Washington Times
Self-inflicted GOP wounds
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
Published 7/18/00
What on Earth was he thinking? This is the question prompted
by House Speaker Dennis Hastert's selection, announced last week,
of a new national security adviser: Nancy P. Dorn, a woman who
had parlayed her stints as an official in the Reagan and Bush
administrations into a lucrative business as a registered foreign
agent.
Not just any foreign agent. One of her troubling clients
was, in the words of Insight magazine, which broke the story, "a
division of a Communist Chinese company linked to Beijing's
military intelligence."
Specifically, Mrs. Dorn lobbied for Hutchison Port Holdings
(HPH), a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. which is, in turn,
owned by Li Ka-shing - a Hong Kong-based billionaire who
reportedly enjoys an extemely close relationship to the
leadership in Beijing and its security services.
HPH created a stir in this country when it became known last
year that Mr. Li's subsidiary had secured under suspicious
circumstances (including allegations of corrupt dealings)
long-term leases for ports at both ends of the Panama Canal.
Concern about this ominous strategic development was intensified
because it came on the heels of a string of other problems
arising from China's operations in this hemisphere. A short
sampler of these includes:
. Chinese intelligence agents were found to have made
illegal payments to the Clinton-Gore campaigns and secured
private meetings with the president in the White House and
elsewhere.
. John Huang - an individual who had his own ties to
Beijing, thanks in part to his dealings there on behalf of his
Indonesian employers, the Riadys - was given an appointment as a
deputy assistant secretary in the Clinton Commerce Department. In
that capacity, he exploited his access to secret information that
might have been of interest to the People's Republic of China and
frequently thereafter made suspicious use of a private fax
machine provided by the Riadys.
. The Cox Committee determined that Chinese intelligence had
successfully penetrated America's nuclear weapons complex, making
off with invaluable information, including blueprints for the
nation's most modern warheads.
. Samuel "Sandy" Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security
adviser and himself a former trade lobbyist for China, had a hand
in securing an appointment to the super-sensitive President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) for former Rep. Jane
Harman, California Democrat. Prior to serving in Congress,
including on the House Intelligence Committee, Mrs. Harman also
worked as a registered foreign agent for a Chinese client.
. President Clinton personally intervened on no fewer than
four separate occasions to try to secure the use of a former U.S.
Navy base in Long Beach for the Chinese merchant marine, COSCO -
a company on whose board Li Ka-shing sits and that is believed to
have been used by PRC operatives to bring hundreds of AK-47s,
illegal aliens, drugs and other contraband into this country.
. During a state visit to China, Mr. Clinton embraced the
communist line on Taiwan and affronted America's regional allies
by refusing to visit any of them enroute to or from the PRC.
Against this backdrop, the prospect that China was about to
secure effective control over the strategic "path between the
seas" in Panama was the last straw for many Americans. Their
concerns were only exacerbated by President Clinton's Freudian
pronouncement on Nov. 30, 1999, that: "I think the Chinese will
in fact be bending over backwards to make sure that they run it
[the Panama Canal] in a competent and able and fair manner. . . .
I would be very surprised if any adverse consequences flowed from
the Chinese running the Canal." Republicans in particular were
appalled.
So who did Li Ka-shing turn to in order to head off GOP
efforts to reopen the bidding on the Panamanian ports in question
and to limit other political fall-out - especially efforts that
might have interfered with the plans he and his friends in
Beijing had to expand Hutchison/ China's presence in the Bahamas
and elsewhere in the hemisphere? Lobbyist Nancy Dorn.
It turns out Mrs. Dorn was also the "go-to" woman for one of
China's leading clients, the military junta that seized power in
Pakistan last year. Presumably, her assignment was to keep
Republicans from making too much of a ruckus about the
Clinton-Gore administration's systematic failure to fulfill legal
obligations to sanction both countries over their cooperation in
the proliferation of nuclear weapons and long-range missile
technology. Whether thanks to her or others, that objective was
largely achieved.
Perhaps Mrs. Dorn deserves credit as well for the lack of
protests from the Republican congressional leadership earlier
this year when Pakistan was curiously left off the State
Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Political
considerations (namely, payback for contributions from
Pakistani-Americans to Hillary Clinton's campaign) seem to have
been the driving force behind this decision - a prime example of
the worrying politicization of that list decried by the recent,
congressionally chartered commission that examined shortcomings
in U.S. policy and capabilities for dealing with the terrorist
threat.
The question recurs: Why would Speaker Hastert appoint this
individual, of all people, as his national security adviser, one
of the few statutorily mandated, highly paid and exceedingly
sensitive senior staff jobs on Capitol Hill? Why would he want at
his right hand a person whose responsibility had, until last
week, been to neutralize Republican opposition to behavior
inimical to U.S. interests in which China and Pakistan are
engaged - and to which the Clinton-Gore administration has
largely turned a blind eye? Why hire someone who would compromise
the GOP's ability legitimately to assail not only these policies
but the troubling roles played by the likes of Mr. Berger, Mr.
Huang and Mrs. Harman?
According to Insight magazine, Mr. Hastert has a simple
answer: He has told colleagues that he thought she was a "
'stay-at-home mom' with solid foreign policy and defense
credentials from the Reagan and Bush administrations." Now that
he knows better, he must return her forthwith to private life.
In a way, an even more interesting question would be why
Mrs. Dorn saw fit to take a significant pay cut to assume a
position that may cease to be Mr. Hastert's to fill half a year
from now? The troubling answer may be that she hoped, by
laundering her credentials in this way, to make herself eligible
for a senior position in a future Bush administration - one that
her incarnation as a paid agent of Li Ka-shing and Pakistan
should have precluded. That prospect too should be foreclosed by
prompt action to terminate her tenure as the speaker's national
security adviser.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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