Sun., Dec. 22, 1996 https://archive.vn/G3CmY#selection-1103.0-1107.19
WHITE HOUSE INSIDER MARK MIDDLETON: HIS TIES TO JOHN HUANG, CHARLIE TRIE, AND OTHER CAMPAIGN FINANCE FIGURES https://www.amazon.com/WHITE-HOUSE-INSI ... 1240453817Minh Nguyen says it would be impossible to find a group of people less politically minded than his fellow disciples of Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai.
The follower who dares to introduce politics to a meditation gathering at Ching Hai’s center here is swiftly shown the door, Nguyen said.
Yet members, who sometimes meditate for nine hours a day in this manicured patch of ranch country two hours southeast of Los Angeles, have been thrust from obscurity into the national limelight.
The fund created to pay President Clinton’s legal bills from the Whitewater case and other matters disclosed last week that it had returned $640,000 to donors, many of whom belonged to the sect.
Nguyen’s personal check for $1,000 has not been returned. He said he made the donation to the fund earlier this year after members learned through electronic mail, TV and newspaper reports, and “maybe talk between us,” that they could help defray Clinton’s mounting legal bills.
“He is a good person, a spiritual person,” Nguyen said of Clinton.
Standing on the outskirts of Ching Hai’s compound in the rugged Riverside County hills, Nguyen said the entire affair was “only a mistake.”
“This is a spiritual place,” the Vietnamese native said. “It doesn’t matter what happened outside. We just enjoy the spiritual life here.”
But investigators working for the fund reportedly suspected many contributions were bogus because the donors appeared unable to afford $1,000 gifts. Some signatures on the donation checks had identical handwriting, and some of the donations were in sequentially numbered money orders from people in different cities, the fund’s lawyer has said.
In March, fund-raiser and Clinton friend Charles Yah Lin Trie delivered $460,000 to the Presidential Legal Expense Trust. He later provided more money, but the fund returned all of it - a total of $640,000.
Fund administrators feared that Trie was using Ching Hai members as a front to conceal the true source of the donations, or to violate contribution limits set by the fund. But Trie’s link to the group is unclear and no larger scheme has been uncovered.
On Thursday, the Justice Department issued subpoenas both to the White House counsel’s office and the trust seeking records related to the return of the donations.
Nguyen, 34, a U.S. citizen who owns a vegetarian food manufacturing firm, said he was not reimbursed by anyone and that no one was pressured to donate. His own wife, a fellow disciple and a Republican, did not contribute.
And while some sect members borrowed the money from friends, he did not.
“People, from my point of view, they appreciate the government to give them freedom to come to the U.S.A. and start a new life,” he said of the many Asian immigrant members.
“Because we are Americans, we need to fulfill our rights to support a good president,” he said. “After four years he did good work. He helped a lot of people in and outside the U.S.A.”
... THE PLAYERS Intriguing new characters seem to emerge daily in the controversy over foreign-linked campaign donations to President Clinton and the Democrats. A current sampling: Charles Yah Lin Trie: A longtime Arkansas friend of Clinton, who used to dine at Trie’s Little Rock restaurant, the international consultant and member of a presidential trade commission delivered $640,000 in questionable donations to the Clintons’ Whitewater legal defense fund last spring. They were later returned. Wang Jun: A Chinese government weapons dealer who attended a White House reception held by Clinton last February. Trie arranged the invitation. The president has said it was inappropriate for Wang, whose company later was implicated in arms smuggling into the United States, to attend. Mochtar and James Riady: The patriarch and his son, respectively, of Indonesia’s Lippo Group conglomerate. Family members and Lippo associates have contributed heavily to Clinton and the Democrats over the years. James Riady made numerous visits to the White House, including six in which he met with the president. John Huang: Chief of Lippo’s U.S. operations before his appointment to a senior Commerce Department position and later transfer to the Democratic National Committee as a fund-raiser. He raised an estimated $3.4 million this election year, much of which was returned because of questions about its origins. Justice Department: Has expanded its investigation of fund-raising irregularities by the Democratic Party to include the president and first lady’s legal defense fund. Buddhist sects: Leading sources of the questionable Democratic donations. Vice President Al Gore attended a controversial fund-raiser with Asian-Americans in April at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif. Suma Ching Hai, leader of an international sect based in Taiwan, sometimes auctions her personal relics - including a pair of sweat socks that reportedly sold for $800. Mark Middleton: An international businessman and former White House aide who solicited funds in Asia for a foundation refurbishing Clinton’s childhood home in Hope, Ark., to make it into a tourist attraction. - Associated Press
The story continues behind the paywall of the Washington Post... Looking for other resources..
