading.
>
>The attached report is the result of that research. I think it is fair to say
>that this constitutes a devastating empirical indictment of the ethical
>conduct of the Clinton White House. What is evident, too, is the pattern
>of concealment, half-truths, and "inoperative" statements which
>characterize the administration's dealings with so many of these ethical
>issues.
>
>Please note: there is no original research contained in this document.
>The information I have compiled is based on accounts (many of them
>almost verbatim) of stories and editorials written in America's major
>newspapers: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington
>Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, USA
>Today, and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, as well as the Associated
>Press, Time, Newsweek and others. Columnists and reporters whose
>work was particularly helpful (and which I made the most extensive use
>of) include William Safire, Jeff Gerth, Bob Woodward, Brian Duffy,
>Jerry Seper, Paul Bedard, Allison Mitchell and Glenn Simpson.
>
>It is well known that in 1992, Bill Clinton promised us the "most ethical
>administration in the history of the Republic." And just last year, as
>various scandals were unfolding, Vice President Gore made this
>statement: "The ethical standards established in this White House have
>been the highest in the history of the White House. You have a tougher
>code of ethics, tougher requirements strictly abided by." It seems to me
>that these are statements to which President Clinton and Vice President
>Gore ought to be held accountable.
>
>Time and events will prove how debilitating these ethical breaches will
>be. For now, though, I think there is no question that there are some
>extremely serious issues at stake.
>
>I hope you find this document useful, and illuminating. It is one I intend
>to update, as events warrant.
>
>
>
>ROADMAP THROUGH SCANDAL
>
>The Clinton Administration's Ethical Problems: Here's What Has Been
>Reported About*....
>
>(Updated: April 4, 1997)
>
>The material in this document was taken virtually verbatim from
>published reports in some of America's leading newspapers and
>magazines, and from several columnists.
>
>Webster Hubbell
>
>At Issue: Whether any of the payments Clinton associates arranged
>for Webster Hubbell were intended to buy his silence in the
>Whitewater investigation.
>
>Top White House Aides Helped Secure Payments to Hubbell
>
> The White House now acknowledges that President Clinton's top
> advisers and confidants mounted a campaign in 1994 to help find
> lucrative employment for Webster L. Hubbell -- former associate
> attorney general, Hillary Clinton's former law partner, one of Bill
> Clinton's closest friends, and a central figure in the Whitewater
> inquiry -- who was then facing a rapidly unfolding criminal
> investigation into his business and billing practices while he was at
> the Rose Law Firm (in December 1994 Hubbell pleaded guilty to
> mail fraud and tax evasion). The effort to help Mr. Hubbell
> included Thomas F. McLarty, then Mr. Clinton's chief of staff;
> Mickey Kantor, then the U.S. Trade Representative; Erskine B.
> Bowles, now the White House chief of staff; and Vernon Jordan,
> a Washington lawyer and close friend of Mr. Clinton;
>
> In early April 1997, the White House admitted for the first time
> that Hillary Clinton had been told about Mr. McLarty's desire to
> "be supportive" of Mr. Hubbell and that she had acknowledged
> Mr. McLarty's concern. To be more specific: in March 1994,
> President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton gathered a group of White
> House advisers for a Sunday meeting to discuss how to respond to
> the latest Whitewater developments -- including the legal troubles
> and the impending resignation of Mr. Hubbell. As the meeting was
> breaking up, Mr. McLarty assured Mrs. Clinton that "I'm going to
> try and help Webb." He soon began a wide-ranging effort by
> various aides and associates of the president to secure payments
> to Mr. Hubbell which totaled around a half-million dollars
> (according to one administration official, Mr. McLarty claims he
> didn't think of Mr. Hubbell's problems as having any connection
> to Whitewater);
>
> Mr. McLarty also "thinks he remembers saying something to the
> president to the same effect," either at that time or on another
> occasion, according to Lanny J. Davis, White House special
> counsel. Davis also said Mr. McLarty had called Truman Arnold,
> a Texas businessman and longtime Clinton friend, to ask him to
> find employment for Mr. Hubbell, and "thinks he remembers"
> talking with Vernon Jordan about Mr. Hubbell's "unhappy
> situation" around April 1994;
>
> Mickey Kantor, who served in the administration and managed
> Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, sought money for Hubbell's legal
> defense and family trust funds;
>
> Marsha Scott, a longtime friend and a trusted aide to the
> president, remained in frequent contact with Hubbell after he had
> left the administration.
