Clinton Scandal Summary Archive

Lion's Den Site Of The Week.

AP reports fund-raiser Nora Lum visited white house personnel office frequently. Federal investigators last year began probing payments Mrs. Lum made from her company to the relatives of two administration officials: the son of late Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown and the mother of a White House personnel worker.

Sen. John McCain predicts Janet Reno eventually will have to appoint an independent counsel to investigate foreign contributions to the Democratic Party.

Newly released documents cast doubt on claims by the DNC that President Clinton didn't host fund-raising events in the White House (WALL STREET JOURNAL).

Cabinet nominees Alexis Herman and Rodney Slater may have violated the Hatch Act, which restricts politicking by government workers and forbids the use of government equipment for electioneering.

Michael McCurry's statements become "inoperative" regarding when White House became aware of former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell's 1994 employment with an affiliate of the Lippo Group.

White House denies using the IRS as a political instrument.

Morris book reveals Clinton used polls to decide where to vacation.

Republicans say NSC head Lake moved to conceal all records of Bosnian arms transfers from Iran.

Time Magazine (Feb 3 issue) reports WhoDB was used for fund raising. (Ray Heizer notes, prior to this date the story was neither true nor false. It stayed in that state of flux until TIME collapsed the quantum uncertainty by remarking on it.)

Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) is planning an investigation of fund-raising practices of both parties and is prepared to go to court, if necessary, to force the release of White House records.

A computer analysis of federal election records and a recently released White House guest list for the coffees found that the Democrats collected $27,018,553 in soft-money "contributions from 358 people invited to meet with Clinton.

Crop Insurance Executives Go on Trial in Espy Case.

Documents show White House aides developed plans last year to energize non-profit groups to work for President Clinton's reelection. The plans were developed under the direction of Clinton's assistant for public liaison Alexis Herman, who Clinton last month nominated to be his new secretary of labor.

A 25-member FBI task force has been assigned to look into economic and national security concerns involving John Huang.

Racial tactics, travel by Slater questioned.

An FBI inquiry into the interception of a cellular call involving Newt Gingrich and other House Republican leaders continues to focus on Democrats looking to embarrass the House speaker Export-Import Bank official Marie Haley could get extra gentle treatment from the Clinton Administration in a new loan scandal because of her tie to the Vincent Foster intrigue.

Washington Times reports: One day after Chinese arms dealer Wang Jun visited President Clinton in the Oval Office, longtime Clinton supporter Ernest G. Green, who helped Mr. Wang get a U.S. visa, made a $50,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee.

Anthony Lake profited from investment in a natural-gas company last year after being told not to invest in the energy sector (WALL STREET JOURNAL)

The White House conceded that a million-dollar political fund-raising event attended by President Clinton this week would violate the requirements of a campaign finance reform bill he is prodding Congress to enact.

Little Rock native Ernest Green disputed suggestions that his $50,000 donation last year to the Democratic National Committee had any connection with a Chinese arms dealer's visit to the White House.

Former Lippo Group executive John Huang, now the focus of an FBI probe into possible economic-espionage and national-security concerns, held top-secret clearances for three years, although he worked at Commerce for only 18 months - Washington Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Roger Tamraz, former banker who is a fugitive from Lebanon on embezzlement charges sipped coffee at the White House with President Clinton and other Democratic donors last April. Tamraz's U.S.-based oil company donated $72,000 to the party in 1995 and 1996.

A New Jersey stock promoter, Eric Wynn, convicted of criminal securities fraud that benefited a member of the Bonanno organized crime family, was among eight guests who accepted an invitation to join President Clinton and top Democratic Party leaders for an early morning coffee four days before Christmas in 1995, White House records show.

The White House acknowledged that it had never reviewed the backgrounds of any of the hundreds of visitors who saw President Clinton in scores of intimate White House meetings arranged by the Democratic National Committee.

Clinton White House ended screening of guests that Reagan and Bush had used.

While nursing home executive Alan D. Solomont raised $17 million for the Democratic Party and gave nearly $300,000 of his own and his company's money, he gained extraordinary access to President Clinton at a time when the administration considered loosening proposed regulations on the nursing home industry.

The IRS demanded the NRA membership list as part of the audit. The NRA has *refused* to provide the list.

A Justice Department task force and a federal grand jury looking at Democratic Party fund-raising have asked the party for records involving more than 40 individuals and corporations, USA Today reported today.

CNN has obtained a copy of a memorandum from Ickes to R. Warren Medoff, a representative of a major Democratic donor. The memo directs how the donor could make large contributions so he could get the "favorable tax treatment" he wanted. Ickes asked that his memo be "shredded," according to a report in Newsweek. President Clinton renewed controversial aid flights to Cuba last October on the same day a campaign donor pressed Clinton to resume the flights and offered to arrange a $5 million contribution.

Pauline Kanchanalak gave $10,000 to the Democratic National Committee a day before a top White House adviser met with council members and U.S. business executives in a move to expand U.S.-Thailand trade. It was among $253,500 in donations that were returned to Mrs. Kanchanalak and her relatives in November amid questions about the source of the funds.- THE WASHINGTON TIMES

More than three dozen subpoenas have been issued for persons and businesses in a Justice Department investigation into foreign-linked campaign contributions involving President Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

Challenged with questions about his frankness, White House press secretary Mike McCurry said Tuesday he should have told reporters last week about his conversation with Democratic fund-raiser Truman Arnold.

"Federal Ruling on Poultry Stuns Consumer Groups."- The Clinton administration issued its "final food-safety rule that requires poultry inspectors to check only a few birds for fecal contamination at the end of production lines."

Dr. J. Michael Waller of the American Foreign Policy Council revealed and discussed the fact that a U.S. government agency headed by the wife of Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has just extended a $200 million loan to Russia to help them modernize their ballistic missiles.

A major donation to the Democrats was a clear ticket to White House coffees with President Clinton, and a channel for lobbyists to personally raise special-interest issues with him, according to interviews with participants. In some cases, invitations to the coffees were issued directly by Terence McAuliffe, the chief fund-raiser for Clinton's re-election campaign, or one of his lieutenants.

FBI whistle-blowers say the bureau's bomb experts played golf when they should have been at work, stashed gin in the refrigerator and held weekly poker games while on duty, CBS reported Wednesday.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, the American political patriarch, has sold his 6 1/2-acre McLean estate for nearly $6 million to Eric Hotung, head of a legendary Hong Kong family of merchant princes, landowners and philanthropists.

The former head of the Los Angeles Airport Commission will testify today before the Whitewater grand jury about a questionable consulting contract he approved in 1994 giving $24,750 to former Associate Attorney General Webster L. Hubbell.

Federal marshals are searching for former White House personnel security chief Craig Livingstone to serve him with a lawsuit alleging he mishandled the FBI background files of White House employees.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Just days before a controversial White House database was disclosed last year, the presidential aide who oversaw the project told congressional investigators in a sworn deposition, ``There was no database at the White House at all. 'White House aide Marsha Scott gave the answer June 19, 1996, during the investigation into the White House travel office firings.

The nation's top banking regulator accepted tickets from a banker to an opera performance in New York and a Kennedy Center black-tie event, and his staff advised a trade group on its lobbying against a banking proposal on Capitol Hill, agency documents show. Rep. Spencer T. Bachus, chairman of an oversight subcommittee looking into the White House meeting, expressed concerns about Ludwig coaching bankers in their efforts to lobby legislators about a banking bill.

Among the hundreds of dinners, coffees and receptions that benefited the Democratic Party last year, a single private gathering featuring President Clinton and four wealthy Asian businessmen at a luxury hotel here last July is emerging as a focus of particular intrigue. The White House cannot explain the participation of people barred from contributing. Justice Department and congressional investigators are investigating to see whether any laws may have been broken--specifically if foreign money destined for the Democratic Party was channeled through U.S. citizens.

A controversial 230,000-name White House computer list now under congressional investigation includes far more political fund-raising information than presidential aides have admitted, Gannett News Service has learned.

ABC "World News Tonight" with Peter Jennings spiked a story this evening that proves conclusively that the Clinton Administration had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Gore's public relations disaster at auto show

Democratic officials regularly steered would-be campaign contributors to a tax-exempt and supposedly nonpartisan voter registration group that in reality has close ties to the Democratic Party. Donations to such groups, known as "501C3s" for the provision of the U.S. Tax Code authorizing them, are tax deductible. But the groups are supposed to maintain an arms-length relationship with political parties, and any coordination of efforts could raise questions of legality and propriety.

Convicted Whitewater partner Jim McDougal is now telling independent counsel Kenneth Starr that then-Gov. Bill Clinton knew about an illegal 1986 loan issued to McDougal's wife at the time, according to The New Yorker magazine.

Up to 900 Donors Stayed Overnight at White House Numbers are called 'staggering.'

Coveted slots on U.S. foreign trade missions generated a major fund-raising bonanza for the Democratic Party during President Clinton's first term. The business leaders who were invited on such trips contributed $15 million to Democratic Party committees over the four-year period.

Ickes ducks White House query on fund-raising Harold Ickes Jr. has failed to respond to a White House request for full disclosure of how he, as President Clinton's deputy chief of staff, funneled Democratic contributions into tax-exempt foundations.

The latest Hubbell client to surface is Time Warner (the parent company of TIME magazine). A company executive confirmed to TIME last week that the corporation employed Hubbell briefly as a consultant in the fall of 1994. Starr issued a subpoena last month to Time Warner, asking for the records of Hubbell's employment.

Wednesday February 12, 1997

During his nine-month tenure at Commerce, Kantor led only two small trade missions abroad. But an analysis done for The Boston Globe found that four of the companies invited, including Enron, gave the Democratic Party one-shot contributions of $100,000 or more just before or after the trips. In an interview, Kantor said he was ``stunned'' to learn of the donations.

Three former Clinton administration appointees and a fund-raiser have refused to cooperate with a House investigation into Democratic fund-raising irregularities, prompting formal subpoenas

A Justice Department investigation into improper political fund-raising activities has uncovered evidence that representatives of the People's Republic of China sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee before the 1996 presidential campaign, officials familiar with the inquiry said.

An FBI task force probing national security concerns involving foreign campaign contributions to the Democratic Party has focused on the transfer of highly classified intelligence documents from the Commerce Department to a safe in the Small Business Administration. President Clinton confirmed Thursday that federal authorities are investigating whether the Chinese government, through its embassy in Washington, orchestrated foreign contributions to the DNC.

A regular source reported to Larry Nichols on his worldwide shortwave radio program today about the existence of National Security Agency (NSA) tapes of telephone conversations between Hillary Rodham Clinton and persons at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. He alleged that the NSA has had bugs in place at the embassy for decades, and that there are also NSA tapes of former high-ranking Clinton administration official Harold Ickes in conversations with persons at the Chinese Embassy before the last election.

President Clinton's computerized database of 350,000 friends, created in part because it would save money, has cost taxpayers $1.69 million and could cost nearly $100,000 annually to operate, according to the White House. Instead of slashing costs by consolidating computerized databases and eliminating some computer operators, the system's price tag has surged above the initial estimate of $545,000.

In a new set of questions about the nomination of Alexis Herman as secretary of labor, a Senate committee is examining why she received an ownership interest now worth as much as $500,000 in a real-estate development here without investing any money, government officials said Friday

New White House documents revealed Friday that a number of Chinese officials attended a taping of President Bill Clinton's weekly radio address at the urging of an Asian-American campaign contributor.

A paid informant of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has revealed to an Oklahoma newspaper that she reported to the agency late in 1994 that three federal buildings, two of them in Tulsa and the other in Oklahoma City, were being discussed as potential targets for bombing by members of an extremist group located in Elohim City, Oklahoma.

Lamberth has over-ridden the Clinton administration's request to quash pretrial probing of the Commerce Dept by Larry Klayman and Judicial Watch. Lamberth noted "annoying and oppressive conduct" by Commerce and Justice Dept attorneys to prevent legal discovery.

While he worked as a senior Commerce Department official, privy to classified trade briefings, John Huang regularly met and dined with Chinese Embassy officials who would have valued such information. When Huang left Commerce to begin a controversial stint as the Democrats' top fund-raiser among Asian-Americans, he kept his Chinese contacts.

The Clinton administration shifted its policy toward the U.S. territory of Guam in late 1996 after politicians and business leaders there contributed nearly $900,000 to the Democratic Party, the Washington Post reported in Sunday editions.

A CNN story said there were big holes in the OKC bombing case. NO witnesses who were going to place Mc Veigh at the scene are going to be used or are "discredited".

Democrats had more than a month to submit proposed subpoenas to a Senate committee investigating campaign fund-raising abuses but didn't begin their work until two hours after the panel voted to issue 52 subpoenas for documents.

Internal Democratic National Committee records show that money man John Huang used a controversial White House "coffee" with President Clinton to raise $185,000 in campaign cash. It's against the law to use federal property -- such as the White House -- for political fund-raising, and Clinton aides and the DNC alike continue to deny that the coffees were direct fund-raisers.

Last month, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton gained much publicity by reading to children on the pediatrics ward of the Georgetown University Medical Center. Now, the American Spectator reports that ill youngsters were barred from the event- that the children shown in newspaper photos actually were the offspring of hospital staff. Mrs. Clinton's advance team "became squeamish about their boss appearing with kids who weren't looking 100 percent in the pink; in fact, hospital officials were told not allow any children into the photo-op who were 'drowsy,' bald, bearing tubes in their bodies, or 'sick-looking,'" the magazine said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate panel investigating 1996 campaign finance abuses subpoenaed President Clinton's legal defense fund Wednesday for records of contributions and money returned to donors, aides said.

On Thursday (February 20) the Washington Post provided a couple of new revelations. A front page story by Lena Sun reported: "An executive of an Asian-American business association said he was approached by Democratic fundraiser John Huang last summer and asked to funnel more than $250,000 from Huang through its members as contributions to the Democratic National Committee in return for a $45,000 payment to the group."

Inside, a story by Bob Woodward began: "A twice-convicted felon who met with President Clinton at one of the small, controversial White House coffees in 1995 appeared on four other occasions at Democratic National Committee fundraising events with Clinton last year, according to records and interviews with DNC officials."

Plus, a front page Wall Street Journal story documented how a Miami businessman twice met with the National Security Council's Latin America specialist to urge Clinton to back Paraguay's President in a coup attempt. "The day the unsuccessful coup attempt began," the DNC "received $100,000 from Mr. [Mark] Jimenez."

The Justice Department is defending some of the same Commerce Department officials its investigating for illegal fundraising. Critics say its a clear conflict of interest that may be coloring Justice's three-month probe.

Hubbell, Huang Say They'll Invoke Fifth Amendment - Associated Press

The White House is ending the practice of allowing the Democratic National Committee to pay the salaries of some of its "volunteer" workers, administration officials said last night, and will hire four individuals now being paid by the DNC. New documents show some of them worked on the secret White House database of Clinton donors and supporters.

"WE MADE A MISTAKE" says ArDem-Gaz STARR STAGED NO MOCK TRIALS, SOURCE CONCEDES

Two Asian-American business leaders (Mary Hay, Rawlein Soberano) accuse Indogate figure John Huang of asking their association to illegally funnel $255,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary agreed to meet with a friend of Johnny Chung, who gave $366,000 to the DNC and used his pull to get pals to meet President Clinton and other top U.S. officials, records show. It's the latest example where the DNC -- under fire for dangling access to Clinton and key administration players to raise campaign cash --intervened with a U.S. official on behalf of a generous donor.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A conservative public interest law firm is accusing Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., of improperly trying to influence a Senate committee investigation of questionable Democratic fund-raising practices.

Trie & Kanchanalak Flee to Asia ?

The Manhattan district attorney said Friday that he had given federal prosecutors evidence that a Venezuelan banking family may have illegally funneled campaign contributions to the Democratic Party during the 1992 election. Prosecutors said they had evidence that the Americans, Charles Intriago and Jorge Castro Barredo, had been reimbursed by companies controlled by the Castro family in Venezuela.

The former head of the U.S. liaison office on Taiwan, who resigned under pressure a month ago, alleged Saturday that the State Department purged him because he was investigating lawbreaking and corruption in the Taiwan operation. James C. Wood accused a former assistant secretary of state of condoning corruption, fraud and mismanagement. Other senior Clinton administration and State Department officials also knew but did nothing, he contended.

Just two months ago America's top drug fighter, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, praised his newly appointed Mexican counterpart, Gen. Jesus Gutiirrez Rebollo, as a man of "unquestioned integrity ."Now General Gutiirrez stands accused of accepting bribes from and collaborating with leading Mexican drug traffickers.

Rural Highfill, Arkansas, has a population of less than 100 persons noted ABC's "20/20" program in their Feb. 20, 1997 broadcast. So why build an international airport there? One reason pointed to is that both Tyson Chicken and Wal-Mart have facilities in nearby Arkansas, Arkansas.... Hmmm.... Who do we know that's from there? The name is Bill something or other, isn't it?

Tribune Review reports Dennis Sculimbrene was forced into early retirement for refusing to dispute allegations made by Gary Aldrich and for his account of the hiring of Craig Livingstone. According to Sculimbrene, last summer the FBI dispatched two agents to question him about his 1993 interview with Nussbaum. Sculimbrene said the agents told him the White House was unhappy about his attribution of statements to Nussbaum concerning a personal relationship between Hillary Clinton and Livingstone's mother.

A lawyer for federal bank regulators initially concluded that some agency staffers might have violated federal law by helping their boss prepare for a Democratic National Committee-sponsored coffee at the White House with President Bill Clinton and several top bank executives. But the lawyer, Barrett Aldemeyer, reversed himself a few weeks later and concluded that no violation had occurred - after receiving an order from a supervisor.

Colorado Gov. Roy Romer says at least three staffers from the Democratic National Committee are still doing work for the White House. Romer, the DNC chief, tells ABC they are doing advance work for President Clinton. Last week, the White House brought four other committee employees onto the government payroll after similar disclosures.

On his last day in office, Secretary of State Warren Christopher dismissed James Wood, an Arkansas Democrat, as chief U.S. representative for Taiwan just 13 months after he took office. Wood said he was victimized by efforts to detail corruption and fraud that occurred at the office before he was named to head it. ``It is clear that massive corruption, fraud, graft and sexual harassment and mismanagement were ongoing during Bellocchi's tenure as chairman,'' Wood said, basing his contention on an independent audit.

House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said he was "gravely concerned" to read over the weekend that the White House, citing diplomatic and national security concerns, recently sought and received information on whether the Chinese government had tried to illegally funnel money to the Democratic National Committee. Burton charged that the Justice Department "inexplicably and in short order" provided records sought by the White House, giving officials there a "heads up in an open criminal investigation that potentially involved senior Clinton administration officials."

Things turned Sunday night serious over at the Capitol Hill paper ROLL CALL: John Huang solicited a $50,000 contribution from a Connecticut businessman who says Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) was his link. The revelation flies in the face of repeated denials by Dodd. The general chair of the DNC during the '96 election cycle has repeatedly scoffed at the notion he had anything to do with Huang's fundraising drives, which are now at the heart of government/media/Internet probes. "The Connecticut businessman, James Belcher, has told two separate sources that Dodd brought him together with Huang," writes ROLL's Ed Henry.

According to a report in Aviation Week and Space Technology, US Navy sources indicate that the Chinese have deployed STEALTH missile warheads that also maneuver in flight. US Navy Aegis warships observed and recorded data on Chinese ballistic missiles during the March 1996 exercises off the coast of Taiwan. The US Navy was shocked to find the DF-15 warheads difficult to track and have determined that the Chinese are now equipping their tactical missile with STEALTH technology possibly stolen from the US.

Israel is denying that it had improper links with a US Army engineer who has admitted that he "inadvertently" passed classified information on the Patriot missile and US armored vehicles to the Israelis.

A former aide to President Clinton is leaving the administration in hopes of promoting "real reform" of the CIA after a prolonged battle with the agency that cost him his highest security clearances. Richard A. Nuccio, an adviser in the State Department's Latin America bureau, was stripped of the clearances last year because of his role in revelations about CIA activities in Guatemala. He made known his intention to resign in a letter to Clinton. The letter states that the CIA continues to rely on disreputable agents for information. He warned of grave damage to American democracy unless the CIA is reined in.

The government failed to do full background checks on as many as 180,000 of the 1 million immigrants granted citizenship last year, and nearly 11,000 of those naturalized had felony arrest records, officials confirmed Monday. Congressional Republicans pointed to the preliminary findings as evidence of their contention that the Clinton administration's Citizenship USA program was rushing to produce new citizens who were expected to vote Democratic in the 1996 election.

The Democratic National Committee is prepared this week to return dozens of additional political contributions that were questioned in a still-confidential internal audit of party fund-raising. At least one of the donations now under review came from a foreign developer who holds an advisory post with China's communist government, documents show. The $15,000 contribution in 1994 was from Ng Lap Seng, a Macao property developer with an official tie to the Chinese government. Ng serves on the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

Two years before the Democratic fund-raising controversy erupted, President Clinton scribbled his enthusiastic approval to a top aide's plan to use overnight stays in the White House as encouragement for big donations to the party, according to administration officials.

In public, President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for nearly three years have maintained a firm distance from former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell since their longtime friend resigned and pleaded guilty to fraud and tax-evasion charges. But in private, the Clintons have stayed quietly in touch with Hubbell--through a trusted White House aide who has acted as a confidential go-between.

Judge Lamberth on Tuesday approved a subpoena for Mr. Sockowitz, who was Ron Brown's special counsel at Commerce. The watchdog group Judicial Watch wants to ask him to answer questions about files that may have been taken from Mr. Brown's office and stored.

Russia has purchased an IBM RS/6000 SP for $7 million through a European middleman and will use the machine to simulate nuclear tests, according to the New York Times on 25 February. In principle, Russia can use these computers to develop new nuclear warheads, even while observing the ban on nuclear test explosions.

