to the Joint Session of the Foreign Relations
and National Security Commissions of
the American Legion
March 3, 1997
"POW/MIA and the President's Vietnam Policy"
I'm pleased to have been asked to speak today before you - my fellow Legionnaires - to give you my candid assessment of where we are on the POW/MIA issue, especially with regard to Vietnam, and where we need to go.
There are several related sub-topics on the POW/MIA issue which I know you'd like me to cover. Unfortunately, there's just not enough time in this type of forum for me to cover all of the important POW/MIA issues, from North Korea to China to Russia to declassification of records, and on and on.
So, I thought what I'd do today is stick to just one of these so-called sub-topics, but then, time permitting, I'll take questions on any other related POW/MIA matter afterwards. And, of course, I'm in constant touch with your leaders here, so I'd be happy to send you additional information afterwards on any subject we don't get to today.
The one topic I want to spend considerable time on today is the President's Vietnam policy, because I am deeply troubled by it, in view of what we are now learning about illegal foreign campaign contributions, and the activities of certain individuals.
I am frankly concerned, as you are, with reports that the goal of obtaining the fullest possible accounting of POWs and MIAs in Vietnam may not have been the driving force behind the President's decisions, despite the reassurances that have been given in recent days by a couple of my Senate Colleagues who actively encouraged the President to normalize relations with Vietnam.
As you have probably all seen from news reports in recent months, the reasons for the President's foreign policy changes toward Communist Vietnam these last four years have become increasingly suspect. The President's previous assertions, that each of his decisions to normalize relations with the Hanoi government were made solely because of the POW/MIA issue, can no longer be accepted at face value.
With each new story about people like John Huang and the influence of illegal foreign campaign contributions to the President's campaign, you have to wonder, "What next? What new revelation will we read about in tomorrow's papers?"
It's bad enough when we see what went on with the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. Over 900 top Clinton/Gore campaign contributors staying there, because the President, in his own handwriting, wanted it done as a way to raise money.
But it becomes even more serious and more troubling when we see reports of illegal campaign contributions from foreigners, or foreign-based companies, or possibly even foreign governments.
And then the question is raised whether foreign governments or subsidiaries of foreign-based companies may have either influenced, or may have tried to influence, foreign policy decision-making at the White House. This has very serious National Security implications, and it is deeply, deeply disturbing to me personally to think that America's foreign policy may have been for sale to foreign businessmen or governments, and that National Security information may have been compromised.
as Senator Trent Lott, our Senate Majority Leader, said yesterday on the Sunday talk shows, this is the area that should concern people the most, and it certainly should be the focus of investigations of Congress.
We've already seen some of the news reports about China's involvement with these reported scandals. But today, I think it's important that we also take a look at where things stand on this with regard to Vietnam, since I sincerely believe it may have had a direct negative impact on our efforts to resolve the POW/MIA issue. And that's not just my belief, but the belief of several of my colleagues in the House of Representatives who chair Congressional committees that are now investigating these matters - including Congressman Burton, Congressman Gilman, and Congressman Solomon.
And I know this is also a concern that your leadership in the American Legion expressed recently in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
I'm going to just summarize quickly what the mainstream press is reporting, and what I have found to date. And you have to realize, the Senate Government Affairs committee technically hasn't even begun its investigation yet. They're still waiting for their funding which we hopefully will finally be voting to approve this week. But I want to lay out a couple dozen points real quickly to recap what we are told in press reports, along with what we already know about what's happened.
There was a detailed account of some of the matters I'm going to be talking about in The Washington Times this past November, and I want to recap some of what that paper first reported on -
First, we have Mr. John Huang, a close personal friend of President Clinton, and a central figure in this scandal. We are told that in 1992, he and a man named James Riady were top officers of the Worthern Bank in Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Huang reportedly raised 250,000 dollars personally for the 1992 Clinton Campaign, and his bank loaned the Clinton 1992 Campaign 3.5 million dollars.
No one doubts that he was a long-time personal friend of then-Governor Clinton, and his financial contributions were critical to the President's election.