>
>Webster Hubbell and the Riady Family
>
> In late June 1994, the Indonesian businessman James T. Riady
> saw President Clinton and some of his aides during five days of
> White House visits. Early the next week, one of Mr. Riady's Hong
> Kong companies paid $100,000 to Mr. Hubbell;
>
> To be more specific: on June 23, 1994 -- three months after he
> left his Justice Department job in disgrace -- Mr. Hubbell had a
> breakfast meeting with Mr. Riady, who had met with President
> Clinton two days before. A few hours after the Hubbell-Riady
> breakfast, Riady was at the White House. Hubbell and Riady then
> had a midday luncheon meeting at the Hay-Adams Hotel. It was
> very soon after these meetings that Mr. Hubbell received
> $100,000 from a Lippo subsidiary. According to a source familiar
> with some of Lippo's activities, little or no work was expected of
> Mr. Hubbell. (Mr. Hubbell has declined to discuss what he did for
> the dozen or so employers who hired him in the months after he
> left the Justice Department);
>
> The payment was made soon after Hubbell had begun withholding
> important personal financial documents from Whitewater
> investigators. Reportedly, Mr. Hubbell at first cooperated with
> Whitewater investigators, but in June 1994 he reversed course and
> declined to assist investigators;
>
> Mr. Hubbell received more than $500,000 in the nine months
> between his resignation and guilty plea. The $500,000 dollars was
> given by about a dozen enterprises, many of which were
> controlled by Clinton associates or major Democratic donors, in
> the months between his resignation as associate attorney general
> and his guilty plea to fraud and tax charges in December 1994.
> Mr. Hubbell also received some payments even after his guilty
> plea;
>
> The largest payment appears to have been from the business
> empire of the Riady family, which also figures prominently in the
> separate Congressional and Justice Department investigations into
> fund-raising activities by the Democratic party. The payment
> appears to have come from Riady-controlled Hong Kong-based
> businesses that have been dealing with the Chinese government.
> These businesses are central to a $2 billion American-Chinese
> joint project in the Fujian Province of China that received crucial
> backing from the administration at about the same time that Mr.
> Hubbell was being paid. An Arkansas associate of the Riadys left
> a message with a friend in the administration saying that the
> Riady-controlled Lippo financial group was "very happy" with the
> outcome of a trip in which the late Ron Brown, then Secretary of
> Commerce, announced the American endorsement of the
> American-Chinese project.
>
>Bill Clinton's Knowledge of Riady Payments
>
> Mike McCurry, the President's press secretary, initially insisted
> that no one at the White House knew in 1994 of Mr. Hubbell's
> arrangement with the Riadys. In fact, some details of the
> arrangement were known in 1994 to Bruce Lindsey, one of Mr.
> Clinton's closest aides, as well as at least two other high-ranking
> administration officials;
>
> At a January 1997 news conference, President Clinton was asked
> whether he found the Riady payment unusual or suspicious, and
> what steps he had taken to find out whether it had been hush
> money. In response, a somewhat flustered Bill Clinton said: "I
> can't imagine who could have ever arranged to do something
> improper like that and no one around here knew about it. We did
> not know anything about it, and I can tell you categorically that
> did not happen. I knew nothing about it. None of us did before it
> happened. I didn't personally know anything about it until I read
> about it in the press";
>
> Asked in March 1997 whether either of the Clintons was aware of
> Mr. Riady's payment to Mr. Hubbell when it was made, David
> Kendall, the Clinton's personal lawyer, declined to comment;
>
> In March 1997 the White House confirmed that President Clinton
> knew that two longtime political supporters and Democratic
> fund-raisers, Truman Arnold and Bernard Rapoport, had hired
> Webster Hubbell in 1994, when the former associate attorney
> general was under criminal investigation. The White House made
> the disclosure after one of the businessmen, Bernard Rapoport,
> said that he had told people at the White House -- possibly
> including Bill Clinton -- about his payments to Hubbell.
>
>Background on Hubbell and the Riady Family
>
> Because of his close ties to the Clintons, Mr. Hubbell has long
> been regarded by investigators as a crucial witness in the
> examination of the President's political and personal finances.
> Both he and Hillary Clinton had some involvement in Castle
> Grande, a real estate project that bank examiners said was
> founded on sham land sales and phony loans intended to enrich
> insiders at Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. Madison Guaranty
> Savings & Loan was a failed Arkansas thrift that federal juries
> have found was a center of insider deals, whose collapse has cost
> taxpayers at least $50 million, and which was owned by James B.
> and Susan McDougal, who also owned a parcel of undeveloped
> land with the Clintons along Arkansas' Whitewater River;
>
> Investigators are reportedly trying to determine whether Hillary
> Clinton deliberately tried to hide her involvement in the project,
> and whether Hubbell sought to conceal the record of her work on
> Castle Grande and other matters by removing files on them from
> the Rose Law Firm. Mr. Hubbell and Vincent W. Foster, Jr.
> (another former law partner with Hillary Clinton and Webster
> Hubbell, Foster committed suicide in 1993, a few months after
> becoming deputy White House counsel) also played an important
> role during the 1992 Presidential campaign in shaping the Clintons'
> version of the Whitewater affair;
>
> In December 1994, Mr. Hubbell pled guilty to two felony counts
> of bilking his former clients and law partners of $482,000. As a
> sign that Whitewater prosecutors did not believe he had been fully
> forthcoming, they declined to recommend a reduction in his prison
> sentence. Prosecutors have been reportedly frustrated by
> Hubbell's inability to recall transactions involving Mrs. Clinton's
> role as a lawyer with Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan;
>
> The Riady family is an ethnic Chinese family based in Indonesia
> who control a $12 billion financial empire operating under the
> umbrella of the Lippo Group. The family patriarch is Mochtar
> Riady. One son, Stephen Riady, has served as Lippo's chairman
> since 1991. His other son, James T. Riady, is deputy chairman.
