Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (34 page)

The architect of America's China policy over the course of the current disaster has been another left-winger, Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Berger began his political life as an anti-Vietnam war protestor and member of the radical "Peace Now" movement which regards Israel as the aggressor in the Middle East. Berger first met Clinton as an activist in the McGovern for President campaign, the most left-wing Democratic presidential campaign in American history. Prior to his appointment, Berger was a lobbyist for the business arm of China's communist dictatorship. (The other root cause of the security breach was, of course, greed — a major factor in all its aspects, and on both sides of the political aisle.) Is it surprising that a political leftist and business lobbyist for China's rulers should take steps to lift the security controls that previously protected United States military technology? Or that, during his tenure, invitations to the White House should be extended to agents of Chinese intelligence and China's military, or that the appointment of Chinese intelligence assets like that of John Huang to posts with top security clearance should be considered reasonable? Or that Huang should be protected by Clinton's Justice Department who handed him a sweetheart deal, after he was exposed, protecting him from prosecution for serious crimes? Is it surprising, given the politics of the Clinton managers, that the administration should place its faith in arms control agreements that depend on trustworthy partners, while strenuously opposing measures to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses that do not? Even after the revelations of China's thefts, Berger and the Clinton Administration still opposed the implementation of anti-ballistic missile defense programs, while pressing to keep China's most favored nation trading status.

Nor is it surprising that a Democratic Party, whose political culture is pervaded by left-wing illusions and deceits, should work so assiduously to obstruct the investigations of the debts of the Clinton-Gore campaign to the Chinese dictatorship, or should be so irresponsibly complacent in the face of the revelations of the Cox report. There was perhaps nothing more alarming for the prospects of the two-party system than the wall of denial that was hastily and irresponsibly erected around these issues by Democratic leaders like Tom Daschle in the wake of the Cox disclosures. To say, as the Senate Minority Leader did, that there was nothing really new in these revelations-as though previous administrations had dismantled vital security procedures, taken illegal monies from foreign intelligence services and then blocked investigations when the illegalities were revealed, presided over the wholesale evaporation of the nation's nuclear weapons advantage, abetted the transfer of missile technologies that could strike American cities to potentially hostile powers, and opposed the development of weapons systems that could defend against such attacks — is absurd.

At the heart of the crisis is, in fact, a White House that has loaded its administration with officials deeply disenchanted with, if not actively hostile to, America's character and purposes. This is a White House whose leader has spent enormous political capital apologizing to the world for America's role in it. Standing behind that leader and his many cover-ups is a party that lacks proper pride in America's national achievement and proper loyalty to America's national interests. This is a party that, even in the face of the most massive breach of security in America's history, took the position that, like Monica, "everybody does it." This is the legacy of the triumphs of the political left during the era of the Vietnam War, and its long march through the Democratic Party and the cultural institutions that support it.

W
ITH THE PUBLICATION of the
Cox Report
we now know that seven years of the Clinton Administration have coincided with the most massive breach of military security in American history. As a result of the calculated degrading of security controls at America's nuclear laboratories, Chinese Communists have been able to steal the designs for our arsenal of nuclear weapons, including our most advanced warheads. As a result of the 1993 Clinton decision to terminate the COCOM security controls that denied sensitive technologies to nuclear proliferators and potential adversary powers, Chinese Communists have been given the secrets of our intercontinental ballistic missile systems, along with previously restricted computer hardware. This allows them for the first time to target cities in the United States. In little over five years, the Chinese Communist dictatorship has been able to close a technology gap of twenty and to destroy a security buffer that had kept America safe from foreign attacks on its territorial mainland for more than a hundred years.

Throughout its entire history until 1957, the United States was protected from such attacks by the oceans, whose natural barriers have insulated it from potential aggressors. In 1957, the Soviet Union acquired an intercontinental missile technology that threatened to close that gap. Since then, the only real protection the United States has enjoyed has been its technological edge in developing more sophisticated warheads and more accurate missiles than its potential opponents. The edge provided a possibility that America might prevail in a nuclear war and discouraged preemptive strikes. The catastrophe that has occurred on the Clinton watch is summed up in the fact that this edge has now vanished, probably never to be regained.

