[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 120 (Thursday, September 11, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1744-E1745]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          EXTENSION OF REMARKS

                                 ______
                                 

                        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

[[Page E1745]]

     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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