From: Bob Bartch 
Subject: SNET: Clinton OKs some "assault weapons" for U.S.
Date: 9 May 1999 22:15:55 -0400
To: SNETNEWS 


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CLINTON OK'S CHINESE ASSAULT WEAPONS FOR U.S. DELIVERY

WASHINGTON WEEKLY

"ASSAULT WEAPONS" FOR U.S.

But of all the decisions, waivers and export liberalizations executed on
behalf of the Chinese by the Clinton White House, none
rivals what the administration did for Wang Jun, the princeling chairman
of China's state owned arms conglomerate, Poly
Technologies. For years, China had been doing a land office business
exporting to the U.S. semi-automatic rifles and ammo
made by Poly and another arms manufacturer, Norinco. Reportedly, the gun
trade was worth hundreds of millions of dollars
annually to the PRC. But suddenly in 1994, there was a problem: the
Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. Overnight, China's
weapons cash cow evaporated.

Not to worry. According to a Scripps Howard report by Michael Hedges,
which ran on the front page of the March 14, 1997
edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Clinton administration
granted Wang Jun's Poly Technologies importation
permits to flood America with over 100,000 semi- automatic weapons and
millions of rounds of ammunition -- despite the
president's own cherished gun ban. That was on Feb. 2, 1996 -- just days
before Clinton issued the first satellite waivers for
Loral Corp.

It gets worse. On Feb. 6, just four days after the assault weapon
waivers were issued, Wang Jun was ushered into the White
House for a personal meeting with Bill Clinton. Wang's escort was Yah
Lin "Charlie" Trie, who had laundered over $600,000
from Chinese sources for the Clinton Defense Fund. Combined with his
campaign donations to the DNC, Trie's total
contributions to Clinton coffers topped the million dollar mark in 1996.
For that kind of money, it's a good bet Charlie Trie
could bring anybody he wanted to the White House.

And Charlie Trie wasn't Wang's only solid White House reference. Charlie
had worked with longtime F.O.B. Ernest Green to
get Wang a U.S. visa, though Wang conveniently forgot to mention that he
was a Communist arms dealer on the visa
application. Had he disclosed that fact, Wang Jun would never have been
let in the country, let alone the White House. The day
after Wang's visit with Clinton, Ernie Green's wife donated $50,000 to
the DNC.

Except for these import waivers, issued two years after Poly's rifles
had been banned at the president's own direction, there
would have been no legal U.S. market for Wang Jun's guns.

Michael Hedges interviewed lawyers involved in negotiating the deal,
nearly all of whom were stunned when Poly Technologies
got the exclusive approval. "All of a sudden there was a breakthrough. I
can't account for it.", said one attorney. Another
admitted that the Clinton administration had been tying other arms
importers in knots to keep guns out of the country because
the president was opposed. He described the abrupt turnaround in U.S.
import policy as "highly suspicious". And this was from
a guy who was working to make this deal happen.

Last year, Hedges told me that his evidence included signed copies of
the importation permits for Wang Jun's guns. Between
the on-the-record interviews and the documentation, his expose was rock
solid. Yet, despite the fact that the implications of his
report were absolutely staggering, only one New York or Washington paper
thought its readers were entitled to this news.
Eleven days later, The New York Daily News followed up on the Wang Jun
100,000 gun story.

News Columnist Michael Daly managed to uncover the destination for
Wang's 100,000 guns: a Detroit firm which investigators
have linked to the Chinese Armed Police. The Chinese Armed Police used
similar assault rifles to mow down demonstrators in
Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The massive gun shipment would have gone through, flooding America's
cities with weapons ruled inappropriate by the Clinton
administration, but the deal was suspended in the wake of the
aforementioned COSCO connected smuggling operation - which
was short-circuited by federal agents just weeks after Wang Jun's
importation waivers were granted. On the night of March 18,
1996, undercover Customs and BATF agents accepted delivery of guns
smuggled aboard the COSCO ship Empress Phoenix,
as part of an ongoing sting operation dubbed "Dragon Fire." The
undercover agents had lured the Chinese into making a trial
shipment of Chinese machine guns: a dry run set up to establish a
working relationship before the Chinese granted access to
their full inventory. Besides the smuggled guns, which they recommended
for the California street gang market, the Chinese
operatives explained that they were ready to sell everything from
grenade launchers to shoulder fired Red Parakeet surface to
air missiles, which they boasted could "take out a 747".
(Coincidentally, a Boeing 747 was taken out over the skies of Long
Island just months later.) That March night, federal agents secretly
unpacked COSCO crates containing 2,000 Poly
Technologies AK-47's delivered from the hold of the Empress Phoenix. It
was the largest seizure of fully operational automatic
weapons in the history of U. S. law enforcement.

