Ken Starr’s “Referral,” which formed the basis of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, was shocking, but the new book called “Year of the Rat” is even more shocking. It is 275 pages of detailed evidence that Bill Clinton sold out America’s national security to Communist China in return for campaign cash.
This book describes Clinton’s actions as bribery, an identifiable “high crime” that calls for removal from office. The obstruction of justice resolution sent to the Senate is broad enough to include Clinton’s massive cover-up of this bribery and to dispose completely of the whining complaint that Clinton’s impeachment is “just about sex.”
“Year of the Rat” was written by two Republican Capitol Hill staffers with extensive investigative experience in the fields of China, national security, and international financial crimes. The book presents a picture of bribery, extortion and obstruction of justice, and is copiously documented with more than 600 footnotes from public information, recently declassified documents, and personal interviews.
Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE) and then-Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) must have been completely mystified as to how they could have been defeated for the 1992 Democratic Presidential nomination by the Governor of a southern state who carried so much baggage of lifestyle and financial misbehavior. Now we know the reason. At a crucial point in the spring of 1992, Clinton’s faltering campaign received a multi-million dollar transfusion from an Arkansas bank.
It turned out that the Arkansas bank was controlled by the Riady family of Indonesia. Then, a rush of illegal Riady money in the fall of 1992 was targeted to the key states vital to Clinton’s election.
Clinton was elected President both in 1992 and in 1996 with large sums of illegal foreign cash. Nearly $5 million in political donations to the 1992 and 1996 Clinton campaigns came from the Riadys.
A Chinese banking family based in Indonesia, the Riadys have some $5 billion of business investments closely interlocked with the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese military intelligence. When the Riadys wanted property on Wangfujing Street, the most valuable commercial block in central Beijing, they were powerful enough to get Beijing to break China’s lease with McDonalds and move America’s profitable fast-food outlet to an inferior location.
Obstruction of justice explains the payment of hush money to Clinton crony Webb Hubbell. In June 1994, as Ken Starr was closing in on the then-broke Hubbell, he suddenly received $100,000 from the Riadys and possibly a similar amount from a Macau criminal syndicate figure who came through the San Francisco airport carrying $175,000 in cash, as he headed for the White House and a Democratic gala.
Clinton paid off the Riadys by giving their man in America, John Huang, a key job in the Commerce Department with Top Secret clearance. This gave Huang access to extremely sensitive CIA information of great value to the Riadys and to their associates in Chinese intelligence.
After the Republicans captured Congress in 1994, a worried Clinton turned to Dick Morris for political advice. Morris laid out a plan to run a television blitz in key states, but that required lots of money.
Clinton moved John Huang, with his security clearance intact, to the Democratic National Committee in order to strut his skills as a fundraiser. In nine months, Huang raised $2,660,000 for Clinton’s television campaign, most of which the DNC later had to return as illegal — after Clinton was reelected in 1996.
The illegal Chinese contributions to the Democratic Party and the Clinton-Gore campaign came mostly from illicit activities, including prostitution and drug trafficking. In return, Clinton used the White House as a visitor’s center for agents of the Chinese army, the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese criminal syndicates, and Chinese generals from the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Another Democratic fundraiser and friend of Clinton, Johnny Chung, was convicted last month of funneling political contributions from a Chinese military officer to the Democrats. A hundred potential witnesses of Chinagate have either taken the Fifth Amendment or fled the country.
Meanwhile, the number-one contributor to the 1995-1996 Clinton-Gore re-election cycle, Bernard Schwartz of Loral Space Systems, turned out to be interested in China, too. Schwartz went from a $12,500 contributor in the 1991-1992 cycle to a $2.2 million contributor.
The Clinton Administration gave Loral the export licenses it wanted in order to have the Chinese launch its satellites. The result is that China acquired U.S. technology that has enabled China to target its missiles against us more accurately.
When the Chinagate scandal started to break into the news, Clinton’s response on March 10, 1997 was just as tricky, legalistic and evasive as his more famous Monica denials: “I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I have changed government policy solely because of a contribution.”
“Year of the Rat” presents the evidence that the Clinton Administration solicited illegal funds from foreigners and took massive contributions from favor-seeking corporate interests, paid them off with preferential trade policies and wide access to U.S. intelligence, and then used the illegal money to steal the 1996 election.
