Vampires in the U.S. Dept. of Transportation

MINNEAPOLIS - Divers checked submerged cars in the Mississippi River Thursday for victims still trapped beneath the twisted steel and concrete slabs of a collapsed bridge. As many as 30 people were reported missing as the rescue effort shifted to recovery.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty also ordered an immediate inspection of all bridges in the state with similar designs....

President Bush offered his condolences to the victims and said the federal government would help ensure that the span is rebuilt as quickly as possible.

Congress could consider an emergency relief package for Minnesota in the amount of $250 million within the next couple of days, NBC News' Mike Viqueira reported. The funds are intended to be a short-term down payment to help the state cope with the immediate aftermath.

Democrat leadership aides in the House report that they are trying to find a way to move the package through Congress in the two days that remain before the August recess.

At Hennepin County Medical Center, patients arrived in a steady stream after the collapse, some unconscious or moaning, some barely breathing, others with serious head and back injuries, Dr. William Heegaard said..

The Homeland Security Department said the collapse did not appear to be terrorism-related, but the cause was still unknown.

The first step of the federal investigation will be to recover pieces of the bridge and reassemble them, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, to try and determine what happened, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said....

As the divers worked their way around at least a dozen submerged vehicles, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced a $5 million grant to help pay for rerouting traffic patterns around the disaster site. Members of the state’s congressional delegation said up to $100 million could be available for repairs and recovery.

In 2005, the 40-year-old bridge had been rated as “structurally deficient” and possibly in need of replacement, according to a federal database. The span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability in that review, White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general last year criticized the Federal Highway Administration’s oversight of interstate bridges, saying investigators found incorrect or outdated maximum weight limit calculations and weight limit postings in the National Bridge Inventory and in states’ bridge databases.

Incorrect load ratings could endanger bridges by allowing heavier vehicles to cross than should be allowed, the inspector general said. The audit didn’t identify any Minnesota bridges beyond noting that 3 percent of the state’s bridges were structurally deficient, placing it at the low end among states.

Pawlenty said Thursday that there was no indication from that and other reviews that the bridge should be shut down. Peters added that “none of those ratings indicated there was any kind of danger.”

This week, road crews had been working on the bridge’s joints, guardrails and lights, with lane closures overnight on Tuesday and Wednesday. In 2001, the bridge had been fitted with a computerized anti-icing system that sprayed chemicals on the surface during winter weather, according to documents posted on the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Web site.

Wednesday evening, 18 construction workers were on the bridge when it collapsed, said Tom Sloan, head of the bridge division for Progressive Contractors Inc., in St. Michael. One was unaccounted for.

The crew was placing concrete finish on the bridge for what he called a routine resurfacing project.

“They said they basically rode the bridge down to the water. They were sliding into cars and cars were sliding into them,” he said.

The school bus had just crossed the bridge when the entire span of Interstate 35W crumpled into the river below. The bus stayed on concrete, and the children were able to escape unharmed out the back door.

Christine Swift’s 10-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, was on the bus, returning from a field trip to Bunker Hills in Blaine. She said her daughter called her about 6:10 p.m.

“She was screaming, ’The bridge collapsed,”’ Swift said. All the kids got off the bus safely, but about 10 of the children were injured, officials said.

From:	"V.K. Durham" <vkdtdht@pionet.net>
To:	“The Catbird” <the-catbird@hotmail.com>
Subject:	Foreign Privatization of U.S. Highways
Date:	Wed, 23 May 2007 06:52:01 -0500

No one paid a bit of attention all these years, and could have been raising HELL and putting a chunk under it, because they were too lazy to open up and read PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH'S EXECUTIVE ORDER 12803 at...

and who bought Social Security as CLINTON 'was put through the impeachment' process TO KEEP YOUR MIND OFF WHAT WAS REALLY GOING ON as the SOCIAL SECURITY was taken over by BUCKINGHAM PALACE and you can read about that at...

