Justice Department Manuevers - Page A1

WASHINGTON DESK - Attorney General Janet Reno said today that soon after the FBI told her last May of a possible attempt by China to influence congressional campaigns, she attempted but failed to pass the information directly to National Security Advisor Anthony Lake.

Reno disclosed Thursday she was unable to find Lake, and decided to instruct the FBI agents briefing the White House to pass along the information to National Security Council staffers. Reno said she thought that Lake would be informed somewhere along the line.

Reno explained that while she viewed the information as serious, she thinks it was up to the National Security advisor to decide whether president Bill Clinton was or was not to be briefed. Contents of a sensitive June 1996 briefing of two NSC staff members by two FBI agents were not passed along to Lake, under Reno's version of the facts handed out on Thursday.

Reno insisted there was no attempt by the FBI to restrict communication of the information within the NSC.

Reno's version of the facts leading up to the 'non-briefing' of the White House on the China incursions into the presidential electoral campaign process has fallen flat with many in Congress. Thursday, the Daily Republican obtained a draft copy of a letter to Janet Reno being circulated to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee by its chairman, Orrin Hatch(R). The four-page letter, dated March 13, demands that Reno appoint an Independent Counsel to ' ...investigate possible fund-raising violations in connection with the 1996 presidential campaign.' 'It is evident...' the letter states, '...that these questions cannot be properly investigated [by the Justice Department] without a conflict of interest, since investigating most of these questions will require inquiring into the knowledge and/or conduct of individuals at the highest levels of the Executive Branch.'

The letter makes reference to the fact that Reno herself testified in 1993 that there is an '...inherent conflict of interest' whenever senior executive branch officials are being investigated by the Department of Justice.

The Daily Republican Newspaper reported on Thursday that the National Security Agency [NSA] has carried on secret electronic surveillance of telephone conversations between Beijing and Communist Chinese agents in the United States, according to Justice Department officials on Wednesday.

The conversations are evidence that Beijing was ready, willing, and able to illegally funnel money to American politicians in the 1996 presidential election.

The New York Times reported Thursday that law enforcement officials told them, the FBI prepared a list of about 30 members of Congress who the bureau thought might be subjects of the Chinese effort. But, only warned half a dozen of them, in private meetings last June.

The Washington Post reported in February the existence of an intelligence report on interest by China in influencing the 1996 elections in the United States. But the involvement of the National Security Agency, how the information was gathered and how it was handled by the FBI have not been previously disclosed.

The officials who spoke on Wednesday, but only on the condition of anonymity, said the NSA, started the Communist China electronic surveillance early in 1996.

The information was then passed, as is routine practice, to top counterintelligence officials at FBI headquarters and, in June, to the two officials at the National Security Council.

The sensitive NSA report of the Chinese government actions to funnel illegal political contributions to American politician contradicts Beijing's repeated denials that it has ever tried to influence U.S. U.S. elections.

The complete listing of the 30 politicians identified by the FBI could not be obtained on Wednesday. Four of them, have now come forwards and identified themselves as being alerted by the FBI in June of 1996, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan(D) of New York, Dianne Feinstein(D), Barbara Boxer(D), and Representative Nancy Pelosi(D) all California politicians.

In 1995, a Chinese official sought to enlist Feinstein's help with a new Beijing initiative: stepping up the number of Congressional visits to Communist China.

Feinstein, a strong backer of China's most favored nation trade status with the US, revealed in a report this year to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she was urged to help organize Congressional delegations to China during an August 1995 visit to the country.

Feinstein wrote in the report last month that she was 'encouraged by Ambassador Liu Shuqing, President of the Chinese People's Institute for Foreign Affairs, to organize additional delegations of Senators to travel to China to meet with senior leaders and discuss a wide range of issues affecting the US-China relationship.'

As a result, Feinstein, who is the ranking member on the Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asia affairs, led two subsequent CODELs to the region. In January 1996, she and Sen. John Glenn(D) and then-Sen. Sam Nunn(D) traveled to China, and following last November's election, she accompanied a delegation led by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle(D) to the Communist China.

A Roll Call study of Congressional travel disclosure records this week turned-up the names of 13 Members of Congress and some 56 staffers who have accepted more than $401,000 worth of free trips to China in the past couple of years.

The Chinese People's Institute for Foreign Affairs, a Chinese government-funded arm set up to receive foreign dignitaries, has often picked up hotel tabs and other expenses - amenities that one Congressman described as 'first rate' for Members of Congress and staffers during their visits.

The members of Congress were told, FBI sources said, that intelligence information suggested they could be the targets of a Chinese plot to use money to buy influence with them. The Times reported the FBI sources said the intelligence indicated that the Chinese were envious of the lobbying success in Washington of Taiwan, a major irritant to Beijing, and wanted to even the score.

The 1995 U.S. visit of Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-Hui, to Cornell University, his alma mater, cast a chill over relations between the United States and China that lasted into 1996.

Public disclosure of the 1996 FBI briefing of two White House NSC aides has led to a highly unusual public rift between the Clinton administration and the FBI on Monday, when President Clinton claimed the FBI agents involved had told White House aides not to share the information with Clinton. However, the FBI then publicly contradicted president Clinton's claim.

On Tuesday, Justice Department officials said that the FBI statement was intemperate and misleading because the agents had in fact cautioned the White House aides to be careful in disseminating the information.

But, on Wednesday, attorney general Janet Reno was attempting to put a happy-face on the situation by telling a Senate committee that it was just a misunderstanding among the officials involved.

The information about possible Chinese influence buying in Congress was subject to Reno's 1995 guidelines, and was collected without a court order or the authorization of the special court that approves eavesdropping in national security cases.

Because Reno's guidelines controlled the collection of the information that could muddy the waters a to whether or not the information can be used in any criminal prosecution of illegal foreign donations.

Meanwhile, two top Democrat Party fund-raisers told reporters they were told by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton that the mansion is out-of-bounds for events intended to stroke deep-pocketed political donors.