> James Riady lived in Arkansas in the 1980s, where he came to
> know then Governor Bill Clinton. In 1984 Mochtar Riady and
> Arkansas investment banker Jackson Stephens bought a $16
> million stake in Worthen Bank in Little Rock, where James Riady
> was installed as a Worthen director; Worthen made a loan to Mr.
> Clinton's cash-short presidential campaign in 1992. The Riady
> family has an unusually big stake in maintaining
> Most-Favored-Nation status for China, since Lippo maintains
> enormous investments in Hong Kong, which will revert from
> British to Chinese control in July 1997, and in China proper.
> These investments would be seriously damaged -- possibly
> bankrupted -- were China to be blocked from exporting its goods
> to the United States, as some human-rights advocates have urged.
>
>John Huang
>
>At Issue: Whether Mr. Huang and his former associates from the
>Lippo Group were unlawfully funneling contributions into
>Democratic Party coffers from foreign sources that had corporate
>and political interests in U.S. policy; why Mr. Huang received top-
>level security clearance before and after he worked at the Commerce
>Department; and whether Mr. Huang conducted economic
>espionage for Chinese interests.
>
>The China Connection
>
> A Justice Department investigation into improper political
> fund-raising activities has uncovered evidence that representatives
> of the People's Republic of China sought to direct contributions
> from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee
> before the 1996 presidential election. The Justice Department
> Task Force has discovered that in early 1995, Chinese
> representatives developed a plan to spend nearly $2 million to buy
> influence in Congress and in the Clinton administration, and
> investigators are apparently trying to determine if any of that
> money was received by John Huang or Charlie Trie (among
> others), all of whom raised and contributed money to the DNC
> and were frequent visitors to the White House.
>
>John Huang, the Commerce Department and Lippo
>
> John Huang, with no background check, received top-level
> security clearance for work at the Commerce Department while
> still working for Lippo -- and this despite Mr. Huang's ties to a
> Lippo bank that was ordered to cease and desist money laundering
> and despite Lippo commercial ties to China and its intelligence
> service;
>
> Despite Mr. Huang's extensive foreign experience that included
> contacts in Indonesia and Taiwan and a posting to Hong Kong in
> 1984 and 1985, security officials never conducted an overseas
> background check on Mr. Huang during the 18 months he was at
> the Commerce Department (where he had access to highly
> sensitive intelligence reports);
>
> President Clinton attended a September 13, 1995 White House
> meeting with John Huang, James Riady (of the Lippo Bank),
> Bruce Lindsey, and C. Joseph Giroir, Jr. (the lawyer who hired
> then-Governor Clinton's wife, Hillary, at the Rose Law Firm, and
> who is now doing Riady business in China). It was at that meeting
> that the transfer of Huang from the Department of Commerce to
> the DNC was arranged. Mr. Huang held top-secret clearance for
> one year after he left the Commerce Department to become
> vice-chairman of the DNC finance committee -- the only DNC
> operative with such access to U.S. intelligence;
>
> A January 13, 1997, letter from Commerce Secretary Mickey
> Kantor says Mr. Huang got a "weekly intelligence briefing
> centered on the People's Republic of China" and that materials
> related to those briefings "were under the control of the Central
> Intelligence Agency";
>
> Documents, including Mr. Huang's personal calendars and
> telephone records, show he met with an intelligence specialist on
> at least 29 occasions during his 18-month stint at Commerce, and
> that he made telephone calls to Lippo Bank of California in Los
> Angeles, where he was formerly president, immediately after at
> least three of those meetings;
>
> Prior to the 1996 election, the White House -- at the direction of
> White House aide Bruce Lindsey and contrary to the advice of
> White House special counsels Mark Fabiani and Jane Sherburne --
> characterized as "social calls" the three visits it acknowledged
> from Mr. Riady. In fact, Mr. Riady visited at least 14 times and
> discussed policy issues involving both China and Indonesia -- and,
> as indicated above, Riady was present at the meeting at which Mr.
> Huang asked to be transferred from the Commerce Department to
> the DNC;
>
> Senior White House aides learned that Commerce Department
> officials had concerns about John Huang in mid-1995, several
> months before the White House helped place him in the sensitive
> fund-raising job at the Democratic National Committee. People at
> the Commerce Department described Mr. Huang as "bad news."
> According to several people familiar with the matter, officials at
> the department were worried that Mr. Huang's government work
> posed a conflict with his past employment at Lippo. In the
> summer of 1995, Jane Sherburne, a White House lawyer handling
> the Whitewater matter, briefed Harold Ickes about issues related
> to the Lippo Group, including Mr. Huang and his work at the
> Commerce Department. (Mr. Ickes said he didn't recall being told
> of these concerns);
>
>
> In his second week on the job at the Commerce Department, Mr.
