April 22, 2003

Katrina Leung and Chinagate II: Time for GOP action

As an American of Asian descent, I was thoroughly disgusted by the Chinagate scandals that exploded during the Clinton-Gore years.

I was sickened by the Clinton White House’s obliteration of the rule of law. I was incensed by the Democrat Party’s systematic sellout of national security. And I was especially outraged by the race-card propagandizing of so-called Asian-American “leaders.”

Crying racism at every opportunity, these Asian-American politicos made blind excuses for corrupt fund-raisers such as convicted campaign finance criminals John Huang and Pauline Kanchanalak. Rather than lambaste Red China for its covert operation to infiltrate America’s electoral system, these leaders complained about ethnic “scapegoating.” They stubbornly defended slippery beneficiaries of tainted cash such as Democratic governor Gary Locke of Washington State, who took money not only from Huang and Kanchanalak, but also (as I reported for the Seattle Times) more than $14,000 donated in the name of clueless monks and nuns at a Seattle-area Buddhist temple.

Now we are at the dawn of Chinagate II.

Overshadowed by the war on terror and ignored by the media elite, there has been almost total dead silence about this alarming new national security scandal. Indeed, the only noise has come from Asian-American leaders, once again fretting about racism instead of condemning potential acts of treason.

Add to the long list of Buddhist monks, shady foreign fund-raisers, Beijing-linked tycoons and family members, and other funny-money givers who have entwined themselves in our electoral system the name of Katrina Leung. She is an accused Chinese double agent who was an influential activist and Republican fund-raiser in southern California.

Leung was arrested on April 9 and charged with illegally obtaining secret documents to the advantage of a foreign power.

Leung is alleged to have conducted long-term sexual affairs with at least two veteran FBI counterintelligence agents. According to court documents, Leung has acknowledged giving the Chinese secret information that she received from retired FBI agent James Smith.

Despite Smith’s discovery in 1991 that Leung was turning over classified information to Chinese intelligence sources without FBI approval, Leung continued as a paid FBI informant. The New York Times also reports that Leung apparently compromised a highly sensitive nuclear espionage investigation by exposing the identities of two FBI agents working on the case to Beijing.

As if the FBI bungling weren’t enough, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reports [“Espionage: Sex, Spies and the ‘Parlor Maid’,” By Michael Isikoff Newsweek, April 21, 2003] that Leung was also a key source for a special Justice Department campaign-finance task force during the Clinton-Gore years.

Leung, Isikoff’s sources say, “was the task force's chief source on prime target Ted Sioeng, a suspected Chinese 'agent of influence' whose family and businesses contributed $250,000 to the Democratic Party in 1996 and an additional $100,000 to a California GOP Senate candidate [Matt Fong]. Leung and Sioeng (who sat next to Al Gore at his Buddhist-temple fund-raiser that year in Los Angeles) were 'close friends,' one source says.”

Isikoff reports further: “Task-force prosecutors hoped to use Leung to lure Sioeng back into the United States in the spring of 1997. But the ruse failed - apparently because Sioeng got suspicious - and the case collapsed. Now FBI officials want to know if Leung sabotaged the probe and was actually protecting Sioeng.”

Over the past twenty years, the FBI (or rather, American taxpayers) paid Leung $1.7 million in fees and expenses. She spent her money on a lavish house in tony San Marino and spread the wealth generously to Republican officeholders and candidates.

In 2002, she donated $2,000 to the conservative American Success Political Action Committee; $850 to the California Republican Party/Team California; $1,000 to the David Dreier for Congress Committee; and $600 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. In addition, she donated $10,000 to former Los Angeles mayor (and nominal Republican) Richard Riordan's primary election campaign for governor. After GOP candidate Bill Simon beat Riordan in the March primary, Leung donated $4,200 to Simon and another $5,000 to the unsuccessful Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Bruce McPherson, plus $850 more to the state GOP.

Riordan and Simon refuse to comment about their relationship with Leung.

Republican Party leaders have been mute on this national security nightmare.

It is time for principled conservatives to speak and act.

Reject political correctness - and return the tainted cash now.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website.