While this was going on even through 1998...your minds were kept off what was really going on FOREIGN DIGNATARIES KEPT WAITING WHILE THE PRESIDENT GOT A MOUTH JOB BY MONICA LEWINSKY and your minds were occupied...by a SEX scandal at the WHITE HOUSE-WHORE HOUSE.

Read the following.. and I really don't like saying this, but AMERICANS HAVE ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN...because everyone wants to be a BOSS running his 'mouth' and no one wants to be a GRUNT to get the work done that needs to be done...

Americans have no one to blame but themselves at what these CORPORATE LEADERS have done to this Nation and her International Good Standing...

American roads are the hottest commodity in the international marketplace. State and local governments are falling all over themselves to sell off highways, bridges, and all sorts of other revenue-producing infrastructure, to international financiers who are eager to snap up structures Americans have already paid for, and for which they continue to pay maintenance costs through endless taxes.

The Chicago Skyway, for example, brought $1.83 billion from a Spanish-Australian partnership. The 157-mile Indiana tollway, brought $3.85 billion from the same partnership. And the state of Texas has recently concluded a deal to sell a Trans-Texas Corridor for $7.2 billion to the same Spanish company who partnered with a Texas construction company.

What’s going on here? Why are government officials so eager to sell off our infrastructure? Because it’s a win-win deal for everyone - except the people who pay taxes and use the highways. Governments get a pot full of cash up front, and the “public-private” partnerships get a long term cash-cow. The taxpayers and highway users get ______, well, you fill in the blank.

Actually, these “sales” are long term leases, which is much worse than an outright sale. The Chicago Skyway deal is for 99 years. The Indiana Tollway is for 75 years. In what condition will these important roads be when they are returned to government? The folks who celebrate the deals today - and spend the billions - will be pushing up daisies by the time a new crop of government officials will have to explain why the roads have crumbled.

The roads that exist today were bought with taxes and tolls. They are maintained with taxes and tolls. Neither taxes nor tolls will be reduced when these roads are sold to public-private partnerships. In fact, taxes are likely to increase, and the tolls are certain to increase. Tolls for commercial use on the Indiana Tollway were scheduled to double during the first three years of the deal. Auto tolls would remain flat for the first three years, and then “catch up” with the commercial rate.

When the taxpayers and highway users get slapped in the budget by these increases, and complain to their elected officials, the elected officials can do nothing but say “we’re sorry, it’s out of our hands for the next 99 years.” When the roads begin to crumble and potholes begin to appear, elected officials can do nothing but say, “we’re sorry, it’s out of our hands for the next 99 years.”

When the people of Texas learned about the $7.2 billion deal the state was constructing, they overwhelmed the legislature and demanded a two-year moratorium during which the consequences of the deal could be studied. The moratorium legislation passed the state House and Senate by a combined vote of 165 to 5 - more than enough to override the governor’s threatened veto. But legislators are trying to take the teeth out of the legislation by exempting half the roads in Texas.

The Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee says that the public-private partnership project must go forward, because the state has not raised gasoline taxes in 16 years, and there’s not enough money to build the roads that are desperately needed.

Well, now, he didn’t say what portion of the state and federal gasoline taxes were spent on non-highway projects. He didn’t say why the gasoline taxes were not increased if a valid need existed. He didn’t say why the state could not raise the necessary construction funds the same way the public-private partnership will raise it - by pledging future revenues to pay for the funds borrowed. He didn’t say why he is eager to turn public transportation over to a public-private partnership that is not accountable to the voters.

There is another reason for the media hype and popularity of public-private partnership funding. To meet the anticipated construction costs of the NAFTA Super-corridor network, incredible sums of capital must be amassed - rather quickly. Not all cities or states have the expertise or the credit worthiness to structure a multi-billion-dollar financing package. It’s much easier to turn to an outfit that has done it before - and damn the consequences that will fall on another generation.

