http://www.netmagic.net/~franklin/MT18.html The ChinaGATE 1 Scandal of 1998 April 4th to December 31st, 1998 The ChinaGATE 1 "Scandal" -- the allegations that the Clinton Administration allowed U.S. missile secrets to leak to the Chinese -- is a classical Whitewater Smear. It begins with a series of allegations and accusations that first appear in the New York Times and which are usually written by reporter Jeff Gerth. It then continues with other articles in the Mainstream Media which repeat the same allegations and accusations, which by now are being mentioned daily by Republican politicians and pundits. After a month or so of this, a few articles will appear in the Mainstream Media which attempt to set the record straight, but these are usually ignored by a partisan Mainstream Media intent on reporting innuendo and shrill claims. As you will read below, the ChinaGATE 1 "Scandal" was actually an outgrowth of a partisan Republican effort to "tar" the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party with the accusation that the Chinese government was attempting to buy influence with that Administration and that political party. Although you would be hard pressed to find this information in many of the news articles cited below, the decision to launch U.S. satellites on Chinese space launchers was made by the Reagan Administration following the Challenger tragedy. This policy initiative was continued in the Bush Administration and then into the Clinton Administration. As you will also read below, the transfer of the authority over the satellites from the State Department to the Commerce Department was originally an initiative of the Bush Administration which did not take effect until the Clinton Administration. Much of this factual information was not in the original ChinaGATE 2 posting to these web pages because of my ignorance. I did not know of an important National Security Council report and of four news articles which had been made part of the Minority Views in House Report 105-582 of June 16, 1998. until a fellow researcher, Tom Sawyer, found them and brought them to my attention. The full text of the four articles and the National Security Council Report can be found on pages 22 to 38 of the text or PDF version of House Report 105-582 which you can reach via: http://thomas.loc.gov/ <snip> Media Coverage of Political Implications: Almost None Much of the political history of the exports authorized by President Bush is also unknown because of the lack of media coverage. No one in the media has attempted to determine the political contributions of Hughes, GE, or Lockheed Martin, or the employees of these corporations to the Republican Party or to Republican candidates during the Reagan or Bush administrations. The only press coverage of ChinaGATE 1 during the Bush Administration evidently appeared in a SINGLE Washington Post article on the Bush "Scandals" by Michael Isikoff on July 4, 1992 during the 1992 presidential campaign. This article described, in passing, son Neil Bush's role in the looting of the Silverado S&L in Colorado, the awarding of an exclusive offshore oil drilling contract by the government of Bahrain to an inexperienced Dallas firm whose board of directors included son George W. Bush, and brother Jonathon Bush's difficulties with Massachusetts regulators because he was selling stocks in the state without registering there as a stockbroker. Somehow, reporter Isikoff missed the SINGLE Washington Post story on the FORGIVENESS of a $4.6 million dollar loan from FEDERALLY-INSURED S&L to Jeb Bush in 1990, or the alleged interference of the President himself in the 1984 investigation of a Florida S&L that failed in July 1985 with bailout costs of $680 million dollars to the American taxpayer. But the Bush family was also active in China and Japan during this time. According to Isikoff: The president's older brother, Prescott Bush Jr., 69, an international business consultant who lives in Greenwich, Conn., repeatedly has been accused of capitalizing on his brother's position -- and indirectly benefiting from his policies -- in search of business opportunties in China. In February 1989, 10 days before recently inaugurated President Bush was due to visit China and other Asian countries, Prescott Bush flew to Beijing on his own Far East tour. He already was a partner in an $18 million joint venture with a Japanese firm called the Aoki Corp. to build a country club outside of Shanghai for foreign business executives. During the February 1989 trip, Prescott Bush also was serving on the senior advisory board to a New York firm, Asset Management International Financing and Settlement Ltd., which paid him $250,000 a year as a consultant. An internal Asset Management document shows that during the trip, Prescott Bush and another Asset Management official met with top Chinese economic officials and discussed a broad array of new business ventures -- including plans to set up an international satellite communications network linking Chinese businesses and universities. Top Chinese officials "figured right away that this is the number one man's older brother and you better be nice to him," said one former U.S. diplomat in China who was in the country during the Prescott Bush trip. "I thought Prescott got very good entree, to say the least." For most U.S. business executives, plans to invest in China came to a halt with the June 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But that September, Prescott Bush returned to China, promoting the satellite communications network and other Asset Management projects that included a wood-processing venture. "There's no conflict of interest," he told the Wall Street Journal at the