Trie's Deadly Deals (biotech transfers to China-anthrax?Clinton admin.)

Clinton fund-raiser Charles Trie has admitted to the FBI that he conducted a business deal that gave Red China equipment capable of producing deadly biological weapons.

Clinton friend and fund-raiser Charles Trie was a conduit for illegal donations from Chinese military and intelligence operatives to the Democratic National Committee and the president’s campaign committees. But Insight has learned that Trie also was involved — and used Clinton connections — in facilitating a 1993 sale of dual-use medical technology to China that poses a significant national-security threat.

In the course of 17 secret Trie interviews with the FBI in 1999 the Clinton confidant revealed an elaborate and illegal scheme to funnel large sums into Clinton-Gore campaign coffers and the president’s legal-defense fund. He also confessed to orchestrating the sale of a 500-liter (130-gallon) medical fermentation device to a pharmaceutical plant in China suspected of manufacturing chemical and biological agents for military purposes.

Insight has obtained copies of the secret depositions given by Trie to the FBI’s Campaign Finance Task Force that, until recently, was thought to have begun shutting down operations after skirmishes with the Reno Justice Department concerning the scope and direction of the long-running investigation. In fact, based on the FBI’s 302 summaries of Trie’s lengthy depositions, the task force appears significantly to have expanded its operations and is zeroing in on key targets involved in suspected illegal campaign donations from overseas, most notably China and Indonesia.

Trie, who pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign operations and is cooperating with federal authorities, has revealed extensive details about the machinery of campaign-finance irregularities involving the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and Clinton’s political operations. He lays bare the elaborate methods he and others used to collect and channel illegal contributions from Asian-Americans and overseas nationals.

It is the revelation about the estimated $1 million sale of dual-use medical technology to China, however, and the involvement of a respected U.S. government scientist in a company Trie used to facilitate the sale, that most deeply has shocked federal investigators and national-security officials contacted by Insight.

Peter Leitner, a senior Defense Department licensing analyst who specializes in export controls of dual-use technology, has reviewed Insight’s copies of the confidential FBI interviews with Trie. Leitner says the transfer of the highly sophisticated pharmaceutical-grade fermenting machine poses significant risks to U.S. security at home and abroad if used to make advanced germ-warfare products such as anthrax and botulism.

The evidence of the fermenting machine’s sale and transfer sometime in 1993 to the Changchun Biological Products Institute is alarming, according to Leitner, given that the Chinese facility has been flagged by some experts as a biological-weapons laboratory run by the People’s Liberation Army. Leitner tells Insight: “This whole affair has the classic earmarks of a Chinese military-intelligence operation.”

What the FBI has done with the information newly obtained from Trie is not clear. However, Insight has learned that Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, is aware of the new development and has scheduled hearings on this and other revelations made to the FBI by Trie.

Scott Wheeler, an investigative correspondent with the TV show American Investigator, has just finished a related video documentary, Trading With the Enemy: How the Clinton Administration Armed China. He presents a Who’s Who of military and intelligence officials, including former CIA director James Woolsey, discussing the ongoing and persistent attempts by Beijing to obtain such dual-use technologies from producers in the United States.

Wheeler and Leitner, who appears in the documentary, were asked to comment on the FBI summary materials. Leitner tells Insight that Trie’s export of biotech materials to China illustrates “a major diversion of U.S. military and technological assets to biowarfare plants in China.” According to Wheeler: “This is a new basis for the congressional oversight committees to revisit the federal task-force investigation of campaign-finance violations in light of compelling evidence that the Reno Justice Department has failed to conduct a thorough investigation.”

Trie told the FBI he formed an international-trading business in 1991 that “brokered the export of biotech machinery and elevator equipment to China.” It was this company, Daihatsu International Trading Inc., that arranged the sale in mid-1992 of the 500-liter fermenting machine from Sulzer Biotech Systems in Woodbury, N.Y., which, only after Clinton took office in January 1993, shipped the equipment from its Swiss manufacturing plant to the Chinese facility. How such an export could have been cleared for China remains a mystery, albeit one about which Chairman Burton will no doubt inquire. For the moment, Insight’s calls for comment from Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch and Commerce Deputy Director of Export Licenses Eileen Albanese went unreturned by press time.

