Nobody has been able to explain credibly how all the disparate elements of this traitorous conspiracy to arm the Beijing regime fit together, but somehow the vice president's appearance at a Buddhist temple in California, Wen Ho Lee's security breach at Los Alamos, Charlie Trie's donations to the president's legal expense trust, illegal fundraising by John Huang and Loral Space's satellite contract are all linked in a sinister web of intrigue. If these shrill accusations have usually been murky when it comes to details, the broader theme has been clear enough, and it sounds a lot like treason.

Spreading that smear (and stirring anti-Asian nativism) for political advantage is the aim of continuing Republican japes about the Buddhist temple incident. Whether the accusation is articulated or merely insinuated, we are supposed to believe that Clinton, Gore and all the other Americans suspected of wrongdoing in these affairs are guilty of intentionally betraying the security of the United States -- a far worse offense, of course, than allegedly lying under oath about sex, for which the president was impeached.

Unfortunately, such ugly suspicions have been encouraged not only by conservative propagandists, but by sloppy journalism that never quite seems to catch up with the facts. Ordinary citizens have little way of knowing that one by one, the premises underlying the so-called China scandal have collapsed almost entirely.

Just a few weeks ago, American Lawyer magazine's Roger Parloff published an exhaustive analysis of the Buddhist temple affair that stripped away the rhetoric to show how weak the case against Gore really is. Going through the evidence that emerged in congressional hearings and in the successful prosecution of Democratic fundraiser Maria Hsia, Parloff showed that the entire affair was at worst a screwup by Clinton-Gore campaign staffers; Gore almost certainly knew nothing about money being raised from Buddhist nuns. Not surprisingly, alas, Parloff's compelling article received little notice from media outlets and commentators who have tried to hang a felony on Gore for the past three years.

And during the last week of May yet another prop of the China scandal fell. The latest to go is the case against Bernard Schwartz, the chairman of Loral Aerospace and a lifelong Democratic maverick in the mostly Republican aerospace industry. During the Clinton years, Schwartz has been among the largest contributors of "soft money" to the Democratic National Committee, while his company sought and received permission to assist the Chinese government in launching a communications satellite.

That coincidence alone might have raised misgivings, but the Republicans went ballistic after the New York Times reported in April 1998 that the Department of Justice was investigating allegations that Loral had illegally transferred missile guidance technology to Chinese engineers. They demanded an independent prosecutor to investigate whether Schwartz had bribed the president so that Loral could leak American military secrets to a Communist regime with impunity.

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