--===NewsMax.com: Inside Cover===--
                                       
                                       
  [NewsMax.com]             
May 26, 1999 
 


_Tuesday May 25, 12:02 AM
 Chi-com Clinton Donor Behind Threat to Nuke L.A._

 Three years ago, reports emerged of a then-unidentified Chinese official who
warned that Los Angeles would be nuked if the U.S. interfered with China's
plans to "reunify" with Taiwan. Two months later, China lobbed an unarmed
nuclear-capable M-9 missile over Taiwan's capital, Taipei.

 Almost three weeks ago, big-time Democrat donor Johnny Chung told
congressional investigators that Gen. Ji Shengde, head of Chinese military
intelligence, had given him $300,000 to donate to President Clinton's
re-election campaign. Ji told Chung, "We like your president."

 Now Jennifer Hickey, reporting in the June 7 issue of Insight magazine, has
noticed a startling connection between the two events after combing through
Chung's testimony before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
The generous Gen. Ji, who likes our president, was the very same Chinese
official who threatened L.A. with nuclear incineration in 1996.

 In 1998, the Washington Post interviewed the person to whom China's nuke
threat was delivered. Chas. W. Freeman Jr. was a China specialist who served
as President Nixon's interpreter for his breakthrough 1972 China trip. More
recently Freeman was assistant secretary of defense.

 In January 1995, Freeman informed then-National Security Adviser Anthony Lake
about a heated discussion he had with Chinese officials in Beijing that had
taken a decidedly ugly turn:

 "I said you'll get a military reaction from the United States" if China
attacks Taiwan, Freeman recalled.

 "And they said: 'No you won't. We've watched you in Somalia, Haiti and
Bosnia, and you don't have the will.' "

 Then, according to Freeman, one senior Chinese officer added: "In the 1950s,
you three times threatened nuclear strikes on China, and you could do that
because we couldn't hit back. Now we can. So you are not going to threaten us
again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei."
(Washington Post, June 21, 1998) 

Freeman would not give the Post the identity of the Chinese officer who made
the nuclear threat three years ago. But earlier this month, in sworn
congressional testimony, Johnny Chung fingered Gen. Ji Shengde.

 Chung says he met Ji at a Hong Kong eatery, where Chung was introduced as "a
good friend of President Clinton" by Liu Chaoying, vice president of China
Aerospace Corp.

 Chung said Ji told him: "We like your president. I will give you 300,000 U.S.
dollars. You can give it to the president and the Democratic Party. We hope he
will be re-elected."

 While Ji was busy placing his bets on Clinton, U.S. security officials took
up Freeman's report about Ji's nuclear threat with Liu Huaqiu, a senior
Chinese national security official. "[Nuclear blackmail] is not our policy,"
Liu responded.

 But comments from other Chinese officials are not always so reassuring:
 The same year Ji threatened L.A., the vice commandant of Beijing's Academy of
Military Sciences offered this ominous assessment of Sino-U.S. relations: 
"For a relatively long time, it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly
nurse our sense of vengeance. ... We must conceal our abilities and bide our
time." (New York Post, April 5, 1997)

 In September 1997, a Pentagon study of Chinese military writings was
disclosed to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Defense Department China
expert Michael Pillsbury told senators that Chinese military planning had a
common theme:

 "America is proclaimed to be a declining power with but two or three decades
of primacy left. U.S. military forces, while dangerous at present, are
vulnerable, even deeply flawed, and can be defeated with the right strategy."
(Associated Press, Sept. 19, 1997)

 One senior U.S official, speaking to the Washington Post on condition of
anonymity, described the uncomfortable months of early 1996 after Ji's January
threat to nuke Los Angeles was followed in March by missile volleys over
Taiwan:

 "It was very tense. We were up all night for weeks. We prepared the war
plans, the options. It was horrible."

 The Post addded: "At camp H.M. Smith in Honolulu, Adm. Joseph Prueher ordered
his U.S. Pacific Command to form a 'crisis action team' to coordinate
air-and-sea operations around the clock. Chinese public rhetoric became as
warlike as any heard in decades, including vows to 'bury' the Americans if it
came to a fight."

 Bury America? In 1961, Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev banged his
shoe on a U.N. podium while bellowing a similar threat. Imagine if one of his
generals was caught greasing the palms of a White House fundraiser with
hundreds of thousands of dollars while uttering the words: "We like your
president. We hope he will be re-elected"?
 




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