Special to WorldTribune.com, July 16, 2024

Corporate WATCH

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer @Schaeff55

If doddering Joe Biden is not able to continue in the 2024 presidential race, the two most likely Democrats in line to replace him are Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Both owe their political careers to a former San Francisco mayor, state assembly speaker and Golden State Democrat power broker who was closely aligned with a woman long suspected to be a Chinese communist agent.

Harris is infamously known for being the former girlfriend of Willie Brown while Newsom got his start in politics due to Brown:
 

It was back in 1996 that Brown first appointed Newsom to the parking commission in San Francisco. Brown appointed him after Newsom volunteered on his mayoral campaign by bar hopping to seek support.

What is not as widely known is Brown’s radical affinities for communism early in his career, which would have marked him as a prime candidate for Chinese cultivation in a Bay Area rife with CCP espionage operations.

In the 1970s, Brown was an enthusiastic supporter of avowed communist and megalomaniac Kool-Aid dispenser Jim Jones:
 

As Daniel Flynn shows in “Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days that Shook San Francisco,” Willie Brown was a supporter of Jim Jones, whom he compared to Einstein and Martin Luther King. Jones was a big hit with San Francisco Democrats of the time. They even gave Jones a seat on the city housing commission.

The African-American Brown, then a state assemblyman, had traction with Cuba’s white Communist dictator Fidel Castro. Brown wrote a letter urging Castro to extend an official state visit to Jones, a “close personal friend and highly trusted brother in the struggle for liberation.”

This was no mere fashionable infatuation. Brown was heavily in the bag for Jonestown:
 

As questions about Jones reached the authorities in Guyana, Brown reassured the nation’s prime minister of the benefits one of the country’s newest immigrants brought from America. “Rev. Jim Jones is that person who can be helpful when all appears to be lost and hope is just about gone,” the powerful California politician wrote Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. “Having him as a resident in your country can only be a plus no matter how short or long his stay.”

Which brings us to Rose Pak. Pak wielded extraordinary influence within San Francisco’s Chinese-American community for some 40+ years until her death in 2016. She was also a very close political ally of Willie Brown.

When the shocking news that Sen. Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her personal staff for 20 years broke in 2018, details on the extensive activities of the Asian communist superpower in the Bay Area failed to garner the attention they deserved. Politico reported at the time:
 

Or take the case of Rose Pak. Pak, who died in September 2016, was for decades one of San Francisco’s preeminent political power brokers. Though she never held elective office, she was famous for making and unmaking mayors, city councilmen (or “supervisors,” as they’re known in San Francisco), and pushing city contracts to her allies and constituents in Chinatown.

According to four former intelligence officials, there were widespread concerns that Pak had been co-opted by Chinese intelligence, and was wielding influence over San Francisco politics in ways purposefully beneficial to the Chinese government. Another worry, U.S. officials said, was Pak’s role in organizing numerous junkets to China, sometimes led by Pak in person and attended (often multiple times) by many prominent Bay Area politicians, including former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who died while in office in 2017.

The article revealed how Pak would chaperone influential San Francisco politicians on trips to China meant to bolster the regime’s espionage activities:
 

Political junkets are used by Chinese intelligence for surveillance (“every single hotel room is bugged,” one former official told me) and collection purposes, as well as for spotting and assessing potential recruits, said former intel officials. (There is no indication that Pak herself participated in, or had knowledge of, specific intelligence-gathering efforts.)

Concerns about Pak’s links to the Chinese Communist Party occasionally percolated into local political debate, but the intelligence community’s identification of Pak as a likely agent of influence for Beijing is being reported here for the first time.

The evidence against Pak certainly seems to be damning. The New American reported as much as far back as 2006:
 

Pak has a still darker side. “Rose Pak is known to be the spokeswoman of [the] Chinese Communist Party, as well as a special agent for the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the Epoch Times. Backing that assertion, the Singtao Daily reported in 2001 that Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin once honored Pak for defeating a resolution by San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly condemning China’s persecution of the practitioners of Falun Gong, a Chinese system of exercise and meditation: “President Jiang was very happy… with the work done by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Rose Pak.”

