Feinstain China Port - 1997
Senators Ask for Inquiry on Leasing of California Base to Chinese
Both of California's Senators have asked the White House to investigate the leasing of a former Navy base in Long Beach to China's state-owned shipping company, which last year transported several thousand automatic weapons that Federal officials say were headed for Los Angeles street gangs.
The Senators, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, asked President Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, if he felt that there were any security reasons not to lease the China Ocean Shipping Company, or Cosco, the entire 145-acre site in the middle of Long Beach. The Port of Long Beach receives about one-fourth of the Chinese goods shipped to the United States.
The Chinese Government signed a lease for the port last April, only three weeks after one of the company's ships, the Empress Phoenix, was raided by customs officials acting on a tip that Chinese-made arms were being smuggled into the United States. The seizure of arms on the ship, which the Customs Service said were intended for street gangs, led in May to the arrest of officials of another state-run Chinese company, although Cosco has not been charged in the case.
An Administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said this evening that the White House was told by members of Congress last week that the lease merited investigation and that the issue had been referred to the Pentagon. But the official said, We are not aware of any reason for concern.
Last year's arms shipment has indirectly figured in the investigations into Mr. Clinton's coffees with large campaign donors and their friends. Shortly before the arrests in May, one of Mr. Clinton's Asian-American supporters escorted Wang Jun, the president of the Chinese company that apparently produced the weapons, Polytechnology, into one of the White House coffees, where he met with the President.
Mr. Clinton apparently did not know about Mr. Wang's connections to Polytechnology or that the company was the subject of a major investigation in California into arms smuggling at the time he met Mr. Wang. Later, Mr. Clinton said the meeting was inappropriate and an example of the failure of the White House to screen visitors rigorously.
Continue reading the main story
It is unclear whether today's letter requesting the investigation was related to the accusations, still unproven, that the Chinese Government tried to funnel money to Congressional races last year. Ms. Feinstein was one of the six Senators and Representatives warned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year to be alert for donations that might have originated from in the Chinese Government. But her office said today that the letter to the White House was prompted by concern that officials at the Port of Long Beach had not considered security worries about the state-owned company.
In Long Beach, a spokesman for the port said the Federal Government had no review over any lease that local officials sign with users of the port's facilities. In this case, the port is planning to build a $200 million dock for Cosco, which would lease it for $14.5 million a year. The project is being financed by local revenue bonds, not Federal money, said Yvonne Avila, the director of communications for the port.
Federal officials say Cosco ships are frequently the subject of surveillance, not only because of the weapons incident last year but also because of concerns that China is evading export quotas on textiles and that its ships have been used to bring what one law enforcement official today called all kinds of contraband into the country.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/13/us/senators-ask-for-inquiry-on-leasing-of-california-base-to-chinese.html