Former Envoy to Taiwan Denies Fund Charges

President Clinton’s former envoy to Taiwan, James C. Wood, on Saturday denied allegations that he solicited campaign contributions from Taiwanese citizens, asserting that he has been falsely accused because he exposed wrongdoing by his predecessor.

Wood, who resigned on Jan. 17, acknowledged in a 20-page statement that he is under investigation by the Justice Department for actions taken during the two years he served as managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan. AIT conducts diplomacy between the two governments in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, which ended in 1979.

Wood said he was forced to resign by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher but had been “Richard Jewelled”--a reference to the wrongly accused suspect in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta--and denied allegations that he illegally asked Taiwanese to contribute to the president’s reelection campaign.

Wood’s statement was issued in response to a story Feb. 11 in The Times that the Justice Department had expanded its probe of the former AIT official. In addition to allegations involving fund-raising, The Times reported the Justice Department is looking into charges that Wood offered to personally broker the sale of sensitive weapons to Taiwan and that he asked two Taiwanese businessmen to hire a friend of his in Washington.

Wood said the charges were generated by his enemies, including his predecessor at AIT, Natale Bellocchi, whom he accused of mismanaging the organization. He also suggested that he had been falsely accused because of his role in uncovering wrongdoing by Bellocchi and others.

“I am a whistle-blower, not a campaign fund-raiser, a middleman for lobbyists or a private arms dealer,” Wood said. “I am no more those things than I am an astronaut, an NFL quarterback or a movie star.”

Bellocchi, now a private business consultant, could not be reached for comment.

Wood specifically denied two elements of The Times story: He said that he had never asked Taiwanese citizens to contribute to the Clinton campaign and that he is not a friend of the president.

“I never sought or received any campaign contributions for President Clinton, the Democratic National Committee or anyone else,” he wrote. “I never said or implied that Taiwan owed President Clinton’s campaign in return for protecting their security interests.”

Referring to his relationship with Clinton, Wood, a native of Arkansas, said: “Although I have been a longtime supporter of President Clinton’s and would be happy to be considered his close friend, such is not the case. While I cannot say for certain, I do not believe I was the president’s hand-picked emissary to Taiwan.”

Wood did not address allegations that he offered to broker arms sales to Taiwan. These claims were first made public by a magazine editor who testified at a court hearing in Taiwan several weeks ago. Nor did Wood address allegations that he tried to persuade two Taiwanese businessmen to hire his friend, as described by two Taiwanese officials interviewed by The Times.

In great detail, Wood’s statement tells how he painstakingly investigated both the finances and the legal authority of the AIT after assuming the job of managing director in December 1995. It was as a result of this work, he said, that he uncovered evidence of fraud, mismanagement and sexual harassment, which occurred during the tenure of his predecessor.

Among other things, he said, he discovered that about $5.3 million in U.S. government funds were unaccounted for, that $400,000 had been improperly paid to the fiance of a former AIT commercial officer and that Bellocchi may have improperly enriched himself by instituting a lucrative pension scheme.

He said he reported these allegations to the State Department in a letter dated July 22, 1996, to then-Undersecretary Richard Moose, who, State Department sources say, assisted Wood in getting the AIT job. Wood said he wrote the letter to Moose about a month after Bellocchi, who was no longer an AIT employee, went to the State Department’s inspector general with allegations that Wood had been involved in illegal fund-raising.

“I suspect that Bellocchi was working in concert with others who had been involved in the fraud and corruption I had uncovered at AIT in an effort to discredit me and undermine my credibility, and that this person or persons also made allegations to the State Department’s inspector general’s office.”