The sale, or long-term lease, of the nation’s infrastructure is not just a fix for immediate congestion problems, it is a method of financing a whole new infrastructure designed to allow goods to flow from Chinese-controlled ports in Mexico, throughout the United States, and into Canada. Proponents of the project know that it will be much easier to get financing from public-private partnerships than from taxpayers who are already over-taxed. Left up to the taxpayers in each state, the international NAFTA Super-corridor network would be in great jeopardy if even one state refused to cooperate.

That’s why it is necessary to take the matter out of the hands of taxpayers, and let the professional bureaucrats do what they know is best for the poor, uneducated taxpayers, who, in the end, must still pay the bill. The sale of the nation’s infrastructure is nothing less than a national tragedy.

Former AZ official picked as next U.S. Transportation secretary, Napolitano
hopes that's good news

Former state transportation chief Mary Peters was named Tuesday by President Bush to be the next federal transportation secretary. And that, according to Gov. Janet Napolitano, could be good news for Arizona.

The White House, in a statement announcing Bush's nomination, called her the "right person" to take over the huge federal agency.

"As Secretary of Transportation, Peters will work closely with State and local leaders to ensure that America has a state-of-the-art transportation system that meets the needs of our growing economy," according to a White House press release.

Napolitano said that Peters, who is not only originally from Arizona but moved back here last year, will be "very cognizant of the needs of our rapidly growing state." And those needs, the governor said, appear to have been ignored in Washington.

"Arizona didn't do too well in the last federal highway bill," she said. "On a per capita basis, we're either 49th or 50th even though we're the first or second most rapidly growing state," Napolitano continued. "Our transportation needs are huge. We need money for roads but also other transportation modes as well."

Technically, Peters has nothing official to do with how big a share Arizona gets of the federal pie.

But gubernatorial press aide Mike Haener said Peters will influence Bush in what the administration proposes in future years in federal transportation funding.

Members of the state's congressional delegation are aware of the issue: Both of the state's senators refused to support the latest highway funding legislation.

"While this year's transportation funding bill was an improvement over past years, due to the efforts of Sen. (John) McCain and me, it still fell short of an equitable share for Arizona," said Sen. Jon Kyl....

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said he also recognizes Arizona remains a "donor state" in providing more to the Federal Highway Trust Fund than it gets back.

Franks said Peters "thoroughly understands what Arizonans and citizens of similar donor states deal with on a daily basis."

Peters dodged questions about whether she believes Arizona is getting shorted, telling Capitol Media Services she doesn't want to comment on policy issues -- at least not yet.

"I'd be happy to talk about that more freely after the confirmation process, should the Senate confirm me." ...

As head of the Federal Highway Administration, Peters was a big proponent of "user fees" to pay for new road construction instead of relying on congressional appropriations. And one key way of raising those fees is through toll roads.

In a speech as highway administrator to the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, Peters said the Bush administration supports such joint ventures. And she detailed some of what she called the "success stories."

That list, Peters conceded, did not include Arizona, where ADOT floated the idea in 1991 as a method of funding a freeway around the back end of South Mountain south of Phoenix.

Those plans came to a halt amid legal and other questions; the road has yet to be built.

One of the companies that submitted a proposal for that freeway was HDR Inc., an engineering firm. Peters currently serves as a senior vice president for the company....

Peters last year weighed a run for governor as a Republican. But that was derailed after it was learned that after Peters went to Washington in 2001 to head the Federal Highway Administration she voted in Virginia, raising legal questions of whether she would meet Arizona's constitutional requirement to be a resident of this state for five years before seeking office.

Lippo Group - From Betrayal - How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security, by Bill Gertz:

Who was the biggest contributor to the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992? Not a corporation, not a labor union, not a Hollywood mogul, but Indonesian businessman James Riady and his wife, who gave $450,000 to elect Bill Clinton....

During the final weeks of the campaign, the Riady family, its associates, and executives at Riady companies gave an additional $600,000 to the DNC and Democratic state parties....

