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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Clinton Puts Foreign Policy Up For Sale

William Safire New York Times

Whose money is buying those anti-Bob Dole TV commercials saturating the airwaves, and what are their secret sponsors getting for their investment?

Thanks to the reporting enterprise of The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal (whatever became of The Washington Post and “60 Minutes”?) we have learned that a good chunk of President Clinton’s campaign money has come from “the Asian connection” - millions from Indonesia’s Riady family, from its $6 billion Lippo banking interests in California and Hong Kong and from the Asian money-raising prowess of its hired hand, John Huang.

Huang, who involved Clinton personally in prying an illegal $250,000 donation out of a South Korean company, also helped steer $425,000 to buy those TV commercials through a gardener and his wife. That resident alien couple, related to a Lippo bank partner, went home to Indonesia and then sent over $295,000 of its contribution.

That’s an election crime no matter what Vice President Al Gore says.

But set that aside for future prosecutors. Focus instead on simple sleaze: It is wrong for Bill Clinton to solicit money from a powerful family in cahoots with a foreign dictator to affect the American election.

Focus, too, on the obstruction of justice in the Whitewater scandal: Between the time Clinton confidant Webster Hubbell was forced to leave the Justice Department and go to jail, a Lippo retainer gave him the comfort to remain hushed.

What has the Riady family been getting for its campaign money investment?

Plenty - Clinton’s “Asian connection” helped turn around U.S. policy on human rights.

Fact: In 1992, President Bush launched a formal review of whether Indonesia, with its military thugs terrorizing labor organizers, was failing to live up to “international labor standards” and should be denied duty-free access to U.S. markets.

Fact: Clinton’s former campaign manager, Mickey Kantor, when he became U.S. trade representative, resolutely kept that review from being terminated throughout 1993.

At the same time, Hubbell, James Riady and Little Rock, Ark., lawyer Mark Grobmyer worked over President Clinton to forget about the support candidate Clinton had promised the people of East Timor, targets of bloody repression by Indonesia.

Fact: On Feb. 16, 1994, Kantor suddenly changed - he rejects the word “reversed” - policy by declaring the Indonesia review ended.

That $40-million-a-year gift to Indonesian exporters and bankers reduced our human rights leverage in East Timor.

It also presaged Clinton’s flip-flop three months later that removed all trade pressure on China to encourage democracy.

Granted, other policy arguments by hungry U.S. executives and eager advocates of engagement carried weight. But heavy money and top-level persuasion provide the basis to believe that U.S. foreign policy was influenced improperly by the back-channel dealings of Clinton’s “Asian connection.”

Now to John Huang, fondly called “aggressive” by Clinton.

For two years, this richly severanced Lippo operative held the sensitive post of deputy assistant secretary of commerce for international economic affairs. That job requires a “top secret” clearance, sometimes one for special compartmented intelligence.

Thus, Huang was privy to U.S. trade bargaining positions, internal reviews of policies toward Indonesian and Chinese interests and even electronic and satellite intelligence from the National Security Agency.

Surely, the FBI conducted a full field investigation of Huang before he was granted top-security clearance. Overseers should ask: Did the summary reveal to Craig Livingstone, former director of the White House Office of Personnel Security, the background to Lippo’s agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) to cease and desist from violating laws on money laundering?

Coverage of Clinton’s “Asian connection” scandal cannot be dismissed as being driven by a partisan Congress or a procrastinating prosecutor or an opposition candidate.

For a change, the story is being ferreted out by reporters and editorialists.

Some are uncomfortable about the sleaze they are uncovering but want to be on firm ground when asked later: “Where were you when American foreign economic policy was put up for sale?”

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