Now what happened with regard to the POW/MIA issue a week after Bill Clinton was elected? Some of you may remember this. On Veterans Day in November, 1992, then-President elect Clinton made a speech, in which he renewed a promise he had made to the American Legion and others during his campaign. He stated, and I quote, " I have sent a clear message that there will be no normalization or relations with any nation that is at all suspected of holding information {on POW/MIAs}." Remember that statement as we move through what happens next.
In 1993, after the first Clinton Campaign, John Huang, Bill Clinton's personal friend and top contributor from Little Rock, went to work as top executive of a foreign company known as The Lippo Group - which was owned by Mochtar Riady, the father of James Riady, who you'll remember was John Huang's banking partner in Little Rock.
The Lippo Group, for those of you who may not know, is an international financial, real estate, banking, and investment company run by the Asian Riady family and based in Indonesia. It has offices in California and in Vietnam, along with 6.9 billion in reported assets.
The Lippo Group has been trying for years to be the first in line to get into different parts of the Vietnamese market, and to get that market opened up. The Lippo Group already had a head start because Vietnam has traditionally had very close relations with Indonesia - much closer than with other nations in Southeast Asia.
Now the question you have to ask yourself is whether John Huang and President Clinton or his advisors stayed in touch with each other in 1993, and what obligations, if any, the President might have had to Mr. Huang because of the critical financial support he provided to the 1992 Clinton Campaign.
I personally believe there was continuing contact, but I'm going to defer to the forthcoming investigations by the appropriate Congressional committees, and perhaps an independent counsel, if that decision is made. That is simply my own speculation at this point.
Let me briefly tell you what leads me to believe that U.S. foreign policy toward Vietnam may have been improperly influenced through Mr. Huang even before Mr. Huang went to work at the Commerce Department and later as a top fund-raiser for the 1996 Clinton Campaign.
First, we already know that in March, 1993, Mr. Riady, as head of The Lippo Group, wrote a letter to President Clinton. Among other things in this letter, he specifically asked the President to take steps to lift our trade embargo on Vietnam and normalize relations between Vietnam and the United States.
Exactly four weeks after Mr. Riady's letter to the President, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House was about to end long-standing U.S. obstructions to Vietnam's access to lending from international financial institutions. What did The Lippo Group, this international banking empire, stand to gain from this specific decision, if it was made? We don't know yet, although I am confident this will be investigated.
As some of you might recall, this expected April, 1993 decision from the White House had to be delayed. Why? Because the same week that the Wall Street Journal article appeared, the Russian government formally gave the U.S. government documents from the old Soviet Communist Party Archives which, on their face, indicated that Vietnam kept back American POWs in 1973 when the rest came home.
These documents contained what was reported to be an actual transcript of a secret speech in 1972 by a North Vietnamese military official to his superiors. In the speech, the official had repeatedly referenced a much higher number of captured American POWs than North Vietnam had publicly acknowledged at the time - a number much higher than those who came home in 1973.{NOTE: 'The 1205 Document' - #1, #2, #3
At first, the Administration tried to classify this information to prevent it from being disclosed to the American people. But when the New York Times got a copy of the documents from Steven Morris, the researcher who had actually located the documents in Moscow, the cat was out of the bag, so to speak.
The concession President Clinton was about to make toward Vietnam had to be put on hold.
These revelations from Russian archives were too dramatic along with the public outcry from veterans and POW/MIA families, including the American Legion, - too dramatic for the President to move forward with his planned decision.
The President seemed to acknowledge that fact, but also the pressure he was under from then-unknown commercial interests, when he stated at a White House East room news conference in April, 1993, "I have to admit that I am much more heavily influenced by the families of those who were lost or whose lives remain in question than by the commercial interests which seem so compelling at the moment."
The President's statement about being influenced by the POW/MIA families lasted for only two months - the time it took for his National Intelligence Council to internally debunk the POW information in the Russian documents - although this politically-skewed intelligence analysis was not made public at the time.
The President then immediately took the step he had almost made in April - lifting U.S. objections to Vietnam's access to lending from international banks.
