Word: thompson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WASHINGTON, D.C.: He let Reno have John Huang. But Fred Thompson clearly wanted immunity for four Buddhist nuns who were at the infamous temple fund-raiser attended by Vice President Al Gore. So on Wednesday, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's first order of business was to give the Justice Department the brush-off. All nine Republicans and a handful of Democrats on the committee supported granting immunity to the nuns over the objections of Janet Reno, who claimed it would hamper her investigation. TIME's Viveca Novak doubts that the nuns' testimony will be worth the commotion. "Remember...
Having worked for weeks to lower expectations, Thompson surprised everyone with his full-throated opening statement, referring to "the existence of a Chinese plan to subvert our election process." And indeed the most intriguing revelation of the week was a letter showing that as far back as 1994, the Riady family, proprietors of the giant Lippo Group, was talking to a Chinese-American activist about introducing Asian businessmen to the Clinton Administration and using them to funnel money to the Democratic National Committee. There were also new revelations of wire transfers from banks in Asia to two of the D.N.C...
This is how it went last week for Senator Fred Thompson and anyone hoping that his hearings into campaign-finance abuses would play a role in reducing them: on the first day, Thompson waved a big red flag in front of the TV cameras, charging he had information that the Chinese government was trying to subvert American democracy. The problem was, it was mostly classified, and he couldn't give any details. On the second day, the Republicans' lead witness was so docile and unresponsive that staff members began faxing reporters his deposition, as if to say, "This is what...
...such a false start, it almost looked as if it had been planned that way. And in a way it was. Thompson may yet dream of using the hearings to drive reform, but there aren't many elected officials in either party who want him to tear apart the system that has fed them so well. In fact, the Democrats made their strategy clear: unless we all play nice with one another, everyone is going to get hurt. When Thompson warned of Chinese influence peddling, his counterpart, ranking Democrat John Glenn, raked over former Republican Party chief Haley Barbour...
Even as he raised his gavel to open the hearings, Thompson knew that the committee's Democrats had found a way to steal the show. For weeks the man at the center of the scandal, former D.N.C. fund raiser John Huang, had refused to testify; so when Glenn disclosed in his opening statement that Huang might be willing to talk if he were granted some partial immunity, Republicans growled that it was "nothing more than an opening-day stunt." White House aides, who had been nervous that the retiring former astronaut might try to depart the Senate with a statesmanlike...