Bill Clinton's Nixon dilemma

Insight on the News, Jan 27, 1997 by Paul M. Rodriguez

Nov. 1995: Drug dealer Jorge Cabrera donates $20,000 to the DNC.

The Wiriadinatas attend a dinner at which Vice President Al Gore is the featured speaker and each of them contributed $15,000 more to the DNC.

Dec. 1995: Huang and his wife and, June, contribute $2,000 to the DNC. According to FEC records, Huang still is vice president of the Lippo Bank. (Huang political contribution total $100,000 in six years.)

Arief Wiriadinata attends a DNC breakfast at the White House with Clinton.

Dec. 1995: Cabrera visits the White House shortly before his arrest on drug charges in January 1996.

1996

Jan. 17, 1996: Huang resigns from the Commerce Department to take employment as fund-raiser at the DNC.

Feb. 21, 1996: Arief Wiriadinata receives a thank-you note on DNC stationery from Clinton expressing his pleasure at meeting Wiriadinata.

March 1996: The FDIC drops its cease-and-desist order against LIppo Bank, Los Angeles.

March 21, 1996: Arkansas restaurateur Charles Yah Lin Trie $460,000 in tow manila envelopes to the Presidential Legal Expenses Trust. The trust cashes $378,300; however, it employs the services of a private investigator to look into the contributions.

April 17, 1996: Trie is appointed to an advisory panel on Asian trade.

April 24, 1996: Trie delivers $179,000 in contributions to the Presidential Legal Expenses Trust.

April 29, 1996: Gore attends a DNC fund-raiser at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California, which raises at lrast $140,000. More than $42,000 of that sum is contributed by monks, who take a vow of poverty, or temple volunteers.

May 1996: Democratic fund-raiser Lalit Gadhia pleads guilty to passing on money from the Indian government to Democratic congressmen.

June 26, 1996: The Presidential Legal Expenses Trust returns the original $460,000 in donations solicited by Trie after the trust's lawyer hear from their appointed investigators.

July-Dec. 1996: 136 of Trie's original contributors donate an additional $122,585 to the trust fund.

Sept. 1996: Four agriculture Department official plead guilty to pressuring employees and co-workers to contributed to the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign. Twenty-one career employees who made contributions were promoted pr given better assignments.

Oct. 1996: FEC records indicate that 27 individuals and four corporations that donated almost $226,450 listed the DNC's Washington address as their home address.

Oct. 16, 1996: The DNC is forced to return a $250,000 donation from the Cheong Am Group. While the donation was made through a U.S. subsidiary, all of the money was raised outside of the country and therefore violates FEC law. The DNC further is forced to admit that it has refunded a $10,000 check from Cheong Am's chairman, Kyung Hoon Lee.

Oct. 17, 1996: Clinton administration affirms commitment to sell F-16s to Indonesia.

Oct. 17, 1996: DNC spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe discloses that the DNC has returned a $20,000 donation from three-time felon Cabrera.

Oct. 22, 1996: The DNC returns a $5,000 donation made by Man Ya Shih, a member of the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple.