CyberAlert -- 06/11/1997 -- Huang's Secrets -- Media Research Center

Huang's Secrets

Tuesday's newspapers brought another series of Clinton scandal revelations for the networks to avoid mentioning:

-- "White House Got FBI Data on Party Donor," declared a June 10 Wall Street Journal headline. The Journal's Glenn Simpson and David Rogers revealed that before Yogesh Gandhi met with the President and donated $325,000 to the DNC, "White House aides received unfavorable information about Mr. Gandhi" from the FBI. "But after the negative information forced cancellation of the White House event...Democratic fundraisers arranged for the meeting to take place on May 13, 1996, at the Sheraton Carlton hotel, two blocks up the street."

-- Key scandal witnesses are leaving the country or refusing to cooperate with congressional investigators, reported this week's Time magazine. Tuesday's USA Today relayed: "The latest to indicate they will take the Fifth are 16 monks whose Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., hosted a Democratic fundraiser featuring Vice President Al Gore, in possible violation of its tax exempt status."

-- Speaking of those who have fled the country, New York Daily News reporters Thomas Galvin and Thomas DeFrank disclosed Tuesday:

"U.S. intelligence officials have told the White House and Congress they've collected evidence that Democratic money man John Huang passed classified trade information to his Indonesian ex-bosses."

Huang served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for international economic policy from July 1994 to December 1995. The Daily News determined that "while Huang was getting classified briefings, he also kept in close touch with Lippo and Chinese officials."

Coverage: Zilch on Tuesday's ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News. I didn't get a chance to check CBS This Morning, but GMA ignored all the developments and, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens informed me, so did NBC's Today.

Correction: The June 9 CyberAlert reported that last Friday's World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News as well as all the morning shows skipped the New York Times story on how the DNC received $200,000 from donors who used fictitious names. I fast- forwarded too fast and missed a very brief item on GMA. In just one of her half-hourly news breaks, anchor Elizabeth Vargas read a 16-second long item about the New York Times report.

-- Brent Baker