Excerpts from Congress depositions: https://irp.fas.org/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/2-20.htm
Charlie Trie's contributions to the Presidential Legal
Expense Trust (the ``Trust'') further illustrate the manner in
which Trie raised foreign money, as well as his close ties to
the White House and the President. Unlike contributions to the
Clinton/Gore campaign or the DNC, contributions to the Trust
inured directly to the personal financial benefit of President
Clinton and the First Lady. The money was used to pay their
personal legal bills. Because such contributions are even more
susceptible to abuse than ordinary campaign contributions, the
Committee looked closely at Trie's activities with respect to
the Trust and the White House's knowledge of and response to
those activities.
In March 1996, Trie personally delivered almost one half
million dollars in checks and money orders to the Trust. Trust
representatives and White House officials recognized almost
immediately that the donations were highly questionable and
appeared, at least in part, to have been coerced from members
of a controversial Buddhist sect. However, rather than simply
returning the suspect donations and publicly reporting such
returns--which had been the Trust's historical practice--the
Trust, in consultation with senior White House officials, hid
the returned donations by changing the format of the Trust's
bi-annual public disclosure form. This avoided public
disclosure of any information concerning the Trie donations
prior to the 1996 presidential election.
Moreover, when the Trust finally sent the donations back to
the Trie-related contributors, it did so with a twist. It
invited these contributors to recontribute their money,
notwithstanding the fact that they knew a substantial amount of
the money had been coerced from these very donors in the first
place. Not surprisingly, once Charlie Trie's close association
with James Riady, John Huang and the entire DNC fundraising
matter became public through press reports in October 1996, the
Trust and White House senior officials quickly determined that
the ``recontributions'' should also be returned--this time with
no strings attached. However, neither the White House nor the
Trust publicly disclosed the Trie/Trust connection or the
strange origin of the donations until after the election and
even then only because they were forced to do so by a
threatened press story....
. The Rose of the Ching Hai Buddhist Sect
During its investigation, IGI conducted extensive computer
information searches, interviewed numerous donors
telephonically, and contacted several experts on cults and
religious sects. Based on these efforts, IGI determined that
Trie likely laundered some or all of the funds through members
of the Ching Hai Buddhist sect to the Trust and that many sect
members were, in fact, coerced into making the donations.
The Ching Hai Buddhist organization is headed by the
Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai. According to IGI's findings and
other published information, the Supreme Master studied
Buddhism in Taiwan, where she maintains her headquarters. Aside
from leading the sect, she also designs her own line of clothes
and conducts fashion shows.\51\ She encourages her followers to
make donations to and purchase items from Ching Hai.
Notwithstanding her teachings to her followers to focus on the
spiritual and not the material, IGI found that Suma Ching Hai
generally travels and lives in an opulent style. Indeed, IGI
reported that she is considered a fraud by many other Buddhist
groups.\52\ IGI also reported on certain unconventional
practices within the sect, such as the sale of the Supreme
Master's bathwater to her followers (which she apparently
claims has curative properties).\53\
As a result of its interviews with experts who had studied
the Ching Hai sect extensively, IGI learned that its
membersoften donate sums to the organization greater than they can
afford.54 IGI concluded that it was highly likely that the
funds donated by members of Ching Hai to the Trust were not given
voluntarily.
IGI also discovered that the donors to the Trust were
solicited by the Supreme Master at large meetings in Los
Angeles, Houston and New York. Many of the members IGI
interviewed said they did not have check books or sufficient
funds with them at the meetings, so in some cases fellow
members wrote checks on their behalf, and in other cases money
orders were provided and people simply filled them out with
their addresses and social security numbers.
For obvious reasons, the Committee looked closely at
whether the Ching Hai members reimbursed the sect for the money
orders they had filled out or whether the sect simply funneled
its funds through its members to Trie and ultimately the Trust.
The organizer of the Ching Hai meeting in New York, Zhi Hua
Dong, addressed this issue when he testified before the
Committee on July 31, 1997.
C. Testimony of Zhi Hua Dong
Zhi Hua Dong is a computer systems administrator in the
physics department at Columbia University. He served as the New
York contact member for Ching Hai and was one of the organizers
of a March 16, 1996 meeting of the group in New York. Dong
testified before the Committee and explained how the donations
were gathered at that meeting. A couple of days prior to March
16, Dong was contacted by one of the Supreme Master's
assistants and told to purchase $20,000 in money orders and was
assured that he would be reimbursed for the purchase. He was
not told why the money was needed. Later the same day he
received another call from the same individual and was told to
purchase as many money orders as he could. After contacting a
few other members from the New York area, Dong was able to
purchase $70,000 in money orders.