Trie said he was paid “a commission of $20,000 or $30,000.” But when federal agents interviewed Sulzer officials about the exotic sale sometime last year, according to government sources, they appeared more interested in whether the sale was part of a quid pro quo to funnel illegal monies into the president’s campaign or to the DNC than whether it was useful to expanding Red China’s deadly arsenal of biological weapons.

Trie told the FBI that he didn’t see the fermenter sale as a big deal. What appears to have impressed him is that on trips to China he met with high-level intelligence, military and business officials, some of whom gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars that he used to make illegal donations.

According to Wheeler, Rene Losher, former executive director of Sulzer Biotech Systems, has advised government investigators that a Swiss engineer was sent to Changchun to help install the tank. The buyer was Zhang Jiaming, director of the Changchun Biological Products Institute. Leitner says the FBI also should have been concerned with the likely participation in the deal of Peter Fu, a toxicology expert at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s research facility on the grounds of the Pine Bluff military arsenal in Arkansas. The arsenal originally was established to produce and store biological weapons, Leitner says.

According to the FBI summaries, Trie said Fu and his wife, Violetta, were “silent partners” in the formation of Trie’s Daihatsu International Trading Inc. and invested thousands of dollars in start-up capital. According to government sources who have seen Trie’s full FBI interviews, the Fu’s gave Trie $40,000 in “start-up capital” for this joint venture.

In fact, Fu tells Insight in an exclusive interview that he was not a “partner” with Trie and did not invest money in Daihatsu, per se. But he admits that he and his wife lent the Tries $40,000 as a favor and that the loan was repaid. At the same time, Fu acknowledges that the registered mailing address for Daihatsu was Fu’s home in Little Rock, Ark. “At that time [December 1991], Charlie’s wife and my wife tried to open a company,” Fu tells Insight. Mrs. Fu quit the business after a few weeks, Fu says. “Violetta felt she was incapable of handling the business because of lack of experience and lack of language ability.” He says he is not aware of any business conducted by Daihatsu or United Biotech, another trading company registered by Trie during the 1992 presidential campaign season.

A summary of Trie’s depositions to the FBI reads, in part: “Trie acknowledged being a close friend of Dr. Peter Fu, a research biochemist who was chief of the toxicology branch of an FDA facility near Little Rock,” adding that “the Fus withdrew from the partnership in 1992 or 1993.” Trie also told the FBI that Zhang was present when Trie formed United Biotech and that Trie had introduced Fu to Zhang in Little Rock.

Fu tells Insight that he may have been introduced to Zhang in 1992 but that he couldn’t and didn’t help them in their business. “Charlie brought someone to me who wanted to do something for a vaccine for hepatitis. They thought I knew something about vaccines, but I do not. It’s not in my area of research,” Fu says.

The 500-liter fermentation tank transferred to the Changchun facility would be prohibited for sale by the Department of Defense’s Militarily Critical Technologies List because it allows the manufacture of large quantities of biological agents, such as botulism or anthrax bacteria, for military purposes, Leitner says. Several 500-liter tanks of this type were discovered in Iraq and seized as contraband by U.N. Special Commission inspectors in 1991. According to government sources, China has listed the Changchun facility on the international registry of facilities producing biological or chemical agents but claims its only use at this time is for the production of pharmaceuticals such as hepatitis vaccines.

Leitner calls Trie’s deposition regarding the fermentation tank and the involvement of Fu “a revelation” that should have been followed up but apparently wasn’t. “Here we have an FDA guy who is head of the toxicology branch of his lab, who gives Trie $40,000 and gets introduced to the manager of a bioweapons program in China. They gave direct assistance to a biological-weapons program, and the FBI did not follow up. It’s right there on page four of the FBI summary. You can’t get more blatant than that.”

Asked about these matters, both the FBI and the Justice Department declined comment.

FYI:

In fact, Fu tells Insight in an exclusive interview that he was not a “partner” with Trie and did not invest money in Daihatsu, per se. But he admits that he and his wife lent the Tries $40,000 as a favor and that the loan was repaid. At the same time, Fu acknowledges that the registered mailing address for Daihatsu was Fu’s home in Little Rock, Ark. “At that time [December 1991], Charlie’s wife and my wife tried to open a company,” Fu tells Insight. Mrs. Fu quit the business after a few weeks, Fu says. “Violetta felt she was incapable of handling the business because of lack of experience and lack of language ability.” He says he is not aware of any business conducted by Daihatsu or United Biotech, another trading company registered by Trie during the 1992 presidential campaign season.