Some Democratic fund-raisers explicitly sold invitations to White House coffees with President Clinton and offered to arrange invitations for a price, usually $50,000 but as much as $100,000, several contributors and fund-raisers said on Tuesday. "I think it is fair to say that there was an understanding that if we became a trustee member, there was going to be an invitation to a White House coffee," said Thomas Tauke, Nynex's executive vice president for government affairs and a former Republican congressman from Iowa.

A prominent supporter of abortion rights says he ''lied through my teeth'' when he said that so-called partial-birth abortions were performed rarely, and only to save the mother's life or to abort malformed fetuses. Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers in Alexandria, Va said he had lied because he feared the truth would damage the cause of abortion rights, but now he is convinced that the debate on the issue must be based on the truth.

Dodd has thus far deflected blame for the DNC's fundraising mistakes to his former co-chairman, Don Fowler. But a July 1995 memo released this week shows that Dodd -- over the objections of Fowler -- lobbied "very strongly" for the White House to continue the "fundraising techniques" that offered premier access to $100,000 DNC contributors.

Armed with a search warrant, FBI agents this week raided the Washington offices of the United States-Thailand Business Council, an organization linked to a Thai businesswoman enmeshed in the Democratic Party fund-raising scandal. The council has close ties to Pauline Kanchanalak.

In his three decades in the thick of Democratic party politics, Harold Ickes has always been the keeper of secrets, a man who took good notes and no prisoners, who lost his share of battles and lived to fight the next war. Now, his detailed files on Clinton's re-election fund-raising portray a president intimately involved in exploiting the position and perquisites of the presidency to raise campaign contributions.

Consider William Fletcher, nominated by the president to the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit. Fletcher has taught law at Berkeley since 1977, but has neither judicial nor courtroom experience of any kind. Fletcher and Clinton were classmates and Rhodes Scholars at Oxford. He was co-director for Northern California of the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1992 and came to Clinton's defense when his marijuana smoking became public. Federal law prohibits appointing someone to ``any office'' in ``any court'' who is closely related to a ``judge of such court.'' Fletcher's mother, Betty B. Fletcher, has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit since 1979.

President Clinton's six White House guest bedrooms were filled far more often than the White House has acknowledged -- 911 times in 1993 alone -- and the president occasionally didn't know who was sleeping over. "We figured it was some sort of payback," says former usher Chris Emery, who worked at the White House from 1986 to 1994. "Guests were treated like royalty," Mr. Emery says.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh has ordered an internal inquiry into what happened to a laboratory examiner's written complaints about the bureau's testimony in an impeachment review targeting then- U.S. District Judge Alcee L. Hastings in the early 1980s. Freeh's action is in response to a 1989 memorandum by FBI examiner William A. Tobin that challenged the bureau's laboratory analysis of a key piece of evidence relating to the judge's truthfulness in a bribery trial.

Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Roll Call show that many influential Democrats -- including both House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) -- received donations from givers who are now caught up in the investigation of the DNC's fundraising practices.

Three Democrats on the Senate committee spearheading an investigation into questionable campaign fund-raising last year were themselves beneficiaries of President Clinton's efforts to raise large contributions, White House records show. Records of Clinton aide Harold Ickes show that Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan, Robert Torricelli of New Jersey and Dick Durbin of Illinois were among candidates who benefited from Clinton's fund-raising appearances in their states last year.

The Pentagon said Thursday that all full copies of the chemical-warfare logs maintained by the military during the 1991 Persian Gulf war had disappeared, even though copies on paper and on computer disks had been stored after the war in locked safes at two different locations in the United States.

The FBI is investigating whether representatives of the People's Republic of China attempted to buy influence among members of Congress through illegal campaign contributions and payments from Chinese-controlled businesses, government officials said this week.

A third former Clinton administration official refused Thursday to give Congress documents subpoenaed for investigations of Democratic fund-raising -- claiming a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The refusal by former White House aide Mark Middleton to turn over documents came as the head of the Senate probe warned that a stalemate over his budget must be resolved quickly or there will be no money for the investigation.

Ohio's Sen John Glenn, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Government Affairs Committee, announced yesterday that he would return $1,600 in contributions to Mark Grobmyer, a Little Rock, Ark, lawyer and Clinton golf partner who served as a business consultant to Lippo executive James Riady and was served with a Senate subpoena last week.

CNN reported that a Memo was faxed this morning containing the 10 measures the WH could take to raise 40 Million:

1. 2 seats on Air Force 1
2. 6 seats at private dinners
3. 6-8 spots at WH events
4. Trips abroad
5. Coordination on Appointments [It's illegal to sell govt. jobs]
6. WH Mess
7. WH visits and overnights
8. Kennedy Center tickets
9. 6 radio Address Spots
10. Photo Opportunities

The Democratic National Committee is returning another $1.5 million in improper campaign contributions from 77 donors, Gov. Roy Romer, the party chairman, announced today.

Red Chinese Opening Giant Base In Former U.S. Naval Harbor

Many Californians have long been asking why the Clinton administration decided to close the bustling Long Beach Naval Station in 1994... The turning over of the naval station to the Red Chinese raises the question whether it was part of what appears to be on-going relations between the Clinton White House and the Red Chinese, which have been linked to campaign contributions given by those with Peking connections to the reelection campaign of President Clinton. - SPOTLIGHT

In a Chicago suburb on a late summer evening last year, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser held a $10,000-a-plate dinner at his estate. The event, attended by President Clinton and dozens of bankruptcy lawyers and bankers, raised $1 million for the Democratic National Committee. Now, five months later, several lawyers and bankers have complained that the veteran fund-raiser, William A. Brandt, had explicitly linked attendance at the dinner with a chance to influence federal bankruptcy policies.

Among the hundreds of overnight guests who stayed at the White House since 1993 were a handful of Clinton's Arkansas friends who figure in the ongoing Whitewater investigation and other controversies involving the Clintons. In some instances, their visits occurred at critical junctures of federal investigations into a wide array of financial dealings related to the Clintons' Whitewater land venture.

A TV bodybuilder who gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee last year is being considered to become chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Athletics. The news of Steinfeld's possible appointment comes with disclosure of a 1994 DNC memo that urged "better coordination of appointments to boards and commissions" as one of 10 ways to reward donors.

CRIME scene photograph from the investigation into the death of the White House aide Vincent Foster appears to prove that the federal authorities have lied about the case and perpetuated a cover-up that continues to deceive the Foster family, the US Congress, and the American people. The photograph is one of the few surviving pictures taken by a Park Police officer soon after Foster's body was found in Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993. It reveals that Foster suffered trauma on the right side of his neck, just below the jawline. On the photograph there is a clearly visible wound about the size of an old sixpence, marked by a black "stippled" ring suggestive of gunpowder burns. It has the appearance of a small-calibre gunshot wound. LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

The White House discovered in 1995 that its former chief of administration had given inaccurate testimony to Congress but failed to correct the matter with House members until last week, documents show. Then-director of White House administration Patsy Thomasson told a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in March 1994 she was unaware of any volunteers working at the White House who were being paid by outside entities. The Associated Press

Vice President Al Gore played the central role in soliciting at least $40 million in campaign money for the Democratic Party during the 1996 election, the Washington Post reported in Sunday editions. Gore called to thank a Texas telecommunications executive after his firm gave $100,000 to the DNC. The Post quoted officials saying the contribution was intended in part as a reward to the administration for its efforts to help the firm win a $36 million telecommunications contract in Mexico. The Democratic Party had telephone lines installed in government buildings for use in Vice President Al Gore's drive to raise millions of dollars for the 1996 campaign, a former top aide to President Clinton says.

When business lobbyists went to the White House for briefings on legislative proposals in the first two years of the Clinton administration, some were surprised to find a staff member of the Democratic National Committee there. The briefings were held by the White House Office of Public Liaison, which was headed by Alexis Herman. Democratic staff member, Caren Wilcox, was there to do something that the White House is legally barred from doing: getting business groups to lobby on Capitol Hill for the president's proposals. This coordination between Ms. Herman's office and the Democratic committee, which has not been previously reported, is one of a series of ties that have raised questions about how she and her aides blended their official and political roles.

More than two dozen Democratic donors linked to shady campaign cash have gone underground -- either disappearing, disconnecting their phones or refusing to answer questions. - NY Post

MONEY BOUND FOR RUSSIA STOLEN AT LONDON AIRPORT. Sacks of $100 bills ?

[TCBY] Yogurt as Replacement for Beef in School Lunches

WASHINGTON (AP) - A White House memo, seen and endorsed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, suggests that information on a presidential computer system was intended to be shared with the Democratic Party, Republican congressional investigators said Monday.

President Clinton on Monday began a new advertising campaign that presents him as a concerned, hard-working parent, a message that the White House had been seeking to promote for more than a year. But the Democrats are not paying a dime to place the advertisements, versions of which will be broadcast free on television, on radio and in newspapers. Created independently of the White House through the Ad Council, a nonprofit organization, the advertisements, which also feature Hillary Rodham Clinton, are part of a public service campaign to encourage people to do more for children.

President Clinton pressed the American immigration authorities to rush through applications for citizenship and create a flood of extra Democratic voters in time for last year's elections, documents being examined by Congress suggestion -.Electronic Telegraph

HILLARY CLINTON encouraged a plan to copy White House databases to help the Democratic election campaign, in an apparent breach of laws which ban the use of federal property for party political purposes, according to information which emerged from a congressional committee yesterday. - The Times of London

In at least two instances in the last two years, controversial fund-raiser John Huang has used the access resulting from his political activities and his senior position in government and the Democratic Party to seek concrete help from a member of Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Al Gore misspoke when he said he used a telephone calling card from the Democratic National Committee for White House calls to solicit campaign funds, officials said today. Instead, it was a card issued by the Clinton-Gore campaign committee.

"This is not about Smith & Wesson. This is about Lippo Group." In a press conference with stunning political implications, President Bill Clinton attempted to divert attention from his ethical and legal scandals by attacking American gun owners, their safety and their rights. - NRA Alerts

NBC news reports tonight that Johnny Chung, during one of his White house visits handed Maggie Williams, Hillary's chief of staff a check for $50,000 in the White House. The White House is blowing the smoke that it doesn't violate the Hatch act. Joseph DiGenova is quoted as saying that this violates election law.

Govt. impounds Sunday Telegraph?

The means of payment in much of the world's drug trafficking, especially in parts of Asia, are Israeli diamonds, a convenient money laundering device.

A reconstruction from public records and interviews with witnesses, associates and former employers of Hubbell show that he was paid significantly more money than was previously known, far more in fact that he had earned as a lawyer in Little Rock, Ark., and from a wider variety of sources, many with close ties to Clinton.

International Links, Ties to Clinton Embroil Giroir in Fund-Raising Flap. Giroir offers a ..benign explanation for the 50 calls he exchanged with Huang, a former Lippo vice president, while Huang served in an international trade post at the Commerce Department. Though Giroir says the contacts were on personal matters, some occurred when Commerce was considering matters of concern to Lippo and its U.S. affiliates. - The Washington Post

``The American people are being misled by the FBI on the problems we're seeing in its crime lab,'' Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a Senate speech. ``The FBI's defense -- some would say cover-up -- is slowly unraveling.'' The Justice Department inspector general has hired five outside scientists to investigate allegations by Whitehurst and other federal officers. The secret, 500-page draft report of that probe criticized lab procedures and testimony in a number of high-profile cases. Justice officials sent some of its findings to prosecutors in 50 cases for possible relay to defense attorneys because it might help clear their clients. - AP

U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), acknowledged that John Huang, a key figure in the Democratic fund-raising scandal, twice asked for help in resolving bank problems. Kennedy's statements appear to contradict what he told reporters in December, when he said Huang had neither asked him for anything nor had he done Huang any favors.

A Philadelphia Democrat claims one of President Clinton's top moneymen put a $50,000 price tag on a "truly intimate" lunch with Clinton, it was reported yesterday. Philanthropist Peter Buttenwieser says fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe told him a $50,000 check to the Democratic National Committee would buy him into an eight-guest Clinton luncheon last June 17, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

President Clinton allowed major campaign contributors to fly with him aboard Air Force One during the presidential campaign, White House and Democratic officials said yesterday, revealing another perk in a portfolio of benefits for major donors. The officials, in interviews with The Boston Globe, said generous Democratic Party contributors were permitted to fly with Clinton and then reimburse the government for the equivalent of first-class air fare - a relative bargain.

According to notes of a December 1995 meeting, then-Assistant Commerce Secretary Charles Meissner apparently argued that Mr. Huang should remain a consultant to the department in order to retain his security clearances. Mr. Huang was never given a consultancy, but he did retain his top-secret security clearance for a year after leaving the government. - WSJ

At a Los Angeles fund-raising gala last summer, a special guest sat at President Clinton's table. He was 64-year-old Chun Hua Yeh, chairman of American International Bank. The small Southern California bank had donated $5,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and a company bearing Mr. Yeh's initials, CHY Corp., had chipped in an additional $32,500 written on checks from an AIB account. As it has with so much Asia-linked money, the DNC now plans to return all of it, citing doubts about its origins. WSJ

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle says he'll return more than $5,000 in contributions from donors at the center of investigations into Democratic Party fund raising. - AP

Washington powerhouse, Robert Novak, is set to report in his Sunday syndicated column that congressional investigators have reason to believe Democratic financial contributors enjoyed overnight stays at Camp David, the secluded presidential retreat in Maryland that few American citizens have ever seen. DRUDGE

The FBI warned six members of Congress last year that they had been targeted by China to receive illegal campaign contributions from foreign corporations, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Individual classified briefings delivered to the lawmakers included this statement: "We have reason to believe that the government of China may try to make contributions to members of Congress through Asian donors,'' the Post said in Sunday editions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, was the only lawmaker identified in the story.

When John Huang and other friends of the Clinton administration brought potential donors with foreign interests to meetings at the White House and other federal offices, they may have run afoul of more than campaign finance laws, according to legal experts. Among the laws being scrutinized is the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires those who engage in political activities or solicit money on behalf of a foreign country, corporation or businessman to register with the Justice Department.- Los Angeles Times

"House Minority Whip David E. Bonior , Michigan Democrat, has accused Mr. Clinton of 'degrading' the White House and 'demeaning the office' of the presidency." Washington Times

The Weekly Standard reported this week that the Hill, a Washington-based newspaper, said that Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas was invited to a White House "coffee" on June 17, 1996. Dr. Tiller is infamous for being one of few people in the country to perform late-term abortions, perhaps even to the day of birth.

Last year, the Cheyenne-Arapaho Indians of Oklahoma kicked in $107,000 to the Democratic National Committee and hoped the money would help result in favorable Clinton administration action on the return of their tribal lands. It didn't happen. A longtime fund-raiser for Vice President Gore, Nathan Landow, has been seeking to represent the tribes. In a meeting last month, tribal leaders said, Landow explicitly warned that if the tribes did not agree to sign a contract with him, he would make sure they never got their land. - Washington Post

A campaign donor with Asian ties sought to arrange a White House meeting for his business associates through an aide to Maggie Williams the day before he handed Williams a check for $50,000, Time magazine reported Sunday.

Former White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta acknowledged yesterday that the 1996 Clinton reelection committee played a role in the spending of some $35 million to $40 million in "soft money" contributions on campaign commercials. Panetta's comments marked the first time that a member of Clinton's inner circle has stated that the president's reelection campaign helped direct the spending of these funds, which are not supposed to be spent on a federal contest. - Washington Post

Attorney General Janet Reno last week noted that federal law prohibits solicitation and receipt of campaign funds on federal property "by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office." Top Justice Department officials said that career prosecutors had always interpreted this to mean that funds in soft money accounts were exempt from this restriction, while acknowledging that this interpretation had never been tested in court and that no written policy statement had been developed to support it. Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) questioned those views on ABC's "This Week." "It sounds like the Justice Department's becoming a defense attorney for the White House

Two members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board each gave the Democratic National Committee over $100,000 last year, raising questions about buying access to U.S. intelligence. Stanley Shuman, a New York investment banker, and Richard L. Bloch, chairman of a Texas real estate investment firm, were appointed to the obscure intelligence panel known as PFIAB (pronounced "pifiab") on July 24, 1995, according to White House records.

President Clinton said Monday he did not know at the time that the FBI had briefed White House officials on a suspected Chinese plan to buy U.S. political influence in June 1996 and felt he should have been told.

Senior White House aides learned that Commerce Department officials had concerns about John Huang in mid-1995, several months before the White House helped place him in a sensitive fund-raising job at the Democratic National Committee. - WSJ

The presidential aide who oversaw the creation of a taxpayer-financed database identified the project as a key to President Clinton's plan to reward donors with White House access and groom them for his re-election effort, memos show. The revelations were contained in passages of documents that had been censored and kept from congressional investigators for more than six months. They were finally turned over uncensored late Monday. "This is the president's idea and it is a good one," says one memo by White House aide Marsha Scott entitled "Early Supporter Outreach Proposal." It recommended as the No. 2 goal that the names of donors be placed in the White House database....- Associated Press

Too bad Eva Piccin, constant victim of a serial robber, was unable to speak to Bill Clinton at Friday's press conference. Her comments, no doubt, would have shed light on this political fund-raising fiasco because Mrs. Piccin managed to bankrupt herself last year sending checks to Democrats who used the mail instead of a gun to plunder her accounts. They did it by scaring the woman into thinking Social Security would end and she would be broke the day Bob Dole won.

The FBI has seized a videotape that purportedly shows an object speeding toward TWA Flight 800 seconds before the plane exploded, killing all 230 people aboard. President Clinton ran up nearly $3.7 million in bills entertaining people at coffees, Christmas parties, receptions and other non-official events since he took office in 1993, lawmakers were told Tuesday. The House appropriations subcommittee received the figures at a hearing from a government agency that said the money had been reimbursed by the Democratic Party or other organizations. But the lawmakers ran into a brick wall when they sought answers to specific questions such as how much Clinton personally reimbursed the government for food and lodging in the White House Lincoln Bedroom for friends and campaign contributors.

President Clinton knew that two long-time political supporters had hired Webster Hubbell in 1994 when the former associate attorney general was under criminal investigation, the White House said Tuesday. - AP

THE FBI chief, Louis Freeh, has issued an official statement virtually calling President Clinton a liar after claims that the White House was kept in the dark about suspicions that China was meddling in last year's US election. - Electronic Telegraph

Magaw on Cspan: "Some manufacturers have agreed to let BATF computers have access to their computerized serial number records". He practically admitted that this was a way to get around the Congressional prohibition on BATF registration. If you buy a new gun from a licensed dealer you will probably receive a card to register the purchase with the manufacturer.

Cosco Line, part of China Ocean Shipping, is the first shipper owned by the Beijing government to receive a federal loan guarantee under a 40-year-old Transportation Department program to help American shipyards win business. Cosco will get a $138 million guarantee to finance several vessels at an Alabama shipyard. It also will lease a 135-acre marine terminal to be built on an old Navy base in Long Beach, Calif - IBD

White House use of Democratic National Committee-paid "volunteers" started on President Clinton's first day in office and even included the first lady's brother Anthony D. Rodham, according to documents provided yesterday to The Washington Times. Many of the "volunteers" were put in key positions, such as drafting political briefings for the president and first lady, despite White House assertions the workers were "low-level." The documents also show that several high-level Clinton aides used the program before Miss Thomasson's denial to the committee that it existed - The Washington Times

CIA director-nominee Anthony Lake told a Senate committee yesterday that he, as President Clinton's national security adviser, was kept in the dark about FBI intelligence on Chinese efforts to influence U.S. elections but suggested the information may not have been confirmed.

Congressman Traficant went to the floor of the House today to let the nation know that the Clinton administration is having the Army's boots made in China.

Democratic donor Johnny Chung returned to the White House 17 times -- mostly visiting the first lady's offices -- after national security officials warned that he appeared to be ``a hustler'' and should be treated with suspicion. - Associated Press

The Democratic Party made a big to-do over its plans to return another $1.5 million in tainted contributions. But the checks aren't in the mail -- and probably won't be for months because the indebted party says it can't afford them. - (AP)

A former federal informant who claimed to have information about the Oklahoma City bombing has been indicted on unrelated bomb-threat conspiracy charges. An amended indictment issued Wednesday charges Carol Howe for the first time and expands allegations against her jailed boyfriend, James Viefhaus Jr. - AP

AMERICA started yesterday to uncover its evidence of an alleged Chinese plot to meddle in the 1996 US election. The move is likely to create new tension in Sino-US relations ahead of an imminent visit to Beijing by Vice President Albert Gore. The plot is said to have involved the secret and illegal funnelling of $2 million in cash to at least 30 Democratic campaigns in the congressional races, as well as Mr Clinton's re-election effort. Both Mr Lake and President Clinton caused surprise by saying that they were kept in the dark until last month about the plot, despite the fact that two aides to Mr Lake were warned by the FBI in June. - Electronic Telegraph

Alexis Herman headed a trade mission last spring that included a former client whose consulting firm paid $50,000 to $100,000 for her business two years earlier. (AP)

Fugitive Lebanese banker Roger Tamraz hobnobbed with political donors and President Clinton at six White House events and met once with a National Security Council official. (AP)

Among those who made arrangements for Hubbell was Mickey Kantor, then Clinton's trade representative and former manager of Clinton's 1992 campaign. Kantor sought money for Hubbell's legal-defense and family trust funds. He also urged the chief executive of the nation's leading mortgage financier, the Federal National Mortgage Assn., to hire Hubbell's son. A California-based non-profit group called the Consumer Support and Education Fund, which paid Hubbell $45,000 to write articles about public service.- LAT

The People's Liberation Army is operating hundreds of front companies in this country to strengthen the Chinese military-industrial complex with Western capital, technology and systematic know-how. Insight Magazine

Companies aided by a Commerce Department program gave at least $2 million to the Democrats in the last election cycle, raising questions about whether the donations were made in return for the departments support for the companies overseas business interests, an MSNBC investigation has found.

