Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash

Investigates campaign funds

While many political journalists largely considered the second term of Bill Clinton's presidency in terms of his romantic interludes, Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II follow up on one of the more controversial scandals of the 1996 reelection campaign. The Democratic National Committee was eventually forced to return $2.8 million in illegal contributions, much of it from foreign nationals, and much of it brought to the party by fundraising executive John Huang.

Huang originally represented U.S. interests for the Riady family, a powerful family of Indonesian businessmen with close ties to the Communist Chinese government. James Riady had been a "Friend of Bill" since 1977, and the two authors all but insinuate that the Riadys "scouted" Clinton--whether as an unwitting dupe, a sleeper agent, or merely an exploitable opportunist is never quite clear--and helped underwrite his bid for the White House. Why? So they could get John Huang a Commerce Department appointment... one that came with a top-secret security clearance.

Timperlake and Triplett gather together an astonishing--and largely convincing--mass of evidence that the Clinton-Gore administration "has made a series of Faustian bargains and policy blunders that have allowed a hostile power to further its aims in Washington." In addition to the potential security breach represented by Huang, they document numerous policy decisions that risk strengthening the technological and military power of Communist China, power that might well be used against the United States in the future.