Thanks for the kudos (blush!!!)

Of a truth, I suspect most of the journalists are busily rewording and expanding on articles written by "experts" in other publications - rather than doing their own research. I don't know if it is fear of lawsuits, the need to break news faster than the next guy, the lack of funds to support research, failure of management support for investigative journalism, laziness or what! Sigh...

Not China, but as long as we're talking about the Clinton administration, how did Bioport get the contract to produce the anthrax vaccine for our troops?

Scroll down to "Anthrax Issues"
Anthrax Vaccine Crowe British

From: How Bioport Finds the Admiral

According to Coupe, when Crowe returned from England in 1997, he was approached by Fuad El-Hibri's father, Ibrahim El-Hibri. The elder El-Hibri, whom the admiral had met a decade before, invited Crowe to serve on the board of Intervac.

"The admiral is commonly referred to as the person who bought this," says Coupe, "and while I don't want to minimize his involvement, he's had no financial involvement either way - giving or getting any money."

Another 30 percent of Intervac shares are owned by Nancy El-Hibri, a mother and homemaker in suburban Maryland and the rest of the company is in the hands of "I&F Holdings," a company directed by Nancy El-Hibri's father-in-law, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a Venezuelan citizen, and her husband, Fuad El-Hibri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent.

Fuad El-Hibri appears to be the real day-to-day director of Intervac and is listed by Dun & Bradstreet as the "chief executive" of Bioport. Mrs. El-Hibri laughed when questioned by a reporter for ABC about Intervac and referred the network to her husband who did not return a call.

Experts in defense policy suggested that the Pentagon would be highly unlikely to approve the sale to a foreign national of a company that is the sole manufacturer of a vaccine considered vital to national security.

Coupe says that Crowe's ownership of Intervac stock gives him a 13 percent share of Bioport.

The only US company given the anthrax vaccine contract. Crowe - a friend of Bill.

(Trie) He also confessed to orchestrating the sale of a 500-liter (130-gallon) medical fermentation device to a pharmaceutical plant in China suspected of manufacturing chemical and biological agents for military purposes.

the transfer of the highly sophisticated pharmaceutical-grade fermenting machine poses significant risks to U.S. security at home and abroad if used to make advanced germ-warfare products such as anthrax and botulism.

Here we have an FDA guy who is head of the toxicology branch of his lab, who gives Trie $40,000 and gets introduced to the manager of a bioweapons program in China. They gave direct assistance to a biological-weapons program, and the FBI did not follow up.

You don't see the relevance to today's international situation or the Clinton administration's culpability here? We must be reading different articles.

Thank you for the helpful link. (^:

Want to help Freep VOA? The head is a Clinton appointee / Gore fundraiser and he and 150 of his fellow traitor-government employees at the State Dept. refused their Commander-in-Chief's request NOT to play Taliban propaganda. VOA is OUR way of communicating OUR side, our freedom, our generosity, our greatness to the mis-informed world, and our troops risking their lives in enemy territory. Let's get them all fired and replace them with anti-leftist patriot radio folks!
Our Inspector Clouseau Press

We shriek about Clinton because, well, it's fun. He won't go away. He still presents a clear and present danger to our nation...but that's another story.

This wasn't meant to be a Clinton thread..necessarily. The DU (most definitely Clinton-connected) accused "right-wing" radicals of the anthrax attacks. The press is ignoring many possible leads, from the American Muslims who blame the left even more than the right (though we're all infidels) for corrupting their youth, to evidence from articles such as this that contain references to FBI reports showing an increase in PRC Bioweapons production. There have been recent stories about the Chinese arming the Taliban, the Chinese providing the advanced encryption technology that allows Usama to contact his minions and keep an eye on us, and the former "Silk Road" (now the "Opium Road") between Afghanistan and China has been well-traveled in recent years by drug-runners making a fortune on the black market. Some Chinese have been working very closely with the Taliban for years.

The transfer of oversight from Defense to Commerce under the Clinton administration, the selling of technology that can threaten our national security for campaign dollars is very relevant today. We know China sells to our enemies. They now have both the equipment and know-how to make weapons grade anthrax.

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