The patriarch of the business empire is Mochtar Riady . . .Of his three sons, James was a permanent resident of the United States, Stephen was educated here, and Andrew worked in California . . . All, however, have fled the United States....

Only John Huang, the family's former U.S. operative, remains in the United States -- and he has pleaded the Fifth Amendment...

The Riady empire, centered on its Lippo Group, is, as one financial analysis in Jakarta describes it, "a carefully balanced house of cards."...

In 1977, Mochtar Riady tried to buy the National Bank of Georgia. He failed, but one of the brokers in the deal was Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas, who tried to interest a disappointed Riady in joining Stephens, Inc., one of America's largest private investment banks outside of Wall Street. . . . Mochtar Riady agreed, and his son James, then aged twenty, arrived to intern at Stephens, Inc....

Thus began a friendship that has lasted twenty years, and has spread a web of intrigue, financial corruption, and foreign influence into American government....

WALL STREET JOURNAL: ... The FBI questioned Huang extensively about whether Lippo fronted in the U.S. for Chinese government interests because of business ties between the company and government-controlled China Resources Corp....

In 1985, the FBI interrogation record says, China Resources allegedly paid for a Lippo-organized trip to Asia by then-Arkansas Governor Clinton....

The FBI says ... that China Resources was controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, the primary lobbying agent for most-favored-nation trade status for China.

Corporations do it to avoid or evade taxes, to defraud their shareholders, to get around currency control regulations, and to bribe prospective clients. . . .

The Lockheed Corporation laundered $25.5 million through a Liechtenstein trust to pay off Italian politicians.

Lockheed also subscribed to the laundry facilities of Deak-Perera, then an important American foreign exchange dealer, to bribe Japanese politicians.

As Lockheed's behest, Deak put $8.3 million into the washing cycle, then brought it out in 15 untraceable payments to a Spanish priest in Hong Kong, who hand-carried the cash in flight bags and orange crates to Lockheed's customers in Tokyo....

From Year of the Rat - How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash, by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II:

On May 30, 1998, a Chinese Long March rocket sent up a Lockheed-Martin telecommunications satellite called "ChinaStar1."....

Over the course of the past eight years there has been a steady trend in satellite operators from Australians, to legitimate commercial interests in Hong Kong, to COSTIND in civilian clothes in Hong Kong, to something mysterious in Singapore, and now to a Beijing-registered, PRC government-owned firm, China Orient Satellite Telecommunications (COSAT). According to published reports, COSAT is a joint venture between the Chlinese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and Polytechnologies.

Polytechnologies is the problem. It is owned by the General Staff Department of the PLA and headed by Deng Xiaoping's son-in-law.

POLY IS CHINA'S LEADING ARMS SMUGGLER AND THE CONDUIT FOR RUSSIAN ARMS TRANSFERS TO CHINA.

POLY WAS ALSO ONE OF TWO CHINESE ARMS SMUGGLERS CAUGHT BY U.S. CUSTOMS AGENTS TRYING TO SELL FULLY AUTOMATIC MACHINE GUNS TO U.S. DRUG GANGS IN 1996.

With regard to ChinaStar, Poly is alleged to have arranged with Lockheed to ensure that the satellite downlinks "passed through missile launching sites" in western China.

The operating assumption is that this is going to be primarily a command and control satellite for the PLA and for PLA business interests....

If it was known to a foreign wire service as early as 1995 that COSAT was a front for the notorious Polytechnologies, why did the Clinton administration grant approval for the deal?

From If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, by Jim Hightower:

Far from opposing the mating dances of corporate Goliaths, Washington actively encourages them.

In 1995, for example, the Pentagon was so pleased that the giant weapons maker Lockheed was going to take over competitor Martin Marietta that it ponied up nearly a billion of our tax dollars to pay for merger costs, including shelling out some $3 million in a bonus to Lockheed CEO Norman Augustine and $31 million more in bonuses to other top executives who engineered the merger-- a combination that cost nineteen thousand workers their jobs.

