I'll bump that !
Thomas Kean says I am the most non-partisan, bi-partisan member of the 911 Commission. Well, ain't I SPECIAL !?
Posted on 04/20/2004 4:55:32 AM PDT by RightOnTheLeftCoast
Hats off to the Wall Street Journal for a spectacular observation, perhaps the Rosetta Stone of postmillennial national security.
Let its boiled-down essence not escape your attention: the ongoing dividends of Chinagate may well have included 9/11.
And history may be repeating itself. Let me explain.
To set the stage, recall that Bill Clinton ensured his loyal minions populated the US Attorneys' offices nationwide when he fired every last US Attorney at the dawn of his Administration, then appointed his own. Next, as we have seen through Jamie Gorelick's startling memo[1], he saw to it that domestic law enforcement was blinded to foreign intelligence information. He then methodically offered up White House access and key strategic technologies to the highest bidder: China, and Indonesian/Chinese billionaire donors with close ties to China's dictatorial regime. Intriguingly, Clinton's Department of Justice's signature assault on Microsoft also appears to have been to the benefit of Indonesian/Chinese billionaires, who just happened to be the originating funders of the private venture fund which was the largest shareholder in lead plaintiff Netscape at the time[2]
With the declassification of former Deputy Attorney General Gorelick's memo, the picture comes into sharp focus: the Clinton Administration was not just:
...but also:
Yes, the economy, Clinton's vaunted economy, with its skyrocketing stock-market and spectacular 5.6% 1996 unemployment rate (which of course puts George W. Bush’s dismal 2004 5.6% unemployment rate to shame). This unstoppable economy screeched to an ignominious halt in the second half of 2000 as the tech sector imploded[4] - a multi-trillion-dollar evaporation of shareholder wealth driven in significant part by the DOJ's pursuit of tech bellwether Microsoft, which put a measurable damper on enthusiasm for big-cap technology stocks and funding for new tech ventures alike.
Follow the money. The legacy of that Administration is not just one of incompetence and inattention culminating in an innocence-crushing September morning once it was safely out of office. It is one of malevolent, calculated wholesaling of loyalty for political gain, with Gorelick's Wall providing cover by blinding law enforcement efforts that might have made a difference.
Still, Chinagate was exposed, and in a sane world it would have hit the political world like one of the Chinese ICBMs it facilitated. But Clinton was untouchable - immunized! - after the Lewinsky obstruction-of-justice mess fizzled like the captivating but comparatively feeble bottle-rocket it was. Today the damage extends far beyond the smoldering pits of lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. The world now stands on the cusp of decades of global turmoil in the face of emboldened and metastasized radical Islamism, most recently including al Qaeda’s successful gambit towards reestablishing Moorish dispensation in Andalusia[5].
Is Chinagate old news? Water under the bridge? Something for the 9/11 Commission's Democrat partisans to pooh-pooh and ignore as they recklessly paint their anti-Bush pastiche?
Not if you continue to mourn the thousands dead on that grim September morning. And not if you consider what other reflexively anti-Defense politician currently angling for the Presidency has financial ties to some of the same scandalous campaign donors as Bill Clinton: John Kerry is today's victorious campaign-donation choice of Chinagate's Huang-linked George Chao-Chi Chu, described as having "unusual access to high-ranking Communist officials in China" [6]. And that is old news, in a way: for in 1996 John Kerry received cash from Johnny Chung and Liu Chaoying, daughter of a powerful Chinese military official, for providing high-level access to Federal securities regulators. Kerry's cash came from transfers sent to Chung on orders from the chief of Chinese military intelligence[7].
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana
Scott Jordan
1 A web-accessible transcription of the Gorelick "Wall" memo is at http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=659679
2 At the time of the DOJ's action against Microsoft was initiated, lead plaintiff Netscape's largest shareholder was the private venture fund of Amerindo Investment Advisors. "The name Amerindo came from the fund's first investors, a group of Indonesian Chinese who wanted [the founder, Cuban expatriate Alberto] Vilar to call the firm American Indonesian Singaporean Investment Co. but settled for an abbreviation." -- Fortune, October 25, 1999
3 Caspar Weinberger, Washington Times, Sept. 2, 2003, reviewing Miniter: "The president never supported Mr. Woolsey's urgent request for Arabic-language translators for the CIA in 1994. A separate feud between Mr. Woolsey and Sen. Dennis DeConcini, Arizona Democrat, was allowed to run its course without direction by the Clinton White House, which further set back the CIA director's appeal for Arabic translators." So, as the author concludes, "a bureaucratic feud and President Clinton's indifference kept America blind and deaf as bin Laden plotted."
4 For a graphical econometric analysis of the recession's onset, see http://www.speakeasy.org/~dervish/recession.pdf
5 London Telegraph, "Bin Laden makes an offer that he cannot deliver",http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fopinion%2F2004%2F04%2F18%2Fdo1806.xml
6 The Hill, "Fundraiser resurfaces from 1996", Sam Dealey, http://www.hillnews.com/news/073003/fundraiser.aspx
7 NewsMax, "Kerry Took Cash From Chinese Military Intelligence", http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/2/124555.shtml
I'll bump that !
Thomas Kean says I am the most non-partisan, bi-partisan member of the 911 Commission. Well, ain't I SPECIAL !?
Let me be the first on record to nickname him George Chao-Chi "Cha-Ching" Chu.
Many of see those terms as an oxymoron. I'd like to proven wrong again and again and again on that though.
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