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“EXTENSION OF REMARKS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1744-E1745 on Sept. 11, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
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HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON
of new york
in the house of representatives
Thursday, September 11, 1997
Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, who would not love to have been a fly on the wall when President Clinton, as the Wall Street Journal noted in its September 11 editorial, ``unleashed John Huang at a meeting on September 13, 1995, approving his transfer from the Commerce Department to work as a fundraiser at the Democratic National Committee.''?
Now that I think of it, Mr. Speaker, we also would like to know what in the first place Mr. Huang was doing at Commerce, where he had access to sensitive information he allegedly shared with a foreign government and a foreign company which once employed him. It would take a wall-
sized chart to show the constellation of quid-pro-quos and money trails.
But that is another story, Mr. Speaker, and for right now we are concentrating on how so many bright, Ivy League educated lawyers could allegedly break the law, do so knowingly, and then suffer such memory lapses about it.
The Journal suggests that Vice President Gore is being set up as the administration's sacrificial lamb. It also suggests that justice would not be served if it went no further than the Vice President's office.
I proudly place the Journal editorial in today's Record.
Tossing Gore
On the eve of new hearings by the Thompson committee, Attorney General Janet Reno felt forced to relax her hard-line stance against an independent counsel in the campaign contributions scandal, starting a review of phone calls by Vice President Al Gore. Conceivably Ms. Reno is edging toward facing the real issue, which is not the Vice President but the President. More likely this is another stall, reflecting a Martha's Vineyard decision by Bill Clinton to divert the pursuing wolves once again by throwing another child from the sled. Sorry, Al.
The Justice Department pre-hearing statement promised to review whether ``allegations that the vice president illegally solicited campaign contributions on federal property should warrant a preliminary investigation under the independent counsel act.'' But the central issue is not whether Mr. Gore's phone calls broke some quaint statute. Nor whether he was sentient at the Hsi Lai Temple fund-raiser. Nor whether there is some metaphysical distinction, as in the latest collapsed excuse by Ms. Reno and her mysterious
``career prosecutors,'' between ``hard money'' and ``soft money.'' Nor whether Democratic National Chairman Don Fowler knew he was talking to the CIA when he talked to the CIA on behalf of Roger Tamraz, a rogue Mr. Fowler had already been warned shouldn't have White House access.
The issue that needs to be investigated is whether all of these various fund-raising outrages are the result of a conspiracy set in motion by the President of the United States. As detailed July 7 by our Micah Morrison, Mr. Clinton unleashed John Huang at a meeting on September 13, 1995, approving his transfer from the Commerce Department to work as a fundraiser at the Democratic National Committee. Also at this significant meeting were three members of Mr. Clinton's inner circle: senior aide Bruce Lindsey, Arkansas wheeler-dealer Joseph Giroir and Indonesian financier James Riady. White House accounts of the meeting are full of stonewalls and half-truths. If Mr. Clinton agreed then to raise money by means he recognized as illegal, he would be party to a criminal conspiracy. This is what we need an independent counsel to investigate.
Under the Independent Counsel Statute, the Attorney General's 30-day review is followed by a ``preliminary investigation'' of up to 90 days, after which Ms. Reno could petition a special judicial panel for a counsel if there are
``reasonable grounds.'' The Attorney General plays a large role in defining the independent counsel's prosecutorial jurisdiction. Whether Justice can somehow maintain a bright line between Al Gore and Bill Clinton here is open to much doubt. What both men appear to share is John Huang and his enterprises.
Thanks to Senator Fred Thompson's hearings, we know Mr. Huang was the key mover in the Hsi Lai Temple event, just one example of the deeds carried out on Mr. Clinton's behalf. The temple scam began around March 15, 1996, when Mr. Huang and fund-raiser Maria Hsia escorted the temple head, Venerable Master Hsing Yun, to a 10-minute meeting with Mr. Gore. Mr. Huang followed up with an April 11 memo discussing a ``fund raising lunch.'' Meanwhile, a National Security Council aide had warned Mr. Gore's deputy chief of staff to take ``great caution'' with the event, presumably because of Chinese sensitivities to Vice Presidential utterances before the Taiwan-based organization. When the fund-raiser came up
$55,000 short of its goal, the Buddhist nuns testified last week, Mr. Huang initiated what clearly appears to be the laundering of 11 checks for $5,000 each through temple adherents.
Meanwhile, even as more dots get connected, elements of the media have undertaken to exonerate China. ``No smoking gun'' to show a Chinese connection has become not a ``shred of evidence,'' according to David Rosenbaum of the New York Times. John Judis in the September 22 New Republic called Mr. Thompson's inquiry into a China connection ``a disastrous blunder.''
But mounds of pretty compelling circumstantial evidence now exist that China connections played a role. Presidential money pal Charlie Trie has fled to Beijing. His patron, Macau-based Ng Lap Seng, has been linked by the FBI to some
$900,000 in funds wired to Mr. Trie from abroad; Mr. Ng has significant business interests in China and is a member of one of its rubber stamp provincial advisory boards.
The Riadys' Lippo Group, former employers of John Huang and longtime allies of the Clintons, have extensive interests in China, with a piece of that pie in the hands of Arkansas' Joseph Giroir. While Mr. Giroir was attempting to broker business deals for Lippo in China and the U.S., his Arkansas associate, former White House aide Mark Middleton, was in Taipei, allegedly shaking down public officials for campaign donations as tensions with China mounted and the Seventh Fleet steamed for the Taiwan Strait. Of course, everybody has now been lawyered up, issued denials and fled to the Fifth Amendment.
Whatever Al Gore's legal exposure in this affair, he shouldn't be left to take the fall for someone else. We don't for a minute believe all this stuff was born in the office of the Vice President. Janet Reno shouldn't be allowed to pursue an independent counsel investigation that ignores the possibility of a conspiracy directed out of the Oval Office.
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