MediaWatch: April 19, 1999
Table of Contents:
FNC Shows the Flow
Four days after the Los Angeles Times revealed Johnny Chung told a grand jury how the head of China’s military intelligence unit gave him $300,000 to donate to the DNC, the Fox News Channel’s Carl Cameron was the first and only television reporter to outline the money flow to show how cash traveled from communist front companies to the Democrats. He also uncovered how Al Gore met with the head of one of the front companies.
In a piece run on the April 8 Fox Report and Special Report with Brit Hume, Cameron revealed: "China’s military intelligence official most likely to be interested in stealing U.S. secrets, sources say, also turns out to be the mastermind behind China’s alleged plot to get the Clinton-Gore team re-elected in 1996 with illegal contributions."
Cameron then explained the money path: "At the beginning of a complicated money trail is the head of Chinese military intelligence, General Ji. He pulls the strings at a massive Chinese conglomerate called China Resources Company. U.S. intelligence say some China Resources divisions in Hong Kong and worldwide are known fronts for China’s Peoples Liberation Army and espionage. China Resources has joint ventures with an Indonesian-based firm called the Lippo Group. Lippo is run by the ethnic Chinese Riady family. James Riady has visited the White House. His family has long supported the Clintons. The Riady family’s chief adviser on U.S. political donations: John Huang. Huang left Lippo for a Commerce Department job, then became a fundraiser, where mostly through connections to the Riady’s, he collected nearly $2 million in illegal foreign contributions for the Democratic Party. Thus completes what investigators say was the Chinese military’s circuitous route to funnel money to the President’s re-election effort."
During Cameron’s exposition of how the money flowed, FNC offered an on-screen graphic showing the stream of money with arrows between each name going down the screen: General Ji => China Resources => Lippo Group => Riady Family => John Huang => Democratic Party.
Cameron noted Al Gore "has been connected too...On September 23rd, 1993, Huang and Riady came to the White House to meet Gore and introduce...[the] head of Beijing’s alleged espionage front, China Resources Company."