> Huang and Webster Hubbell -- who was then employed by Lippo
> -- met for lunch in Washington. At the time, according to internal
> White House documents, administration officials were
> "monitor[ing]" Mr. Hubbell's "cooperation" with the Whitewater
> independent counsel. That evening Mr. Huang joined Mr. Riady
> and Mr. Clinton at the president's birthday party;
>
> Telephone logs from the Commerce Department show that, within
> days of Mr. Huang's arrival, he was called several times by Mr.
> Hubbell and Arkansas friends like C. Joseph Giroir, Jr.;
>
> John Huang received 37 CIA-documented intelligence briefings at
> the Commerce Department, saw more than two dozen intelligence
> reports, and made more than 70 phone calls to a Lippo-controlled
> bank in Los Angeles. Mr. Huang's message slips from the
> Commerce Department also show calls from one Chinese
> Embassy official in February 1995 and three calls from the
> embassy's commercial minister in June and August of that year.
> Huang's desk calendar entries had three meetings scheduled with
> Chinese government officials; he attended a policy breakfast at the
> Chinese Embassy in October 1995; and Huang's expense account
> records show he left his Commerce Department office to visit the
> Indonesian Embassy on October 11, 1995. Records indicate he
> did not return to his office until the following day, when he took a
> cab ride not from the Indonesian Embassy, but from the residence
> of the Chinese ambassador.
>
>Asian-Related Policy Reversals
>
> In March 1996 President Clinton reversed a key administration
> policy on immigration following a $1.1 million Asian fund-raising
> dinner -- the most successful Asian-American political fundraiser
> in United States history -- held the previous month and organized
> by John Huang. President Clinton had previously opposed the
> practice of allowing foreign-born siblings of naturalized U.S.
> citizens to come to the United States, based on a recommendation
> of a commission he appointed, and affirmed his desire to halt
> sibling immigration in an early 1996 letter to the Speaker of the
> House. But in March 1996 President Clinton made a last-minute
> about-face -- a reversal that brought the White House in line with
> the "top priority" recommendation made in a strongly-worded
> John Huang memorandum to Bill Clinton. (Former Senator Alan
> Simpson said, "I never in my 18 years in Congress saw an issue
> that shifted so fast and so hard");
>
> Mr. Huang began aggressively arguing for a new U.S. trade policy
> toward Vietnam only one day after joining the Commerce
> Department in July 1994 -- and pushed the idea for the next 17
> months while the Lippo Group sought to expand its investment
> empire into Vietnam. He also attended an inter-agency meeting of
> the Indonesian Working Group. The next month, a U.S. trade
> mission to China resulted in a $1 billion power plant that Lippo
> would finance;
>
> In November 1992, President-elect Clinton strongly opposed
> normalizing relations with Vietnam until Hanoi finally made good
> on longstanding pledges for full disclosure on Americans missing
> from the war. "I don't think we should normalize and then get
> accounting," Mr. Clinton said. "I think we ought to know where
> our people are. That's putting the horse before the cart." A little
> more than two years later, Mr. Clinton changed his position. On
> February 4, 1994, he declared "Today I am lifting the trade
> embargo against Vietnam because I am absolutely convinced it
> offers us the best way to resolve the fate of those who remain
> missing and about whom we are not sure." Two things happened
> between November 1992 and February 1994 which bear on this
> issue. One was that Senators John Kerry and John McCain
> lobbied the president to drop the embargo. The second thing was
> that in September 1993 the head of the Lippo Group, Mochtar
> Riady, led a trade mission of Asian bankers on a trip to Vietnam
> to (in his words) "size up business opportunities there." Lippo
> helps, among other things, to finance trade deals. It therefore
> stood to benefit enormously from expanded trade between
> Vietnam and the United States;
>
> In 1992, candidate Clinton described as "unconscionable"
> Indonesia's treatment of the East Timorese, 200,000 of whom
> have perished since Indonesia annexed East Timor 20 years ago.
> In March 1993, the administration even supported a United
> Nations resolution criticizing Indonesia's East Timor policies.
> Around the same time, Mark Grobymer, an Arkansas lawyer who
> golfs with Mr. Clinton, joined Mr. Huang and James Riady on a
> trip to East Timor. In April, the three then visited Mr. Clinton.
> Human rights activists claim that administration concern for East
> Timor waned soon thereafter;
>
> John Huang helped raise $425,000 from an immigrant Indonesian
> couple whose primary breadwinner was a landscaper. A U.S.
> government investigation into alleged mistreatment of Indonesian
> workers -- which threatened trade preferences with this country
> worth some $600 million to Indonesian businesses -- abruptly
> ended on orders of then-Trade Representative Mickey Kantor.
> While "more needs to be done," he said in early 1994, Indonesia
> had made enough progress to justify the preferences.