The impact that John Huang, the Riady's, and The Lippo Group had on the President's foreign policy decision-making toward Vietnam becomes even more curious two months later - in September, 1993.
Again, in early September, the Russian government turned over yet another intelligence document from their archives - another secret speech by a North Vietnamese official during the war indicating that they were holding far more U.S. POWs than those who eventually came home in 1973.
Nonetheless, despite this new information, President Clinton made another foreign policy change toward Vietnam on September 14, 1993. This time, he decided to relax the U.S. trade embargo to allow U.S. firms to bid on development projects financed by multilateral development banks.
Again, what was the connection between his decision and the foreign-owned Lippo Bank and John Huang - Bill Clinton's personal friend and campaign contributor from Little Rock? I don't know, but I'll tell what we do know from press reports.
In September, 1993, Mochtar Riady, who you'll remember was the head of The Lippo Group, led a trade mission of Asian bankers to Vietnam to appraise business opportunities. John Huang, as you'll also remember, was the banking executive and Vice-Chairman of The Lippo Group. He may have even been on this trip. Is this simply a coincidence that this trip to Vietnam by The Lippo Group just happened to coincide exactly with the decision by the President to further open the door toward investment in Vietnam? Are we really to believe the President's assertion at that time, that he made his decision solely because Vietnam had taken a giant leap forward with POW/MIA accounting between July ad September, 1993 - a two month period? Was the President's sole reason for this decision related to POW/MIA accounting? This question needs to be fully investigated.
Bear in mind the President had promised 10 months earlier on Veterans Day that he would not be normalizing relations with any nation that is at all suspected of withholding information on American POWs. Yet, in July and September, 1993, and even up to the present day, Vietnam has never provided any information from their Politburo Archives to refute the information we received from the Soviet Archives indicating the Vietnam held more American POWs than they returned in 1973.
Any responsible intelligence analyst or Vietnam scholar would tell you that, of course, Vietnam has Politburo records from the war, especially those involving their National Security - these documents exist, they just haven't been turned over, and frankly, this Administration has not seriously pressed Vietnam on that issue.
So again, we need to know the whole truth behind what led the President to break his promise to the POW/MIA families and our nation's veterans. We need to know whether U.S. foreign policy toward Vietnam was compromised by the activities of people like John Huang. This matter needs to be fully investigated.
Let me move forward in time to a few more months after the September, 1993 foreign policy decision by the President on Vietnam. On February 3, 1994, the President announced that he was fully lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Communist Vietnam. When he announced his decision, he specifically stated that the Commerce issue had never been a factor in the discussions within his Administration. And his National Security advisor said the same thing in a background briefing to members of the press at the time. It had nothing to do with Commerce, they said, it was only because of the POW/MIA issue.
All of this was occurring, some of you may remember, during the same period that the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was being investigated for allegedly planning to accept a $700,000 bribe in foreign money for lifting the trade embargo with Vietnam. He was later cleared of these charges by the Justice Department.
I'm told by reliable sources that there are records indicating that unnamed Commerce Department officials in favor of normalization of relations with Vietnam did, in fact, attend White House National Security Council meetings on Vietnam policy during this period - despite the President's claim, despite the National Security Advisor's claim, and despite even Secretary Ron Brown's claim.
So, in addition to the John Huang/Lippo connection to this decision, these statements by the President and his top advisors also need to be investigated so we can determine the truth.
We also need to examine what happened after the President's embargo decision in February, 1994. John Huang was reportedly paid a $780,000 bonus by The Lippo Group. Why?
The facts now get even more disturbing. John Huang then gets hired by the Clinton Administration to be the Deputy assistant Secretary for International Trade in the Commerce Department. But several months before he was even hired, we now learn that the Administration had given him a Top Secret security clearance! For what?
How many White House or National Security Council meetings did John Huang attend on Vietnam policy before he was even hired? We need to know.