Mob Rules - Prosecutors called Laborer's union chief Arthur Coia a "mob puppet." But Coia spent millions of his union's money to buy Bill Clinton's friendship. New information suggests Bill repaid the favor by calling off the Feds. - The American Spectator

The White House was not the Democrats' only bed-and-breakfast. White House sources tell the Prowler that Blair House, a private White House residence just across Pennsylvania Avenue, was also rented out to potential donors. The American Spectator

The growing fundraising scandal is raising many troubling questions like: Who paid for the perks overnight guests and coffee klatch attendees received while on government grounds? The White House says the DNC covered all costs but sources at both the DNC and WH say such payments haven't been made. "It was just understood that the White House" - in other words the taxpayer - "would pick up the tab." The American Spectator

Grammy officials apparently tipped off HRC that she would receive an award for "It Takes a Village." "We didn't want her to look like a loser on national TV," a source on her staff said. - from The American Spectator

You might think that "rights" don't apply abroad, but U.S. mission grounds are considered sovereign territory, belonging to the embassy's government. It was here that [to appease Muslim radicals], the State Department people were doing their best to put a stop to Christian services. Eventually they succeeded. Within the British mission such religious services continue today.- The American Spectator

The discovery of one of the largest illegal weapons caches in the United States reverberated yesterday from Washington to Mexico, as the investigation into its origin and destination continued. "This has opened a lot of questions about the whole issue of the lease of the Long Beach facility to a Chinese company," said John Woodard, spokesman for Bilbray. He said Bilbray is concerned because the China Ocean Shipping Co., (COSCO) which was granted the naval station lease, is not only linked closely to the Chinese government, but one of its ships was used last year to smuggle 2,000 AK-47s into San Francisco.

Barely noticed among the list of problem campaign contributions to be returned by the Democratic National Committee were two totalling $97,500 from Japan Green Stamp America. That's been reported, but the national press might not know that the company is the American subsidiary of the Japanese company that now owns Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel, which has achieved a certain measure of fame in the Clinton years. - Arkansas Times

The FBI, long accustomed to staunch support in Congress, is facing increasing congressional criticism because of a series of expensive and embarrassing management miscues, including more than $200 million in cost overruns on two enormous computer systems. Difficulties with the computer systems -- coupled with recent allegations of evidentiary problems at the FBI forensic laboratory and other controversies -- have led to complaints on Capitol Hill - Washington Post

In a move that has raised concern among some aviation security advocates, American Airlines gave about $250,000 to the Democratic National Committee and its House and Senate counterparts little more than a week after a White House panel backed off demands to immediately test a controversial new security measure.

A massive shipment of Chinese guns and ammunition, which had been banned by order of President Clinton, was approved for delivery into the United States four days before the head of a major Chinese gun company met Clinton in the White House. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

While the FBI has challenged key elements of the investigative reports of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, a California daily that last week claimed a U.S. naval missile shot down TWA Flight 800, the newspaper appears to have undercut significant government claims about the disaster. Original government claims that the crash was likely a result of a catastrophic explosion in the jet's center fuel compartment appear to have been quietly discarded.- Ruddy

When the Democratic National Committee wanted to get controversial Democratic donor Roger Tamraz into the White House, it wouldn't take no for an answer. In a highly unusual move, then-party Chairman Donald Fowler called a National Security Council official in late 1995 to try to overturn her recommendation that Mr. Tamraz not attend high-level White House meetings. Administration officials believe Mr. Fowler arranged for a Central Intelligence Agency report on Mr. Tamraz to be sent to the NSC. Mr. Fowler says he "can't recall" doing so. WSJ

The FBI learned of possible Chinese plans to influence Congress in 1995, but did not tell the White House, Justice Department or congressional committees until May 1996, the Justice Department said Monday. The FBI did not begin briefings about the Chinese plans until ```it acquired additional information,'' the department said in a three-paragraph statement.

Forcing the Justice Department to make public a draft report of an inspector general's investigation into allegations of misconduct and slipshod work in the FBI's forensic lab would be "premature" and "confusing" to the public, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Kessler, in ruling from the bench, sided with the Justice Department and denied a request for a preliminary injunction by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Frederic Whitehurst, a former crime lab chemist who first leveled allegations about the lab. - Washington Post

The CIA has opened an internal investigation into "extremely serious" allegations of improper contacts between the Democratic National Committee and the CIA, the acting director of central intelligence said on Monday. The investigation, begun four days ago by the agency's inspector general, seeks to unravel a tangled chain of events that preceded President Clinton's meetings with Roger Tamraz, a major campaign contributor who has done favors for the CIA. - NYT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Prompted by a blunt complaint from the Justice Department inspector general, FBI Director Louis Freeh admits he gave Congress incomplete testimony about why the bureau suspended the whistle-blower in its crime lab. Inspector General Michael Bromwich accused Freeh of three inaccuracies in his March 5 testimony to a House subcommittee about Bromwich's investigation into allegations of mismanagement, sloppy work and bias in the crime lab made by suspended scientist-agent Frederic Whitehurst.

House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt has returned $22,000 in campaign contributions, most of them linked to Indonesia's Lippo Group conglomerate. - (AP)

In voluminous notes that resemble a diary, Ron Brown's chief of staff at the Commerce Department scribbled the daily details of Cabinet politics -- where the line often blurs between campaigning and governing. The Associated Press obtained hundreds of pages of handwritten notes made by Ginsberg during his tenure as chief of staff to the late Brown. The notes were turned over to Republican congressional investigators trying to determine whether tax dollars and government staff were improperly used to assist President Clinton's re-election. (AP)

As previously reported, Lake gave Iran the go-ahead to ship arms to Bosnian Muslims in April 1994 (see "Iran-Bosnia Green Light," TAS, August 1996). Evidence is now emerging, including detailed accounts provided by two direct participants who carried messages to Tehran, that the green light was only part of a much broader covert policy toward Iran. It included back-channel discussions with Tehran that have not been made public before. -TAS

In an effort to get a major Democratic Party donor invited to the White House in December 1995, a party official both called and wrote the Central Intelligence Agency asking that an intelligence report on the man be sent to a National Security Council staff member who opposed the visit, officials said yesterday. Frederick P. Hitz, the CIA inspector general, has begun an investigation to determine who at the Democratic National Committee contacted the intelligence agency on behalf of Roger Tamraz, a Lebanese American businessman who has contributed large sums to the DNC. Investigators also want to know who in the agency forwarded the Tamraz report to the NSC, and why derogatory information was deleted from it. - Washington Post

For the third time in less than seven years, federal regulators are moving to impose a severe sanction on Los Angeles-based LippoBank--owned by James Riady, the Indonesian financier who figures prominently in the Democratic fund-raising controversy. The sanction, in the form of an order to "cease and desist" from particular practices, represents yet another setback for Riady, a friend and supporter of President Clinton's since the early 1980s, when both lived in Little Rock, Ark. "Most banks don't get one" cease-and-desist order, said Bert Ely, a banking consultant based in Alexandria, Va. "To get hit with three is relatively rare." "The question is, why haven't the regulators been more aggressive?" Los Angeles Times

Worried when Republicans were trying to eliminate the Commerce Department, the late Secretary Ron Brown's deputies anxiously honed their Capitol Hill survival skills, according to diary-like notes kept by one top aide. The notes suggest one of the lawmakers, House Ethics Committee chairwoman Nancy Johnson, might be important in winning over House Speaker Newt Gingrich. ``Nancy Johnson -- key to Gingrich due to Ethics Committee opposed to dismantling,'' Ginsberg penned. At the time, Johnson was overseeing the sensitive investigation into Gingrich's ethics violations. (AP)

The former travel agent for Tyson Foods Inc. lobbyist Jack Williams testified Tuesday that the lobbyist paid for a $1,009 round-trip plane ticket to a Dallas Cowboys football game for former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy's girlfriend.

The stakes were high a year ago as China and Taiwan faced off across the straits that separate them. The Chinese were staging war games as Taiwan voters prepared to go to the polls. In Washington, there was talk of sending U.S. gunboats and imposing trade sanctions against China. On Capitol Hill, some telephones started ringing. The calls came from former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. He urged congressmen not to take rash steps against Beijing, especially regarding trade. Haig is a paid adviser to a giant shipping company owned by the Chinese government.

In late June of 1994, Indonesian businessman James Riady saw President Clinton and some of his aides in five days of White House visits ending on a Saturday. Early the next week, one of Riady's Hong Kong companies paid about $100,000 to Webster Hubbell, the president's close friend, who was then facing a rapidly unfolding criminal investigation, according to people in the United States and abroad familiar with the arrangement. .It has not been previously known how closely that payment followed Riady's White House visits. And at least two other high-ranking administration officials [besides Lindsey] also knew of Riady's support for Hubbell. - NY Times

CBS said Wednesday that it has turned over to investigators a piece of seat fabric that a free-lance writer claims holds proof that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a Navy missile.

An official of Tyson Foods Inc. says he arranged for a scholarship application to be sent to former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy's girlfriend to a Tyson company foundation, but that his sister made the decision to award the grant. - AP

Former Commerce Department General Counsel Ginger Ehn Lew has testified under oath she knew of no reason why an aide would have taken classified intelligence documents with him when she and he left Commerce last year for new jobs at the Small Business Administration. Miss Lew, in a videotaped deposition by a private watchdog law firm that sued Commerce last year for records on its use of trade missions for Democratic fund raising, also said she was unaware of the removal of the documents now the focus of a congressional inquiry. The papers, including a classified CIA report, were taken by Ira Sockowitz, top aide to Miss Lew, after they went to the SBA in June. WASHINGTON TIMES

On Jan. 15, 1996, John Huang, the Democratic National Committee fund-raiser, received an extraordinary memo. It spelled out how to "convert" Democrats to back favorable trade status for China. And, most mysteriously of all, it included a handwritten notation that the strategy was being discussed "with the Embassy." The document, which has not been previously reported, is intriguing in light of allegations that the Chinese Embassy had planned to direct campaign contributions to the DNC to influence US policy toward China. - Boston Globe

After Clinton named Tenet to the top spy job on Wednesday, CBS Evening News reported that Tenet's confirmation could be headed for trouble over leaked documents about undercover CIA operatives allegedly involved in a murder of an American in Guatemala.

An international oil financier, while seeking support from the Clinton administration for an oil pipeline project from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, hired a Washington law firm affiliated with the wife of Sen. Edward Kennedy and Marvin Rosen, then a top Democratic Party fund-raiser. Roger Tamraz, a major Democratic Party donor, said in an interview Wednesday from Paris that the work performed by the law firm in 1996 had nothing to do with his pipeline project.- USA TODAY

Investigators at the Central Intelligence Agency have determined that former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler did not personally contact the CIA on behalf of a campaign contributor. But sources have told CNN that the CIA has written documentation apparently proving that someone under Fowler made phone calls in October and December 1995. - CNN

A Hong Kong conglomerate with ties to the Chinese government has gained control of two key Panama Canal ports in a deal U.S. officials say is "unorthodox" and harmful to American businesses. - Washington Times

Democratic friends rushed to help Webster Hubbell -- whose repeated memory lapses have frustrated prosecutors -- with hefty consulting fees, a college fund for the children, a place for his wife to stay and jobs for the wife and a son. On the other hand, two witnesses who lodged specific and detailed allegations against President Clinton or his wife, Hillary, have languished.- (AP)

The General Accounting Office was asked Thursday to review ``unvouchered expenditures'' by the Clinton administration on various social and political functions held at the White House. ``The law requires the GAO to conduct these audits on a periodic basis, and prior to 1991 the agency had done so on a biennial basis,'' Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., said in making the request. ``I am greatly concerned that no such audit has been conducted for any of the last six years.'' (AP)

USA TODAY has found indications that at least 36 additional contributions to Democrats may have been improper. They total about $207,250. The contributors are primarily in California and New York. The finding raises the possibility that irregularities still exist in contributions given to the Democrats for the 1996 campaign.

The Democratic National Committee may have been "tipped off" by high-ranking government officials in time to allow it to withdraw a dinner invitation with President Clinton to the head of an Austrian-based trading firm tied to Russian organized crime, congressional sources said Thursday. The DNC, according to State Department records, had invited the businessman, Grigori Loutchansky, to a July 11, 1995, fund-raising dinner with Mr. Clinton at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, but unexpectedly withdrew the invitation before State Department officials could determine his visa eligibility. - WASHINGTON TIMES

(AP) -- A lobbyist for Tyson Foods Inc. was convicted Friday of twice lying to investigators about providing favors to former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. The guilty verdict against Jack L. Williams was announced by the jury in U.S. District Court after just four hours of deliberations.

With sincere regrets, Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko, a West African multimillionaire philanthropist, was forced to pass up an invitation to dine with President Clinton last September at a tony Washington hotel. A week before the dinner, Sissoko had been arrested in Europe on a U.S. warrant and charged with trying to smuggle two Vietnam-era military helicopters out of Miami to Africa and offering a $30,000 bribe to a U.S. Customs agent. - NY Times

The Cuban government last month searched the contents of a U.S. diplomatic pouch destined for the U.S. Interest Section in Havana in violation of all normal procedures. The Clinton administration, rather than protest the opening of the pouch, apologized to Cuba for the publications. - WT

The Justice Department inspector general's office has determined that the FBI crime laboratory made "scientifically unsound" conclusions in the Oklahoma City bombing case, finding that supervisors approved lab reports they "cannot support" and many analyses were "biased in favor of the prosecution." - Los Angeles Times

A federal grand jury has collected evidence that shows U.S. government officials allowed the slaughter of hundreds of wild horses taken from federal lands, falsified records and tried to prevent investigators from uncovering the truth. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who oversees the BLM and by law is responsible for protecting wild horses, refused to be interviewed. - AP

Three months after he left his Justice Department job in disgrace in 1994, Webster L. Hubbell scheduled a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting in Washington with an old friend just in from Indonesia, James Riady. A few hours after breakfast, Riady was at the White House, but not for long; Hubbell had his friend penciled in for a midday luncheon meeting at the elegant Hay-Adams hotel. That same month, according to knowledgeable sources, a Lippo subsidiary paid Hubbell $100,000. Little work, if any, was expected from Hubbell in return for the money, according to a source familiar with some of Lippo's activities. Washington Post

Contrary to the Clinton administration's claims, a typical White House coffee klatch with President Bill Clinton or Vice President Al Gore had a firm fund-raising goal of $500,000 and a target entry fee of $50,000 per guest - both set by Democratic Party officials. A meeting between Democratic National Committee fund-raiser David Mercer and a "prospective donor" reveals that attendance at the intimate coffees was based on cash up front.MSNBC

Officials at Pacific Telesis Group acknowledge that they were unaware former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster L. Hubbell, one of the firm's private advisors in the high-stakes battle over massive telecommunications legislation in 1994, worked at the same time for a competing telephone company. Said one person affiliated with Pacific Telesis during the telecommunications battle: "If we had known that Web Hubbell had been hired by Sprint, . . . no way we would have touched him." - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson recently reported that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had completed his inquiry into the death of Vincent Foster and was ready to release a 100-page report, but no report has materialized so far. - TRIBUNE-REVIEW [One month after the LAT report, and no Starr report - the bogus leak qualifies as a Clinton scandalHJK]

Monday, March 24 1997

The White House spent more than $640,000 to implement a massive computerized database that government investigators have characterized as "inadequate" and "incomplete." Congressional Republicans examining the computer system also contend the White House has spent another $1.15 million on the staff needed to run the database, which they suspect could have been used in connection with improper or illegal Democratic campaign fund raising. - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Several officers of the Marine Corps have raised questions about why the Clinton administration favored turning over a military base in Long Beach, Calif., to the China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco) over the protests of a Marine reserve battalion made homeless by the 1994 Northridge earthquake - WASHINGTON TIMES

Tuesday, March 25, 1997

Lindner, the conservative tycoon from Cincinnati, Ohio, who heads Chiquita Brands, gives much more money to Republicans than Democrats. That helps explain why, when he needed a big favor from the Clinton Administration two years ago, he may have wanted to hide his footprints... On April 12, 1996, the day after Kantor asked the WTO to examine Chiquita's grievance, Lindner and his top executives began funneling more than $500,000 to about two dozen states from Florida to California.. Lindner received the same red-carpet treatment as some of Clinton's more flamboyant benefactors, including coffee with the President and a night in the Lincoln Bedroom... Last week the WTO panel issued a preliminary ruling in Lindner's favor. - Time

Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn, who according to FEC records gave $35,000 to the D.N.C., sprinkled 10 times that amount last fall to seven state Democratic parties, including Georgia and Colorado. Wynn wanted to limit the subpoena power of a new federal gambling commission. Clinton initially favored giving the panel broad investigative authority to study casinos and their books but subsequently reversed his position. Not long afterward, Wynn's cash came through, steered to tightly contested swing states by D.N.C. officials. - Time

The U.S. Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), has obtained "smoking gun evidence" that President Clinton made "fund-rasing phone calls" from the White House, according to a source connected to the investigation. Specific details of evidence have not been revealed to the DRUDGE REPORT.

Wednesday, March 26, 1997

DNC Donor [Ernest G. Green] Denies He Was Reimbursed. Fund-raising: Meeting with Clinton and Chinese arms dealer wasn't compensation for gift, lawyer says. Officials question events' proximity. - LATimes

Roger Tamraz, the financier whose campaign donations to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and President Clinton figure in the Democratic fund-raising controversy, received support from Clinton for the general concept of his oil pipeline proposal in October 1995, Tamraz said in an interview yesterday. Tamraz said he gave a ``measly $180,000'' to the Democratic Party shortly before Clinton's announcement, but said he does not believe the two events are connected.....[I]t has not been reported that Clinton announced support for a position sought by Tamraz after the businessman made his contributions. - Boston Globe

Thursday, March 27, 1997

A Florida businessman and a Texan who collects historical bonds testified yesterday before a federal grand jury investigating questionable campaign fund-raising by the Democratic National Committee. R. Warren Meddoff, a Fort Lauderdale exporter, and William R. Morgan, the collector, came to the grand jury without lawyers to explain events before and after a key Clinton aide used White House office equipment to prepare and fax a memo outlining ways to make large, tax-deductible campaign contributions.

House and Senate committees leading congressional probes into campaign funding irregularities issued a series of new subpoenas yesterday, with both seeking documents on former associate attorney general Webster L. Hubbell. - Washington Post

Friday, March 28, 1997

House Republican Conference Chairman John A. Boehner has asked Attorney General Janet Reno for a status report on the nearly three-month-long FBI probe into the monitoring and recording of a cellular phone conversation he had with Speaker Newt Gingrich. . . . . "The reluctance of your office to provide me with an appropriate level of information raises grave concerns in my mind about whether your office is vigilantly pursuing this investigation," Mr. Boehner wrote in a March 21 letter. WASHINGTON TIMES

(Reuter) - A Justice Department internal investigation released Friday criticized the FBI's top lawyer for poor judgment in his dealings with the Clinton White House on the FBI background files controversy. The report by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility found that General Counsel Howard Shapiro, a longtime associate of FBI Director Louis Freeh, made "a very serious mistake and exhibited very poor judgment." The report said his action "exacerbated a political problem by contributing to the appearance that the FBI, and particularly Shapiro, was not sufficiently independent of the White House." P>

Saturday, March 29, 1997

No scandals

Businesses that gave Democratic Party committees more than $2.3 million and won coveted seats on US trade missions during President Clinton's first term secured nearly $5.5 billion to support their foreign business operations from a federal investment agency. In all, 27 corporations that sent executives on trade trips with the late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown obtained part of a multibillion-dollar commitment in federally guaranteed assistance from the Overseas Private Investment Corp., according to a Globe analysis of fund-raising records, trip manifests, and OPIC documents. - Boston Globe

Did Dr. Don Chumley crash on the evening of September 25th due to bad weather? Did he commit suicide due to his grief over what he saw on the morning of April 19th. Or was Don Chumley murdered? It was rumored that Chumley was about to go public with some damning information. According to Michele Moore, who has investigated the bombing, Chumley was asked to bandage two federal agents who falsely claimed to have been trapped in the building that morning. Since the pair was obviously not hurt, Chumley refused. When the agents petitioned another doctor at the scene, Chumley intervened, threatening to report them.- Washington Weekly

FBI General Counsel Howard Shapiro, just last week cleared by an internal Justice Department review of his dealings with the White House over the FBI Files/Gary Aldrich messes ["no misconduct but showed bad investigative judgment"], will soon submit his resignation to FBI Director Louis Freeh, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. One other factor leading Shapiro to leave could be the Hill buzz that Anthony Marceca, colleague of Craig Livingstone of FBI File fame, may have pleaded the fifth during public hearings, but he performed the 5th of Beethoven for investigators -- so the talk goes.