>
>Improper Campaign Contributions and Potential Money Laundering
>
> John H.K. Lee of Cheong Am America, the United States'
> subsidiary of a South Korean company, gave a $250,000 illegal
> campaign contribution to the DNC following a private meeting
> with President Clinton and arranged by John Huang. The money
> was returned following a press story;
>
> Rawlein Soberano, vice president of the Asian American Business
> Roundtable, said he was approached by John Huang in the
> summer of 1996 and asked to funnel more than $250,000 from
> Huang through its members as contributions to the Democratic
> National Committee. According to Mr. Soberano, Huang
> explained that he wanted to give Soberano $300,000 and have the
> Asian American Business Roundtable "write it back to the DNC
> through membership. He said we could keep 15 percent for
> ourselves," according to Mr. Soberano. Soberano, who said that
> he rejected Huang's offer, is the first person to bring direct
> allegation that Huang tried to mask the source of campaign
> contributions to the DNC and enlist the help of others in falsely
> reporting the origins of large donations. Huang, speaking through
> an attorney who declined to be quoted by name, denied making
> the proposal to Soberano;
>
> Extraordinary efforts were made to hide John Huang until after
> the 1996 election. Then-DNC chairman Christopher Dodd
> promised, on national television, that the DNC would make John
> Huang available to the media -- and then pulled back on that
> promise.
>
>Johnny Chung
>
>At Issue: Johnny Chung's ability to gain frequent access to the
>Clinton White House, where he was able to advance his own and
>Chinese business interests; and why Mr. Chung was allowed White
>House access despite the National Security Council staff's serious
>concerns about Mr. Chung.
>
>Donations and White House Access
>
> On March 9, 1995, Margaret Williams, chief of staff to Hillary
> Clinton, accepted a $50,000 donation to the Democratic Party
> from Johnny Chung, a California businessman who has emerged
> as a central figure in the Justice Department and Congressional
> investigations into Democratic fund-raising;
>
> Mr. Chung made a $50,000 donation to the Democrats the same
> week that he escorted some officials from the Communist Chinese
> Government to a taping of President Clinton's weekly radio
> address at the White House (the group included Huang Jichun, the
> vice president of a Chinese conglomerate that trades weapons);
>
> After that visit, President Clinton told his aides that he "wasn't
> sure we'd want photos of him with these people circulating
> around," according to a White House document made public in
> February 1997;
>
> Brian A. Sun, Mr. Chung's lawyer, said that Mr. Chung had a
> discussion with Miss Williams and Evan Ryan, another aide to
> Mrs. Clinton, "about the fact that the party needed help. But I will
> not say who said what to whom," Mr. Sun said. White House
> spokeswoman Ann Lewis said, "Evan Ryan does not recall any
> discussion of the financial needs of the Democratic Party with
> Johnny Chung";
>
> During that same week, Mr. Chung took the Chinese businessmen
> to the White House on three occasions. In addition to the taping of
> the radio address, he brought them to a White House dining room
> for lunch and to meet Mrs. Clinton, who posed for pictures with
> them. By Mr. Sun's account, Mr. Chung also met that week with
> top officials at DNC, including Donald Fowler, who was then the
> national chairman;
>
> Mr. Chung, who apparently told Miss Williams earlier in the
> administration that he had wanted to give money to the Clintons
> personally, sought to exploit his contributions and access for
> commercial gain. Associates of Mr. Chung have said that he used
> his political access to cement business deals with investors from
> China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, bringing them to White House
> events and fund-raisers;
>
> Mr. Chung has said in interviews that he began courting political
> figures in 1992, when he was having trouble getting his fax
> business off the ground. He met Mrs. Clinton in 1992 after it
> occurred to him that government offices could be a market for his
> fax service, which uses a computer system to transmit a fax
> simultaneously to thousands of locations. He began making
> political contributions two years later, giving $11,000 in August
> 1994 to attend a birthday party for President Clinton and $40,000
> in December of that year to bring guests to a luncheon with Mrs.
> Clinton in Los Angeles.
>
>NSC Warnings Ignored
>
> Robert L. Suetting, a China specialist on the National Security
> Council, warned that Mr. Chung was "a hustler" who appeared "to
> be involved in setting up some kind of consulting operation that
> will thrive by bringing Chinese entrepreneurs into town for
> exposure to high-level U.S. officials." Three months later, Mr.
> Suetting expressed concern to Anthony Lake, who at that time
> was President Clinton's national security adviser, after the White
> House learned that Mr. Chung was leaving for China and planned
> to get involved in the sensitive case of imprisoned Chinese
> dissident Harry Wu. "I recommend that we be very careful about
> the kinds of political favors he is granted," Mr. Suetting wrote;
>
> Mr. Chung visited the White House 51 times, records show, and
> 21 of those times he was cleared for entry by the Office of the
> First Lady. Mr. Chung made 17 visits to the White House after
> the April 1995 NSC memorandum identifying him as "a hustler"
> and urged caution, and eight visits after the second warning
> memorandum went to NSC director Anthony Lake in July 1995;
>
> In March 1997, in her first extensive public remarks about the
> Democratic fund-raising controversy, the first lady said she did
> not know why Johnny Chung had such access to, and was
> spending so much time around, her staff's offices in the Old
> Executive Office Building;
>
> The Democratic National Committee has announced that it will
> return contributions totaling $366,000 from Johnny Chung
> because auditors could not verify the source of the money.
