Powerful Republican Who Once Ran with Jeb Bush and Worked for a Company That Harbored Chinese Spies, Calls for a More 'Balanced' Relationship While Travelling Abroad
By Brad Friedman on 1/11/2006, 2:47pm PT  

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) continues to carry water for his Communist Chinese friends. Even while the media hasn't stopped for a moment to question Feeney's years-long effort at protecting a Florida software company which harbored and employed a convicted Chinese spy. The company, Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI) continues to lie about that employment.

As an illegal alien in 2004, Hai Lin "Henry" Nee, who worked for years for the company, plead guilty to charges related to three counts of attempting to send Hellfire Anti-Tank Missile chips illegally to China. Stunningly, Nee received only three-years probation and a $100 fine for the crime, even after admitting that he and a partner had sent such shipments "10 to 20 times over the past year" to China. The convictions were the result of a four-year sting effort by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Feeney himself worked as general counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI even while he was the powerful Speaker of the Florida Legislature back in 2000. The conflicts of interest there are mind-blowing. He now sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

The BRAD BLOG originally took notice of Feeney when we first broke explosive allegations about Feeney and YEI, as made by computer programmer Clint Curtis. Curtis, who first reported all of these matters to Florida's Inspector General back in 2001, alleged in a sworn affidavit [PDF] that Feeney had asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype while they both worked for YEI. Curtis, who had been a Republican at the time, later gave video-taped testimony under oath to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee of the allegations. He later passed a polygraph test confirming the veracity of his charges against Feeney and YEI.

As a report from Reuters today reveals, Feeney is currently in the Communist nation as part of a "congressional US-China Working Group", where he is advocating for a "more 'balanced' discussion about relations with China." A quote below, from Reuters' story, reports Feeney's support for expanding China's space program.

The story fails, of course, to mention Feeney's personal relationship to NASA, which is based in his home state of Florida. As well, NASA is a client of YEI's and, as far as we know, Feeney's wife still works for the space agency, as do many of YEI's employees.

Here's some earlier BRAD BLOG reporting, which links to several of our stories exposing the corrupt congressman's dubious connections to Chinese spying and his activities on behalf of the company, which has apparently been harboring at least one such spy for many years.

And here's the quote from the Reuters story [emphasis added]:

On Tuesday, a U.S. senator on a separate visit to Beijing, Max Baucus, said resentment in Congress about China's $200 billion trade surplus with the United States may prompt lawmakers to pass legislation threatening to punish China unless Beijing revalues the yuan and so makes Chinese exports more expensive.

The other three visiting congressman are members of a congressional U.S.-China Working Group, which advocates more "balanced" discussion about relations with China.

[Mark] Kirk [(R-IL)] said during their six-day visit in Beijing that began on Monday that China's repeated promises to post an intellectual property ombudsman in Washington to take complaints from U.S. businesses, as well as to spend $250 million on legitimate software for government offices.

Tom Feeney, a Republican congressman from Florida, said the lawmakers also discussed expanded cooperation in space, including a proposal for China to engineer the entry docks of its manned spacecraft so they could dock with U.S. and Russian craft, allowing for cooperation in space rescues.

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
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