Tipper Gore hosted five of the controversial White House coffees at the Gore home at the Naval Observatory in 1995 and 1996, White House records show. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records also show that two organizations represented at coffees hosted by Gore - including tobacco giant Philip Morris contributed $75,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) within days of the events. Cooper said that by allowing the DNC to control guest lists, the president, vice president and their wives are open to criticism of trading access for contributions. USA Today

When Wichita physician George Tiller made a $25,000 contribution last year to the Democratic National Committee, he asked a Kansas party fund-raiser for a special favor in return. One of the few doctors in the country who perform third-trimester abortions, Tiller wanted a chance to personally thank President Clinton for 30 months of door-to-door protection by the U.S. Marshals Service. The service provided to Tiller, who was shot in 1993 by an antiabortion extremist, goes far beyond what the government has afforded to any other abortion provider faced with threats and on-the-job violence, interviews show. Antiabortion activists said Tiller's protection is objectionable because others in high-risk jobs do not receive federal protection. Washington Post

Charlie Yah Lin Trie, a central figure in the controversy over foreign contributions to the Democratic Party, received a series of substantial wire transfers in 1995 and 1996 from a bank operated by the Chinese government. The transfers from the New York office of the Bank of China, usually in increments of $50,000 or $100,000, came at a time when Mr. Trie was directing large donations to the Democratic National Committee. WALL STREET JOURNAL

For the first time since the 1950s, Chinese ships can dock near U.S. military installations with just a day's notice, one-fourth the Cold War-era restriction still imposed on former Soviet republics. In one of three deals in the past year helping Beijing's main shipping company, the U.S. quietly agreed to end the requirement that Chinese ships provide four days' notification when entering one of a dozen sensitive U.S. ports.Associated Press

One month before assuring Congress that the Democratic National Committee was not paying White House "volunteers," President Clinton's West Wing manager was put on notice that the party was paying the salaries of key Clinton aides, according to documents provided to The Washington Times. Patsy L. Thomasson, who was the director of the office of administration, was notified in a memo Feb. 7, 1994, that two political office aides were being paid by the DNC -- an unusual but legal process. White House officials yesterday said Miss Thomasson didn't lie to Congress. They said she didn't see the memo, which was transmitted to her fax machine and recently was found in her personal files. White House officials have been unable to explain why Miss Thomasson didn't know about those workers. WASHINGTON TIMES

The Senate commerce committee's chairman is questioning whether China agreed to buy American-made container ships as a "quid pro quo" benefiting the China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco). In a letter to the Federal Maritime Commission, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said Cosco bypassed lower-cost builders in Japan to sign a $157 million contract with an Alabama shipyard for four commercial vessels. - WASHINGTON TIMES

Consider CH2M Hill, an environmental consulting firm that received Advocacy Center muscle in obtaining a $15 million contract to develop a wastewater treatment plant in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. The Advocacy Center arranged for Under Secretary Jeffrey Garten to meet with the mayor of Ribeirao Preto, and, according to the Centers memo on the project, Secretary Ron Brown followed up with a letter to the mayor in April 1995 emphasizing CH2M Hills qualifications and expressing personal interest in the bidding outcome. In the 1995-96 election cycle, CH2M Hill gave the DNC $50,000, nearly five times the $11,000 donated in the previous election cycle.And then theres Raytheon Co., the Massachusetts defense contractor that ponied up $79,150 to the Democrats during the 1995-96 election cycle an enormous increase over the paltry $250 given during 1993-94. One of its biggest contributions during that period was $25,000 given one week after CEO Dennis Picard met with Brown - MSNBC

Two of President Clinton's most trusted aides, Mack McLarty and Erskine Bowles, led an effort to find work for Webster Hubbell in the days after he resigned from the Justice Department in spring 1994, the White House acknowledged Tuesday. Bowles, then a federal agency head and now the president's chief of staff, made calls to three businessmen he knew to see if they would be interested in hiring Hubbell, the White House said. - AP

From ABC News. - It seems the U. S. Department of Agriculture has ILLEGALLY (Catch the word illegally - not "a mistake was made" or improperly) purchased strawberrys from Mexico and distributed the possible highly infectious Hepititus A tainted produces to American School Childred thru the School Lunch Program.

The pressure to raise money for President Bill Clinton's re-election grew so great in late 1995 that the Democratic Party pressed the president and Vice President Al Gore to telephone donors directly, according to documents released by the White House Wednesday. - Reuter

Nashville airline entrepreneur Charles Caudle isn't out to get the President, but he would like to get something back from a good friend of Bill Clinton's: his reputation.Caudle is alleging that Thomason's remarks in White House memos defamed him and cost him millions of dollars in potential business. The remarks led to FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigations of Caudle, which turned up no wrongdoing.

Documents of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, released yesterday, provided two new damaging elements in the developing scandal. They showed for the first time that many of the 107 coffees held at the White House were direct fund-raising ventures and that the president and the vice president were tasked to make calls to donors -- events the White House has denied until now. - Washington Times

An internal memo warning then-CIA Director John M. Deutch that Donald Fowler, former Democratic National Committee chairman, had improperly contacted the CIA on behalf of a major campaign contributor is at the root of a new investigation, reports the Thursday edition of the LOS ANGELES TIMES. The December 1995 memo warning of Fowler's allegedly improper contacts with the CIA was signed by William Lofgren, then the chief of the central Eurasian division, its clandestine espionage arm. - Drudge Report

Democratic fund-raisers put Taiwanese businessman Winston Wang down for a $100,000 contribution in conjunction with a meeting with President Clinton on June 21, 1995. Campaign records don't show that Mr. Wang gave the money. But his associate, Charlie Yah Lin Trie, gave the Democratic National Committee $50,000 on June 22 of that year, the day after Mr. Wang met with Mr. Clinton at a White House fund-raising "coffee." The incident... raises new questions about the origins of Mr. Trie's donations - WALL STREET JOURNAL

President Clinton's legal defense trust requested the use of the Democratic National Committee fund-raising list presumbably to raise funds -- despite government rules barring the trust from such solicitations -- according to White House documents released Wednesday. "The presidential legal fund has requested use of the DNC's direct mail fund-raising list, especially those for the president's 1992 campaign," Harold Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff, wrote in a July 1994 memo. Such a request, if it was made, would be a violation of government ethics law. - Boston Globe

Jorge Cabrera, a drug smuggler who has emerged as one of the most notorious supporters of President Clinton's re-election campaign, was asked for a campaign contribution in the unlikely locale of a hotel in Havana by a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, congressional investigators have learned. - NY Times

Democratic attorneys devised a plan to push legal limits on money sent to nonprofit--and supposedly nonpartisan--groups to pay for get-out-the-vote efforts without drawing attention from the Federal Election Commission or the public, documents show. The plan--outlined in an October 1994 memo marked "privileged and confidential"--called for the Democratic National Committee to transfer "limited" amounts of money to tax-exempt groups that sign up voters or get them to polls on election day. The limit the memo suggested was $500,000. "Grants of amounts much larger would risk drawing public, press and FEC and/or [Internal Revenue Service] attention," wrote DNC chief counsel Joe Sandler- LAT

In mid-1994, more than two years before he faced reelection, President Clinton hosted a series of breakfasts at the White House to raise large sums of money--as much as $50,000 to $100,000 per participant--to promote his health care plan, according to individuals familiar with the events. The disclosure may heighten criticism that Clinton and his party unduly traded on the White House and sold access to those who wanted private time with him or sought to ingratiate themselves with the chief executive. - LAT

Steve Forbes accused the Treasury Department Thursday of attempting a "nasty little tax increase'' on accountants, lawyers and other limited partnerships, and got House Speaker Newt Gingrich to intervene. Forbes, the magazine publisher and former GOP presidential candidate, said in a statement the rule will levy the 2.9 percent Medicare payroll tax not only on partners' incomes, but on the earnings the partnership retains. Gingrich said he talked to House Ways and Means staff, who told him they "plan to intervene directly'' and object to the rule proposal.- FOX News Internet

Ickes papers show that the DNC had budgeted $1 million for FEC fines and the previous record was only $150,000 showing that they knew they were doing a lot wrong.

Federal officials are investigating whether Webster Hubbell may have concealed some of his income from authorities in 1995 when he was sentenced to prison for defrauding his former law firm. Sources close to the investigation said that U.S. Judge George Howard in Little Rock agreed to the lower restitution of $135,000--less than one-third of what he admitted stealing based on Hubbell's statement that he had no current personal income and was burdened with debt.(LOS ANGELES TIMES)

The top U.S. immigration officer in Hong Kong has been relieved of his duties and his wife has been arrested on visa fraud charges in a growing investigation into the highly lucrative smuggling of Chinese immigrants to the United States.The episode marked the second time in less than nine months that a senior INS agent has been implicated in corruption related to immigrant-smuggling, a multibillion-dollar business in which Chinese illegal migrants typically pay $30,000 to $40,000 apiece to be brought into the United States by land, sea or air. Washington Post

Jorge Cabrera, a convicted drug dealer and one of the most notorious supporters of President Bill Clintons 1996 re-election campaign, may have been laundering drug money when he made a $20,000 contribution at what he says was the request of a Democratic fund-raiser he met in Cuba.

Democratic donors rewarded with rides on Air Force One received no special screening to determine if they should be allowed on the presidential aircraft, a White House spokesman said. Sun-Times

Documents released during the Senate Whitewater hearings last year show that two weeks before Webster L. Hubbell quit as associate attorney general, Hillary Rodham Clinton was notified formally that her former law partner was involved in a conflict-of-interest investigation and he might have lied in a sworn statement to federal regulators. The White House, which began an extensive job search for Mr. Hubbell within days of that notification, has said repeatedly that President and Mrs. Clinton were not aware of his legal problems. - Washington Times

Documents of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, released yesterday, provided two new damaging elements in the developing scandal. They showed for the first time that many of the 107 coffees held at the White House were direct fund-raising ventures and that the president and the vice president were tasked to make calls to donors -- events the White House has denied until now. - Washington Times

The White House supplied top-secret intelligence information to the Democratic National Committee to block a Latvian businessman with alleged ties to organized crime from attending a $25,000-a-person fund-raising dinner with President Clinton, according to government officials and other sources. The effort was successful, and the businessman, Grigori Loutchansky, who had been formally invited to attend the DNC fund-raising dinner in 1995, was abruptly disinvited. In the course of the episode, political operatives in the White House and the DNC gained access to and disseminated information gathered by some of the nation's most sensitive intelligence-gathering methods. Washington Post

The Clinton administration has a long public history of bashing tobacco, but industry leaders tell CNNfn that, behind closed doors, the administration actively solicited contributions from tobacco companies. According to recently released memos from the files of ex-White House aide Harold Ickes, the Democratic party bypassed federal disclosure requirements by keeping a secret set of books to track money the national organization solicited and sent to state parties. - CNN

Despite President Clinton's public rebuke of the FBI, senior administration officials say they have concluded that the White House's own personnel and procedures bear significant responsibility for a breakdown in communications that left Clinton unaware of an investigation into suspected Chinese influence-buying. - Washington Post

Conflicts of loyalty, it seems, have been a trademark of Mr. Siegel's career. His loyalty to Ms. Bhutto made him disloyal to his client--the government of Pakistan, which he condemned for dismissing her. This time, his loyalty to the Democratic Party has led him to betray his former client again, dragging the name of Pakistan into a controversy this nation has nothing to do with. In 1990, soon after Ms. Bhutto's government was dismissed by the Pakistani president on charges of corruption and mismanagement, Mr. Siegel too lost his job. Along with the other concerns, the incoming government found out that Mr. Siegel--the man Ms. Bhutto had hired to represent all Pakistan--had issued a press release condemning the president of Pakistan for dismissing Ms. Bhutto, while Mr. Siegel was still on Islamabad's payroll. - HUSAIN HAQQANI Wall Street Journal

An Arkansas lawyer was charged Wednesday with laundering $380,000 in drug money and funneling some of it to the Democratic National Committee in 1992 and President Clinton's 1993 inauguration. Mark Cambiano pleaded innocent to all 31 federal money laundering and conspiracy counts involving cash from a methamphetamine ring. The indictment said Cambiano, a defense attorney who specializes in death row cases, transferred $20,000 from his bank account to the DNC around July 10, 1992, and transferred $9,770 around Jan. 7, 1993, to the Presidential Inaugural Committee General Fund. (AP)

Today's military is plagued by overworked and undertrained personnel and would be hard-pressed to carry out another Gulf War-type operation, the chairman of the House National Security Committee said Wednesday. Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., in a report on military readiness, said the current policy of cutting back on personnel while committing U.S. troops to more peacekeeping missions has seriously undermined the military's war-fighting capabilities. - Associated Press

In the spring of 1995, a few months after his fraud conviction, former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell and his wife asked a recently retired White House aide whether the Riady family of Indonesia, which had already paid Hubbell $100,000, would be keeping him on its payroll even as he faced prison. Over dinner at the Palm restaurant in Washington, the former aide, Mark Middleton, told the Hubbells to take their question to the Riady family itself or to John Huang, the Riadys' former top American executive, who was then a trade official at the Commerce Department, says Robert Luskin, Middleton's lawyer. [T]he new interviews show the involvement of a wider circle of White House officials, at various levels, than was previously known. - NY Times

The office of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered the Resolution Trust Corp. in October 1993 to advise her of all media questions about an RTC probe of a failed Arkansas thrift at the core of the Whitewater investigation, including inquiries on Webster L. Hubbell's ties to suspected criminal wrongdoing. The order, according to former RTC officials, included questions on the agency's probe of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, pending criminal referrals in the case, the Rose Law Firm's involvement, Mr. Hubbell's or Mrs. Clinton's connections to the failed thrift, and Mr. Hubbell's ties to a possible conflict of interest in the RTC probe. he first lady's apparent interest in queestions on Mr. Hubbell's legal woes appears to contradict White House claims that it was unaware of his legal problems when top administration officials sought to find him work after his Justice Department resignation. WASHINGTON TIMES

It was a $3.4 billion deal. Legal publisher West Publishing was selling out to a Canadian rival. But West's Vance Opperman needed the Clinton Administration's approval... A secret ledger sheet at the Democratic National Committee, dated June 4 last year, lists Opperman for eight contributions, totaling $155,000. The money went not directly to the national party; that would attract national attention. The ledger shows the donations directed to states: And within weeks, on June 19, the Department of Justice announced an agreement allowing the sale. But now the question is whether one of the department's own decisions was "wired" to benefit a big Democratic donor, one whose underground contributions were deliberately hidden. CNN attempted to contact Opperman for comment, to no avail. - CNN

Vice President Al Gore, who claims he did not know an April 1996 visit with contributors in a Los Angeles Buddhist temple was a "formal fund-raiser," had been notified more than three months earlier that the event was set to raise $200,000 for the Democratic Party, according to White House papers. - WASHINGTON TIMES

The owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team and four other Democratic contributors paid Webster Hubbell a total of about $90,000 after he left the Justice Department, according to attorneys and other people familiar with the Whitewater investigation. At the time they hired Hubbell, he was under criminal investigation by the Whitewater prosecutor's office for billing practices at his old law firm. Several of the donors, each of whom steered about $18,000 to Hubbell, have said they were unaware of that. - AP

Smarting from allegations of crooked Democratic fund raising, President Clinton's inaugural planners spurned any donations over $100. But that didn't stop IBM, the Laborers' union and a host of lobbyists from writing five- and six-figure checks for bundles of tickets. In all, $23.7 million was raised for Clinton's second swearing-in and the balls, parade and festivities that surrounded it, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced Friday.(AP)

When Webster Hubbell announced his resignation as associate attorney general in March 1994 and -- with the knowledge of Hillary Rodham Clinton -- began to seek financial support from friends of the White House, the administration knew that Hubbell had already emerged as a crucial witness in several politically sensitive investigations of President Clinton and the first lady. Documents and testimony from earlier inquiries show that White House officials knew in early 1994 that at the same time they were trying to find financial assistance for Hubbell, he had emerged as a major witness in several investigations of the Clintons that had been deeply troubling to them. NYT

The official explanation of Huang's controversial activities is that they were an isolated side effect of a massive fund-raising machine pushed to take in too much money too fast. But Huang's Washington career shows a number of intriguing elements that suggest a more complicated picture. These include the timely appearance of unseen hands to lift him over obstacles in his path, the intervention of high-level help to finesse reluctant peers and bosses and a relentless blindness to the warning flags fluttering around his government and campaign work. - LA Times

The Justice Department wants to spare Hillary Rodham Clinton from testifying about the firing of a White House chef who charges his dismissal was retaliation for his discrimination complaint. The government is also asking an administrative law judge to conduct the proceeding in private because ``undue public attention might well create a `circus'-type atmosphere.'' [Why is the Justice Dept. functioning as HRC's lawyers?] (AP)

Democratic National Committee officials channeled millions of dollars in campaign donations to state Democratic parties last year, effectively hiding big contributions from tobacco, gambling and other special interests. Contributors' checks routinely were sent to DNC headquarters before being passed on to the state parties, but documents show that DNC officials kept meticulous records of the donations so that donors and fund-raisers received credit.

A state-regulated account of the Massachusetts Democratic Party received the vast majority of its funds during the last two years from unregulated "soft money" contributions collected by the national party, according to federal and state records. The money poured into the party from Washington only after state Democrats inserted an obscure provision in a Massachusetts law passed in 1994 that allows the political parties to receive national soft money for their ``state accounts,'' thus legally circumventing a longstanding ban on contributions of more than $5,000 per person annually. - Boston Globe

In a series of five letters to members of the House and Senate Judiciary commitees today, the Justice Department said its investigation has not found "specific and credible evidence" that a crime has been committed by an individual covered by the Independent Counsel statute. - CNN

A month after President Clinton was elected in 1992 on a promise to take the politics out of naming ambassadors, the Democratic National Committee put together a ``must consider'' list of big givers to be named as judges, ambassadors and senior government officials, party memos show. - Scripps Howard

The White House released a list of 56 Democratic contributors who rode on Air Force One in 1995 and 1996. The list included lobbyists, labor leaders and corporate executives who gave $5,000 or worked for an organization that did. Some also were fund-raisers who brought in at least $25,000. The White House said most of Clinton's 477 other guests on the plane were administration officials, personal friends, or working reporters. - AP

The foundation raising money to preserve Clinton's birthplace released a complete list of its 2,000 donors, acknowledging that some of the money was raised in Asia. - AP

Details of grand jury proceedings have been leaked to the press. Normally, federal prosecutors keep such hearings secret to avoid tipping off witnesses and possible targets who might want to destroy evidence or flee the country. At least two targets of the fund- raising probe have fled the country, and there have been reports that key documents were shredded. Also, Justice has shared confidential data from its probe with the White House- once in February after news broke of China's alleged plot to influence the election, and again last month before Vice President Al Gore's trip to China. Former prosecutors say the briefings were improper given the White House's heavy role in the fund-raising scandal. - IBD

A seating chart for a Democratic fund-raising dinner on June 1994, shows that Nancy Soderberg, a deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, was seated at a table with James Riady, and John Huang, then a Commerce Department official. Administration officials on Monday called Ms. Soderberg's attendance at the dinner ``appropriate.'' But the appearance of a senior National Security Council aide at a political dinner raises additional questions about whether political fund raising and foreign policy overlapped at the Clinton White House. - NYT

FBI crime lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases but did not commit perjury or fabricate evidence, the Justice Department inspector general said today. In a 500-page report, Inspector General Michael Bromwich recommended censure, transfer or other discipline for five agents. He said the chief whistleblower, scientist-agent Frederic Whitehurst, should be transferred from the lab because his ``overstated and incendiary'' allegations had poisoned his relations with others. - (AP)

The State Department changed written testimony submitted to a Senate panel last week in what critics say was an effort to downplay China's shipping of chemical weapons components to Iran. The critics charge the Clinton administration is minimizing potential law violations in the China-Iran arms arrangement so it won't have to impose severe economic sanctions against Beijing. - WASHINGTON TIMES

The FBI used the OK City bombing investigation as an excuse to tap the phone of a man who was suing the FBI over Waco. [I don't have the exact quote. Saw this story in Pgh. Post-Gazette - HJK]

PRESIDENT Clinton offered contributors to his election campaign a "thank you" trip with him on Air Force One, the ultra-secure Boeing 747 that Americans regard as a vital taxpayer expense to protect its leaders. The government almost certainly subsidised the fares, as the Democratic Party paid only the equivalent of a first-class ticket for the flight aboard a plane that costs huge amounts to maintain, as well as $36,000 (#22,000) an hour to fly.

In the last four years, Alexis M. Herman, President Clinton's nominee to be Secretary of Labor, and her aides at the White House have done several personal and business favors for a close friend of Ms. Herman's who bought her management-consulting firm in 1993, interviews and Government records show. Ms. Herman, who directs the White House Office of Public Liaison, has invited the friend, Vanessa J. Weaver, to the White House more than two dozen times and taken Ms. Weaver's sister on a trade mission, the records show. Ms. Herman's assistance has provided a high-level entrie for Ms. Weaver, a former Procter & Gamble manager who moved to the Washington area from Los Angeles a few years ago. NY Times

In the nine months after he resigned from the Justice Department in 1994 and before he pleaded guilty to charges of bilking his former law firm, Webster L. Hubbell had more than 70 meetings with Clinton administration officials, records show. An appointment calendar, telephone message slips and other documents obtained by The Washington Post indicate that the extent of Hubbell's contacts within the upper reaches of the White House and the administration was much broader than was previously known.