>
>Charles Yah Lin Trie
>
>At Issue: The questionable $450,000 raised by Mr. Trie on behalf of
>President Clinton's Legal Defense Fund; Mr. Trie's appointment to
>the President's Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment
>Policy; and reports of substantial wire transfers made to Mr. Trie by
>a bank operated by the Chinese government.
>
> In March 1996 Charlie Trie, a Little Rock restaurateur and a
> longtime friend of President Clinton, presented Michael H.
> Cardozo, executive director of the Presidential Legal Expense
> Trust (a defense fund that President and Mrs. Clinton set up to
> help pay their legal bills) with two manila envelopes containing
> checks and money orders for more than $450,000. The fund
> returned about $70,000 of this immediately, but deposited
> $378,300. Two months later, after the fund ordered an
> investigation, the rest of the money was returned. The
> investigation found that some of the money came from
> sequentially numbered money orders, supposedly from different
> people in different cities, but all apparently signed in the same
> handwriting;
>
> Mr. Trie was officially appointed in April 1996 to the President's
> Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy, just
> two weeks after dropping off to Mr. Cardozo the two manila
> envelopes containing the $460,000 in checks and money orders;
>
> Mr. Trie was informed of his coming appointment in November
> 1995 and did not begin to collect the money for the Clinton
> defense fund until a Clinton personnel aide, Bob Nash, told the
> prestigious commission to expect Trie to be named;
>
> Trie was appointed to the commission even after Mr. Cardozo
> reported in April 1996 to Hillary Clinton and to then deputy chief
> of staff Harold Ickes that he had serious doubts about Mr. Trie's
> contributions;
>
> According to a defense fund trustee, Harold Ickes and Hillary
> Clinton had knowledge of the corrupt money and did nothing to
> stop the flow of it until newspaper columns and stories triggered
> Ickes's tipoff to the DNC that maybe Trie's fund-raising would be
> linked to John Huang and James Riady;
>
> A Justice Department/FBI task force investigating allegations that
> China may have directed contributions to the Democratic party
> (charges that the Chinese government denies) is focusing on a
> series of substantial wire transfers in 1995 and 1996 from a bank
> operated by the Chinese government. The transfers, made from
> the New York office of the Bank of China and usually made in
> increments of $50,000 or $100,000, came at a time when Mr.
> Trie was directing large donations to the Democratic National
> Committee;
>
> The Democratic National Committee has returned $187,000 that
> Mr. Trie personally contributed and plans to return another
> $458,000 he helped raise from others. The DNC said the
> donations appear to have had foreign sources, which would make
> them illegal.
>
>Roger Tamraz
>
>At Issue: Whether the Central Intelligence Agency was used by the
>Democratic National Committee to encourage access to the president
>(despite objections by National Security Council staff members) for
>Roger Tamraz, an international fugitive and a major donor to the
>Democratic party (Mr. Tamraz is the subject of an international
>warrant charging him with a $200 million embezzlement in
>Lebanon).
>
> The Central Intelligence Agency has opened an internal
> investigation into "extremely serious" allegations of improper
> contacts between the Democratic National Committee and the
> CIA;
>
> In 1996 Mr. Tamraz was invited at least four times to the White
> House, over the objections of National Security Council staff
> officials. One meeting, in April 1996, took place while Tamraz
> was being sought for questioning by Interpol -- the international
> police agency -- for bank fraud in Lebanon;
>
> Mr. Tamraz was interested in gaining some form of official United
> States support for a hugely ambitious project: a multibillion-dollar,
> 930-mile oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean
> Sea. That project led him to the NSC's offices for a meeting on
> June 2, 1995, with Sheila Heslin, the NSC's Central Asia
> specialist;
>
> Ms. Heslin recommended that Mr. Tamraz not be admitted to the
> White House to discuss the pipeline project (she based her
> recommendation in part on a dossier on Mr. Tamraz compiled by
> the CIA);
>
> Donald L. Fowler, then the DNC's chairman, reportedly called
> Ms. Heslin in December 1995 to intervene after she had
> recommended that Tamraz be barred from White House events
> (the call came two months after Tamraz and one of his oil
> companies, Tamoil Inc., gave $100,000 to the state Democratic
> Party in Virginia). Heslin reportedly told the NSC legal counsel
> about the contact, describing it as "highly irregular" and repeated
> her advice that Tamraz not be allowed to meet with the president.
