Trie Answers More Questions

An Insight investigative report last week has led to further congressional questioning of Clinton campaign fund-raiser `Charlie' Trie about his odd dealings with Communist China.

Revelations in secret FBI summaries of 17 interviews with Yah-lin "Charlie" Trie, who has pleaded guilty to Clinton-era campaign fund-raising violations, appear to be raising still more questions. In response to an article in last week's Insight (see "Trie's Deadly Deals," March 20), Trie was queried before Chairman Dan Burton's House Government Reform Committee on March 1 and was interrogated closely.

This testimony and what Trie has told the FBI and Department of Justice investigators about his role in funneling money from Communist China into Democratic coffers and the president's legal-defense fund suggest his involvement predates the current allegations that he improperly influenced the 1996 election.

The summary reveals that Trie explained "he would have contributed money to Clinton's campaign back in 1992, but he was aware at the time that either the FBI or the CIA was interested in talking to him." According to the summary, when then-governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton told Trie that he would run for president, Trie telephoned the Chinese Embassy, apparently to apprise Beijing of the development. It is this slip, according to the summary, that was the cause of Trie's anxiety about openly donating to Clinton in 1992 despite his "pro-Clinton enthusiasm."

In May 1998, an Associated Press, or AP, report indicated that the Justice Department and the FBI had "gathered evidence as early as 1992 that two fundraisers who organized Clinton's initial efforts among Asian-Americans were engaged in wrongdoing." The report revealed that Nora and Gene Lum, after being convicted of other related charges, offered to cooperate with authorities in exchange for immunity from prosecution on charges of campaign-finance abuses.

According to the AP account, "The Lums also told prosecutors that [Ron] Brown, then the Democratic Party chairman, tipped them off in 1992 that a businessman they were working with was in fact an undercover FBI agent." The same press account says the Lums were told of the attempted FBI sting only days before they were to meet with Clinton in Arkansas. How the FBI got on to these operations is not discussed.

A recently retired Department of Defense special agent, who asks not to be identified, tells Insight Trie's statement to the FBI "raises more questions than it gives answers." The retired official, who worked on counterintelligence and technology-transfer cases related to China, states that the testimony "suggests Trie was already in communication with sources of tainted money" in 1992. A U.S. citizen since 1984, Trie legally was free to make any legal donation he wished, so the retired special agent is suspicious of what may be a Trie cover story or spy legend. "It sounds as though the source of the money would have been the PRC [People's Republic of China] as it was in 1994 and subsequently," says the agent.

According to the FBI documents, Trie explained to investigators that he phoned the PRC's consulate in Houston to ask officials to "gather Asian immigrants and community leaders [and] organize a party to raise money for Clinton." The summary of sworn Trie depositions went on to say, "The consular official told Trie that the PRC could not become involved in a U.S. election campaign and warned him that the phone line was tapped."

In short, Trie was told to "shut up and duck." The retired special agent says the money that the PRC poured into Clinton's campaign coffers through Trie after Clinton was elected president, coupled with the dramatic testimony, suggests that the investigation is far from over. "For them to say that they did not want to get involved in an American election flies in the face of reason," the agent says, "in view of what we know they did after the '92 election."

In fact, according to his sworn statements, Trie was attempting business relations with China as early as 1991 when he formed Daihatsu International Trading Inc. and began a series of trips to the PRC. In 1997 the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that immediately following the 1992 election, "President-elect Clinton wrote Trie a congratulatory letter for opening a Chinese branch of Daihatsu." The paper quotes the Clinton note to Trie as saying: "I know that you and your company can serve as a bridge of good will and exchange of mutual interest and benefits between China and the U.S."

Some now are raising questions about Trie's interests and how mutual the benefits were to the United States. In 1992, as Insight reported in last week's issue, Trie's China sojourns resulted in the 1993 shipment of a 500-liter fermentation tank to the PRC. Defense Department export analyst Peter Leitner tells Insight that the tank has the dual-use capacity of producing pharmaceutical vaccines and biological weapons and that the facility to which it was shipped is suspected of producing both.

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