The Treasury Department's inspector general acknowledged Thursday she gave Congress inaccurate information about two Secret Service agents who contradicted the White House in the FBI files controversy. Valerie Lau told a Senate panel that she received bad information from her staff, and discovered it last week when a contradictory e-mail surfaced. She brought the document to the attention of the senators. The White House had asserted that acquisition of hundreds of FBI files on former Republican employees was an innocent mistake resulting from the use of outdated Secret Service lists. But special agents John Libonati and Jeffrey Undercoffer said there was no way the Secret Service could have supplied outdated material. Last December, Lau testified her office had not conducted a criminal investigation of the two agents, simply a review of how their testimony was prepared. But a Treasury e-mail that Lau learned of last Friday showed that originally the matter was listed as a criminal investigation into whether the agents committed perjury and had been requested by a Democratic congresswoman.(AP)

Since 1986, the Justice Department has given the District $4.4 million for a crime victims assistance program. Federal officials recommend that the money go to programs that provide crime victims with counseling, legal assistance and other aid. While all 50 state governments heeded that advice, the District government did not. City officials didn't pass any money to community groups and spent 70 percent of the grant on employee salaries at the Department of Human Services, according to the city's annual report to the federal government. - Washington Post

An inspector general for the agency that operates AmeriCorps is investigating whether a senior official improperly mixed government business and Democratic fund raising. At issue is a letter by Michael Woo, a Los Angeles politician who was a corporation official on the West Coast until late last year... Woo wrote a letter inviting a Commerce Department official to speak about U.S.-trade policy to a group of Indo-American business owners in Los Angeles...The letter may be evidence that Woo violated the Hatch Act, which restricts political fund raising by government officials. The letter "appears to be part of that fund-raising effort" by Huang, the lawmakers said. Nando.net

An American citizen who worked for decades for the Marxist government of Cuba and remains an outspoken admirer of President Fidel Castro contributed $62,000 to the Democratic Party and its candidates for the 1996 election, The Herald has learned. John Henry Caba¤as appears to have violated the U.S. embargo on Cuba by working for the Havana government. And two former Cuban intelligence officers say they knew Caba¤as as a Cuban counterintelligence agent who spied on foreigners in Havana. There is no evidence that Caba¤as' political contributions were illegal or came from a source other than himself, and it is unclear what benefits, if any, his contributions got him. But they add to the Clinton administration's mushrooming scandal of campaign funds from questionable sources, including Asian businessmen, foreign companies and convicted Cuban-American drug trafficker Jorge Cabrera. - Miami Herald

No scandals

"You've got to be kidding," Sen. Orrin Hatch said yesterday when asked what "credible evidence" he has that a criminal investigation by an independent counsel is warranted. "There's evidence all over the place," the Utah Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." . . . . "We have five people who have either taken the Fifth Amendment or are going to take the Fifth Amendment. We have eight people who have left the country, some of whom after taking the Fifth Amendment." - Washington Times

Shortly after becoming the Treasury Department's ethics watchdog, Valerie Lau arranged a no-bid contract for a longtime acquaintance who had written the White House recommending her for her job. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Lau wrote a Treasury contracting office on Dec. 11, 1994, to select auditor Frank Sato to conduct a management review study of her office. Sato had proposed the study only the day before. Lau asked that the contract be a ``sole source procurement,'' not to be competitively bid because of an ``unusual and compelling urgency'' for the review, the documents state. (AP)

Federal investigators tracing the movement of hundreds of thousands of dollars from mainland China into California banks suspect it came directly from the Communist government and went partially to the campaigns of California politicians, Newsweek magazine reports. It says the focus of the investigation is Ted Sioeng, an Indonesian businessman now living in Los Angeles who has donated $250,000 to the Democratic National Committee at the behest of his friend John Huang, a key figure in the DNC money-raising scandal, and $50,000 to California state treasurer Matt Fong, a Republican now running for the U.S. Senate. One investigator was quoted by Newsweek as saying the Sioeng money transfer is the first "verifiable, direct link to the People's Republic of China." - (AP)

During an eight-month period when former top Justice Department official Webster Hubbell had promised to cooperate with the Whitewater independent counsel's investigation of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Clintons' closest confidant and lawyer on the White House staff was in repeated contact with Hubbell, according to people familiar with the conversations. The previously unspecified contacts between Hubbell and Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey occurred between Hubbell's guilty plea to charges of bilking clients and partners of his former law firm and the beginning of his 16-month prison term. When McLarty and Bowles sought to help Hubbell, Clinton said on April 3, "no one had any idea about what the nature of the allegations were against Mr. Hubbell or whether they were true. Everybody thought there was some sort of billing dispute with his law firm, and that's all anybody knew about it, so . . . I do not think they did anything improper." That explanation, however, would not apply to Lindsey's contacts with Hubbell following the guilty plea. - Los Angeles Times

Ron Blackley, former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy's chief of staff, was indicted Tuesday on charges he lied about receiving $22,000 from private businesses while a government employee. A federal grand jury returned a three-count indictment charging Blackley with failing to disclose the payment, falsifying details about the money and denying he had received any income other than his government salary. - (AP)

The Little Rock underground has Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr looking at close to $3.5 million worth of payments and comp received by Webb Hubbell during the period of time he spent between Justice and jail. The NEW YORK TIMES' Jeff Gerth has estimated Hubbell's earnings that year at close to $400,000. The amount may actual be closer to ten times that amount... Drudge Report

A long-running government investigation appears to be closing in on former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, legal experts said Wednesday after an indictment was returned against Espy's former chief of staff. Experts agreed that with the indictment of Espy's close aide Ron Blackley on Tuesday -- the first of Espy's former staff to be criminally charged with wrongdoingIndependent Counsel Donald Smaltz appears to be systematically weaving a tighter net around the former Clinton cabinet member.- Nando.net

A month ago I asked the question "Did John Huang have access to Clipper"? Clipper is a "secure" communication ciphering chip, secretly developed by the NSA (National Security Agency). The answer, provided by an FOIA against the Commerce Department, is yes. Four of the six documents on "Clipper" viewed by Mr. Huang were sent to me, three of them are now on display at the Softwar web page. However, two other documents were mysteriously with-held. These were to be reviewed by the "other" agencies which originally sent them. My ever-faithful Post Office has today delivered to me more evidence of John Huang's interest in secret computer chips. - Charles R. Smith
SOFTWAR
http://www.us.net/softwar

Satellite photos now reveal that a state-owned Chinese company deliberately deceived Washington officials in 1994 when it claimed it was importing American machine tools for civilian purposes. Instead, it diverted them illegally to a missile factory. The equipment came from Columbus, Ohio, where it had been used to produce the B-1 strategic bomber. The shipment included high-tech milling and measuring machines and a giant stretch press used for bending huge pieces of metal; all required export licenses from the Commerce Department..The satellite photos show that the factory was under construction even as the Chinese were promising Administration officials they would use the press at the Beijing machining center. - NYT

The FBI has obtained substantial evidence that "top" Chinese officials approved plans in 1995 to attempt to buy influence with American politicians, and that the scheme continued through the 1996 elections and is ongoing, Bob Woodward reports in Friday edition of the WASHINGTON POST. Secret communications between Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Washington establish that the influence-buying plan was "government sanctioned," one official tells the paper. Incredibly, the Chinese are still trying to keep the scheme going, despite the (campaign finance) investigations in Congress and press attention, a second source tells Woodward. - Drudge Report

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the White House must turn over to Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr subpoenaed notes taken by White House lawyers when investigators questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton, sources said yesterday. The appeals court panel held in a still-sealed decision that the White House cannot cite attorney-client privilege in the matter, overruling a federal judge in Little Rock who had held that the president's lawyers did not have furnish the notes. The White House has publicly maintained that it has cooperated fully in Starr's investigation, and its effort to keep the lawyers' notes out of the hands of investigators was not previously known. Washington Post

No scandals

Former Clinton Whitewater partner James McDougal appeared on Larry King Live last week and his unedited, live remarks shed some new light on the illegal $300,000 loan that is at the center of the Whitewater scandal. Perhaps the conspiracy is not between the three of them (with David Hale a hesitant co-conspirator), perhaps it is between Susan McDougal and Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton offered to help Susan to get the loan in return for services that we are unaware of, and he showed up at the meeting to push the loan through. Susan and Bill then split the proceeds, some of it going into land speculations that the SBA does not lend money to. And that is why Susan is now refusing to testify--she would incriminate not only the President, but also herself. - Washington Weekly

Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and the FBI were notified more than three months ago about serious ethics problems involving Treasury Department Inspector General Valerie Lau, Treasury sources say. . . . . Treasury Department spokesman Howard Schloss said he believed the Jan. 15 internal memo, a copy of which was obtained last week by The Washington Times, was referred to the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees performance of inspectors general from various Cabinet departments. . . . . "It's my understanding that nothing's been done on this matter," said Mr. Schloss, who declined further comment on the pace of the inquiry or the allegations against Miss Lau. - WASHINGTON TIMES

A Hong Kong English language news magazine reported that Liu Tai-ying, the head of the ruling Kuomintang's powerful business empire, offered $15 million to the Clinton-Gore Campaign-DNC, just before the November presidential election. After the report appeared in Asian news papers, the magazine was sued in Taipei for libel. The magazine's defense was based upon the truth of the facts stated in its story. On Tuesday, a Taipei court ruled that Yazhou Zhoukan the Chinese-language news weekly, broke no law when it published the story. The court's ruling was written by Judge Lee Wei-hsin, who wrote that the magazine '...conducted reasonable investigations and acted with good intent.' Credibility of the news story was raised to new height when the Court cleared all of the reporters and the editor who wrote the story,of any wrong doing. - Pacific News Service

President Clinton's showcase agency for volunteerism is being asked to explain why five high-paid political appointees stayed on the payroll after their jobs were abolished. Five regional directors of the Corporation for National Service whose jobs were abolished last spring were given other duties and were allowed to continue working until last December, said agency spokesman Joseph Toscano. The corporation operates AmeriCorps, Clinton's project to promote volunteer service.... Hoekstra has accused AmeriCorps of allowing itself to be used for political purposes, citing a 1995 episode in which AmeriCorps volunteers participated in a demonstration organized by a housing advocacy group that disrupted a speech by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. (AP)

A House committee investigating campaign fund-raising abuses said Monday that the White House had missed a noon deadline for delivering subpoenaed documents. The Government Reform and Oversight Committee said the documents related to John Huang, a former Commerce Department and Democratic National Committee official; the Lippo Group, an Indonesian company, and the Riady family, contributors to the Democrats. - Nando.net

John Huang, a central figure in the investigation into Asian donations to Democrats, had more access to government secrets during his short tenure at the Commerce Department than previously disclosed, documents show. The Commerce Department has identified 109 meetings in 1994 and 1995 attended by Huang and at which classified information "might have been discussed," according to information released Tuesday. Previously, the department disclosed 37 intelligence briefings Huang had attended while a deputy assistant secretary. - Las Vegas SUN

When Al Gore formed a political union with Bill Clinton in 1992, his dowry included a Miami fund-raiser named Howard Glicken. In its log of overnight guests, the White House puts Mr. Glicken and his wife, Barbara, in a select category of "long-time friends" of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Glickens are even tighter with Al and Tipper Gore. Mr. Glicken once was fired from a bank after accepting a commission that his boss considered to be a kickback. He later headed a small gold-trading company indicted in a big case involving laundering of drug money. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Virginia King....says: "In my opinion, if one is aware of Mr.Glicken's involvement in this case, prudence would dictate that to avoid the appearance of impropriety, one probably should not form a close association with him." - WALL STREET JOURNAL

No scandals

A Senate panel asked the Justice Department on Thursday to open a criminal investigation into whether a Democratic fund-raiser lied to Congress when he denied promoting a $10,000-a-plate dinner for President Clinton as an opportunity to influence federal bankruptcy policies. The longtime fund-raiser, William Brandt Jr., who has described himself as a close friend of the president, held a dinner at his home in a Chicago suburb for Clinton on Sept. 17, 1996. The event raised more than $1 million for the Democratic National Committee. When questioned by congressional investigators in March, Brandt denied accusations by several bankruptcy lawyers and bankers that he had offered them the chance to discuss policy with Brady Williamson, a bankruptcy lawyer whom Clinton had appointed to lead a commission exploring ways to revamp the nation's troubled bankruptcy system. Brandt also denied referring to Williamson as a "guest of honor" in any fund-raising letters or programs for the dinner. But in a pair of letters he had written to potential donors last summer, Brandt called Williamson "one of the guests of honor" and portrayed the fund-raising dinner as a chance to discuss bankruptcy issues with Williamson and the president.- NY Times

".... the contents of the last "document dump" from the White House to Mr. Burton's committee was: 47 letters sent to the White House by members of Congress
2,500 pages of newspaper clippings pertaining to the investigation
1,000 pieces of BLANK paper
35 copies of John Huang's five page resume
The menu to Charlie Trie's restaurant in Little Rock and
one invitation for White House interns to attend a DNC
sponsored "Beer Blast"
"My new correspondent says that, "The White House is literally thumbing its nose at the Congress. The nest step is contempt citations. Stay tuned......................" - Anonymous lurker

Presidential friend Webster Hubbell visited at least four times with President or Mrs. Clinton at the White House in the months he was under investigation by Whitewater prosecutors, records released Friday show. Two weeks after he visited the president at the Camp David retreat to discuss his legal woes, Hubbell met in the White House on July 20, 1994, with Hillary Rodham Clinton and had a similar discussion, officials disclosed. Before Friday, Hubbell had acknowledged only two contacts with the Clintons after his resignation in March 1994 from a top Clinton administration job -- the Camp David visit and a later phone call. (AP)

In a strongly worded opinion unsealed yesterday, a federal appeals court ordered the White House to surrender notes its lawyers took in conversations with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling the administration's use of government attorneys as a "shield" in a criminal investigation "a gross misuse of public assets." "Mrs. Clinton's interest in the OIC's investigation is naturally avoiding prosecution, or else minimizing the consequences if the OIC decides to pursue charges against her," the court ruled. "One searches in vain for any interest of the White House which corresponds to Mrs. Clinton's personal interest." - Washington Post

Three years ago Sprint Corp. agreed to pay $90,000 to former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell to help it win federal approval for a European venture. Details of the arrangement were revealed in a letter written to the chairman of a congressional oversight committee and obtained Friday by The Kansas City Star. Sprint officials confirmed the contents of the letter but offered little elaboration. - Kansas City Star

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton played host to Webb Hubbell at the White House until six weeks before he pleaded guilty to defrauding clients and partners at his former law firm, according to Secret Service records released here Friday. The records show that Hubbell was authorized to enter the White House at least 14 times during the nine months between March 14, 1994, when he announced his resignation from the No. 3 post at the Justice Department, and Dec. 6, 1994, when he pleaded guilty to bilking clients and partners at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm, where he had been a partner with Hillary Clinton. At least four of those visits were at the invitation of the Clintons themselves. - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The White House has rebuffed requests that it reveal "the actual number and costs" of overnight stays in the executive mansion since President Clinton took office, according to Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.). Earlier this year, Kolbe, who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees White House budget accounts, asked the General Accounting Office to audit budget accounts for the Executive Residence and the process used by the Clintons to reimburse taxpayers for the costs of their guests. The audit by the congressional watchdog agency will not be completed for several months, so Kolbe also asked the White House to volunteer answers to questions about how taxpayers are reimbursed for political and nonpolitical activities at the White House.

The White House has maintained that President and Mrs. Clinton did not know that Webster L. Hubbell faced possible criminal charges when their close associates started organizing a string of business contacts to help support him in the spring of 1994. But according to documents and interviews, two of the president's closest confidants understood the seriousness of Hubbell's troubles even before he resigned as associate attorney general in March 1994. One of the confidants, James B. Blair, an Arkansas lawyer, went to the Clintons to warn them that Hubbell ``needed to resign as quickly as possible,'' according to Blair's previously unpublished testimony before Senate Whitewater investigators. ``Let me remind you of the critical fact,'' Clinton said at a photo session at the White House on April 3. ``At the time that it was done, no one had any idea about whether any -- what the nature of the allegations were against Mr. Hubbell or whether they were true. Everybody thought there was some sort of billing dispute with his law firm. And that's all anybody knew about it. - New York Times

No scandals

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, in previously sealed court records, identified first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as "a central figure" in the Whitewater investigation, adding that she had changed her sworn testimony "over time" and that it "differs from that of other witnesses." - Washington Times

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif) faces the extraordinary prospect of contempt of Congress charges being filed against her after refusing to comply with subpoenas issued by ex-Rep. Bob Dornan (R) in his quest to prove that his loss last November resulted from voter fraud. Thursday was the deadline set by the House Oversight Committee for Sanchez and a number of other groups to produce documents relating to Dornan's challenge of the Democrat's 984-vote victory. But instead of handing over the campaign records, Sanchez's attorneys filed a 20-page brief with the House Oversight panel outlining a series of constitutional objections to the subpoena process. - ROLL CALL

Louis Freeh advised Janet Reno that early evidence suggesting White House involvement in the Democratic Party fund-raising scandal should warrant appointment of an independent counsel in the case. (WASHINGTON POST)

Hillary Rodham Clinton co-signed "two or three" checks Whitewater figure Webster Hubbell wrote while stealing $485,000 from his law partners, the firm's top officer has told investigators. Testimony doesn't suggest Mrs. Clinton, a former partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark., intentionally helped Hubbell defraud the firm. But her involvement might have heightened the Clintons' awareness of the Hubbell situation more than they have let on. - NY Post

WASHINGTON knew that drugs would surge into the United States from Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), but ordered whistle blowers to keep quiet about it, a former anti-drug agent has claimed. It also knew but kept secret the fact that Mexico's drug cartels, in the run-up to Nafta's signing in 1993, were buying legitimate cross-border trading companies which they are now using as cover for smuggling. Describing Nafta as a treaty made in "narco-heaven", Phil Jordan told ABC News that, when he and fellow agents voiced their fears, their superiors said "it was not something we were allowed to discuss". - Electronic Telegraph

The Justice Department is in the early stages of investigating the failure of George Tenet, President Clinton's nominee to head the CIA, to disclose his part interest in stocks and property inherited from his father. (REUTER)

The numbers generally tossed around are that Mr. Hubbell, after he resigned from the Justice Department and before he pleaded guilty to defrauding his law partners, collected somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 in legal and consulting fees. Not bad for half a years work. But now it turns out that half a million may be a very low estimate of the cash Mr. Hubbell raked in. The Kansas City Star reported over the weekend that Sprint Corp. had hired Mr. Hubbell in November 1994 to help win federal approval for a European venture with Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom. The deal, according to Sprint spokesman Bill White, called for Mr. Hubbell to be paid a $15,000 retainer each month for the length of the six-month contract. Mr. Hubbell would have received $90,000 if he had completed his work for Sprint, but a month after signing on, Mr. Hubbell pleaded guilty to fraud. This has given rise to the inference that Mr. Hubbell received only $15,000 from Sprint. Now it is becoming apparent that he got much more. ... Hubbell collected four months retainer $60,000 -- before the remainder of his $90,000 contract was negotiated out. Mr. Hubbell, then, got something between $60,000 and $90,000 for his work. - Washington Times

During a tough battle last year over how a closed Navy base in Long Beach, Calif., would be used, a Clinton administration official made what several people involved describe as highly unusual telephone calls to push for construction there of a container terminal that would be leased to a shipping company owned by the Chinese government. The White House official who made the calls, Dorothy Robyn, a member of the National Economic Council, denied in an interview that she had been trying to exert any undue influence over the fate of what had been a major Navy base. In the calls, Ms. Robyn urged the preservation officials -- from the Navy, the state and the local government-- to abandon efforts to save any buildings at the base and to allow them to be razedquickly, and the new terminal constructed.- New York Times

The White House has refused to give a Senate committee three documents on a popular small-business loan program that is running short of money, and Republicans responded Thursday by accusing the administration of simply trying to avoid political embarrassment. Administration officials said the documents were memorandums to President Clinton or senior White House aides about problems with the loan program. They said the White House was holding on to them solely to protect the confidentiality of its decision-makingprocess. - New York Times

China's FAR Eastern Economic Review reported in April that Wang Jun, Chinese arms dealer and White House Coffee club member, gave John Huang $30,000. Please note * Publications are censored and strictly controlled in China by the Communist government. So far - neither Huang nor China have commented on the payment. The details, published by INSIGHT magazine, cover the wholesale sacking of advanced US technology by foreign powers for weapons of war. For example, the sales of Super-Computers to China by Silicon Graphics. Silicon Graphics is now under investigation for selling super computers to Russia. These systems are now being used for NUCLEAR weapons research

There are possibly new names on the Web Hubbell donor list... they are under subpoena. "Unlike my good colleague, Mr. Waxman (who appeared earlier on the show), I won't reveal those names" until after it is investigated, Burton stated.- "This Week" (ABC)

Reno and Gorelick may have leaked FBI information to the WH that Freeh specifically asked them not to leak regarding the Chinese Embassy wiretaps. Freeh asked Reno not to give this information to the WH until the investigation concluded. Freeh then goes out of the country (to Cairo). Reno and Gorelick contacted Freeh's deputy and asked him for copies of the investigation. Freeh was "livid" on a phone call back to Reno when he found it. Burton speculated that Reno and Gorelick briefed the WH on these papers. - "This Week" (ABC)

U.S. officials are investigating whether an executive of a Chinese-language newspaper in Southern California who sat next to President Clinton at a Democratic fund-raiser in Century City in July is an agent of the Chinese government, according to sources familiar with an ongoing federal inquiry. Ted Sioeng, an Indonesian entrepreneur whose family owns the International Daily News in Monterey Park and other businesses, has come under suspicion apparently because of evidence gathered from secret Chinese communications intercepted by U.S. intelligence last year, according to sources. - Los Angeles Times

Aviation Week and Space Technology reports that a recent secret deal struck between China, Russia and Israel has resulted in active contracts to develop the Lavi for China. Israel is currently providing significant help to China, including some of the US technology given or sold to Israel during the co-operative effort to develop their F-16 class warplane. Israeli engineers are now working inside China with their Russian counterparts on the project. The advanced Chinese fighter is expected to be deployed around 2005.

"Latest to show up on the Democrats' list of awkward donors," reports National Review in its May 19 edition, "is convicted spy Aldrich Ames, who contributed $5,000 of his KGB earnings. We can't wait to see just whom they return the money to this time."