And what does John Huang do on his very first day on the payroll, now funded by U.S. taxpayers? He schedules a meeting on "U.S. - Vietnam Policy"! And that wasn't his only meeting on Vietnam. His personal calendar of meetings, which has been obtained by Congressional investigators, reportedly shows several other meetings as Vietnam-related.
It's no wonder that his former Lippo boss, James Riady, has reportedly referred to John Huang as 'My Man In The American Government." I would simply ask, "Who did the POW/MIA families and our veterans have in the American government during this same period?"!
In addition to that, John Huang's phone records from the Commerce Department in 1994 and on into 1995 reportedly show scores of phone calls to his former bosses at the Indonesian-based Lippo Group.
And this is during the same period that he was now pressuring the President and his advisors to establish full diplomatic relations with Vietnam!
Let's move forward in time again to the summer of 1995, when the President, against the wishes of POW/MIA families and the majority of our veterans, including the American Legion, announced the establishment of full diplomatic relations. Again, the President said that the primary reason for his decision was POW/MIA accounting.
However, I learned just this past Friday in documents provided to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that John Huang and other Commerce Department officials attended and August, 1995 meeting on Vietnam at the State Department right before the Secretary of State announced the opening of the U.S. embassy in Hanoi.
Again, what was the connection? What was John Huang doing at this meeting? How many other meetings on Vietnam did he try to influence? How often was he influencing Clinton Administration decisions on Vietnam? And, most importantly, what obligation did the President feel he had to John Huang and the Riady family. In view of their significant financial support to his first campaign?
Let me now get to the final. most disturbing part of this whole disturbing affair - the second Clinton Campaign. In December, 1995, John Huang left the Commerce Department to become the top ranking fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee - the committee whose obvious top priority in 1996 was the reelection of John Huang's long-time personal friend, President Bill Clinton.
Between December, 1995 and Election Day this past November, John Huang reportedly raised $3.4 million in campaign money for President Clinton's reelection effort from Asian-connected sources. The only problem is, that with respect to $1.6 million of that total, no one really knows specifically from who or where John Huang got the money, or in some cases, we know it came from foreign-based sources like The Lippo Group, which as I said earlier, has offices in Vietnam and California.
In another disturbing example, I read in the New York Times yesterday that a federal grand jury heard testimony last week that John Huang had approached the Asian American Business Roundtable with an offer to give them $45,000 if they would take $250,000 from Mr. Huang and donate it to the Democratic National Committee. If this is true, it is nothing more than outrageous! Where did John Huang get this money in the first place - from The Lippo Group? From China? from Vietnam?
That $1.6 million has now been rejected by the Democratic National Committee, though it's a little late for that to happen after the President's reelection!
Nonetheless, the Congress and/or an independent counsel needs to determine where this money came from, because the possibility is very real that U.S. foreign policy may have been for sale to foreigners, foreign-based companies, and even foreign governments like Vietnam and China. Our National Security may have also been compromised.
So again, the most troubling part of all this apparent illegal campaign activity comes back to the ethics issue of whether the President's foreign policy toward Vietnam has been influenced by any of this, at the expense of the POW/MIA accounting concerns of the families, and our nation's veterans.
As the new Chairman and a member for several years now on the Senate Ethics Committee, I've had to review cases involving allegations of ethical misconduct. But in my judgment, none of the allegations I have seen in my own work on the Senate Ethics Committee would equal or compare to the seriousness of the allegations now circulating around the White House, and the implications if these allegations are true.
It is critical that we have a credible and thorough investigation of this matter.
Let me now summarize the relationship of all this to the POW/MIA issue:
Twice last year, the President certified to Congress that Vietnam was "cooperating in full faith" on the POW/MIA issue, even though the facts indicate there is still information Vietnam could readily provide access to if they truly wanted to show "full faith" on the POW/MIA issue. The Presidential certification was a condition passed into law by Congress last year that the President was required to fulfill if he wanted to use taxpayer funds to carry out his normalization agenda with Vietnam. {NOTE: PD 96-28 and PD 97-10.