The government payouts to Augustine and the other executives were orchestrated by then-Secretary of Defense William Perry and his deputy John Deutch-- both of whom had previously been highly compensated consultants to Martin Marietta and had a close personal relationship with Augustine.

(An interesting footnote to this government-induced merger is that one fellow who lost his job as a result of it went away with a big grin on his face: Lamar Alexander--the hapless candidate for the Republican presidential nomination! He had been a well-paid, ex-board member. The merged company wanted a smaller board, so it paid Lamar $236,000 for agreeing not to serve on the new Lockheed Martin board.)

In June, 2000, it was announced that Secretary of Commerce William Daley was resigning his post to become AL GORE'S campaign manager. (Like being Gore's campaign manager is more important to the country's welfare than completing his term as Secretary of Commerce???)

A few days later, PRESIDENT CLINTON announced that NORMAN MINETA was his choice for the new Secretary of Commerce.

Loral Space Systems - From Year of the Rat - How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash, by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II:

In the early morning hours of February 15, 1996, a Chinese Long March 3B space launch rose a short distance off the launch pad and then fell over onto a local village with an incredible explosion. According to an Israeli engineer who witnessed the disaster, "thousands of corpses were loaded in dozens of trucks and buried in mass graves."...

Loral Space Systems, the builder of the February 15 satellite, had a problem. So did the Chinese launchers, who had such a poor reputation for reliability that they were uninsurable. Without insurance, Loral and the other U.S. firms could not use Chinese rockets to launch their satellites. Something had to be done to make the Chinese rockets more reliable if the satellite makers were going to save a dollar or two on launch fees. . . .

On April 14, 1998, the New York Times ran a major story by investigative reporter, Jeff Gerth -- "Grand Jury Probes Two Firms' Ties to China Missile Program" -- that linked Loral and its partner, Hughes Electronics, to China....

Under pressure from Congress, the National Security Council was forced to release a series of documents it would have preferred to keep secret. The substance of the allegations is as follows:

>> Without obtaining a proper license from the State Department, engineers for Loral and Hughes helped the Chinese make their rockets reliable. Not only did the engineers solve the immediate cause of the February 15 accident, they also recommended improvements to other areas of weakness in the Long March.

>> In May 1966, after the federal government found out about this, the U.S. Air Force did a classified study of the event and concluded that "United States national security has been harmed."

>> After a number of delays, the Justice Department began a federal grand jury investigation.

>> In February 1998 the Justice Department was closing in on Loral and Hughes when President Clinton approved a waiver allowing the free transfer to China of the same technology that Loral and Hughes were accused of transferring under the table. This severely undercut Justice's case.

National Security Council documents show that, although at the time of the February waiver National Security Adviser Sandy Berger knew Loral's conduct was "criminal, likely to be indicted, knowing and unlawful," he did not recommend against what amounted to a get-out-of-jail-free card for Loral.

>> Adding to the overall concern, the encoded portion of the Loral satellite was missing when the Chinese returned the debris from the February 1996 explosion. NBC has shown pictures of PLA soldiers picking through the crash site while U.S. officials were kept away for five hours.

Finally, after the Loral-Hughes fixes, the Chinese launch program now has a perfect record for reliability.

Then there is the question of the money. Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz claims that it is only a "coincidence" that he, his family, and his employees were large donors to the Clinton-Gore cause and subsequently received favorable treatment from the administration ...

After Clinton and Gore were elected, they had something Schwartz wanted. In the summer of 1994 he wrote a check to the Democrats for $100,000.

Two months later he was on Ron Brown's trade delegation to China. Brown arranged meetings between Schwartz and Chinese officials.

In the 1993-1994 cycle, Schwartz contributed a total of $112,000 to the Democrats....