Dong testified that he and his wife met the Supreme Master
Suma Ching Hai at Kennedy International Airport along with
other sect members.58 Dong's wife, Tracy Hui, drove
Charlie Trie and the Supreme Master into Manhattan. Dong
followed in another vehicle. Upon arriving at the Ritz Carlton
Hotel in midtown, Dong went up to the Supreme Master's room
where he delivered the money orders he had been asked to
purchase. At that time the Supreme Master explained to him that
they were helping President Clinton raise funds for his
personal legal expenses. Trie, who was to be initiated into the
sect at the meeting, was also in the room and wrote down the
full name of the Trust so that people would be able to spell it
correctly on their money orders and checks. Before leaving,
Dong observed the Master removing $20,000-25,000 from the stack
of money orders for sect-related expenses.
During the meeting that night, which was held at the Inn at
57th Street, the Supreme Master addressed about 150 new
initiates, all U.S. citizens, and told them that President
Clinton was a good person and needed their help. After
requesting them to contribute to the Trust, the Master turned
to leave the room and to go downstairs to a private meeting.
When some of the new initiates tried to follow her, she turned
and in an angry tone told them to stay put and attend to
business.60 When one of the followers tried to ask a
``spiritual question,'' she angrily told him that it was not
the time for spiritual questions.61 According to
Dong, her tone made some of the members uncomfortable,
The voice was very strong, very strong, you know,
from my perspective, I feel some energy coming out, and
her tone, you know, could make people uncomfortable . .
. there is one person stand up, after Master talked,
stand up, asked a spiritual question regarding the
practice. Master was very angry . . . It's a very
strong voice. That could irritate people.
Immediately following the event, Dong went back to the
Master's room at the Ritz-Carlton and helped count the funds
that had been raised. Between sixty and one hundred of the
blank money orders had been filled out by individuals who did
not pay for them.63 The Master added a number of
checks and money orders from another meeting, and, according to
Dong, the total amount finally given to Trie could have been
more than $400,000. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dong had never met Trie prior to the New York meeting, and
he testified that from the way Trie talked, he was under the
impression that he worked directly for President
Clinton.65 This was the only time Dong was aware of
the Supreme Master ever asking for support for a political
figure.66 Four days after this New York meeting--on
March 20--Trie called Cardozo to set up their initial
meeting.
Dong testified that in May, 1996, Trie called him and asked
him if they could meet at the airport while Trie was changing
planes in New York. At this meeting Trie was very upset because
the Trust was investigating the source of the contributions. He
told Dong that the Trust was being ``very cautious'' because it
was ``an election year.''
Several weeks after the event, Dong contacted the Ching Hai
headquarters in Taiwan requesting that he and his fellow
membersbe reimbursed for the $70,000 in money orders that they
had purchased with their own money. Dong testified that up to this
point he had received little or no reimbursement from the individual
members. Dong and the other members who had advanced funds for the
money orders were eventually reimbursed by the sect in three wire
transfers, one for $20,000 from Taiwan, one for $30,000 from Cambodia
where the sect had a chapter, and the balance in a wire transfer from
Los Angeles chapter.
VI. May 9, 1996 White House Meeting
After receiving the initial investigative report from IGI,
including information about the Ching Hai Buddhist group,
Cardozo scheduled another meeting at the White House for May 9,
1996 to again discuss the Trie donations.70 The
meeting was attended by Cardozo, Schwartz and Libow on behalf
of the Trust, and Harold Ickes, Jack Quinn, White House
Counsel, Bruce Lindsey, Deputy White House Counsel, Cheryl
Mills, Deputy White House Counsel, Evelyn Lieberman, Deputy
Chief of Staff, and Maggie Williams, Chief of staff to the
First Lady, on behalf of the White House. Cardozo did not know
why it was necessary to meet with so many senior members of the
White House staff, especially in light of his insistence that
the Trust operated independent of the White House.71
The White House apparently made the decision as to which staff
members would attend.
On April 24, 1996, Trie visited the Trust for the second time.
He met with Cardozo and Schwartz and brought a shopping bag with him.
Cardozo testified that when he saw Trie approach he thought to himself
``Oh my God, he's got a million dollars.'' In fact, Trie had an
additional $179,000 for the Trust. Because the Trust was investigating
the first batch of donations, Cardozo refused to accept the donations.
