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“UPDATE ON THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1327 on March 19, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
UPDATE ON THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, as we close this week, I thought I would inform my colleagues and anyone else who may be paying attention that, regarding the investigation that I am charged to chair involving illegal foreign campaign contributions and the possibility of people in very high offices of this country breaking the law, we are now up to 89 people, 89 people who have been associates or friends of the President or political allies or contributors, 89 people have either taken the fifth amendment or fled the country.
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A lot of my colleagues have asked me about the progress of our investigation. I tried to explain to them that we are making some headway. Charlie Trie, one of the friends of the President who had fled the country and gone to China, has now returned. He is under indictment and we believe there is negotiations going on with him of a plea bargaining nature, but we are not sure about that. The fact of the matter is there has been an indictment of Mr. Trie, a personal friend and associate of the President. We have a number of others that we believe ultimately will face indictment.
But the biggest problem we face with the investigation is getting people to talk to us. Toward that end, we have asked the President to contact people who have fled the country to come back and appear before the committee so that they can help us get to the bottom of all these allegations. So far the White House, the President and the White House, has not been cooperative in asking foreign governments to insist that these people return. We have got James and Mochtar Riady in Indonesia whom we would like to have come back. We have asked for the assistance of the White House in convincing these gentlemen, who are executives of the Lippo Corporation and friends of the President in Indonesia, to help us get them back. So far we have had no cooperation.
We have asked the President and the State Department to work with us to get people back from other countries like China. We have not had that success. As a matter of fact, the Chinese government would not let my investigators even get a visa to come to China to investigate these allegations of illegal activities.
So we are having a difficult time. The President I understand is going to be going to China before too long. There will be Members of Congress, I understand, accompanying him. I would like to urge the President to postpone his trip until China allows my investigators to go in there and to give them visas so that they can do the job that they have been charged by the Congress to do.
Mr. Speaker, I hope if the President or any of his friends at the White House or any of his colleagues here in Congress happen to be paying attention, I hope they will urge him to send a message to China that any diplomatic missions to China will be deferred until we get some cooperation from the Chinese government regarding our investigation. I think it is unbelievable that all the trade that we do with China, all the business that we do with China, all the breaks we have given to China, even in spite of their human rights violations, which are legion, they will not cooperate by allowing our investigators to have a visa to get into China.
Mr. Speaker, I will just end up by saying that we want to get to the bottom of all this to finish this investigation as quickly as possible. If the President would just come forward and talk to us, if his friends would not take the Fifth Amendment and would come forward and talk with us, we could conclude the investigation rapidly. I would urge all those involved to give us their cooperation so we can get it concluded. That is what the American people want.
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