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The ranking intelligence expert in the U.S. Congress says he believes
that one-time Democratic National Committee fund-raiser John Huang had a
“double agenda” when he was working at the U.S. Commerce Department, and
that the FBI probe of the matter has been inadequate.
“I think the FBI has not done an adequate job on this,” said Rep.
Porter Goss , R.-Fla., chairman of the House Select Committee on
Intelligence. Goss also served as a member of the House Select Committee
on U.S. National Security and Military Commercial Concerns with the
People’s Republic of China (the Cox Committee). “I’m a little
disappointed that they have not been more aggressive on this case and a
couple of other ones.”
In a wide-ranging interview with the editors of Human Events, Goss,
who was a clandestine services officer in the Central Intelligence
Agency for 10 years, also discussed what he sees as a potential disaster
looming for the U.S. intelligence community as the result of the gutting
of resources that has taken place during the Clinton presidency.
‘Aiding and abetting’
But his most notable remarks went to the issue of John Huang and a
campaign-finance investigation that never seemed to get off the ground.
Goss was asked about the connection between the Lippo Group — an
Indonesian corporation run by James Riady, who offered to raise $1
million for Clinton’s 1992 campaign — and China Resources Holding Co.,
an organization owned by the People’s Republic of China that the Cox
Committee report indicated was an “agent of espionage.”
Does he believe that part of the agenda of Chinese-government-owned
China Resources when it became a partner with the Lippo Group was
“intelligence gathering”?
“I would say information gathering, yeah,” said Goss. “I’m not sure
I’d classify it as intelligence the way we do business. I don’t know
what the value added is. But, do I think there is any doubt that John
Huang had a double agenda or there was a double agenda assigned to John
Huang? No, none in my mind at all.
“I think John Huang was aiding and abetting another country. Whether
he was doing it wittingly or not, or how wittingly, I don’t know. I
assume it was wittingly.
“I can’t rationalize the fact that the guy has an office across the
street and is so concerned about the fire-wall between official business
and private business and is being such a goody two-shoes that he’s not
going to call his wife from his phone because that’s not really official
business. So he’s got this front office across the street where he goes
and he calls his wife. I’m not buying that.”
Goss was referring to a private business office in the Willard Hotel
that Huang routinely visited while he was employed across the street at
the U.S. Commerce Department. At Commerce, Huang received regular
briefings from the CIA on matters relating to China. As documented by
the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigation of the matter,
frequent calls and faxes were placed from the office at the Willard to
Lippo offices in Asia.
In August, Huang pleaded guilty to violating federal election laws in
a different matter, became a cooperating witness, and has recently been
immunized to testify before the House Government Reform and Oversight
Committee. He is expected to appear next month.
Reached by phone and read Goss’s remarks, Huang’s attorney John
Keeney said that he would have no comment.
“My view would be that the Huang behavior is extremely irregular and
is suspicious and certainly fits the pattern, the M.O., if you could
even give it that formal a designation, of the way the Chinese operate,”
said Goss. “To say ‘Chinese intelligence’ conjures up an organized
entity that functions with clear lines, clear communication …
benchmark activities and so forth. It doesn’t work that way. The
Chinese are very acquisitive and they use every means at their disposal
— beg, borrow, steal, whatever it is — to get information and then
they patch it together.”
He compared the schematic diagram of Chinese government information
gathering to Hillary Clinton’s national health care plan. “It is worse
looking than Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, trying to make anything
out of that chart,” he said. “But it works because it sucks in vast
amounts of information, here and there, in multitudinous ways and they
do profit from it.
“They are very good at taking what they saw yesterday and repackaging
it and selling it to somebody else and get the money for something new
to go out and acquire something else — see there, as I say, beg,
borrow, steal, and in some cases purchase. And they have stepped
themselves forward, or up the ladder, very well doing that.
“The one thing I will say about the Chinese and about the Cox report
is that they did gain time, lots of time, and time is important in
technological advance. Any country that can move quicker than another
country with the geometric progression of technology has an advantage,
and they’ve used that very well.”
Goss said that President Clinton’s meeting with Lippo head James
Riady during an event at the Asian Pacific Economic Conference in New
Zealand in September was an “arrogant” act. The House Government Reform
and Oversight Committee has been trying to get Riady to testify on the
campaign finance scandal since 1996, but since that time Riady has
avoided being subpoenaed by staying out of the United States.
‘Blatantly arrogant’
White House spokesman James Kennedy confirmed to the Washington Times
that Clinton did see Riady in New Zealand, but that it was only a brief
“rope-line encounter.”
“I mean, that is just so blatantly arrogant,” Goss said of the
Clinton-Riady face-to-face meeting. “I don’t know whether they sought
that or how it came to pass, but if we can guard the President so
carefully and spend so much money that we have to stop traffic regularly
for him to come up from the White House to the Hill, you’d think that
with this massive force of protection and security that they’d be able
to screen out at a fundraiser an obvious problem for the president. It
just doesn’t make any sense to me. If the guy had a gun instead of
money, he would have never have gotten into the room.”
Lippo Group officials have denied any wrongdoing in the company’s
relationship with President Clinton.
Goss said he thought that national security problems arising in the
administration were rooted in arrogance. “There is a certain arrogance
in the administration that is very hard to understand,” he said. “I am
very concerned about our national security, about our foreign policy,
about the capabilities of the people assigned. I have no question that
they are all good Americans trying to get through the day, and I don’t
think there’s treason or treachery going on, but I do think there’s a
lot of bad judgment when it comes to trying to find political gain and
support.”
?1999, Human Events
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