Riady/Lippo 'Nam Fiasco continued

He also kept business cards for several Chinese businessmen at companies operating in mainland China.

``We just don't have any idea why'' Huang kept those telephone numbers on hand, DNC spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe said. She would not comment further, except to say the committee was ``cooperating with any and all investigations.''

Then, of course, there is the Senate connection to Riady/Lippo Group.

An indication of just how deep and subtle Red Chinese roots run in U.S. business and government affairs deals with Sen. John Sidney McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. John Forbes Kerry (D-MA). Both McCain and Kerry fought long and hard to provide the political cover Clinton needed when he made the controversial decision to normalize trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

McCain's current wife, Cindy, is the daughter of James Hensley, who is the second largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the United States. Sen. McCain is an officer in Hensley & Co. and Cindy is a vice president. The McCain family owns several million dollars in Anheuser-Busch stock.

As a part of an aggressive campaign to enhance its international standing in the beer market, Anheuser-Busch has been signing contracts and investing hundreds of millions building brewery operations in China and Vietnam. It remains unclear whether any of those contracts involve Lippo.

Documents retrieved from the Internet reveal that Riady's Lippo is the holder of a license for Sea World in Indonesia and that Anheuser-Busch owns all the Sea World themeparks in the United States as well as some overseas. Again, this begs the question, is there a connection between Anheuser-Busch and Lippo?

McCain has requested the Justice Department appoint an independent council to investigate Huang and the Lippo group for the contributions violations. Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-NY) has asked for investigators to focus on assertions made by James Riady, that Huang was "my man in the American government."

A member of Sen. Kerry's family, specifically his cousin, C. Stewart Forbes, is Chief Executive Officer of the Boston, Massachusetts-based Colliers International, one of the largest real estate federations in the world.

In Dec. 1992, Vietnam granted Colliers a contract designating Colliers the "exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam." Colliers has since written contracts in Vietnam worth billions, upgrading Vietnam's ports, railroads, highways and government buildings.

Colliers is involved with Lippo in multimillion contracts in Indonesia. Kerry, who has a blind trust run by members of his family, claims he knows nothing about his cousin's business deals or affiliations.

Perhaps tied into all of this, but it could be coincidental, Vietnam has sent its first official military delegation to the United States:

First Vietnamese Military team arrives in U.S
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuter) - Vietnam has sent its first official military delegation to the United States in a step toward possible future strategic cooperation between old enemies, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Six senior Vietnamese colonels arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Monday on the first leg of a 12-day visit which will also bring them to Washington for talks at the Pentagon and the State Department, defence officials said.

``Vietnam retains a large military that is in the midst of a modernisation effort,'' the Defence Department said in announcing the visit, the first of its kind at U.S. government invitation. ``There's a natural basis for exploratory discussions regarding strategic issues of mutual interest.''

Vietnamese diplomats said the delegation was led by Col. Vu Tan, head of the defence ministry's external relations department.

Previous Vietnamese military visits have dealt almost exclusively with the more than 2,100 U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action or otherwise unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, 1,594 of them in Vietnam.

Unanswered questions about the fate of some of those men have cast a pall over ties since Communist-led forces overran the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government in April 1975.

The current visit's agenda, while still featuring the missing in action (MIA) issue, was broadened as part of a process of developing military-to-military relations.

``The visit is part of a modest effort to begin discussions with the Vietnamese regarding the shape (of) contacts between our defence establishments,'' Army Lt. Col. Donna Boltz, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said.

Lt. Cmdr. Karen Jeffries of the Navy, another Pentagon spokeswoman, described the delegation as a ``working group'' aimed at developing personal ties and fostering an understanding of how each military establishment operates. She said she expected discussion of the possible first port calls since U.S. warships operated from the giant Cam Ranh Bay naval base during the Vietnam War.

In Hawaii, the delegation was being hosted by the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Joseph Prueher, and was visiting the facilities of the U.S. Joint Task Force for Full Accounting which is in charge of efforts to trace MIAs.

In Washington, the host will be Kurt Campbell, a deputy assistant secretary of defence who led a U.S. inter-agency team to Vietnam last October to begin military-to-military talks, the Pentagon said.

It said getting the fullest possible accounting for missing Americans ``remains the U.S. government's top priority in regard to Vietnam.'' On the Washington leg, which begins on Saturday, the Vietnamese team will visit the Pentagon, Coast Guard headquarters and the Pentagon's National Defence University and meet military historians, defence officials said.

President Bill Clinton normalised diplomatic relations with Vietnam in July 1995. Douglas ``Pete'' Peterson, a former prisoner of war nominated to be the first U.S. ambassador to Hanoi, is expected to arrive there next month if confirmed, as expected, by the U.S. Senate.

With the normalisation of ties, the Navy has been interested in paying port calls to Vietnam to show the flag, partly as a counterweight to China's growing military might in the region.

U.S. access to Vietnam's ports has become potentially more important as an operational matter since Washington lost access to Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines in 1992.
16:10 02-19-97

You have to wonder about the logistics involved. This had to be planned well in advance of the confirmation hearing on an ambassador to Vietnam. During the 104th Congress, a well known senate staff found that appointing a sitting congressman as Ambassador violated the constitution, thus temporarily procrastinating the appointment of Pete Peterson the first US Ambassador to Vietnam in 50 years.

The planning of this delegational visit had to have taken up a lot of bureaucratic time--or did they, too, make a Riady/Lippo-type contribution?

Former Congressman Peterson's confirmation hearing took all of An hour and 15 minutes, from 8:00 AM to 9:15 AM; less time than it takes to extract a tooth but a lot more painful for family members, veteran groups and the PoW/MIA community.

Now a former enemy, who brutalized American PoWs, who has warehoused remains and actively has aided in the coverup of their keeping Americans behind as PoWs, now they have a military delegation on American soil.

An enemy whose Prime Minister is personally responsible for the execution of captured American PoWs; did they too use the Riady/Lippo Group to buy their way into normalization? What's next, MO$T FAVORED NATION $TATU$?

Key money. Perefectly legal. Morally bankrupt.

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