> As a result of her protest, the NSC's deputy director, Nancy
> Sodeberg, telephoned Mr. Fowler and in the words of officials,
> told him "to knock it off" and not pester NSC workers;
>
> The NSC concerns were ignored. On April 1, 1996, Tamraz
> attended a White House coffee at which Bill Clinton was present,
> and in June 1996 he attended a White House reception that
> included dinner and a movie;
>
> Administration officials believe Mr. Fowler made a call to the CIA
> asking the agency to provide classified information to the White
> House about Tamraz and his business interest in his pipeline
> project -- funded partially by Chinese businessmen (Mr. Fowler
> says he "can't recall" doing so). According to intelligence officials,
> since intelligence gathering is supposed to be apolitical, it would
> have been, at best, improper for a political fund-raiser to make
> contact with the CIA, especially if he was seeking a favor for a
> wealthy donor;
>
> Mr. Tamraz made $177,000 in donations to Democratic causes
> and has raised funds for the party from other wealthy individuals.
>
>
>White House Fund-raising: Bill Clinton
>
>At Issue: The unprecedented use of the White House residential
>areas -- including the Lincoln bedroom -- to raise money for the
>1996 presidential campaign.
>
> In January 1995, after the Republican party had captured both
> houses of Congress and the president's re-election seemed
> endangered, Terence McCauliffe, then the DNC finance
> chairman, wrote a memorandum requesting a presidential aide to
> set aside some of the president's time for breakfasts, lunches or
> coffees with about 20 "major supporters" in order to "energize our
> key people." Mr. McCauliffe suggested the names of 10 people
> who might be invited to these events. "Do you want me to
> pursue?" the aide wrote on the memo. "Yes," Mr. Clinton
> instructed in his own handwriting, "pursue all 3 and promptly."
> The president further instructed his aide to "get other names at
> [$]100,000 or more, [$]50,000 or more." President Clinton then
> recommended overnight stays (which Mr. McCauliffe had not
> even suggested): "Ready to start overnights right away," the
> president told his aide in notations on the McCauliffe memo.
> "Give me the top 10 list back, along w/ the 100, 50,000" donors.
> In February 1997, after the release of these documents, the
> president insisted, "The Lincoln Bedroom was never sold."
>
>White House Coffees and Other Events
>
>At Issue: The propriety of holding more than 100 fundraising coffees
>at the White House; how candid the White House has been in its
>portrayal of the purpose of the coffees; and why people of apparently
>suspect character were allowed to attend.
>
> Despite White House efforts to portray the coffees at which
> President Clinton played host in 1996 as something short of overt
> fund-raisers, documents show explicitly that the White House kept
> close tabs on how much money was anticipated and how much
> was raised by each coffee;
>
> Documents turned over to Congress by Harold M. Ickes, the
> White House's former senior political aide, show that coffees that
> the president held at the White House in 1996 had systematic
> fund-raising targets associated with them, often of $400,000 a
> session;
>
> President Clinton and Vice President Gore were routinely notified
> of how much political cash was expected -- and raised -- from
> each White House coffee, documents show. And a memorandum
> from Harold Ickes to senior officials of the Democratic National
> Committee shows that there was a plan on November 12, 1995,
> to have President Clinton make 18 to 20 calls to raise money
> personally and Vice President Al Gore make 10 calls in hopes of
> raising $1.2 million in the final weeks of the year (the memo does
> not make clear if the President and Vice President actually made
> those calls);
>
> According to news reports, witnesses testifying before the federal
> grand jury investigating Democratic fund-raising have said party
> officials, in the presence of President Clinton, often asked coffee
> guests to contribute to the party or the president's campaign;
>
> According to both fund-raisers and contributors, with the
> permission of the party's top officials, slots on the guest lists for
> White House coffees were routinely sold for $50,000 and
> $100,000. The DNC finance division compiled the guest lists. In
> one case, DNC documents themselves revealed that two
> controversial coffee guests and contributors, Pauline Kanchanalak
> and Duangnet Kronenberg, delivered their $85,000 and $50,000
> donations the same day they attended a coffee. DNC press
> secretary Amy Weiss Tobe labeled it "a coincidence";
>
> Some of the donors invited to the White House and who
> participated in events with the president include:
>
> Russ Barakat, a south Florida Democratic party official who,
> five days after attending a White House coffee session in
> April 1995, was indicted on criminal charges and ultimately
> convicted of tax evasion. A Florida newspaper was full of
> stories about Mr. Barakat's problems with the law before the
> executive mansion get-togethers;
>
> Wang Jun, a Chinese businessman and the head of a
> military-owned arms company. While part of the U.S.
> government was out investigating Wang Jun for allegedly
> smuggling arms into this country, he was with Mr. Clinton at
> a White House coffee, courtesy of Charlie Trie;
>
> Eric Wynn, whose $100,000 bail was revoked because he
> failed to tell authorities about his five arrests since being
> previously sentenced for theft and tax offenses (he was at
> the White House for coffee two days after a company
> partially controlled by him gave $25,000 to the Democratic
> National Committee). Mr. Wynn turned up in 1996 at four
> other DNC fund-raisers involving the president -- including
> one in which he, his attorney, and Mr. Clinton reportedly
> had a brief private chat; and
>
> Chong Lo, convicted of tax evasion in the 1980s under the
> name of Esther Chu, who was another visitor for coffee with
> Mr. Clinton. She has since been arrested again on 14 charges
> of falsifying mortgage applications, to which she has plead
> not guilty.