America is now vulnerable to nuclear attack, not merely from China but, in the absence of an anti-ballistic missile defense which the Clinton Administration has steadfastly refused to develop, from every rogue state that China has chosen to arm. Along with Russia, China is the chief proliferator of nuclear, missile, and satellite technology to other governments. The governments it has chosen to benefit in this way are notorious stockpilers of biological and chemical weapons, and among the most dangerous and dedicated enemies of the United States: Libya, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran.

Yet, in the midst of the revelations that make up this grim prospect, the attitude of the Clinton Administration has been one of hear-no-evil, see-no-evil. The official line, ritually repeated by the Democratic leadership in the sickeningly familiar refrain of the Monica scandal is "everybody does it" and "it's no big deal," presumably because, at the moment, China only has a few nuclear weapons actually deployed. Far from acknowledging the catastrophe that has occurred or recognizing the dangers it creates, the Clinton White House has hurried to resume export sales of the same previously restricted technologies and to reassert the "strategic partnership" it promoted with the very dictatorship that has declared America its "number one adversary" and has stripped us of our military shield.

Indeed, the government's awareness of many of the losses dates back several years, during which the Clinton reaction was exactly the same: continue on the destructive course. According to Congressman Curt Weldon, who is a member of the Cox Committee, at least fifteen government officials have experienced the wrath of the Clinton Administration
because
they tried to protect America's secrets from being transferred to China. One notorious case was described in a recent
Wall Street Journal
article by a former security official, Michael Ledeen. According to documents obtained by Ledeen, a mid-level government arms-control bureaucrat was asked in 1997 to provide a memo supporting the administration's certification that China was not a nuclear proliferator and could be provided with advanced technologies. This request was made on the eve of a visit from China's communist dictator, Jiang Zemin. The bureaucrat refused and wrote that the agreement the Clinton Administration was about to sign "presents real and substantial risk to the common defense and security of both the United States and allied countries." The official added that China was actively seeking American secrets and that "China routinely, both overtly and covertly, subverts national and multilateral trade controls on militarily critical items." This patriot was immediately told by his superiors to revise his memo or lose his job. Sadly, he complied with the order and rewrote the document to state that the proposed Clinton trade agreement "is not inimical to the common defense or the security of the United States."

In keeping with its fierce defense of a suicidal policy, the Clinton Administration has failed to prosecute the very spies who have been identified as responsible for the most critical thefts of American military secrets, and has protected those whose wrists it has slapped.

Wen Ho Lee, the man responsible for the most damaging espionage, is known to have downloaded millions of lines of computer codes revealing the designs of our most advanced nuclear warheads.

But Wen Ho Lee today is a free man. Peter Lee, who gave Communist China our warhead testing techniques and the radar technology to locate our submarines (until then the most secure element of our nuclear deterrent), is also free, having served only a year in jail for his treason.

Wen Ho Lee was actually protected while performing his dirty work. When government agents requested a wiretap on Wen Ho Lee's phone, the request was denied by Clinton Justice. From its inception the Clinton Justice Department had never denied a wiretap request before. In explaining why it has not prosecuted Lee, the Clinton Justice Department claims that its evidence only shows that Lee downloaded the classified information onto a non-secure computer, from which others unknown may have picked it up. But, as Angelo Codevilla pointed out in the
Wall Street Journal,
"by this logic no one could be prosecuted for espionage for putting stolen documents into a dead drop, such as a hollow tree, for later pickup by foreign agents." Of course, the administration lacks even this transparent excuse in the case of Peter Lee, who did give the information directly to the communists.

