China Alleged to Have Sought Influence On U.S. Congressional Elections

Extract

There are basically three things you've asked there. Let me try to—first of all, yes, the President should know. And I can tell you, if I had known about the reports—and, again, these are reports, these are allegations, we have not reached a—as far as I know, no one in the government has reached a conclusive decision about this. So it's very important not to accuse people of something that you don't know they have done. But had we known about the reports, the first thing I would have done is I would have given them to Leon Panetta and to Tony Lake and to Sandy Berger and I'd say, listen, look at these, evaluate them and make recommendations about what, if any, changes we ought to make or what should we be alert to. So it would have provoked at least to that extent a red flag on my part.