With that claim to fame, one might expect the agents responsible for
Operation Dragon Fire to be boasting of their unqualified
success. However, as the BATF's Dick Stoltz and the Customs Bureau's
Matthew King explained all of the above to Vanity
Fair Magazine last December, they emphasized that Dragon Fire's goal was
much larger. The real targets of their undercover
investigation were Poly and Norinco lieutenants who controlled the deal
from China and whom Stoltz and King had managed to
lure to America for a brief visit. And they suspected Wang Jun's direct
involvement. As King told Vanity Fair:

"Can you imagine the reactions or how Congress would have voted (on MFN
for China) if we had been allowed to keep
going? If we had arrested the Norinco officials who had come here to
sell Red Parakeet missiles? If Dragon Fire had been able
to nail the princelings? This country's China policy would be a hell of
a lot different today."

So why, instead of stopping with the March 18th gun seizure, didn't they
keep going? Stoltz and King had wanted to - but
inexplicably, somehow word had leaked about Dragon Fire. First their
office got a call from a Los Angeles Times reporter,
who shocked them with his detailed knowledge of their supposedly still
secret sting. This reporter's silence was purchased with
the promise of an even bigger exclusive after the investigation had
culminated in indictments of Chinese kingpins.

Shortly thereafter, The New York Times called and had to be promised a
similar deal to keep the investigation secret. But it
was too late. After the second inquiry Stoltz and King realized that
their own undercover agents were now in jeopardy.

They had to act fast before the entire operation came unraveled. That's
why Dragon Fire's ultimate prize turned out to be
Chinese AK-47's rather than the Chinese operatives close to arms
merchant, Wang Jun.

The mystery of the Dragon Fire leak has never been solved. But there are
disturbing clues. Reporters for both the L.A. and
New York Times worked in Washington, where the only people familiar with
Dragon Fire were top government officials.
According to Vanity Fair, the journalists involved would reveal only
that their tips came from "diplomatic sources". And
evidently these reporters weren't the only ones who got the word.

Several of Wang Jun's top lieutenants hotfooted it back to China just
one jump ahead of federal indictment. One was Robert
Ma, chief of Poly Technologies' U.S. subsidiary, who fled just two days
before his arrest warrant was executed.

Was a federal probe into a massive Chinese arms smuggling operation
foiled by insiders who knew the investigation put
Clinton's China connection at risk? Is it significant that leaks about
an investigation run out of San Francisco came from a
Washington source? If so, this would constitute a more blatant (though
potentially less dangerous) national betrayal than even
Clinton's Loral satellite waivers.

If the Loral waivers damaged national security, as a still secret
internal Pentagon study reportedly claims, then what national
interest, pray tell, was served by sabotaging an investigation into
Chinese gun smuggling? And just which Americans would have
benefited when the White House tossed it's own gun control policy over
the side to welcome in 100,000 outlawed Chinese
guns?

Though the press has virtually ignored this aspect of the Clinton "China
First" policy, House Government Reform and Oversight
Chairman Dan Burton has not. Reached Friday on Sean Hannity's New York
talk radio show, Burton told me:

"We continue to investigate the Wang Jun connection. Our concentration
has been on the illegal campaign contributions and
Wang Jun is one of the people that we've been looking into. Obviously if
there was a quid pro quo where the president signed
off on those guns coming into the country in exchange for campaign
contributions, that's something that he should be held
accountable for and we are looking into that."

Quid quo pro or not, this president needs to explain why his
administration waived its own gun law for a Chinese princeling
arms merchant whose lieutenants were intent on smuggling even more to
firepower to American street gangs.

Published in the Jun. 1, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright
1998 The Washington Weekly



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->  Posted by: Bob Bartch