We had wanted the language "fully cooperating" - the same language used for the certifications on anti-drug cooperation for various countries which the President issued this past Friday. It's okay to use that language as a condition for foreign aid in the fight against drugs, but it's not okay when it comes to cooperation on the POW/MIA issue. Ask them to explain that one to you.
The White House fought us on this last year, because they knew, and even admitted at one point, that the President could not certify the stronger language, and if adopted, it would have put a lie to the Administration's rhetoric about the superb cooperation Vietnam was allegedly giving on the POW/MIA issue.
We eventually settled on "cooperating in full faith," and the President made the required certification, which again, is not based on facts. Let's briefly look at the facts;-
s Wartime Politburo or Central Committee records concerning U.S. POWs have not been provided by Vietnam; additional North Vietnamese military records known to exist on U.S. POW/MIAs from Laos have not been provided by Vietnam; Prison Camp records pertaining to U.S. POWs have not been provided by Vietnam; nor has Vietnam dramatically improved its unilateral actions with respect to 461 cases of unaccounted for Americans, where Pentagon analysts have concluded that Vietnam has the ability unilaterally to help us resolve these cases. How is that cooperation in full faith?
If Vietnam truly wants to show full-faith, and have normal relations with us, then they should also give us the names of the officers from Cuba who came to Hanoi at Vietnam's invitation and then tortured and beat to death American POWs in the POW camps. Cuba is responsible for War Crimes against American POWs in Hanoi, and Vietnam has an obligation to provide us the names of these Cubans. There are also reports that the Cuban involvement may have been greater than previously realized. Again, if Hanoi wants to show full-faith cooperation, they know what they can do .
So again, you have to ask yourself - why did the President make this certification that Vietnam was cooperating in full faith on the POW/MIA issue when the facts show otherwise? I don't know the answer, but I strongly believe it needs to be investigated, in view of the information I've already discussed.
As some of you know, the President now wants to send an Ambassador to Hanoi. This would be the first time we've ever had a U.S. Ambassador in Communist Vietnam. It's another step in the normalization process with Hanoi when so many of these other troubling questions are unanswered and unresolved.
I certainly have no objection to the President's nominee himself - former Congressman Pete Peterson. He served his country in the Air Force and in the Congress, and he suffered as a POW in Vietnam. Even though I disagree with Pete Peterson's personal view on normalization of relations with Vietnam, I want to stress that my concerns with this nomination have nothing to do with Pete Peterson. Again, this is not about Pete Peterson. It's about whether the Senate should be confirming an Ambassador to Vietnam.
The Senate's Constitutional Advice and Consent Role, which I take very seriously, requires me to look at this latter issue. It's not just about the fitness of the nominee, but the very office to which the nominee has been nominated, and what has led to the creation of this office.
At a time when there are so many disturbing reports which cast doubt on the Administration's publicly-stated rationale for moving forward with Communist Vietnam over the last four years, I believe it would be irresponsible for the Senate to just go ahead and approve the President's request that we put a U.S. Ambassador in Hanoi, and allow Hanoi to do the same here in Washington.
Therefore, I am today announcing publicly that I support the position taken by the American Legion on this matter. I will oppose any Senate action to confirm an ambassador to Vietnam until the impact that illegal foreign campaign contributions may have had on U.S. policy toward Vietnam has been fully investigated by the appropriate Congressional committees or an independent counsel.
Let me be even clearer, since right now John Huang is refusing to testify before Congress. NO TESTIMONY, NO AMBASSADOR - it's that simple.
There should be no misunderstanding of my position. If I have to use a filibuster, I will. I owe that to you, my fellow veterans, and to those who are still Missing in Action, and their families.
And because the President's certification of Hanoi's full-faith POW/MIA cooperation is not, as the law requires, supported by all relevant information available to the U.S. government, such as the Russian documents and the certain existence of other records in Vietnam, this is one more reason that I will OPPOSE any Senate action to further normalize relations with Vietnam.
The Senate should not be required to put itself on record on ambassador confirmation until these matters have been fully investigated. You have my word on this. I will do everything in my power to make sure this doesn't happen.
Thank you very much."