No scandals

The independent counsel investigation of Ronald Brown did not end when the late commerce secretary's plane went down in Croatia last year. In fact, a key portion of that probe, which was taken over by the Justice Department after Brown's death, now appears to be reaching critical mass. Three sources familiar with the matter say that prosecutors examining the activities of Nora Lum, and Asian-American Democratic activist who helped Brown raise money, are focusing on whether Lum improperly routed donations to Democratic campaigns in the names of others..One of the prime beneficiaries of Lum's fund-raising largess has been Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Employers, family members and directors of Dynamic Energy gave $39,000 or more to Kennedy's 1994 re-election campaign and a related political action committee. Some of those funds -- including money donated by Michael Brown -- have since been returned by Kennedy in the aftermath of reports that Dynamic Energy may have reimbursed the contributors for their donations. - American Lawyer

The chairman of a House committee asked Commerce Secretary William M. Daley yesterday to explain briefings in which former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang may have received classified information at 146 separate meetings instead of the 37 originally claimed or the 109 later acknowledged. . . . . In a letter, Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon, New York Republican and chairman of the House Rules Committee, also asked whether President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore attended some of those briefings, which the Commerce Department now says may have taken place at the White House. - Washington Times

The Clinton administration has refused to turn over documents sought by a grand jury investigating former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy for allegedly accepting gifts and favors from companies he regulated, sources said Thursday. - Reuter

A Clinton administration loan program channeled nearly one-third of its first $37 million in grants for poor communities to four related banks with ties to Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Republican congressman said Thursday. Associated Press

The White House is refusing to live up to an agreement to provide documents to the Senate committee investigating campaign fund-raising abuses, sources said this week. Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) called White House Chief of Staff Erskine B. Bowles Tuesday to complain that despite pledges of full cooperation by presidential aides, his investigators are receiving documents slowly and often with whole sections, even entire pages, blanked out, the sources said. - Washington Post

A White House memo turned over to Republican investigators in Congress suggests combining a presidential database with a donor list of Democrats to target contributors who have not attended White House functions. The two-page, handwritten memo dated Nov. 15, 1994, summarizes a meeting of presidential aide Marsha Scott and two database assistants. It was written by Brian Bailey, an aide to President Clinton's deputy chief of staff, said White House spokesman Barry Toiv. - AP

The White House apparently merged its list of President Clinton's social contacts with a larger list of Democratic donors, despite warnings from the counsel's office, according to newly released documents turned over to a House oversight panel. A two-page, handwritten memo on a meeting led by White House database boss Marsha Scott describes the plan to add more than 200,000 "money people" to the social list of 116,000 Clinton friends to make sure Mr. Clinton's re-election donors were "taken care of" by receiving invitations to White House parties. While the memo suggests three action options, including keeping the lists separate, it ends by stating: "We need to decide how to cross $ list with social information. Either put in WhoDB [White House database] or do short term database."- Washington Times

No scandals

Chicago's Shorebank Corp. is at the center of an inquiry by a House banking panel chairman who is accusing the Treasury Department of ``political cronyism'' and giving grants to institutions with ties to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Banking Committee's investigation subcommittee, alleges that nearly $11 million of the $37 million in grants made in 1996 from the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund went to Shorebank or entities it controls, exceeding a $5 million cap.

Following a report that Zaires rebel leader Laurent Kabila has signed a $1 billion deal with an Arkansas mining firm, more questions are being asked about the role of the United States in supporting the insurgents bid to topple Mobuto Sese Seko. The rebels success in sweeping across the vast nation of Zaire in a matter of months, especially under the leadership of an obscure disciple of Communist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, has led to theories that the war is part of a U.S. master plan to leverage influence in Africa and secure business interests. There is no question, however, that foreign intervention has been key to rebels push on the capital city of Kinshasa so far. Zaires neighbors Rwanda and Uganda have been the principle foreign supporters of the revolution. But there is growing evidence that Washington at least gave its approval to the plan. - WorldNetDaily

In addition to the employment deals in the private sector that were steered to Webster L. Hubbell, a top Clinton administration official approved giving a federal job to Hubbell's son soon after the senior Hubbell's resignation from the Justice Department. Mickey Kantor, the top Clinton political advisor who served four years in the president's Cabinet, signed off on a staff position for W. Walter Hubbell in the U.S. Trade Representative's office. The hiring came in May 1994--just as Webster Hubbell had resigned as associate attorney general and was facing criminal investigation over fraudulent billings at his former Little Rock, Ark., law firm. The hiring is the first known use by Clinton aides of the federal payroll to help the Hubbell family after his resignation. - LA Times

No scandals

The Justice Department says Democratic fund-raisers Nora and Gene Lum have agreed to plead guilty to charges of making $50,000 in illegal contributions to the 1994 campaigns of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and W. Stuart Price, an unsuccessful Democratic House nominee from Oklahoma. Officials say their daughter Trisha Lum, 27, has also agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor on charges of letting her mother funnel $10,000 in illegal contributions through her to the Democratic National Committee while Trisha was an employee of the Commerce Department. - (UPI)

Vernon Jordan, a close friend of President Clinton, is among those who helped get legal work for Webster Hubbell in the weeks after Hubbell resigned from the No. 3 job in the Justice Department, USA Today reported today. Hubbell was paid more than $60,000 by billionaire financier Ronald Perelman's MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings after Jordan introduced Hubbell to the firm in April 1994, the newspaper reported. At least 14 companies and individuals hired Hubbell _ some of them at the request of White House officials and others close to Clinton _ and paid him more than $500,000 after he resigned as associate attorney general. - (AP)

The Democratic National Committee intends to reimburse a Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma after its chief was charged with diverting money to pay a DNC worker during last year's presidential election, the Washington Post reported Friday... Cherokee Nation Chief Joe Byrd has been charged in tribal court with illegally diverting tribal funds when he authorized the hiring of a Cherokee law clerk to work as part-time deputy coordinator of the American Indian Outreach Office at DNC's Washington headquarters. The clerk, Kimberly Teehee, was paid $23,420 from July to December 1996, the newspaper said, quoting from court documents. - Nando.net (Reuter)

While in prison, Webster Hubbell kept in touch with his friends in the Clinton administration with regular telephone calls that were taped by prison officials and later turned over to Whitewater prosecutors, according to lawyers and others familiar with the investigation.Voices on the dozens of taped calls include those of then-Clinton administration official Mickey Kantor and current or former White House aides Marcia Scott, John Emerson and David Watkins, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. - Nando Net Associated Press

The Buddhist temple that hosted a controversial political fundraiser last year that featured Vice President Al Gore, has privately reimbursed some of the donations made to the Democratic campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. The undeclared repayments, ranging from $2,200 to 5,000, came from about a dozen contributors, the paper said.Federal election law prohibits reimbursements of campaign contributions and requires disclosure of the true source of any funds. - Reuter

None

With the assistance of the Democratic Party, Clinton administration appointee John Huang participated in raising political donations in 1995 while serving as a government official who was prohibited by law from soliciting campaign funds, according to newly available records and interviews. Huang, the central figure in Justice Department and congressional investigations into campaign finance abuses, helped generate at least $52,000 from four Asian American donors in the months before he left the Commerce Department to become a full-time fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee. On at least three occasions, the DNC listed Huang's wife, Jane, as the "solicitor" for large donations even though party officials recalled that she had no involvement in fund-raising. DNC officials now acknowledge that Jane Huang's name appears on the donor tracking forms because it would have been an admission of wrongdoing to credit the contributions to John Huang, a deputy assistant Commerce secretary at the time. - Los Angeles Times

To the annoyance of Senate fund-raising investigators, the Democrats are invoking attorney-client privilege and refusing to let the party's top lawyer testify about conversations with White House and party officials. Lawyers for Joseph Sandler, the party's general counsel, are claiming that the Democratic National Committee and the White House have a joint defense to allegations involving fund raising. Thus, the lawyers say, the traditional attorney-client privilege extends to certain conversations Sandler has with presidential aides. - (AP)

None

None

Senate investigators plan to subpoena records from a Connecticut businessman who says he contributed $120,000 to the Democratic National Committee after Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn) lobbied the State Department on his behalf, according to knowledgeable sources...The information about the Belcher subpoena comes to light at a time when Dodd has changed his account of his relationship with the businessman. Belcher owns Ennar Latex Inc., a Connecticut-based rubber firm that has a plantation in Liberia. Belcher told Roll Call that in 1995 he called Dodd, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, after civil war threatened his business (Roll Call, Feb. 20). Belcher said that after he faxed at least one letter to Dodd about the trouble and spoke to the Senator on the phone, Dodd helped set up meetings with State Department officials that cleared up the problem. Belcher added that a few months later, Dodd's DNC aides helped arrange for him to attend a coffee at the White House with Dodd and President Clinton. - Roll Call

In a letter addressed to Janet Reno, Reps. Henry Hyde and Tillie Fowler have revealed that a 1994 fiber optics deal between the US and China included encryption software. The Clinton administration, while denying export of any crypto to allies, quietly transferred sophisticated communications and encryption technology to China. The deal was no mere accident. The joint venture, called Heu Mei, was approved by the Clinton administration OVER the objections of the NSA and the Defense Department. The high speed fiber optic secure communications system sold to China, including the advanced encryption software, is now serving the Chinese nuclear strategic forces. Charles R. Smith SOFTWAR

Lobbyist Peter Knight, who served as President Clinton's 1996 campaign manager, arranged numerous private meetings and dinners with a top Energy Department official for clients who won millions of dollars in government contracts, documents show. The official, former Undersecretary Thomas Grumbly, says he is being investigated by the department's inspector general in connection with a contract to one of Knight's clients. Grumbly left the department two months ago for a job with a private company. On more than one occasion, Knight's clients made large donations to the Democratic Party or to Clinton around the time the department made decisions favorable to them. Knight says he may have advised or solicited some of the donations, including $100,000 last spring from Lockheed Martin several months before the company got a major environmental cleanup contract. AP

The Washington Times reported today that despite claims to the contrary the Commerce Department under Ron Brown kept a list of 139 names "including those of corporate executives, bankers, union officials, lawyers, stockbrokers and community activists, loosely categorized as `DNC Friends`, members of the `Chairman's Circle`, the `National Finance Council`, the `Business Leadership Forum` and as `trustees.` " The list was kept by Jude Kearney, deputy assistant secretary in the International Trade Administration which employed, among others, John Huang. Kearney had previously denied that as a Commerce official he was involved in fund-raising or that the list existed. The information was gleaned by a deposition of Graham Whatley, deputy assistant secretary for the department's Office of Service Industries and Finance, on May 28 in a pending lawsuit by Judicial Watch.

Federal authorities in Los Angeles are trying to build a case of income-tax evasion against Susan McDougal, the imprisoned former business partner of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to those familiar with the matter. The filing of new charges could increase pressure on McDougal to end her nine-month refusal to answer questions about whether President Clinton testified truthfully in her Whitewater trial last year.

There are new reports that Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr has seized the records of a Los Angeles-area broker involving a $3,500,000 account supposedly belonging to Webster Hubbell. Speculation first raised in this space [DRUDGE REPORT 4/22/97], had Hubbell's suspicious earnings far exceeding the press accounts of $700,000. One theory has Starr stumbling upon the account from taped phone talk caught on tape during Hubbell's time in prison... Matt Drudge

A congressional investigator says probers are exploring Bruce Lindsey's possible role in soliciting Asian money for Democrats and Clinton's legal defense fund--and his presence at White House meetings with fund-raising figures such as John Huang and James Riady. (BUSINESS WEEK)

The Treasury Department has asked its inspector general to investigate a Republican congressman's allegation that Treasury officials may have created documents in an effort to mislead Congress. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama says he has evidence that suggests memos justifying more than $10 million in Treasury grants were placed in Treasury files earlier this year after Congress began to scrutinize the program, called Community Development Financial Institutions. The congressional probe is looking at whether grants may have been awarded for political reasons to the family of community-development banks with ties to Mrs. Clinton. She is a longtime advocate of using such institutions to help disadvantaged entrepreneurs in poor areas, and she strongly backed creation of the CDFI program. The first lady helped set up Southern Development in 1986 with assistance from Shorebank executives, one of whom was her college roommate. About $10.7 million of the $37 million in CDFI grants went to corporations in the Shorebank family. WALL STREET JOURNAL

A Massachusetts toxic-waste cleanup firm that contributed heavily to Vice President Al Gore and the Democrats received $33 million in Department of Energy contracts, despite objections by federal scientists, according to a report in Time magazine. In a May 29 letter obtained yesterday by The Washington Times, House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley told Energy Secretary Federico Pena his panel is probing whether the firm, Molten Metal Technology, should have won these contracts "in light of the apparent technical and commercial limitations" of the "highly expensive" technology whose development was subsidized. "There is no denying that from the first days of the Clinton administration, Molten Metal was singled out for special care," Time senior political correspondent Michael Weisskopf writes in a report that appears in this week's Time magazine, which arrives at newsstands today. He points out in the article that the $33 million that Molten Metal received from DOE "since the vice president took office" to test its "toxic-waste washing machine" on the "poisoned remains of nuclear-weapons proving grounds" was "more money than 17 other companies have received collectively [during the same period] to do the same job." Washington Times

The ``privilege calendar'' of 40 documents of campaign finance irregularities that the White House is denying congressional investigators includes material concerning Democratic fund-raiser John Huang's employment at the Commerce Department, according to well-placed sources. The exact contents are unknown outside the White House. The Huang papers are included on the list of documents President Clinton's lawyers are withholding from the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on possible claims of executive privilege or lawyer-client privilege. Rep. Dan Burton, the committee chairman, has vowed to go to court if necessary to get information he needs. - Chicago Sun-Times

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A high-ranking Energy Department official interceded with a National Security Council staff member on behalf of controversial Democratic donor Roger Tamraz after Tamraz discussed his proposal for a major foreign oil pipeline with President Clinton, administration officials said last night. Despite warnings about allowing Tamraz into the White House, Clinton and senior presidential adviser Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty met with him at fund-raising events in the executive mansion in the spring of 1996. McLarty subsequently asked the Energy Department if the administration could be more supportive of Tamraz's proposed pipeline, which would carry oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, one administration official said. At the time Tamraz met with Clinton and McLarty, the National Security Council and Department of Energy already had decided that Tamraz's pipeline proposal did not merit administration support. But after Tamraz talked to the president, McLarty contacted the Energy Department to ask for another review of the pipeline project, administration officials said.- Washington Post

Some U.S. soldiers are gearing up to take on new duties in Central and South America, helping train warriors for the environment. In at least 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations, members of the U.S. Southern Command -- SouthCom -- may begin training local soldiers to guard rain forests and endangered species. - AP

At least $200,000 in contributions to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign came from donors that federal investigators now suspect were fictitious, including checks from several phony corporations and a $3,000 draft funneled through the account of a dead woman. The most compelling evidence of this illegal practice comes from two strikingly similar checks that arrived at the headquart%rs of the Democratic National Committee last August, on the day after Clinton's 50th birthday fund-raiser was held at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan. Both checks were solicited by John Huang, the fund-raiser who is at the center of the investigation into the financing of the 1996 Democratic campaign. One check for $3,000 bore the name of Michele Lima, a New York City woman who died in 1986, according to investigators. The other, for $4,000, is signed with the name Hong Jen Chiao. Election records list Chiao's address as the Democratic National Committee's office here. Yet investigators, who have failed to find Chiao, now suspect he does not exist.Written on the same day and in a handwriting that appears identical, each check was made out to ``Victor '96,'' an erroneous reference to ``Victory '96,'' an organization committed to the re-election of Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. - NYT

Mum's the word at Merrill Lynch but sources familiar with the investigation being conducted by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr tell me that his FBI agents recently paid a visit to the brokerage firm's L.A. office. They were interested in an account allegedly containing more than $3 million connected to White House friend Webster Hubbell. The former Associate Attorney General, as everyone knows, got a whole lot of well-paying jobs before he went to jail for bilking the Rose Law Firm. Some have suggested that this was hush money since Hubbell, despite a jail term and the threat of another, has remained hushed to Congress and Starr about what he knows about the Clintons' financial and political dealings. But so far the money being connected to Hubbell is a relative small hundred thousand here and there. If the FBI has indeed located the mother lode at Merrill, it could open a new chapter in the Hubbell saga. NEW YORK POST

At the urging of the White House, the agency that operates President Clinton's national service program kept four political appointees on the payroll last year after their jobs were eliminated and other workers' positions were terminated. One of the executives, former Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo, is now under investigation for activities during the period he remained working at the Corporation for National Service after his job had been eliminated. According to documents and interviews, regional executives including Woo raised concerns about plans to eliminate their jobs in a February 1996 memo, a copy of which was sent to the White House. A Democratic senator also wrote the agency on Woo's behalf. The White House then urged the agency to find other work for the appointees. The corporation decided to keep paying four of the five for nearly eight months after their jobs were eliminated, using them for special projects.- AP

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- Notes taken by a national security staff member suggest an Energy Department official invoked President Clinton's name and the possibility of six-figure donations in trying to persuade the staffer to help a Democratic donor, according to individuals familiar with the notes. ``Pres wants,'' National Security Council staffer Sheila Heslin wrote in notes on her conversation in spring 1996 with the Energy official, Jack Carter, according to the individuals, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. One said Heslin jotted down separate notations about $200,000, $400,000 and $600,000, about the Democratic National Committee and about White House official Mack McLarty in summarizing the conversation concerning Democratic donor Roger Tamraz. (AP)

The Senate's chief campaign-finance investigator Tuesday accused the Democratic Party of invoking attorney-client privilege to block inquiries into the activities of its former fund-raiser John Huang. Democratic National Committee attorneys ``are blocking those inquiries in what seems to be a very calculated and selective process,'' Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said in a letter to DNC Chairman Roy Romer. (AP)

"White House Got FBI Data on Party Donor," declared a June 10 Wall Street Journal headline. The Journal's Glenn Simpson and David Rogers revealed that before Yogesh Gandhi met with the President and donated $325,000 to the DNC, "White House aides received unfavorable information about Mr. Gandhi" from the FBI. "But after the negative information forced cancellation of the White House event...Democratic fundraisers arranged for the meeting to take place on May 13, 1996, at the Sheraton Carlton hotel, two blocks up the street." - MRC Alert

Key scandal witnesses are leaving the country or refusing to cooperate with congressional investigators, reported this week's Time magazine. Tuesday's USA Today relayed: "The latest to indicate they will take the Fifth are 16 monks whose Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., hosted a Democratic fundraiser featuring Vice President Al Gore, in possible violation of its tax exempt status." - MRC Alert

Speaking of those who have fled the country, New York Daily News reporters Thomas Galvin and Thomas DeFrank disclosed Tuesday: "U.S. intelligence officials have told the White House and Congress they've collected evidence that Democratic money man John Huang passed classified trade information to his Indonesian ex-bosses." Huang served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for international economic policy from July 1994 to December 1995. The Daily News determined that "while Huang was getting classified briefings, he also kept in close touch with Lippo and Chinese officials."

An embarrassing 1996 meeting involving President Clinton and two people he would rather forget -- contributor Yogesh Gandhi and fund-raiser John Huang -- was arranged, it turns out, by Craig Livingstone. Mr. Livingstone is the White House security-office director who resigned last year after admitting that his office obtained hundreds of confidential FBI files on Republicans -the controversy that engulfed the White House last spring before the campaign-finance affair became known. The meeting took place three weeks before the FBI scandal broke. An earlier White House meeting between Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Clinton was canceled by the White House counsel's office after officials were warned that Mr. Gandhi was misrepresenting himself. - WSJ

The Central Intelligence Agency recently uncovered another suspected foreign spy in its midst but chose to handle the espionage case through administrative action and keep the matter secret, according to U.S. intelligence sources. CIA sources said the agency discovered that a contract employee working closely with its clandestine case officers apparently was providing information to a foreign intelligence service. The CIA brought in the FBI to aid in a counterintelligence investigation but sufficient evidence could not be obtained for an arrest. Instead, the worker was fired. The CIA notified congressional intelligence oversight committees but, unlike other recent high-profile spy cases, the agency decided not to make a public announcement that a spy had been unmasked.- LA Times

PRESS RELEASE January 24, 1996: United States Attorney Donald K. Stern, Frederick P. Aufiero, Chief, Criminal Investigation Division, Internal Revenue Service, and Richard Swensen, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced that SUBRAHMANYAM (SUBU) M. KOTA, 50, 72 Wesson Terrace, Northboro, was indicted today by a federal grand jury. The twelve-count indictment charges KOTA with seven counts of subscribing to false returns. For each of the years 1989- 1993, KOTA is charged with subscribing to a false joint United States Individual Income Tax Return, Form 1040. For each of the years 1993-1994, he is charged with subscribing to a false United States Income Tax Return for an S Corporation, Form 1120S, for BSST Software Group, Inc. d/b/a The Boston Group ("The Boston Group"). ... KOTA is currently awaiting trial on a separate indictment charging him with espionage and with conspiracy to transport stolen property in foreign commerce.
Kota was making donations to the Kerry/DNC victory fund after his indictment on charges of espionage!
KOTA, SUBA M
10/19/94 $5,000.00
NORTHBORO, MA 01532
BOSTON GROUP -[Contribution]
DEMOCRATIC SENATORIAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
KOTA, SUBU
9/4/96 $250.00
NORTHBOROUGH, MA 01532
BOSTON GROUP -[Contribution]
KERRY/DNC VICTORY FUND

In March 1996, Vice President Al Gore had a 10-minute White House meeting with the master of a Buddhist temple. It was described as a social call, but just two days before, a Democratic Party fund-raiser, John Huang, had an intriguing telephone conversation with a top Gore aide that hinted at another motive. "Lead to a lot of money moving support," Gore's deputy chief of staff, David Strauss, jotted down on a phone log recording Huang's call. And shortly afterward, Huang followed up with a memorandum to another Gore aide, proposing that the vice president attend a "fund-raising lunch" at the master's Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., that April 29. NY Times

The US government is investigating the sale to China of some supercomputers that might be used for nuclear weapons testing, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright told lawmakers yesterday. The government also announced it had suspended an Export-Import Bank loan to an unnamed US company planning to sell computer equipment to a Chinese corporation. (AP)

Thomas "Mack" McLarty, President Clinton's boyhood friend and former chief of staff, faces increased scrutiny for his role in assisting oil financier Roger Tamraz in promoting a Caspian Sea pipeline proposal last year. In a statement Wednesday, Mr. McLarty denied ever discussing Mr. Tamraz's status as a Democratic donor with anyone at the department. But the two men asked to deal with the Tamraz matter at the Energy Department were both longtime Texas party activists with experience in fund raising. And one recalls seeing notes by the other of a conversation with Mr. McLarty and listing large dollar sums in reference to Mr. Tamraz. - WSJ

A key congressman says electronic intercepts confirm that former Clinton administration official and Democratic fund-raiser John Huang ``committed economic espionage'' by passing government secrets to his previous Asian-based employer. House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., said he confirmed with government officials that the intercepts substantiated that Huang passed classified information to the Lippo Group, which is based in Indonesia but has substantial dealings with China. - (AP)