time, but conceded: "It doesn't hurt that my brother is the president of the United States." Later that year, President Bush granted a national security waiver permitting the sale of two Hughes Aircraft Co. satellites to China to be launched on that country's Long March rockets -- one step in the administration's efforts to maintain friendly relations with the Chinese despite the anti-democratic crackdown. At the time, Asset Management officials told the Los Angeles Times that launching of the satellites would be "advantageous" for the communications network project. Company documents indicate that the satellite network plan has not materialized and there is no evidence that Prescott Bush ever discussed his private business affairs with anybody in the administration. In addition, administration officials point out that the president was sensitive enough to the issue that he told Secretary of State James A. Baker III to send a cable to all U.S. embassies directing them to avoid giving "any appearance of preferential treatment" to any business investments involving his brother or any other members of his family doing business overseas. Prescott Bush's ties to Asset Management resurfaced last year when it was disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission documents that he had been paid $500,000 in fees for helping arrange an investment in the firm by West Tsusho Inc., a Tokyo investment firm that since has been been identified by Japanese police as a front company for one of the country's largest yakuzu, or organized crime, syndicates. Prescott Bush, who has not returned recent phone calls to his home in Greenwich, had met with West Tsusho officials during his initial 1989 trip to Japan and later invited them to invest in yet another U.S. firm, Quantum Access, a computer software company headed by one of his nephews, Draper Kauffman. In a recent telephone interview, Kauffman said that West Tsusho associates ultimately seized control of his company. "They came in, fired the management, put in their own people, and ruined the company," said Kauffman, who added that both he and his uncle were "victims" of the Japanese. Asset Management since has been liquidated by a bankruptcy court. Last month, lawyers for West Tsusho Inc. filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against Prescott Bush, charging that he reneged on a deal to protect the firm's investment. In a counter-suit, Prescott Bush asked for $8 million and charged that he had been unaware when he helped set up the deal that West Tsusho was "not a legitimate business company, but rather a front" for people "engaged in nefarious criminal activities in Japan and the United States." Summary: The launches of the nine Bush-authorized satellites and the waiver for a tenth satellite later reaffirmed by Clinton are as follows: (1) April 7, 1990 - Hughes Asiasat 1 satellite was launched into a geostationary orbit using a LM3 space launcher. (2) July 16, 1990 -Hughes Badr A communications satellite for Pakistan into low orbit using an LM2 launcher. The launch failed. (3) August 13, 1992 - the Hughes Optus B1/LM2E (geostationary for Australia) (4) December 21, 1992 - the Hughes Optus B2/LM2E (failed) geostationary satellite for Australia. (5) July 21, 1994 - the Hughes Apstar 1/LM3 (geostationary for China) (6) August 27, 1994 - the Hughes Optus B3/LM2E (geostationary for Australia) (7) January 26, 1995 - the launch (failed) of (7) the Hughes Apstar 2/LM2E geostationary communications satellite - Chinese domestic communications. The Hughes Apstar 2 exploded shortly after launch, killing six people. (8) November 28, 1995 - the GE Asiasat 2/LM2E (9) December 28, 1995 - the Lockheed Martin Echostar 1/LM2E on 28 December 1995. (10) February 14, 1996 - the Loral Intelsat 708 /LM3B geostationary satellite for international communications. (The waiver to authorize this launch had been signed by President Bush in 1992.) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Monday, April 17, 2000 11:35 AM Subject: [CIA-DRUGS] A Philippine/Bush Tidbit >An excerpt from: >George Bush >Fitzhugh Green�1989 >All rights reserved. >Hippocrene Books, Inc. >171 Madison Avenue >New Yor, NY 10016 >ISBN 0-87052-783-5 >270 pages -- First/only edition -- Out-of-print >----- >Anbody know anything Kaufmann? > >Prescott, Goerge's older brother was working for PanAm and married Elizabeth >Kauffman, a "childhood family friend," two weeks before George and Barbara >married. > >Om >K >---- > >Then grandchildren began to appear to the extraordinary Prescott and Dorothy >Bush. It was impressed on me how highly they were respected one stormy night >in Manila at the end of World War II. I was aide to the Philippine Sea >Frontier Commander Vice Admiral James L. Kauffman. We were expecting a >typhoon. The admiral frowned as he entered our quarters at six Pm., stomping >his feet dry. Rain already pelted the windows. I foresaw a hectic evening of >meteorological bulletins�a disagreeable prospect. > >Minutes later, the base messenger arrived with a radiogram marked "personal" >for the admiral. The old sea dog read it. Abruptly the climate changed in his >study where we were eyeballing maps of the Philippine archipelago. He broke >into a grin that could have stopped a typhoon in its tracks. "Tell the >steward to bring drinks, " he ordered. Minutes later he raised an icy martini >to "Prescott S. Bush, the third, my grandson!" > >Pps.51-52 >----- >Aloha, He'Ping, >Om, Shalom, Salaam. >Em Hotep, Peace Be, >All My Relations. >Omnia Bona Bonis, >Adieu, Adios, Aloha. >Amen. >Roads End > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ High rates giving you headaches? 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