Then, in the 1995-1996 cycle, three things came together: (1) Clinton desperately needed money for Dick Morris's TV advertising blitz, (2) Schwartz needed antitrust approval from the Clinton administration's Justice Department for his spinoff of some parts of Loral to aerospace giant Lockheed, and (3) Schwartz desperately needed Clinton support (and later, cover) for his China satellite program.

He wanted granting-authority for the export licenses he needed transferred to the user-friendly Commerce Department. He also wanted regular waivers of the Tiananmen sanctions on satellites, and, to avoid the proliferation sanctions, he had to persuade the Clinton administration to ignore Chinese missile sales to Iran....

Bernie wrote a lot of checks. His personal contributions rose to an amazing $586,000 in the Clinton-Gore reelection cycle of 1995-1996. As of May 1998 Schwartz had contributed $421,000 to the Democrats' 1997-1998 campaign cycle. That makes him the number one contributor to the Democrats in both the 1995-1996 and 1997-1998 campaign cycles. Between 1992 and 1998 he has given the Democratic Party $1,131,000.

His family, his companies, and his executives have given another $881,565 to Democratic candidates. Finally, he has contributed $217,000 to the Democratic Leadership Conference, a Clinton-associated think tank.

On March 12, 1996, Clinton overturned an October 1995 decision by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and transferred authority for satellite export licenses to the Commerce Department.

America's first line of defense against missile proliferation was dismantled. Loral would have gotten off the hook with the February 1998 Clinton waiver if somebody hadn't tipped off Jeff Gerth of the New York Times....

From: Betrayal -- How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security:...

President Clinton has turned upside down President Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning about a too-powerful military-industrial complex. Using the end of the Cold War as cover, and to please corporate bigshots targeted for campaign contributions, Clinton has loosened export controls on several high-technology sectors, including U.S. high-speed computer manufacturers, software makers, and communications satellite makers who want to sell to China....

Two such companies are Loral Space & Communications, Ltd. and Hughes Electronics, both the subject of a federal investigation to determine how they passed embargoed militarily-useful rocket technology to Beijing without licenses.

At the time of the weapons technology transfers, Loral was headed by Bernard Schwartz, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Clinton and the Democratic Party....

Shortly after the "decontrols" took place, American supercomputers began showing up in both Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons development centers -- helping to build nuclear arms that might one day be turned against the United States...* * *

From The Buying of the President 2000, by Charles Lewis and The Center for Public Integrity:

t's one thing to macromanage the national political party from the White House in unprecedented fashion, and unabashedly sell access to the White House, Air Force One, Camp David, and so forth, to the party's biggest patrons....

But what if a President's naked malleability, his willingness to bend policies to money, actually violates and jeopardizes our national security? What if a U.S. company headed by the Democratic Party's most generous individual patron in the 1990s violates federal laws involving national security? And after this happens, what if the company continues to get government contracts and even an export waiver signed by the President himself, worth millions of dollars-- over the objections of the Justice Department prosecutors?

All of this did in fact occur, against a backdrop of espionage and intrigue, of dozens of illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals with no real assets, of nuclear secrets systematically stolen from our most advanced laboratories over many years, and all of it led back to one country - China....

In 1992, after President Bush had approved a waiver, and an American satellite was subsequently launched on a Chinese rocket, several senators, including Al Gore, wrote to the Bush Administration to complain that China was using the launchings to "gain foreign aerospace technology that would be otherwise unavailable to it." ...

Unfortunately, far more than Chinese leaders were coddled by the Clinton-Gore Administration and the Democratic Party, under vastly more serious circumstances. . . . In its first four years, the Clinton Administration awarded ten waivers to China, one more than Bush. But the number of waivers in not really the issue.

Almost as soon as Clinton and Gore took office in January 1993, the Chinese and U.S. corporations doing business in China began lobbying intensely to "educate" the new administration to look beyond the country's poor human-rights record. In the 1992 election, dozens of U.S. companies active in China had given millions of dollars to the Democratic Party.