Why is Bill Clinton furiously covering up for the Communist Chinese and protecting its leaders and their spies from the wrath that should surely follow their rape of America's most guarded secrets? Certainly not, as Clinton and his complicit Democratic defenders now claim because "everyone does it." Unlike China, for example, the state of Israel is a democracy and a proven ally of the United States. Yet when an Israeli agent named Jonathan Pollard was discovered stealing secrets whose dimensions did not even approach the seriousness of these thefts (no technologies, for example, were involved), he was given a life sentence amidst the most solemn anathemas from the officials of the government he betrayed.

The evidence is compatible with only one conclusion. The reason Bill Clinton is protecting China's spies and their communist masters is because in protecting them he is protecting himself. The China strategy is fully intelligible in the frame of Clinton's strategy on other matters:
the President has triangulated toith China's communist government in pursuit of his com political interest at the expense of the United States.
This is not about loyalties that Bill Clinton might have to communist ideology or communist dictators. On this, Bill Clinton's record is clear: he has no loyalties, except to himself. It is the solipsistic nihilism that we have come to know as the very essence of Bill Clinton that has made this treachery possible, even inevitable.

Clinton's triangulation with Communist China has been chillingly charted by two national security professionals (although they do not employ the term itself), with the help of the Thompson Committee investigations into illegal campaign contributions. In the
Year of the Rat
, Bill Triplett and Ed Timperlake show that the roots of the Clinton betrayal lie in relationships that go back to Arkansas, and the fact that Bill Clinton owes his political life to the Chinese Communists through their agents, business associates, and friends.

Year of the Rat
begins with the authors' observation that the number one funder of the Clinton-Gore 1992 presidential campaign was an Arkansas resident and Chinese banker named James Riady, who has been a friend of Bill Clinton for twenty years. Riady is the scion of a multi-billion dollar financial empire which is a working economic and political partnership with China's military and intelligence establishment. The Riadys gave 450,000 dollars to Clinton's presidential campaign and another six hundred thousand dollars to the Democratic National Committee and Democratic state parties.

But the importance of the Riadys to Clinton's ascent is far greater than even these contributions suggest, and not merely because the Chinese network, in which the Riadys are only one important factor, extends through thousands of companies and individuals whose contributions no one has as yet attempted to track.

Without the Riadys, Clinton would not have won the Democratic nomination in the first place, and would not have been in a position to benefit from their later largesse. In the presidential primaries of 1992, in fact, the Riadys were the absolutely crucial factor that stood between Clinton and defeat. After losing the New Hampshire primary, the candidate faced a crucial test in New York.

But he had also run out of money. At this critical juncture, James Riady stepped in to arrange a 3.5 million dollar loan to the Clinton campaign. New York proved to be the last real competition that Clinton faced on his path to victory.

When the Arkansas governor stepped onto the national scene, Clinton and Riady were not new acquaintances. They had met in 1978 when Clinton was attorney general and had not yet become governor of the state. They were introduced by Clinton's chief political backer, Jackson Stephens, the head of Stephens, Inc., one of the largest private investment firms outside of Wall Street. "Thus began a friendship," in the words of Timperlake and Triplett, "that has lasted twenty years, and has spread a web of intrigue, financial corruption, and foreign influence into American government."

James Riady had begun his American banking career earlier in the 1970s as an intern at Stephens, Inc. Later they became partners in the Worthen Bank of Little Rock, the very same that subsequently experienced a mysterious fire which destroyed records being sought by Kenneth Starr and other Whitewater investigators in their inquiries into Hillary Clinton's Rose law firm activities. It was through the Worthen bank that Riady arranged the 3.5 million dollar credit to Clinton's failing primary campaign. The Riady relationship extended beyond the Clintons themselves to their friends and to Hillary's associates at Rose, including its head, Joe Giroir, and a White House aide named Mark Middleton, who later invoked the Fifth Amendment when he was called before the Thompson committee. It was the Riadys who provided a one hundred thousand dollar "job" for the indicted Web Hubbell, at the moment when he had indicated to the Starr prosecutors that he might be ready to talk. After the payment from Riady and others, Hubbell changed his mind and chose jail instead.