A day after Vice President Gore attended a controversial fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple last year, the temple's leaders scrambled to come up with more money for the Democratic National Committee, and ultimately repaid $58,000 to 12 individuals who wrote checks to the Democrats, according to people knowledgeable about the event. The sources said the temple's leaders were pressured to come up with the political contributions by then-DNC fund-raiser John Huang and Maria Hsia, a temple adviser and close Huang associate who has raised substantial funds for the Democratic Party. - Washington Post

A senator alleged that congressional investigators have obtained records showing that eight donors to John Huang's first big Democratic National Committee fund-raiser last year were illegally reimbursed a total of $23,000 for their contributions...Sen. Specter's revelation, aimed at pressuring Democrats to approve the immunity proposal, is significant because it suggests illegal fund-raising activities involving Mr. Huang began at the start of his career as a DNC money man. It had been alleged previously that some money donated to a Huang fund-raiser in April 1996 at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., was reimbursed -an allegation that Sen. Specter said also was confirmed by records obtained by the committee. Sen. Specter didn't identify the source of the records. - WALL STREET JOURNAL

McDougal told NBC News that new evidence about certain financial transactions points to the president and the first lady. For the first time, McDougal claims publicly the new evidence he gave to Starr links the Clintons to other questionable loans and land deals, in addition to Whitewater. McDougal also claims both the president and his wife have lied to federal investigators, and believes there's a good chance Hillary Rodham Clinton will go to jail for it. McDougal said he believes there is evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons, and in terms of possible perjury, added: "In the case of Mrs. Clinton, for certain, yes." - MSNBC

Investigators have evidence that as much as $1 million was wired from Asia to Democratic fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie'' Trie while he was helping President Clinton's re-election effort, Senate aides said Friday. Bank records and other evidence pieced together by investigators for the Senate panel investigating fund-raising abuses show that Trie received at least $470,000 money from his business partner, Macao developer Ng Lap Seng, aides said. Bank records show that Ng wired Trie the money through the Bank of China to an account Trie controlled in Washington D.C., aides said. The wire transfers occurred during a 10-month period last year, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity. - AP

Even though Democratic Party officials conceded they financed a $4.6 million TV ad campaign improperly, the party escaped punishment when bickering Federal Election Commission members deadlocked over the case. - AP

An Energy Department official who urged a White House aide to review an oil-pipeline proposal by Democratic contributor Roger Tamraz has testified that he was told Tamraz would contribute $400,000 to the Clinton-Gore reelection effort if he got the review, government officials and other individuals said yesterday. The Energy Department official, Jack Carter, told a federal grand jury that he saw a note written by a colleague who had spoken with White House adviser Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty about the pipeline proposal, the sources said. The note, written by Kyle Simpson, now a top aide to Energy Secretary Federico Pen~a, said, in part, "Tamraz, $200,000. . $400,000," a government official said. The official added that Carter earlier had told Justice Department investigators he understood Simpson's note to mean that Tamraz had already contributed $200,000 to the Democratic National Committee and that he would double that if the Clinton administration would review his proposed pipeline to carry oil from the Caspian Sea region. Federal Election Commission records show Tamraz gave the DNC $177,000 in 1995 and 1996. The review never took place.- Washington Post

Landmark Legal Foundation today is asking House Minority Whip David Bonior (D.-Mich.) to explain allegations attributed to a U.S. Capitol police officer that the officer has fixed hundreds of [Mr. Boniors] tickets each year from all over the place. The allegation is made in a new book by Ronald Kessler and was reported in todays Washington Times. -

A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that a federal judge wrongly allowed the Clinton White House to withhold 84 documents subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. The appeals court ordered the U.S. District Court judge to conduct a more detailed review of the documents, which have been at the center of a long legal battle between the White House and independent counsel Donald Smaltz. The appeals court said the judge made a mistake by failing to provide any explanation or legal reasoning in rejecting a request from the prosecutors to force the White House to comply with the subpoena. - Reuters/Fox

Senate investigators have evidence that two other members of a Buddhist temple were reimbursed for their $5,000 contributions at a Democratic Party fund-raiser last summer in Los Angeles, according to an internal Senate memo. Those alleged reimbursements bring to $83,000 the total amount of possibly illegal contributions associated with the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif. Like the two other events where questionable funds were raised from Buddhists, the event last July at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles was organized by then-Democratic National Committee fund-raiser John Huang. Mr. Huang, whose lawyer couldn't be reached Monday, has denied wrongdoing. - WALL STREET JOURNAL

Commerce Department officials have described Huang as a mid-level functionary cut off from policy action on Asia. But they are unable to explain why he had almost weekly one-on-one briefings from a CIA officer on the latest intelligence concerning China, Taiwan and Vietnam. What's more, a series of stunning security breaches at the Commerce Department allowed Huang to get and maintain a top-secret clearance for 18 months, both before and after he became a government employee--a period longer than the time he actually served. Huang's security status was of keen interest to at least one high-level Commerce Department official. Huang's boss tried to ensure that Huang maintained his top-secret clearance even after he left the department for the Democratic National Committee. But when Huang--in a marked departure from previous department practice--turned down an offer from his boss to be upgraded to the government's highest security clearance, Commerce Department officials showed strangely little curiosity. An upgrade from "top secret" to "sensitive compartmented information," or "code-word" clearance, which his two immediate predecessors had, would have required Huang to undergo a much more detailed investigation of his ties to foreign nationals, including his former employer, the Jakarta-based Lippo Group. Former department officials and others now agree that Huang's apparent reluctance to subject himself to the intense scrutiny required for code-word clearance should have raised questions. - Los Angeles Times

In spite of all the publicity about how much was raised at White House coffees during the 1996 campaign about $27 million by some estimates theres been little reporting on the other side of the menu: How the DNC paid little or nothing for use of the White House for those fund-raising events. The problem, laid out in a report issued by the House Appropriations Committee last month, is that the taxpayer picked up most of the tab for all the coffee and finger foods along with the best service in Washington ... outside the Jockey Club.-

When he was putting together his White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security late last July, after the explosion of TWA 800, Bill Clinton took the trouble to call Victoria Cummock personally and ask her to join. Cummock, who had lost her husband over Lockerbie on Pan Am 103 eight years before, seemed a solid, logical choice. Now Victoria Cummock has filed suit in federal court against Gore and the Department of Transportation, charging that the vice president pressured her to abandon her call for counter-terrorism measures and refused to publish a 42-page dissent she had filed, despite promising her publicly at the Commission's last meeting that her dissent would be included in the official report. Her suit demands access to the internal memos and files she claims Gore's staff withheld from the commissioners, so that if necessary a new dissent can be prepared. Al Gore, she believes, sold her out. Cummock may well have a case. Federal Election Commission (FEC) documents show that the airlines contributed nearly $500,000 in soft money to the Democratic Party after Clinton chartered the aviation commission in the days following the crash. - American Spectator

Senate investigators probing campaign finance abuses have found that two Maryland women funneled $25,000 to the Democratic Party in 1996 at the behest of the Macao-based business partner of controversial fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie and were subsequentlyreimbursed, according to an internal Senate memorandum. - LA Times

Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, killed in a plane crash off Croatia in April 1996, allegedly used illegal drugs and accepted contributions while in office, his former business associate Nolanda Hill says. Hill described herself as a close friend of Brown's, saying, "We loved each other.'' But in an interview with the ABC-TV program "Prime Time Live'' Wednesday, she revealed some potentially damaging information about the first black American to become chairman of a major political party...In the wide-ranging interview, Hill alleged that Brown smoked marijuana and once inhaled a line of cocaine at her Washington apartment while he was serving as Commerce Secretary. Hill also said Brown was considering a proposal from Vietnam to pay him a considerable amount of money - while he was Commerce Secretary to get U.S. trade restrictions lifted, but dropped the project after getting a tip that the FBI was investigating the matter. Hill said at least $60,000 was passed to Brown from two Democratic donors, Nora and Gene Lumm, who gave Brown's son Michael a senior job at their company, Dynamic Energy Resources. She said Brown also told her that the White House ordered his department to give a job to former DNC fund-raiser John Huang, who is at the heart of current congressional and Justice Department investigations into alleged campaign finance abuses.The White House also pushed Brown to make a 1994 trip to China, pressing officials there to approve a billion-dollar power plant project involving the Indonesian financial conglomerate Lippo Group, owned by the Riady family which has also been linked to the campaign fundraising scandal.- Fox/Reuters.

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The White House and State Department have ignored a CIA report that China helped Pakistan construct a factory to manufacture medium-range ballistic missiles, according to a Time magazine report. The magazine said U.S. intelligence services discovered the facility near Rawalpindi in late 1995 and concluded that China was not only selling missiles to Pakistan but also helping the Pakistanis build a factory to manufacture them. - (Reuter)

Los Angeles city officials are urging federal and county law enforcement agencies to consider prosecuting former Justice Department official Webster Hubbell in connection with his hiring as a lobbyist for the Los Angeles Airport Commission. City Controller Rick Tuttle released a report today accusing Hubbell of billing the city $24,750 for services he had not provided. The report says Airport Commisssion officials ``artificially manipulated'' Hubbell's fee to avoid public disclosure laws and keep his hiring secret. Tuttle says ``available evidence'' indicates that the airport's deputy director, Jerald Lee, back-dated his approval of Hubbell's invoices to make it look as though his approval came before it was publicly known that Hubbell would plead guilty to a felony.UPI

Investigators trying to determine whether President Clinton made telephone solicitations to Democratic donors from the White House have obtained one aide's handwritten notes that say the president raised a half million dollars by telephone, government officials say. "BC made 15 to 20 calls, raised 500K," White House aide David Strauss wrote in excerpts of 1994 notes described to The Associated Press. The notes also reference calls by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. In addition, the White House has turned over to Congress a handwritten notation from Clinton on a February 1996 memo from presidential aide Harold Ickes that forwarded the names of 10 major corporate donors the president could call, the officials said. In the notation, Clinton appears to note that two of the donors on the list had already made contributions, asks Ickes which of the others had not given and makes reference to a good time to call, the officials said. - (AP)

John Huang a central figure in the campaign fund-raising investigation expressed a particular interest in getting secret intelligence about China, according to testimony by the CIA officer who briefed Huang 37 times. In testimony released Friday in a lawsuit, CIA officer John Dickerson said he also sent back to CIA headquarters reports on the reaction of Huang and other Commerce Department officials to his briefings. The Justice Department and congressional investigators are reportedly probing whether Huang might have fed secret intelligence information to his Indonesia-based former employer, which has extensive business dealings with China. Huang has denied any wrongdoing. - (AP)

President Clinton's defenders are escalating their attacks on Whitewater counsel Kenneth Starr to lay the groundwork for undermining his credibility in case he brings indictments, Clinton insiders said yesterday....The reason why the Starr attack was so well-coordinated, a source said, was that the White House got wind of the story early, giving it three days to prepare its assault. But Abner Mikva, a former Clinton lawyer, denied he talked with the White House before he called on Starr to resign. But Abner Mikva, a former Clinton lawyer, denied he talked with the White House before he called on Starr to resign. - Daily News

If government agents break the law in pursuit of justice, are they committing a crime? Should they be prosecuted? In theory, yes! In practice, it seems, no... At least not in the Clinton/Reno Justice Department. Consider the international kidnapping of the suspect in the murder of CIA employees, for example, which the FBI committed in Pakistan....[C]onsider some ramifications. The "F" in the FBI stands for "Federal," meaning U.S. domestic law enforcement. What were the U.S. Federal agents doing in a foreign country? Did the Pakistani government invite them there? Furthermore, even in the U.S., the law enforcement officers are supposed to have a court order before barging through someone's doors. Did they have it? Did they have a Pakistani court order? Based on the angry reactions in Pakistan, which New York Times reported, it seems that the answers to all of the above questions is "no." - Bob Djurdjevic TRUTH IN MEDIA

In cinematic terms, it may well have been the prequel to the epic 1996 Democratic fund-raising debacle. Foreshadowing key elements of last year's campaign-finance controversy, then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown and a coterie of Asian American activists--individuals who now are central to federal investigations of foreign campaign contributions--traveled to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Hawaii in late 1991. Their itinerary included meetings orchestrated by the fund-raisers, and their plans called for assessing future prospects for raising money in Taiwan and Hong Kong, according to a review of previously undisclosed records. The 1991 trip, which has yet to draw the scrutiny of investigators, suggests that Brown, who later became President Clinton's Commerce secretary and died last year, may have played a significant role in laying the groundwork for the Democrats' foreign-linked fund-raising. Money funneled into the DNC from Asia is at the core of ongoing Justice Department and congressional probes. Los Angeles Times

A former Commerce Department employee says the Democratic Party sent him names of companies interested in going on an official U.S. trade mission and he included them on the list used to choose participants. In a deposition for a lawsuit, John Ost said he received a fax listing ``anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen names of companies'' from a Democratic National Committee employee and included them in a list of those seeking a slot on the 1994 trip to Russia. The deposition was taken as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group trying to document whether businesses won seats on Commerce trade missions in return for the donations to the Democratic Party. - (AP)

The Washington Times reported in Tuesday's editions that secret intelligence briefings which former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang received in his job at the Commerce Department included information that could have led to the death of a CIA informant. Rep. Gerald Solomon, the New York Republican who heads the U.S. House Rules Committee, which is investigating the 1996 campaign financing controversy, made the allegation in a letter to President Clinton, the paper said. He described the briefings given Huang, a former executive of the Indonesian financial conglomerate Lippo Group, as "extremely serious and dangerous," and asked Clinton to make White House officials who knew about the briefings available to congressional investors.- Nando.net

At last we may be getting a clearer map of the pipeline that carried tainted campaign money from Asian businesses to the Clinton re-election effort. The Democrats have conceded that the money was suspect, returning $2.2 million of the nearly $4 million raised by John Huang and Charlie Trie. In a significant story this week, Don Van Natta Jr. and Christopher Drew of The Times reported that investigators are looking at $470,000 in money transfers to Mr. Trie from an account in Macao. The money came in just as Mr. Trie was showing up at campaign offices with envelopes of money, some from donors who cannot now be found. - New York Times

Prompted by a conversation that a Maryland businessman would give $100,000 to the Democratic Party, President Clinton last year called the potential donor, officials disclosed Thursday. The White House says the call could have been made from the Oval Office. A White House memo states Clinton needed to make the call to "clinch" the donation from Robert Meyerhoff, of Cockeysville, Md., officials familiar with the campaign fund-raising investigation confirmed. The White House says it believes the president simply made the call to thank Meyerhoff for making a commitment to donate and does not recall asking for money. "The president recalls making the phone call to thank them for their support of the Democratic Party. He does not recall asking them for a contribution, " White House special counsel Lanny Davis said. Clinton's call was made in January 1996, officials said. Meyerhoff is listed in Federal Election Commission records as giving $100,000 to the Democratic Party the next month, and is listed as attending a state dinner at the White House six weeks later with his wife. - LAS VEGAS SUN (AP)

The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission sometimes adds personal travel to his official trips, often flying first-class and staying at luxury hotels, The Washington Post reported. Arthur Levitt uses upgrades paid for by the government that help reduce his own costs when he chooses more expensive accommodations than are allowed under federal rules, the newspaper said today, citing SEC travel documents...He also added eight personal trips to his vacation house in Santa Fe, N.M., to 22 official trips to the West Coast and Southwest, the newspaper said. It quoted subcommittee aides as saying that when Levitt came to the SEC after his appointment by President Clinton in 1993, he told the agency's executive director that he would always fly first class. Levitt, who had headed a Wall Street brokerage firm and the American Stock Exchange, declared assets of more than $21 million in 1995. (AP)

President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore volunteered "on their own" to place telephone calls seeking large donations from Democratic supporters in late 1995, according to an internal document obtained Thursday. The disclosure raises new questions about the president's stated inability to remember whether he made telephone fund-raising pitches from the White House on behalf of the Democratic National Committee at a time when the Clinton-Gore team needed millions of dollars for early television advertising. Clinton said in March that he could not recall soliciting people for money, but he did not rule out the possibility. White House officials insisted that the new document did not contradict his earlier statement....Federal law prohibits government officials from soliciting political funds on government property, and Clinton's chief lawyer in 1995 specifically warned White House employees against engaging in any fund-raising activities at the Executive Mansion.... A copy of the Nov. 24, 1995, message, addressed to Gore's scheduler, begins: "The POTUS and VP offered (ON THEIR OWN) to make f r calls for the DNC." - Los Angeles Times

A shadowy figure in the controversy over President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election fundraising practices regularly used business facilities of an Arkansas investment firm while employed as a senior Commerce Department official, informed sources said on Saturday. The activities of John Huang, whose fundraising efforts on behalf of Clinton and the Democratic Party during last year's campaign is already a matter of embarrassment for the president, will be a prime topic of Senate hearings on campaign financing abuses set to open on Tuesday. A secretary in the Washington office of the Little Rock- based Stevens Company named Paula Green is prepared to testify that Huang, who held a top-secret security clearance while on the government payroll, frequently visited the office to use the telephone and fax machine, the sources said...Before Huang joined the Clinton administration in late 1993 as a deputy assistant Secretary of Commerce, a position that gave him access to classified briefings on U.S. trade policy and strategy, he was the top U.S. representative of Lippo, which also has ties to the Stevens Company. - Fox/Reuters

The Clinton administration is about to be embarrassed by the result of an investigation into vetting procedures in the scandal-tainted commerce department. It has emerged that a senior official in the department who resigned a year ago was given his job despite having a criminal record. The official's offence has provoked guffaws: he was arrested for soliciting a prostitute with "his organ displayed". The official had stated he had had no brushes with the law. A check proved otherwise and the commerce department was warned. But he was appointed anyway: he was a protigi of Ron Brown, the former commerce secretary killed in a plane crash a year ago. - The Times of London

After Paula Jones's Supreme Court victory, the mainstream press has spun numerous tales about Starr's investigations, and Trooper's "recantations." But.... mainstream reporters have been reading from a White House script and have by no means told the truth. Ronnie Anderson has never gone on record with any allegation against the president and he and the other troopers did not work for Cliff Jackson when they told their stories to David Brock. In fact, Ronnie Anderson worked for Clinton operative Buddy Young. And none other that Bill Clinton himself offered a trooper a job in return for his silence. None of the other Troopers--those who went on record--have recanted anything. In fact, Betsy Wright has told presidential advisor David Gergen that, as far as she could tell, the troopers were telling the truth. - Washington Weekly

As Republicans prepare for tomorrow's Senate hearings by focusing their attention on infiltration of the Democratic Party by Chinese spies and the selling of military secrets for campaign donations, Democrats predictably do their best to obstruct the probe. Senate Democrats use three tactics: (1) Blocking the granting of immunity to low-level witnesses with knowledge of laundering of campaign contributions by the Chinese government. What are Democrats afraid that they are going to say? (2) Trying to divert the probe from illegal espionage towards legal fundraising and ordinary political influence--a separate issue. (3) Calling for the issuance of a barrage of subpoenas to every conservative foundation in the country, just because it is conservative. - Washington Weekly

Senate investigators have discovered records that indicate a real estate holding company run by John Huang while he was working for the Jakarta-based Lippo Group apparently was used to funnel money from Indonesia into U.S. election campaigns, according to sources close to the probe into campaign fund-raising activities. Financial documents obtained by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which begins televised hearings Tuesday into the campaign finance scandal, show that Hip Hing Holdings Ltd., part of the Lippo Group, received regular injections of foreign funds and gave about $79,000 in U.S. political contributions, the sources said. It is illegal under U.S. election law for noncitizens or nonlegal residents to contribute to campaigns, or for anyone to contribute in someone else's name. Any money donated by corporations must come from income generated in the United States. - Washington Post

President Clinton took a personal interest in the hiring of John Huang by the Democratic National Committee, going so far as to ask Marvin S. Rosen, the committee's finance chairman, in November 1995 whether Huang would be hired, congressional investigators say. In the two months leading up to that conversation, White House officials had strongly urged the Democratic committee to hire Huang so he could begin soliciting contributions from Asian-Americans. And on Nov. 8, 1995, at a fund-raising event here, Clinton asked Rosen about the status of Huang's hiring. The president told him that Huang had come "highly recommended," Rosen told Senate investigators last month. Rosen added that he had assured the president that Huang was under consideration. Five days later, Huang accepted a job as vice chairman of finance. - Newe York Times

Another summer, another dream-vacation freebie. For the third time, President Clinton is poised to enjoy a rent-free break at the Martha's Vineyard estate of Boston developer Richard L. Friedman, renewing questions about the propriety of a president's accepting a lavish gift from a businessman who is a friend and campaign contributor. Although the fear of violating a congressional gift ban has reduced the volume of free lunches in Washington so drastically that some restaurants have closed, Clinton and his aides have expressed no reservations about the president's accepting free lodging at what Friedman jokingly has described as ``Clinton's Cottage.'' - Boston Globe

The Democratic Party's former finance director testified Wednesday that two calls from President Clinton's deputy chief of staff prompted the party to hire controversial fund-raiser John Huang. In Madrid, where he was attending a NATO summit, President Clinton acknowledged that he, too, may have put in a word for Mr. Huang. Richard Sullivan, the opening witness of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearings, testified he had reservations about Mr. Huang's lack of professional fund-raising experience before going to work as the Democrats' chief fund-raiser in the Asian-American community. WSJ

Yogesh K. Gandhi, the head of a California foundation who claims to be the great-grandnephew of the late Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, contributed $325,000. But according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and documents released by GOP staff aides, a few days after Gandhi made the contribution, he received a total of $500,000 in two wire transfers from an account in a Japanese branch of a U.S. bank that was held by Yoshio Tanaka, a Japanese business associate of Gandhi. Republican committee aides said the two wire transfers of $250,000 each were clearly the source of the Gandhi contribution and that they did not know what happened to the remaining $175,000 that was not contributed.- Washington Post

