Mike Wallace flunks Jiang test

Friday, September 6, 2000

On September 3, "60 Minutes" aired an interview with China's president, Jiang Zemin, who arrived here the next day to attend the United Nations Millennium conference and meet with American business leaders. Wanting to polish his image for this trip, Jiang granted a long-standing request by Mike Wallace for an interview with him in China. In 1986, Wallace had interviewed Jiang, then the mayor of Shanghai. A CBS release said Wallace had asked "all the difficult questions, including those about illegal campaign contributions to U.S. candidates."

That is a huge stretch. The one question Wallace asked about campaign contributions was inspired by Jiang's response when he was asked what he would like to say to Al Gore and George W. Bush about U.S.-China relations. He responded, "I have a lot of friends among leaders of both parties, Republicans and Democrats." Wallace fired back, "So you give money to both their campaigns?" Jiang responded, "Are you joking? We have never done such things." That ended the campaign finance discussion.

Mike Wallace knows that large contributions to the Democrats in the 1996 campaign from such donors as Johnny Chung and Charlie Yah Lin Trie were funded by official Chinese entities or individuals with close ties to the Chinese government. China provided a safe harbor for Charlie Trie and others when they were being sought for questioning in this country. Wallace refrained from spoiling Jiang's image-polishing appearance by exposing his efforts to help Clinton win reelection.

This is laid out in a new book by Kenneth R. Timmerman titled Selling Out America, The Whole Story of Bill Clinton's Corrupt Relationship to Communist China. (It can be ordered on line from www.timmerman2000.com). What follows is based on this book. Johnny Chung, the businessman who compared the White House to a subway where you put in money to get through the turnstile, described the source of his donations in testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform in May of last year. He testified that when he was in China in August 1996, he got a call from Liu Chaoying, the daughter of a senior Chinese general. She was managing director of the Hong Kong subsidiary of the China Aerospace Corporation. She arranged for Chung to meet General Ji Shengde, the director of Chinese military intelligence and a close ally of President Jiang. Two days later General Ji confirmed that he would wire $300,000 to Ms. Liu's account for transfer to Johnny Chung. Ms. Liu told Chung that China was using him and several other intermediaries to buy influence with the Clinton administration. She said that China wanted to see Clinton reelected and that he could use the $300,000 to help achieve that goal.

Justice Department records showed that $300,000 was transferred to Johnny Chung from a Citibank account in Hong Kong on August 14, 1996. Investigators traced the funds to J&A Securities, a big securities trading company in China started by the People's Liberation Army. Chung was quizzed about his ties to this company and General Ji by Justice Department investigators in 1998.

General Ji sent an emissary named Robert Luu to warn Johnny Chung not to reveal the involvement of the general or China Aerospace in the campaign contribution scheme. Chung negotiated a plea bargain that involved recording his conversations with Luu, who said that if he kept quiet, China would take care of his legal expenses and his family. If he was sent to prison, they would try to get Clinton to pardon him. Gen. Ji has since been arrested on corruption charges. This insures his silence. He can't tell all he knows, and if he could, the media would not dare report it.

Little Rock restaurateur Charlie Yah Lin Trie was another big Democratic donor. Aides to Sen. Fred Thompson, who chaired a committee investigating China's influence buying, claimed to have evidence that in 1996, Trie had received wire transfers of up to a million dollars from the state-owned Bank of China. His gifts to the Democrats helped Trie arrange for Wang Jun, a big Chinese arms merchant, to meet President Clinton.

Trie later fled to China to escape being questioned about his donations. He hid out there for several months, never being made available to American investigators. President Jiang may not have known all about Trie's gifts, but he certainly knew that sheltering him in China hampered our investigation of China's influence buying.

Mike Wallace should have asked him about Chung and Trie. If the interview were a test, Jiang would probably give him an A, but we would have to flunk him.

Reed Irvine is chairman of Accuracy in Media.