WASHINGTON-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) last week said a select committee, patterned after the 1973 Watergate panel, will be formed to investigate alleged satellite technology transfers from U.S. wireless companies to Communist China that may be linked to Clinton-Gore campaign contributions and nuclear proliferation in Asia.
The technology transfer issue has taken on added urgency in light of India’s nuclear tests earlier this month and new allegations that a Chinese executive of a government-owned aerospace firm funneled $300,000 into Democratic campaign coffers in 1996.
Indeed, there were signs late last week the explosive issue could turn into a high-profile confrontation between the GOP-led Congress and the Clinton administration, one that could complicate the president’s trip next month to Beijing and consume his presidency up to and beyond this fall’s midterm elections.
“This has nothing to do with campaign finance. This has to do with national security,” Gingrich told reporters after meeting with House GOP leaders early last week. “This is a profoundly deeper question than any other question that has arisen with this administration.”
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) will create a task force in the Senate to investigate the China-satellite issue.
So frustrated are GOP lawmakers over White House stonewalling on initial inquiries from House National Security Committee Chairman Floyd Spence (R-S.C.), House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), Gingrich and Lott that they now are considering subpoenaing White House records on satellite export waivers.
There were signs late last week the White House might be rethinking its position on whether to give Republicans the documents they seek.
The Washington Post reported that senior Justice Department officials rejected an FBI recommendation that a special prosecutor be appointed to take over the China satellite case.
Attorney General Janet Reno, despite snaring independent counsels for other cases involving Clinton administration officials, has steadfastly refused entreaties by FBI Director Louis Freeh and GOP leaders to appoint an independent counsel to address the one issue-campaign fund raising-that is common to many of the White House controversies.
House Republicans and Democrats, in a rare show of unity, declared 417-4 last Wednesday that Clinton’s satellite export waiver policy is not in the best interest of the United States.
In a separate 364-54 vote, the House moved to cease future satellite exports to China. That could cost U.S. satellite firms millions of dollars and undermine their competitiveness in the emerging global satellite market.
Some GOP lawmakers-questioning whether India’s nuclear tests were prompted by fears of improved Chinese military capability that U.S. wireless firms may have contributed to-have urged Clinton to postpone his trip to China in late June. But Clinton is scheduled to go as planned.
The White House, despite Beijing’s poor record on human rights and religious freedom and its arm sales to rogue states, is anxious to engage the world’s most populous country for economic and strategic geopolitical reasons.
China, among other things, is the largest potential export market in the world for U.S.-made wireless products and services.
Given the circumstances, debates on renewing China’s most-favored-nation trade status and allowing China into the World Trade Organization are expected to be as contentious as ever this year.
Some top Democrats, who in the past defended the president in the campaign finance, Whitewater and sex scandals, are calling for a full accounting of technology transfer questions.
Though Gingrich dismissed campaign finance as a focus of the eight-member select committee, which would be headed Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), the issue remains front and center and perhaps the key to unraveling a controversy that increasingly is making Clinton politically impotent here and abroad.
Andrew Weinstein, a Gingrich spokesman, said the committee, if approved by the House, could be up and running in mid-to-late June, or roughly right before Clinton heads to China.
The Justice Department, within its campaign-finance probe that is nearing conclusion, is examining whether there is a connection between the $632,000 given to Democrats by Loral Corp. CEO Bernard Schwartz in 1996 and presidential waivers (one over the Justice Department’s objection) allowing Loral to launch satellites from Chinese rockets.
Schwartz was the single largest donor to Democrats in 1996, when Clinton was re-elected.
Pentagon and intelligence officials believe sensitive technology information was supplied to Chinese officials by Loral and Hughes Electronics Corps. in a damage assessment review that followed the 1996 explosion of a Chinese rocket with a $200,000 Loral satellite (for Intelsat) on board.
Both Loral and Motorola Inc., licensed to operate global satellite phone systems, have launched satellites from Chinese rockets. Hughes is a major U.S. wireless infrastructure supplier and satellite manufacturer.
Hughes and Loral have denied any wrongdoing. Motorola said it received proper government clearances to launch Iridium satellites from China.
Clinton, for his part, said campaign donations had nothing to do with the administration’s satellite export policy.
“All foreign policy decisions we made were based on what we believed-I and the rest of the administration-were in the interests of the American people,” said Clinton. “Now, if someone tried to influence them, that’s a different issue and there ought to be an investigation into whether that happened and I would support that.”