>
>Improper Fund-raising (White House and DNC)
>
>At Issue: Whether laws governing money laundering and solicitation
>of funds were broken at the DNC or the White House.
>
>Harold Ickes, Warren Meddoff and Requests to Shred Documents
>
> Harold Ickes, former deputy chief of staff, wrote a two-page
> memorandum to a Florida businessman and major Democratic
> contributor, R. Warren Meddoff, advising him on ways to make a
> $1.5 million contribution to the Democratic National Committee
> tax deductible. The memo detailed how $540,000 contributions
> could be filtered through three 501(c)3 organizations that were
> helpful to Democratic reelection efforts. Mr. Ickes also asked that
> Mr. Meddoff wire $500,000 to the DNC's bank account. In the
> memo, Mr. Ickes wrote, "If possible it would be greatly
> appreciated if the following amounts could be wired to the
> designated bank." According to Mr. Meddoff, after sending the
> memorandum Mr. Ickes promptly called back to say, "I shouldn't
> have sent you that [memo]. Shred it.";
>
> Mr. Meddoff reportedly testified for two-and-a-half hours and
> recounted for a federal grand jury the brief conversation he had
> with President Clinton and the subsequent contact with Mr. Ickes.
> "Any time an individual asks me to shred a document, there's a
> problem," according to Mr. Meddoff (who said the money was
> never sent);
>
> The federal grand jury investigating campaign fund raising is now
> said to be probing whether Mr. Ickes violated restrictions on
> fund-raising by federal employees. Mr. Ickes contends that he did
> not violate any law because he was responding to Mr. Meddoff's
> offer, not soliciting funds.
>
>Jorge Cabrera Donation Sought in Cuba
>
> Congressional investigators have reportedly learned that Jorge
> Cabrera, who had two felony convictions from the 1980s and is
> now serving time in a Miami prison on a drug-smuggling
> conviction, was asked by a prominent Democratic fund-raiser,
> Vivian Mannerud, for a campaign contribution at a meeting at the
> Copacabana Hotel in Havana. In exchange for the donation, Mr.
> Cabrera was told he would be invited to a Miami fund-raising
> dinner in honor of Vice President Al Gore;
>
> In November 1995, several days after the meeting, Mr. Cabrera
> wrote a check for $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee
> from an account that included the proceeds from smuggling
> cocaine to the United States. And within two weeks of the
> contribution, Mr. Cabrera met Mr. Gore at the dinner. Ten days
> later, Mr. Cabrera attended a Christmas reception at the White
> House, hosted by Mrs. Clinton. Investigators are said to be trying
> to determine whether Mr. Cabrera laundered drug money when
> making his $20,000 contribution. The White House and the DNC
> said the party returned Mr. Cabrera's $20,000 in October 1996,
> after deciding it was an improper donation. Ms. Mannerud said
> she can not recall soliciting a contribution from Mr. Cabrera but
> vaguely recalls meeting him in Cuba.
>
>Leon Panetta and Al Gore
>
> In March 1997, former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta
> acknowledged that the 1996 Clinton reelection committee played a
> role in the spending of some $35 million to $40 million in "soft
> money" contributions on campaign commercials. Panetta's
> comments marked the first time that a member of Mr. Clinton's
> inner circle publicly stated that the president's reelection campaign
> helped direct the spending of these funds. When asked if it was
> illegal for the Clinton campaign to use soft money, Panetta replied
> it was not because the money was spent as part of an overall
> "Democratic strategy in confronting the Republican Congress";
>
> Mr. Gore was asked in an interview how he and Mr. Clinton
> could continue to defend themselves by claiming that all the
> allegations of wrongdoing were aimed at the Democratic National
> Committee, not the Clinton-Gore campaign. After all, he was
> asked, the president appointed the chairman of the DNC, directed
> the committee to spend much of its funds on a massive television
> advertising campaign to boost his own reelection, and even helped
> to write the text of those ads. His answer (filled with many long
> pauses) was as follows: "Uh, well, the DNC is a, uh, uh, different
> entity from the campaign, uh, and uh, that, that's a fact." Another
> seven-second pause followed, and then it was suggested to Gore
> that he attended more fund-raisers for the DNC than for the
> reelection committee. The vice president responded this way:
> "They are separate entities. In saying that, I wouldn't want to
> imply that the DNC wasn't, uh, focused on among other things the
> success of, the campaign to reelect the president. But it was also
> focused on a lot of activities that our campaign was not, such as
> the governor's campaigns, state legislative campaigns, and so, uh
> your basic point that these are the same entities -- and they're
> not".
>
>
>
>\\/ayne //\ann
>
>
>
>"I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed
>government policy solely because of a contribution."
> - Bill Clinton
>
>
>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S. : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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