GOP Keeps Up Heat On Possible Clinton-China Links
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Thompson on CNN's 'Evans and Novak'
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Thompson: Forgo China trip until 'big, ugly mess' cleared up
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, May 23) -- Republicans are keeping
up the pressure on President Bill Clinton to explain
questions about possible links between 1996 Democratic
campaign contributions and decisions to share U.S. satellite
technology with the Chinese government.
In the weekly GOP radio address Saturday, Rep. Porter Goss,
R-Fla., said "the administration needs to provide Americans
with direct and full answers to important questions about all
of this."
"How did it come about that highly sensitive technical
information was given to the Chinese? Why did the president
ignore the national security experts who counseled against
this deal? What damage has been done to our national
security?" Goss asked.
"We know that Chinese officials chose to invest hundreds of
thousands of dollars in the 1996 re-election of the Clinton
administration. What we don't know is what they expected to
gain from that investment," Goss said.
Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., in an interview on CNN's "Evans
and Novak," called the questions about transferring
technology to China a "big, ugly mess," and he said Clinton
should seriously reconsider his trip there, scheduled for
next month.
"I'm more concerned that if he goes, he's going to ... make
agreements to transfer additional technology. It's been
reported that he's thinking in those terms," said Thompson,
who chairs a Senate committee that has been investigating
1996 campaign fund-raising irregularities.
Thompson: White House should 'stop and reassess'
"You have a lot of troubling questions ... You have some
significant policy matters being determined in the midst of
some very questionable activity involving a foreign
government -- involving the very government that he is
planning on visiting. So I don't think it's bad to stop and
reassess that at this point," Thompson said.
More than 150 House members also have called for Clinton to
cancel the trip, but the White House has said that is not an
option.
The Justice Department is investigating whether political
contributions, from either the Chinese government or American
business interests, influenced the administration's China
policies.
Former Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung has told Justice
investigators that he passed on to the Democratic Party more
than $100,000 from Liu Chao Ying, an official of a Chinese
aerospace company who is also an officer in the Chinese army
and the daughter of a top official in the Beijing regime.
After the donation, Clinton approved a waiver that allowed
Loral Space and Communications -- whose chief executive
officer, Bernard Schwartz, is a leading Democratic Party
donor -- to launch one of its satellites on top of a Chinese
rocket.
Friday, Clinton defended the waiver, saying it "was in the
national interest, and supportive of our national security."
"There was absolutely nothing done to transfer any technology
inappropriately to the Chinese as a result of this decision,"
he said.
In Beijing, Liu issued a statement this week denying that she
ever gave political donations to the Democrats through Chung.
But Thompson said based on his committee's investigation,
such a scenario "totally fits with everything that we know."
"[The Chinese] has lied consistently. Not only do they lie
about such things as transfers of nuclear technology, they
have lied to us about their involvement in our campaign,"
Thompson said. "I wouldn't believe anything any of them
said."
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