By May 1993 the President reversed his campaign posture and awarded China most-favored-nation trade status....

One of the most aggressive of those companies was Loral Space and Communications Ltd., which manufactures satellites and is headed by Bernard Schwartz. Loral and Schwartz have contributed at least $1.9 million to the Democratic Party since 1991...

In 1994, Schwartz was awarded one of the coveted seats on the late Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown's trade mission to China. Brown helped Loral seal a multimillion-dollar mobile telephone satellite network deal in Beijing....

During the 1990s the Chinese government courted companies like Loral to launch its satellites. Both Chinese and American companies wanted the U.S. government to loosen its export licensing rules regarding satellites. Specifically, they wanted satellite export licensing decisions to be made by the Commerce Department, not the more restrictive State Department.

Billions of dollars were at stake -- an estimated 14 commercial communications satellite launchings annually, each costing several hundred million dollars.

C. Michael Armstrong, then the CEO of Hughes Electronics Corporation ... met with then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and requested that satellites be regarded as commercial, as opposed to military, goods. Christopher agreed to conduct a detailed interagency review with officials from the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other agencies.

Soon, however, a majority of the interagency group, including Christopher, had concerns about the security ramifications; disagreeing with Loral, Hughes, and the aerospace industry generally. They thus recommended that satellites continue to be categorized as military on the State Department's munitions list.

Commerce Secretary Brown, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a prolific fund-raiser, appealed the decision to the President. Clinton sided with Loral and the industry, in a decision that was publicly announced in March 1996.

The Commerce Department thus was entrusted with the national security issues surrounding satellite technology.

Worse, weeks earlier a Chinese rocket carrying a $200 million Loral satellite had crashed seconds after liftoff in southern China, killing and injuring civilians on the ground. The China Great Wall Industry Corporation-- the Chinese government's missile, rocket, and launch provider-- asked Loral to help pinpoint the cause of the accident.

In the collaboration that ensued, engineers from Loral and other companies identified potential causes that the Chinese engineers had overlooked. As a result, China may be able to improve the accuracy of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 12 of which are aimed at U.S. cities (including Honolulu and Pearl Harbor?)

The Pentagon and the CIA found that both Loral and Hughes had "greatly damaged U.S. national security." The State Department warned White House aides that Loral had engaged in "unlawful" and "criminal" activity. . . . The Justice Department began a formal criminal investigation into the matter.

Amid all this, in the chutzpah department, Loral had another satellite deal pending with the Chinese, and once again wanted a waiver from the President. "Sandy" Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, and other administration officials recommended that Loral be given the green light, although they acknowledged in a memo to Clinton that such a decision might be perceived as letting Loral "off the hook on criminal charges for its unauthorized assistance to China's ballistic missile program." Meanwhile, Justice Department prosecutors warned that approving the waiver request would seriously jeopardize the Loral investigation.

The wheeling and dealing were not occurring in a vacuum. Months earlier, in July 1997, the President had been briefed that China, through years of spying and outright theft, had obtained some of the most sensitive U.S. military technology, including nuclear weapons design.

And the Democratic Party was deeply embroiled in scandal over illegal contributions from China, part of a systematic campaign to influence the 1996 U.S. presidential election. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee had recently found "strong circumstantial evidence that the Government of the People's Republic of China was involved in funding, directing, or encouraging some of these foreign contributions."

Clinton had been criticized for months for repeatedly stonewalling requests from the Senate committee and the news media for information, and more than 45 witnesses had fled the country or invoked the Fifth Amendment. The President and his administration, the Senate committee found, "took no action whatsoever to persuade such individuals to cooperate."

More foreboding, 80 percent of the illegal foreign contributions had been raised by two longtime Clinton friends, John Huang and Charlie Trie. Huang took the Fifth and Trie fled to China. (Huang later decided to cooperate with the Justice Dept and plea