January 26, 2005

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  Small Names, Big Checks

  
  

  By Michael Scherer

  
  

  January 20, 2005

  
  

  Therese Shaheen, the former U.S. envoy to Taiwan, wrote a $250,000 check so that her Asian business clients can rub shoulders this week with George W. Bush. “Outsiders are fascinated by the president’s inaugural, so it’s nice for them,” says Shaheen, who resigned her post as the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission to Taiwan last April and returned to the private sector. “The inauguration is always good for business development.”

  
  

  Only a few people, including the president’s staff, know that Shaheen is responsible for the donation, which entitles her clients to tickets to top-tier events with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. That is because she donated the funds through the Strongbow Technologies Corporation, a company that lists no phone number and whose mailing address is a post office box in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C.

  
  

  Shaheen, the owner of Strongbow, has no plans to identify the foreign clients she is bringing to dine and dance with the President. But it is not hard to guess why they are working with her. In addition to her State Department experience, Shaheen’s former business partner, and the former co-owner of Strongbow, was Richard Lawless, an ex-CIA agent who now works at the Pentagon as deputy undersecretary of defense for Asia-Pacific affairs. He has recently been discussed as a candidate to replace the head of the CIA’s clandestine unit.

  
  

  Lawless and Shaheen founded a company in 1987 called U.S. Asia Commercial, which partnered with the president’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to work on deals with Asian investors. Shaheen’s husband is Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita, who also serves as a special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

  
  

  Nonetheless, she said her involvement in the inauguration was not political.

  
  

   

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