It is a fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton shared a close financial relationship with John Huang and Moctar Riady, the Indonesian billionaire owner of the Lippo Group.
Mrs. Clinton reportedly insisted that John Huang be given a position at the U.S. Commerce Department under Ron Brown. She has not made any public comment on her relationship with Huang's employer, Indonesian billionaire Moctar Riady.
In addition, the Indonesian billionaire Moctar Riady allegedly passed illegal monies to the 1992 and 1996 Clinton/Gore campaigns. In 1996, Arief and Soraya Wiriadinata were closely connected to the Riadys when they passed a check to Bill Clinton. Arief was a gardener living in Virginia. Arief earned about $25,000 a year but he and his wife somehow managed to donate $450,000 to the DNC in a single contribution.
Just by coincidence, Soraya's father, Hashim Ning, was a business partner of Mochtar Riady and the Lippo Group in Indonesia. Hashim wired $500,000 that the Wiriadinatas used to make the $450,000 contribution. For their troubles, the Wiriadinatas kept $50,000 but the bulk of the money was obviously laundered from Indonesia through the Wiriadinatas into the Democratic National Committee.
Ironically, the CIA also accused Riady of working for Chinese military intelligence. According to a 1998 CIA report presented to Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., "James and Moctar Riady have had a long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency. The relationship is based on mutual benefit with the Riadys receiving assistance in finding business opportunities in exchange for large sums of money and other help."
"The Chinese intelligence agency seeks to locate and develop relationships with information collectors, particularly with close association to the U.S. government," states the CIA report on Riady.
According to the testimony before Thompson, the Lippo Group is in fact a joint venture of China Resources, a trading and holding company wholly owned by the Chinese communist government and used as a front for espionage operations.
One such Chinese army operation involved an airliner part owned by Riady with a live missile stuffed in its belly.
In 1996 China obtained the most advanced Russian air-to-air missile, NATO code-named the AA-11 ARCHER. According to the Cox Report, in 1996, Hong Kong Customs officials removed a fully operational AA-11 missile from the cargo hold of a Chinese Dragonair L-1011 airliner stuffed with paying passengers.
"In 1996, Hong Kong Customs officials intercepted air-to-air missile parts being shipped by (China National Aerotechnology Import and Export Company) CATIC aboard a commercial air carrier, Dragonair. Dragonair is owned by China International Trade and Investment Company (CITIC), the most powerful and visible PRC-controlled conglomerate, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China," states the Cox report.
It was Aviation Week and Space Technology that carried the full story. Aviation Week reported that the missile was in a box labeled as "Machine Parts" and the Chinese government and Moctar Riady then owned Dragonair jointly. According to intelligence sources, the Chinese missile was bound for Israel for an upgrade with stolen U.S. Sidewinder technology.
Dragonair was fined for carrying the Chinese missile in the cargo bay of a L-1011 airliner full of paying passengers. According to Aviation Week & Space Technology (AW&ST), the missile was found by accident. Both the volatile solid fuel rocket motor and the deadly explosive warhead were intact and fully operational.
What the Cox report left out was that in 1996, the Chinese government owned only 36 percent of Dragonair. Moctar Riady then owned the remaining 64 percent lion-share of the Hong Kong based carrier.
Missiles and airliners full of people should not be mixed. There is an old U.S. Marine axiom: "Never load munitions and troops on the same ship." PLA owned airliners, however, do not operate along the same rules with or without illegal loads of munitions.
The Dragonair incident may shed light on unexplained civil airline accidents such as TWA-800. For example, in the 1980s, a South African 747 blew up over the Indian Ocean while carrying a load of artillery shells along with passengers. The illegal load of cannon shells exploded over the Indian Ocean, killing everyone onboard.
What remains unanswered is the role Israel played in the Dragonair case — a U.S. ally anxious to obtain a copy of an enemy missile or a willing aerospace contractor eager to upgrade a weapon for a paying customer with stolen U.S. Sidewinder technology?
Why is there no mention of the ever-popular Moctar Riady, major contributor to Bill Clinton?
Another issue left unresolved by the Dragonair incident is the relationship between the Chinese army and Riady.
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