[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 31 (Thursday, March 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              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.

                              {time}  1400

  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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