Because IGI had been specifically instructed by Cardozo not to
interview Trie, they had instead prepared a list of questions to be
asked of Trie at the April 24 meeting in order to gain a better
understanding of the source of the donations. However, neither Cardozo
nor Schwartz asked any of IGI's questions at the meeting.
During the May 9 meeting, Cardozo explained the key facts
surrounding Trie's donations to the Trust, and called upon
Libow, the Trust's attorney, to provide the group with a
summary of IGI's findings regarding Ching Hai and its leader,
Suma Ching Hai. Libow described IGI's findings in great detail
including their conclusion that at least some of the donations
may have been coerced.
IGI's conclusion was ultimately proven
correct when in July Cardozo received a letter from Ching Hai member
David Lawrence. Cardozo circulated the letter to all of the people who
had attended the May 9 meeting, as well as Mrs. Clinton. The Lawrence
letter confirmed that in fact many of the donors did not contribute
their own funds:
Unfortunately as you suspected, the funds were raised by
the efforts of a concerned party who was unaware of some of
the terms mentioned in your letter. In particular, none of
those in the private association involved in the fund
raising knew that the individual U.S. citizen donors were
required to use only their own funds. In my case, $500
given by money order was advanced by the association or its
leader and not reimbursed by me. We were led to believe
that reimbursement was optional. I am sure that none of the
members or leadership of the association knew otherwise. In
addition, I was not made aware of the other terms mentioned
periodic public reports of fund contributors.''
Mr. Ickes was not alone in his failure to follow up on
Trie's actions with regard to the Trust. White House personnel,
including the President, not only failed to notify the DNC of
Trie's questionable fundraising practices with the Trust, but
continued to have contact with him. Only four days after the
May 9 White House meeting, the President sat next to Trie at
the head table of a $5,000 per person dinner in
Washington.82 In August, 1996, two months after the
Trust decided to return the Trie-related donations, the
President accepted $110,000 from Trie at an event celebrating
the President's 50th birthday.83 In addition, as
noted above, the President proceeded to appoint Trie to a
federal trade commission and had the NSC prepare a personal
response to foreign policy questions raised by Trie, both after
Cardozo informed the White House and the First Lady about the
questionable Trust donations.
n May 17, 1996, Trie visited the Trust for the third and
final time. Cardozo asked Schwartz to meet with Trie alone
because Cardozo no longer wished to have any dealings with
him.84 During the meeting, Trie acknowledged that he
was indeed a member of the Ching Hai sect and that he had
encouraged the Supreme Master to help him raise money for the
Trust.85 Trie also had additional donations which he
said totaled $150,000--bringing the total to $789,000--that he
wished to deliver, but Schwartz refused to accept them because
by the Trust had yet to make a determination regarding the
first delivery of funds.....
XIII. CONCLUSION
As a result of its investigation into Trie's activities
with the Trust, the Committee gained further insight into
Trie's close relationship with the White House, and how, as a
major fundraiser, Trie raised and laundered contributions for
the benefit of the President and First Lady. The evidence
uncovered by the Trust's own investigators reveals that the
donations were laundered through members of a controversial
Buddhist sect, many of whom were coerced into making the
donations. The evidence also reveals that senior members of the
White House staff were informed of this disturbing fact, yet
still acquiesced in a plan to have the donations returned to
the contributors, and then resubmitted to the Trust. This plan
soon became untenable because of Trie's sudden notoriety over
his relationship with John Huang and the growing DNC
fundraising controversy. Rather than publicly disclosing Trie's
involvement with the Trust, however, the White House sought to
keep the matter secret until after the presidential election.
Moreover, despite all of the warning signs they were given,
these same White House aides, particularly Harold Ickes and
Bruce Lindsey, made no effort whatsoever to alert the DNC that
a major DNC fundraiser was involved in money laundering with
the Trust.
The investigation also demonstrated that Trie was granted
several special favors by the White House at or about the same
time that he was raising and delivering the questionable funds
to the Trust. One question which remains unanswered is whether
these favors--the appointment of Trie to the trade commission,
Wang Jun's invitation to meet personally with the President, or
the personal reply letter from the President prepared by the
NSC explaining U.S. foreign policy--were linked in any way to
the Trust donations. These same types of questions were raised
by the Trustees in their initial meetings concerning Trie.
Inexplicably, neither the Trust nor the White House ever made
any attempt to investigate these matters. Because Trie had fled
to China during the course of the Committee's investigation and
did not return until early February 1998, and Mark Middleton
has asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-
incrimination, the Committee could not conclusively answer
these questions.