Friends of Rose Pak told a Chinese-language reporter, “She came to San Francisco with a clear mission to go into Chinatown.”

And a Chinese-language reporter has recently discovered that circa 1970, while she was in Australia, Pak made frequent contact with none other than Li Peng, who between 1998 and 2003 ranked second in the Communist Party of China behind Jiang Zemin on the Politburo.

This woman “famous for making and unmaking mayors” was a prominent guest at a wedding in 2001:
 

As weddings go, the Saturday night union of up-and-coming mayoral contender Gavin Newsom and up-and-coming Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Guilfoyle had the feel of a Danielle Steel novel -- glitz, media, money and just enough political intrigue to keep everyone buzzing.

Newsom did indeed run for mayor in 2003, winning a tight runoff election. He especially thanked one specific voting coalition for the victory:
 

“There is one reason I won a very close election,” Newsom told 600 supporters in one of Chinatown’s oldest banquet halls, after lion dancers and cymbals welcomed him. “And that is the support of the Asian community, and the Chinese community in particular. I could not have done it without you.”

In what is perhaps a disturbing foreshadowing of the fraud-riddled 2020 presidential election, Newsom owed his victory not just to Chinese voters, but mail-in Chinese voters:
 

He also lost... among voters who went to the polls Dec. 9, pulling off his narrow victory with a solid lead from early absentee voters.

About 22% of those who voted by mail were Chinese American, according to an analysis of surnames by the nonprofit Chinese American Voters Education Committee. That is striking, considering that only 18% of the city’s registered voters are Asian American -- up from 13% a decade ago, said David Lee, the group’s executive director. Overall, Newsom carried precincts with large Chinese American populations with a consistently higher margin of victory than in the city as a whole.

“It can’t be understated,” Newsom said of the community’s importance. “I think what we’re seeing is the future of San Francisco.”

His political mentor was among the first San Francisco politicians to go out of his way to court this special constituency:
 

[Willie] Brown also campaigned heavily in Chinatown and visited often for events and ribbon-cuttings. Newsom’s election, however, saw a larger percentage of Chinese American voters turn out. Further, his narrow margin of victory gives his Chinese American supporters even greater significance.

Brown undertook multiple trips to China during his time as San Francisco mayor from 1996-2004. In 2002, Chinese President Zemin made a special final visit to the city before leaving office. Rose Pak’s name was prominently featured in The San Francisco Chronicle report on their meeting:
 

Jiang chose to make the farewell stop in the Bay Area because "he's an old friend of Mayor Brown," said Wang Ling, a press attache at San Francisco's Chinese Consulate. "You know Mayor Brown has been (on trade missions) to China three times, and each time he's met with President Jiang. So, they have a very good relationship."

Chinese leaders also have cultivated political ties with San Francisco's powerful Asian community. "One of the strongest characteristics that the Chinese have is loyalty and friendship," said Rose Pak, a Chinatown power broker and Brown supporter.

In 2013, Brown, serving as a columnist for The Chronicle, gushed over a trip to China made by then-Mayor Ed Lee, a man he and Gavin Newsom helped get in office. Brown specifically noted that Rose Pak had organized the junket:
 

The trip to China was just spectacular!

The entire trip was orchestrated by Rose Pak of Chinese Chamber of Commerce fame.

Pak made all of the contacts with the government of China, and Mayor Ed Lee gave a great speech at Tsinghua University.

He should give it again and again. In it he described every single economic development happening in San Francisco – high tech, medical research, productivity on the real estate investment side in particular.

When Rose Pak fell seriously ill in 2016, she traveled to China for a kidney transplant. Upon her return to San Francisco, she was greeted at the airport by a bevy of key political figures including Lee, Brown and then-California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. She died four months later. Kamala Harris was among those officially mourning her passing:
 

SF has lost a fearless advocate of with the passing of Rose Pak. Her spirit will live on in the countless lives she touched and inspired.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 20, 2016

Given the very real possibility that Newsom or Harris may be the Democratic nominee for president soon, it is high time that the American people learn about Rose Pak.

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