Original Sources 3/9/99 Mary Mostert "… In 1996 Bill Clinton told reporters he was "not told about the June 1996 FBI warnings of Communist Chinese involvement in the 1996 presidential election." However, it was later learned that president Clinton not only KNEW about it, but that he subsequently made a thwarted attempt to obtain the counterintelligence information about what the FBI had learned of the Communist Chinese influence on the presidential election in November of 1996. Charles Ruff, Clinton legal counsel who most recently defended him in the Senate Impeachment trial, made the FBI contact. Ruff contacted Janet Reno's deputy JAMIE GORELICK and wanted to know what federal investigators knew or suspected about Chinese illegal contributions to the presidential campaign. However, when FBI director Freeh learned of the White House probe by GORELICK, he ordered the information not be provided to Clinton, federal law enforcement officials told the Daily Republican in 1997. In a New York Times story Ruff was quoted as telling Gorelick he was seeking the information on behalf of the National Security Council…. However, law enforcement officials pointed out that Ruff's request was received only after FBI director Freeh had left Washington on a trip to the Middle East. In his absence, attorney general Janet Reno and GORELICK quickly moved to obtain the secret FBI files. Before the Justice Department turned over the FBI files to Clinton's legal counsel, Robert Bryant, then head of the FBI national security division, picked up the telephone and informed Freeh of Clinton's probe for the secret files on the Chinese investigation. Freeh ordered the files withheld. And people wonder how come the Senate of the United States was never able to get Janet Reno to obey the law of the land and appoint an independent counsel to investigate the Chinese money that helped get Clinton and Gore elected…."
Note: David A. Wise, The Bureau and the Mole, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002, page 179, Clinton, behind closed doors, says, "Louis Freeh is a g-dd-mn f--king -assh-le."
This ostensibly followed Freeh's public claim that the White House had victimized him [Freeh] and the FBI in Filegate.
Gorelick covered the waterfront for Hillary during the Whitewater heat and apparently helped defend Clifford and Altman in BCCI. Checking.