SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I got rich, really, rich, selling out
my country as my husband/pimp paid out bribes to other DEM POLS so they would
keep their mouths closed about our corruption!
IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional
ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules
Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the
ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been
beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics
experts.
“All
in all, it was an incredible victory for the Chinese government. Feinstein has
done more for Red China than other any serving U.S. politician. “ Trevor Loudon
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
More Evidence Yet of China's Systemic Penetration of U.S. Academic and Research Institutions
Another prominent researcher, Anming Hu, has been taken into custody for inappropriately sharing sensitive information with the People's Republic of China (PRC) while hiding his relationship with that country. Although the Department of Justice (DOJ) press release doesn't say he's an American citizen, that's a reasonable conclusion given that the data he gave to the PRC came from his work on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and federal rules require that individuals working on classified U.S. government projects must be citizens with clearances.
I'm delighted that another individual has been unmasked for engaging in espionage on behalf of what is perhaps the world's largest intelligence-gathering apparatus. But my darker side says, "Chill your enthusiasm, this is a 'shooting fish in a barrel' exercise."
Certainly the evidence seems to suggest the latter. Only a month ago, I blogged about a spate of arrests that included just such a case involving a researcher sharing his data with the PRC in return for millions of dollars and a cushy position at a Chinese university. And I have been periodically highlighting similar espionage and data theft cases for a long time now. The United States appears to be engaged in a belated game of catch-up regarding the penetration of our academic and research institutions at all levels by the PRC government.
While Hu's instant case slogs through the courts, and if (as the odds dictate) he is a naturalized American, then this is a good chance for DOJ to stretch its newfound denaturalization wings and add that charge to the others he faces, because chances are pretty darn good that Hu was working for the Chinese government all during the period before he naturalized. That's not the kind of thing that just happens overnight. People like him are groomed to work their way through the system and obtain the kind of job he obtained for the express purpose of siphoning off data and technology from our most sensitive enterprises. It's notable that the DOJ press release mentions the investigation involving not just NASA, but Department of Energy (DOE) agents. Keep in mind that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is centered in Tennessee and uses the University of Tennessee — Hu's U.S. employer — as administrator and manager of this DOE-sponsored facility engaged in many highly classified programs.
I have a few unsolicited comments and questions to offer Uncle Sam:
To the investigators and hunters: Keep up the good work. It may be like shooting fish in a barrel because of the lax practices that have been allowed to fester at U.S. academic and research institutions, but it sorely needs to be done. Sooner or later, it will dawn on even the most venal or casual in those rarified atmospheres that it's no longer business as usual, because the stakes have been ratcheted up and the U.S. government is serious about keeping its secrets. That will allow you to then concentrate your efforts on the more hardcore spies.
To the federal departments and agencies sponsoring and administering the many thousands of such grants and programs, while spending tens (hundreds?) of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process: Isn't it time to start contemplating better vetting procedures as a part of your oversight mechanisms? How about, for starters, engaging in personal interviews with the principals who will be doing the work rather than just reading grant papers and proposals prepared by their most gifted writers? Ask pointed questions, and record the answers. That will surely focus the weak-minded who otherwise might be tempted to take money or accept straw-man positions whose real purpose is to pour information into the massive PRC intelligence siphon. Conduct physical security audits of the work environs in these places. Are they lax and conducive to inappropriate revelations, whether on purpose or inadvertent, such as over water coolers and in break rooms? While you're at it, develop serious debarment procedures for those institutions whose principals and corollary researchers are caught giving away secrets, whether to the PRC or anyone else. Nothing will gain institutional attention more quickly than the fear of losing a massive amount in federal funds.
Finally, to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): When are you going to get serious about your own part in all of this, and crack down on bogus students and scholars whose purpose is to steal U.S. technology, data, and other classified or highly sensitive materials? You need to put some backbone in the folks at your Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which has the regulatory authority to strip institutions of their right to accept foreign students. When was the last time this was done, other than a couple of fourth-rate visa mills here and there? Closing visa mills down is of some significance as a matter of numbers and system integrity, but if you want to contribute to national security, then you need to work with NASA, DOE, the Defense Department, and others to ensure that academia and its correlated scientific research world take their responsibilities to shield sensitive data with the seriousness it deserves — and if they can't, then take away their right to host foreign students.
The problem seems to me that while the PRC manages and integrates its intelligence-gathering and theft operations extremely well, our government doesn't seem to have any kind of coordinated mechanism at all to defend against their (or any other hostile nation's) efforts. It's an "ad hoc-ery" of responses which does not serve our long-term interests.
Senator
Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President
A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to
China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice
President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings
with the communist regime.
Senator
Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President
Win
McNamee/Getty Images
9 Oct 20192,419
5:44
A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to
China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice
President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings
with the communist regime.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a
former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her
endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have
witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures
in Congress.
I’ve worked closely with Vice
President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his
statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitud. During his time in
Congress and in the White House, Joe Biden has been a tireless fighter for hard
working American families.