A former consultant for Charlie Trie, a central figure in the campaign financing inquiries, alleged Thursday that he has been prevented from telling a federal grand jury all he knows. Dwight Linkous, who developed real estate in Little Rock and also served on the city's Board of Directors during the 1980s, held a news conference here to make public a letter he is sending to Attorney General Janet Reno. In the letter, Linkous said he testified before the federal grand jury investigating campaign finance irregularities in Washington, D.C., on July 2, but was prevented from fully answering questions.- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

John Huang, a key figure in alleged Democratic fund-raising abuses in the 1996 elections, funneled illegal foreign contributions to the Democrats as long ago as 1992, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday. "The paper trail dates back to Aug. 18, 1992, just a few weeks after Bill Clinton was first nominated for president," the weekly news magazine reported in its latest edition. Senate investigators have uncovered documents showing that on the day an obscure California real estate company called Hip Hing Holdings made a $50,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee, a similar amount was wired into the company's U.S. bank account from the Jakarta headquarters of the Lippo Group, Newsweek said. (Reuter)

The Commerce Department's chief intelligence official says he was never told that John Huang was to be "walled off" from China policy and he would have changed how he handled intelligence briefings for Mr. Huang had he received that information... Committee documents show that a former senior Commerce Department official, Jeffrey Garten, told Senate investigators that he made the directive. But it isn't clear what motivated him, and the official to whom Mr. Garten said he gave the order, Mr. Huang's superior, Charles Meissner, died in a plane crash last year. - Wall Street Journal

Fund-raiser John Huang asked his Indonesian employer to wire money to the United States for a contribution to the Democratic Party, documents introduced at a Senate hearing showed today. ``Please kindly wire'' money to the LippoBank in Los Angeles to the attention of Huang, the money- raiser asked in an Aug. 17, 1992 memo to the Lippo Group conglomerate in Jakarta. Among the items the money would be used for: ``DNC Victory--Contribution $50,000,'' the memo said. The memo was released by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee as the panel began its second week of hearings into campaign finance abuse. The committee is focusing this week on whether Huang raised contributions for the Democratic campaign of 1996 from overseas. The memo ``certainly looks like the movement of foreign money into an American campaign in 1992, '' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. - (AP)

Officials at the FBI told senators they do have counterintelligence information substantiating that Chinese government officials were able to influence the U.S. political process. The evidence is in the form of Justice Department telephone wiretaps. Chinese embassy officials were taped discussing strategy to funnel China's bank-roll through conduits to the 1996 Clinton-Gore Campaign to tip the election to William Jefferson Clinton. There is evidence that millions of dollars from red China were transferred to the Chinese Embassy in Washington for that explicit purpose. The red Chinese accomplished that avowed purpose. The red Chinese controlled the out come of the 1996 presidential election. The briefing was a devastating set-back to Democrats, who had requested the FBI briefing after a week-end of rancorous accusations by Democrats against governmental Affairs Committee chairman Fred Thompson(R). - The Daily Republican

Hours before congressional investigators showed up, Treasury officials hastily composed memos justifying $11 million in grants to banks owned by friends of the Clintons, congressional investigators said. The memos were undated, written in the present tense, and inserted into the files, apparently to make investigators think they had been written when the grants were made instead of after the fact, according to Republicans on the House Banking Committee investigating the matter. The Treasury Department said it considers the matter serious and is investigating. - (AP)

Controversial fund-raiser John Huang's former Commerce Department boss told senators today that he believed Huang was unqualified for the government job to which he was appointed and should never have been given intelligence on China. "He was totally unqualified in my judgment for the kind of Commerce Department we were establishing," former Undersecretary Jeffrey Garten testified, saying he wanted Huang solely to handle administrative duties and avoid policy matters. "I felt Mr. Huang did not have the requisite experience for policy matters," he added. The Senate hearings into campaign fund-raising abuses turned to how Huang got a high-level government appointment and a top-secret security clearance in 1994. Investigators have been tantalized by the access that Huang had to classified information, his links with the Indonesian-based Lippo Group and its substantial Chinese ties, and the circumstances in which he received the security clearance. Garten testified that he was upset that his advice that Huang be "walled off" from China issues was not heeded. "In my view he should not have been involved with China in any way at all," Garten said. - Los Angeles Times

A previously missing government form that should have  indicated whether John Huang was debriefed by a security officer before he left the Commerce Department two years ago turned up last Friday. But the place where the infamous Democratic fund-raiser was supposed to have signed is blank. Any government official with top-secret access--Huang, a deputy assistant secretary of commerce, included--must attest to the return of all classified information when debriefed as he leaves the government. But Huang's unsigned debriefing document underlines questions about what he did with government secrets. - ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

President Clinton says he doesn't remember just who he talked to about hiring John Huang as a fundraiser, but Senate investigators have learned that Clinton actually spoke with two or three aides about the matter on at least four different occasions. During two months in 1995, Clinton talked about Huang with presidential assistant Bruce Lindsey, Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes and Democratic National Committee Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen. The topic was the status of hiring Huang to raise money from Asian-Americans, according to depositions the aides gave Senate investigators. But just last week Clinton said he couldn't remember who he talked with, telling reporters, vaguely, ``I think I may have said to someone that he wanted to go to work for the DNC.'' - Scripps Howard News Service

Documents obtained by NBC NEWS show that during 1992, in the weeks after U.S.-based Lippo subsidiaries requisitioned $146,000 from their home office for
contributions to the Democratic Party, the companies and their executives gave at least $245,000 to the DNC, Democratic candidates and Democratic State committees. Much of the Lippo money  $85,000  was given within two days of the requisition, according to the records. The requisition specifically asks only for a $50,000 contribution to the DNC. Please kindly wire money to the LippoBank in Los Angeles to the attention of Huang, the  money-raiser asked in an Aug. 17, 1992, memo to the Lippo Group conglomerate in
Jakarta. Among the items the money would be used for: "DNC Victory-Contribution $50,000," the memo said. NBC News

The federal government is turning a blind eye to companies that are selling sophisticated technology to countries such as China and Russiatechnology that can be used to make advanced weapons. In some high-profile cases, high-grade equipment - sold by U.S.
firms to supposedly civilian end-users in potentially hostile countries- has wound up in military hands. And Congress wants to know how it happened. ''The evidence is now overwhelming that the Chinese are using American products to build the next generation of Chinese
weapons,'' said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based group that tracks the proliferation of nuclear weapons. ''And this is the
direct result of the administration's decision to roll back export controls.''Investors Business Daily

A glimpse at the background of Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie reveals that the Taiwanese immigrant worked at his Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, Ark., before opening a small consulting office in Beijing in late 1992 when his friend of 13 years, Bill Clinton, was elected president. But his resume became much grander after a major make-over by the Clinton administration's Office of the U.S. Trade Representative...[N]ewly available records obtained by The Times show that the White House went to extraordinary lengths to promote and place Trie, now a central figure in federal and congressional probes into allegations of espionage and illegal fund-raising, on the Presidential Commission on U.S. Trade and Investment Policy. To give Trie the position, according to e-mail messages, Clinton signed an executive order in January 1996, expanding the membership of the commission, which was already full. Then Trie was able to serve even though U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky refused to sign a required waiver discounting any problem with potential conflicts of interest, according to
government memos marked "highly confidential." LATimes

New information has just surfaced proving that there was a second wound on the neck of Vincent Foster. The report of Dr. Haut, the Medical Examiner who examined Vincent Foster where he was found at Fort Marcy Park has surfaced, and clearly indicates a trauma to the neck, a trauma which was concealed by the official autopsist, Dr. Beyer, and ignored by Robert Fiske and Kennerth Starr.  Scans of Dr. Haut's actual report are available for viewing and download at
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/~rivero/POLITICS /FOSTER_COVERUP/NECK/neck.html

A Senate committee has been  unable to determine whether China influenced U.S.  elections because the Justice Department and the  FBI hindered the campaign-finance probe, a Republican  panel member said Sunday. "There has been an obstruction of the free flow  of information from the intelligence community  to the committee and from the Department of Justice  investigators to the committee by people in the  Department of Justice," Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
 

 A member of the Senate committee probing campaign-finance abuse, Sen. Thad Cochran, says the panel is finding it hard to get answers because of an "obstruction of the free flow of information" from the intelligence community and the Justice Department. The Mississippi Republican made his comments on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday when he was asked about continued differences among Governmental Affairs Committee members as to whether the Chinese government used campaign contributions to influence both congressional races and the 1996 presidential election. He said the panel has been unable to get information it has

sought from Justice about possible illegal fund-raising by John Huang or calls he made to Asia when he was a Commerce Department official. "They would say: 'We can't answer that. We have our own criminal investigation under way,'" Mr. Cochran said. "And then from the intelligence community we've had Department of Justice officials changing the information from the FBI that was sent to the committee ... and that's created a lot of confusion." Washington Times

Having sanctimoniously assured New Yorkers that its cable system would serve all their viewing needs, Time Warner is now betraying local viewers by denying them live coverage of
the Senate hearings on campaign finance abuses. Whatever the business explanations for this lapse, Time Warner's conduct is an abdication of its journalistic and civic responsibilities. In denying a spot in its cable system to the Fox News Channel last year, Time Warner asserted that it was fulfilling its obligation to cover the news by distributing CNN, which it owns, and MSNBC. But CNN and MSNBC have given short shrift to the hearings in the very neighborhoods where top Time Warner executives live themselves. Only the Fox channel has provided running, live coverage, and most New Yorkers cannot watch it. A.M. ROSENTHAL New York Times

With hearings on political fund-raising abuses shifting to the Republicans, the  Senate's chief GOP prober said Tuesday he had lost confidence in the Justice Department's investigation
of the 1996 campaign. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., voiced anger that senior Justice Department officials refused to specify why they opposed granting partial immunity to allow four Buddhist nuns to testify about a fund-raiser attended by Vice President Al Gore.
Thompson, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, charged that the Justice Department's handling of congressional immunity is fraught with conflicts of interest because the testimony deals with alleged Democratic wrongdoing. Thompson also complained that the department was slow in reviewing the panel's immunity requests.(AP)

Two members of Bill Clinton's "$100,000 Club," who spoke to TAS  on condition of anonymity, shed additional light on donor goals  for giving: they wanted "image and connection," rather than hard favors.One donor is a partner in a medium-size law firm, who needed to show his foreign clients, who assumed such connections could be bought, that he had a direct line to the White House. "I knew  when Al Gore or [campaign manager] Peter Knight invited me for some event, they would always ask me for money," the donor said. In mid-1995 this lawyer attended one of the White House coffees and contributed $50,000 two weeks later. In his case, the money pitch was not made at the coffee -- but at a dinner at the vice president's residence the night before. "Peter Knight asked me to come to the vice president's dinner, promising it would be a very small affair. But it turned out the place was full of people. At the cocktail party before we sat down to dinner, both Al and Tipper came up to me and said, 'Thank-you for your support.' That was when I made the commitment to write the $50,000 check," the donor said. "It was very clear that the vice president was asking me for money. After all, that's why I was invited to the dinner, and why I wrote the check," the donor said. Soliciting campaign contributions on U.S. government property is a federal crime.
The American Spectator

  President Clinton personally requested a list of potential contributors whom he offered to call to try to raise $1 million for the Democratic National Committee early last year, according to a White House memorandum recently turned over to congressional investigators. Several days after making that request, Clinton was presented with a list of donors that the Democratic committee thought would be especially receptive to an appeal "from you," the memorandum said. And in the weeks after Clinton had asked to call the donors, five people on the president's list gave $50,000 and $100,000 checks to the Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission records. For example, on Nov. 27, 1995, Clinton was asked to call August Busch IV, the vice president of Anheuser-Busch, to ask for a $100,000 contribution, according to a Democratic finance call sheet given to the president. Two weeks later,  Anheuser-Busch contributed $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records. NYT

Last summer President Clinton and Teamsters President Ron Carey found themselves in the same boat: battling for second terms. To meet their pressing money needs, documents show that top Democratic fund-raisers and members of the Carey team may have cooperated to keep their campaigns flush. Documents show a top DNC official directing the distribution of nearly $1 million in Teamster political action committee contributions to DNC affiliates nationwide. In return, according to a note written by a political consultant, the DNC allegedly made an unspecified "commitment" to help the Teamsters. According to one person involved, that commitment was to help find DNC donors to contribute money to Mr. Carey's campaign. Such a plan could be an illegal misuse of Teamster PAC funds to benefit Mr. Carey's personal campaign for Teamsters president. Mr. Carey acts as a trustee of the Teamster PAC. It also could pose a public-relations problem for the beleaguered DNC if it acted as the middle man. -WSJ

Administration environmentalists, egged on by allies such as actor Robert Redford, operated secretly for nearly six months on a plan for a 1.7-million-acre national monument in Utah,  according to internal documents.  The documents show administration officials also misled Congress and reporters about the proposal in order to deflect opposition to its election-year initiative. The papers, provided to the House Resources Committee, reveal   that the administration as late as Sept. 13, 1996, told Congress and reporters that the president was not close to creating Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, which he did with much fanfare five days later.In addition, the documents --shown to The Washington Times --suggest that the decision was made as much for personal political reasons as for environmental or recreational reasons during a re-election season in which environmentalists were criticizing Mr.Clinton. - Washington Times
 

Thanks to wire queen Helen Thomas at UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, this morning we learn that President Clinton has been using a hot tub at the White House. "A spokesman is confirming [Friday] President Clinton is using an $8,100 hot tub from a California firm given to him through the National Park Service. The gift hot tub is near the outdoor swimming pool on the White House grounds," she rushes... Drudge Report

Senate investigators have found $30,000 in additional suspect contributions to the Democratic National Committee linked to the Lippo Group of Indonesia. A 22-year-old college student related by marriage to Lippo Group scion James Riady made the contributions in February 1996, according to records obtained by investigators, four months after receiving a $200,000 wire transfer from Indonesia via California-based Lippo Bank, which is affiliated with Lippo Group...Senate investigators have obtained a $10,000 personal check that the student, Jane Dewi Tahir, wrote to Democratic fund-raiser John Huang on the same day that she wrote three $10,000 checks to the DNC. A copy of the canceled check indicates that the funds were deposited into an account at Lippo Bank, where Mr. Huang once worked. The investigators don't know why Ms. Tahir would be giving such a large sum to Mr. Huang. Ms. Tahir, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, is the daughter of an Indonesian businessman who is married to one of James Riady's sisters..WALL STREET JOURNAL

Then-presidential chief of staff Mack McLarty approved a 1994 meeting that brought several Chinese businessmen working on a project with the controversial Lippo Group inside the White House, documents show. The meeting was sought by Arkansan C. Joseph Giroir,
a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was also supposed to involve fund-raiser John Huang, according to the White House documents obtained by The Associated Press. Then-White House aide Mark Middleton hosted the Chinese businessmen and a Lippo executive on the afternoon on April 22, 1994. Huang, a Lippo employee, and his wife met with Middleton earlier in the day at the White House, according to Middleton's calendars. The Huangs made $20,000 in donations to the Democratic Party the month before the meeting, and another $5,000 contribution a week after it, federal election records show. Huang later joined the Commerce Department and, at Giroir's urging, became a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee, He is now the central figure in the current campaign money investigation. The disclosure marks the first time a meeting is known to have been held inside the White House related to a proposed $1 billion China power plant project, now-dormant, spearheaded by the Indonesian-based Lippo Group and Giroir. (AP)

Contradicting accounts by the Clinton administration, one of the Democratic Party's biggest campaign donors says he gave a $50,000 check to the first lady's chief of staff on White House grounds in 1995 in direct response to solicitations by aides of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Southern California entrepreneur Johnny Chung said he was seeking VIP treatment for a delegation of visiting Chinese businessmen when he was asked to help the first lady defray the cost of White House Christmas receptions billed to the Democratic National Committee. Chung, who has refused to cooperate with investigators unless granted immunity from prosecution, said in interviews that he realized such special treatment hinged on his willingness to make a political contribution."I see the White House is like a subway--you have to put in coins to open the gates," Chung said in his first public comments on the controversial episode. - LA Times

Monday, July 28, 1997

Kathleen Willey is looking for a lawyer; According to multiple sources in and out of government who have knowledge of the story, this former low-level White House staffer personally approached President Clinton a few years ago looking for more work and additional responsibilities, feeling underutilized in the Office of the Social Secretary. The DRUDGE REPORT first noted on July 4 that NEWSWEEK ace investigative reporter Michael Isikoff was hot on the trail of a woman who claims to have been sexually propositioned by the President on federal property.  "...Then he fondled me," she is known to have told Isikoff, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned from several sources.

The proposal, marked "privileged and confidential," was a model of bluntness. Entitled "Background Research: Senator Don Nickles," the May 16, 1997, document, obtained by NEWSWEEK, outlined an extensive plan to scour the Oklahoma Republican's life for embarrassing or incriminating details: searching courthouses for "civil, criminal, divorce and bankruptcy litigation"; hunting for "fictitious name filings"; reviewing his and his wife's "personal business activities." The goal was to show that Nickles was "linked to the oil industry." The memo's author: Terry Lenzner, a former Watergate counsel who now runs a private investigative firm with close ties to the White House. The Democratic National Committee is one of his top clients.

Less than a week after receiving money wired from the Bank of China, fund-raiser Yah Lin ``Charlie'' Trie reimbursed two associates the same day they donated to the Democratic Party, Senate documents show. The transaction last year tied to a fund-raiser hosted by President Clinton is one of several that investigators intend to introduce this week as Senate hearings into fund-raising abuses turn to the activities of Trie, an Arkansas businessman and presidential friend. In all, investigators have evidence that Trie received nearly $1 million wired from Asia from his overseas business partner, Ng Lap Seng, during the period he was raising money for the Democratic Party and Clinton's legal defense fund.- (AP)

Senate investigators said Democratic fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie's efforts to deliver $640,000 in suspect donations to President Clinton's legal-defense fund coincided with letters between him and the White House on Sino-U.S. relations. - WALL STREET JOURNAL

FBI agent, Jerome Campaign, testified today that Charlie Trie and his associates knowingly "laundered" money into the DNC. Further, he noted that one source of money had sufficient funds to cover the check written to the DNC but still took the money from China to replace donation funds."Would that be considered money laundering?" asked Senator Smith (R-NH). "That would be considered a slam dunk, Senator," replied Campaign.

Newly unearthed documents show that Ms. Kathleen Willey did work at the White House, contrary to an official's off-the-cuff claim late on Monday that she did not. According to multiple sources in and out of government who have knowledge of the story, this former low-level staffer personally approached President Clinton looking for more work and additional responsibilities, feeling underutilized in the Office of the Social Secretary. It has been learned that Willey also worked in the Office of White House Counsel. The President made sexual overtones towards her as she made her request, according to intelligence familiar with her conversations with a reporter. - Drudge Report

As for the on-again, off-again investigation of Ms. Williams by the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that prosecutes Hatch Act violations, here is some news that will let Ms. Williams
sleep well at night: Janet Reno's Justice Department has told the Office of Special Counsel to put its investigation into Ms. Williams on hold, in deference to the attorney general's own so-called investigation into campaign fund raising. That sounds like Miss Reno's way of saying bon voyage and bon appetit. - WASHINGTON TIMES

Smith Barney Inc. will pay a $1 million civil penalty because of the purchase of a 1994 Super Bowl ticket for former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. (ARKANSAS DEMCRAT-GAZETTE)

An investigator hired to trace questionable donations to President Clinton's legal defense trust fund told the Senate he was ordered by trustees not to interview the person who delivered the money, committee aides say. Terry F. Lenzner, chairman of a private investigative company, was scheduled to testify today at Senate campaign fund-raising hearings about his 1996 investigation that led to the return of $640,000 in defense-fund contributions delivered by Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie. Lenzner told Senate investigators that he was directed by trust officials not to interview Trie, said committee aides, speaking Tuesday on condition of anonymity. - (AP)

The White House disclosed Wednesday that an Asian tycoon who gave the Democratic Party hundreds of thousands of laundered dollars visited the White House at least 10 times from 1994 to 1996. The timing of the revelation, coming a day after the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee heard testimony centering on the role of Ng Lap Sing in campaign fund-raising scandals, provoked an angry response from the committee's Republican chairman, Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson. It prompted Thompson to suspend his policy of cooperating with the White House to gain access to information. He declared he would issue a blanket subpoena Thursday for all relevant White House material.- Reuter
 

Working with fund-raiser Yah Lin ``Charlie'' Trie, a Buddhist sect raised money for President Clinton's legal defense fund at an event where one member brought some $70,000 in blank money orders, Senate investigators have learned. - (AP)
 

International diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman, a generous contributor to the Democratic Party, has won unusual support from high Clinton administration officials for a business proposal that could position him as a key marketer of billions of dollars of Angolan diamonds, interviews and classified government cables  show. A frequent White House visitor, Tempelsman last year won help from a senior State Department official and then-national security adviser Anthony Lake for his Angola plan. And despite a prohibition on lending in Angola by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the records and interviews show, National Security Council and State Department officials discussed such financing for mining equipment to be purchased in connection with the Tempelsman proposal.- Washington Post

Welcome to Filegate II. It's back with the same principal player-- the White House. News alert! has learned that the Office of the Inspector General in the Social Security Administration, or SSA, is investigating allegations that a White house employee used political clout to obtain the confidential tax records of a private citizen who had filed a fraud complaint against the staffer. The IG probe, which likely will prompt congressmen once again to question whether the White House is in the habit of exploiting the IRS for political or personal purposes, started out as an investigation into the employee and the care that the individual had committed possible supplemental Social Security income fraud. But now the IG also is looking into how the alleged fraudster discovered he was under scrutiny and whether he set the IRS on the complainant, triggering a punitive tax audit... Last October, the IRS began an audit on the complainant. Sources familiar with the probe say that few days after the audit began the White House employee mocked the complainant. "When the IRS is through with you, you are going to lose your house," the staffer apparently jeered. . - Insight Magazine


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