The endorsement comes as Biden’s
presidential campaign is besieged by scandal regarding the lucrative business
dealings his youngest son, Hunter, had with foreign governments.
Only hours before Feinstein’s
endorsement, the Chinese government announced it would not
investigate how Hunter Biden ended up at the center of one its top private
equity firms. The Chinese foreign ministry made the decision after President
Donald Trump publicly called for a probe of Hunter Biden’s dealings with Bohai Harvest
RST (BHR). In particular, Trump has noted that the circumstances surrounding
BHR’s creation could have posed a conflict of interest for Joe Biden.
As Peter Schweizer, senior
contributor at Breitbart News, revealed in his bestselling book Secret Empires: How the American Political
Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter
Biden inked the multibillion-dollar deal that created BHR with a subsidiary of
the state-owned Bank of China in 2013.
The timing of the lucrative deal has
been brought into question as it came only 12 days after Hunter visited China
with his father aboard Air Force Two. Officially, the then-vice president
was visiting the country amid escalating tensions over islands in the South
China Sea and decided to bring his granddaughter and son along. In a March
2018 interview with Breitbart News Tonight,
however, Schweizer detailed the political machinations that preceded Hunter
Biden’s $1.5 billion venture with China:
In December of 2013, Vice President
Joe Biden flies to Asia for a trip, and the centerpiece for that trip is a
visit to Beijing, China. To put this into context, in 2013, the Chinese have
just exerted air rights over the South Pacific, the South China Sea. They
basically have said, ‘If you want to fly in this area, you have to get Chinese
approval. We are claiming sovereignty over this territory.’ Highly
controversial in Japan, in the Philippines, and in other countries. Joe Biden
is supposed to be going there to confront the Chinese. Well, he gets widely
criticized on that trip for going soft on China. For basically not challenging
them, and Japan and other countries are quite upset about this.
Since its creation, BHR has invested
heavily in energy and defense projects across the globe. As of
June, Hunter Biden was still involved with BHR,
sitting on its board of directors and owning a minority stake of the fund
estimated to be worth more than $430,000.
Such dealings at the center of
politics and business, while perhaps not illegal, are not exclusive to the
Biden family alone. As a few noted at the time of Feinstein’s endorsement, the
senator and her husband have their own close ties to the communist country.
During her tenure as mayor of San
Francisco in the late-1970s and early-1980s, Feinstein took advantage of the
newly normalized diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China by
establishing one of the first sister city partnership between San Francisco and
Shanghai. Through that partnership, Feinstein led trade delegations to China in
which she and her husband, Richard Blum, became acquainted with some of the
country’s most prominent political leaders.
As the Federalist noted in August 2018, Feinstein
and her husband leveraged those relationships to boost their own wealth. In
1986, Feinstein and Jiang Zemin — the then-mayor of Shanghai, who would later
ascend to the presidency of the People’s Republic of China — “designated
several corporate entities for fostering commercial relations.” One of those
firms was Shanghai Pacific Partners, which employed Blum as a director. Blum reportedly
had an interest of upwards of $500,000 in a project backed by Shanghai Pacific
Partners.
After Feinstein was elected to the
Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same
time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to
colleagues, even once claiming “that in my
last life maybe I was Chinese.” Through her seat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Feinstein led the fight on a number of initiatives seen as
being favorable to China, including granting the country permanent
most-favored-nation trading status in 2000.
Despite Feinstein and her husband
having a close relationship with Jiang, the Chinese government targeted the senator
as part of its espionage operations. In the early 2000s, the Chinese Ministry
of State Security (MSS) recruited a longtime employee of the senator to gather
information about the inner workings of her congressional and district offices.
Feinstein only learned of the staffer’s duplicity in 2013, after he’d already
been on her payroll for more than 20 years.
“While this person, who was a
liaison to the local Chinese community, was fired, charges were never filed
against him,” Politico reported in 2018,
speculating that because “the staffer was providing political intelligence and
not classified information—making prosecution far more difficult.”
Apart from the convoluted history of
the senator’s ties to China, the political timing of Feinstein’s endorsement
also caught many off guard. The California Democrat, who hosted a
fundraiser on Biden’s behalf last week alongside House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) daughter, is only the most recent figure from the
Democrat establishment to openly pledge support for the former vice president.
Feinstein’s endorsement, however, was not totally expected, especially since
her seamate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), is mounting a bid of her own for the
Democrat nomination. In fact, earlier this year, Feinsten flirted with the
notion of remaining neutral in the 2020 contest out of respect for Harris.
Compounding the political picture is
that most polls show Biden no longer the favorite to win California,
having fallen behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Feinstein, however, did not address
any of that when endorsing the former vice president on Tuesday. Instead, the
senator offered platitudes about Biden’s work to enhance gun control and how
his campaign was a “fight to restore the soul of the nation.”
No comments:
Post a Comment