Riady's Influenced The Clintons: 67 Recorded Visits To The White House

Riady's Influenced The Clintons:
67 Recorded Visits To The White House

October 8, 1998

Remember John Huang?

He's the banker who was placed by Indonesia's Riady family in the corrupted Clinton Commerce Department. For 18 months he read top-secret cable traffic, was briefed 37 times by the C.I.A., viewed 500 pieces of raw intelligence -- and made 261 calls to the Lippo banks. He frequently slipped across the street to a Riady banker's ''drop'' to send and receive faxes and packages that did not appear on Commerce records.

Mr. Huang also paid 67 recorded visits to the White House complex. After deceptively signing in as a visitor to the President's secretary, he met in the Oval Office with his new and old bosses, Bill Clinton and James Riady. Clinton had Bruce Lindsey arrange with Harold Ickes to reassign Huang to the D.N.C., where he raised $2 million from illegal Asian sources.

That fund-raising scandal was first noted in this space two years ago yesterday. The Clinton Department of Justice botched the investigation. When F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh complained in a 27-page legal memo about the need for independent counsel to replace the fumbling ''Public Integrity'' time-server, Lee Radek, Attorney General Janet Reno refused and instead brought in Charles La Bella, a San Diego prosecutor.


La Bella determined in a 100-page report that the law called for an independent counsel. When Reno refused to honor a lawful Congressional subpoena to examine policy recommendations in the Freeh and La Bella reports, the Government Oversight Committee voted her in contempt. To palliate Senate and House leaders, she read selections from the reports taking issue with her judgment, but would not hand them over.

Then this: According to ''a senior Justice official,'' reported Roberto Suro of The Washington Post, ''some investigators have concluded that Huang does not have information that would support the prosecution of the Democratic officials who received and spent the funds he raised or the White House officials who promoted his career in Washington.''

Huang home free? But nobody at Justice has interrogated him in these two years. Although he has taken the Fifth Amendment to duck Congress, he has never had to exercise his rights against self-incrimination to Reno's parade of hamstrung prosecutors. Ty Cobb, tells me, ''John Huang has not had the occasion to take the Fifth.''

Clinton Gives Few Details On Recommending Huang

• July 10, 1997
  
  

President Clinton today played down his role in the Democratic National Committee's hiring of John Huang as a fund-raiser, saying he would have ''referred virtually anybody's name to the party'' if that person had volunteered to raise money for the campaign.

The President also said at a news conference here that he had ''no knowledge'' of whether the Chinese Government had tried to influence American elections through contributions. Senator Fred Thompson, the Tennessee Republican who heads the Senate committee investigating campaign finance practices, said on Tuesday that China had spent ''substantial sums of money'' on the 1996 campaigns.

Mr. Clinton said that until the facts were established, such an accusation ''can't in any way, and shouldn't, affect the larger, long-term strategic interests of the American people and our foreign policy.''

The President answered the questions on campaign finance on the second day of a NATO summit meeting at which the Western alliance moved to open its doors to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. While the President sought to use the news conference to begin selling NATO's expansion to the American public, domestic issues, including the campaign finance questions, repeatedly intruded.

Mr. Huang, who was in charge of Democratic fund-raising among Asian-Americans in the 1996 campaign, is a central figure in the Senate inquiry because $1.6 million he raised has been returned by the Democrats as either questionable or unlawful donations. Investigators have been trying to find out the true sources of the money and the motives of the donors.

Mr. Huang was the former head of United States operations for the Lippo Group, the Indonesian banking conglomerate of the Riady family, longtime patrons of Bill Clinton. Mr. Huang became a Commerce Department official in 1994, and in early 1996 he was named vice chairman for finance of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Huang had appealed to Mr. Clinton for the fund-raising post in September 1995, and Congressional investigators say the President took a personal interest in Mr. Huang's hiring.

Mr. Clinton today gave only a sketchy account of why he had intervened on behalf of Mr. Huang, saying, ''I can only tell you what I recall about that.''

The President said that Mr. Huang ''at some point, when I saw him in 1995, expressed an interest in going to work to try to help raise money for the Democratic Party. And I think I may have said to someone that he wanted to go to work for the D.N.C.''

Mr. Clinton said he did not remember whom he contacted, ''but I believe I did say that to someone. And I wish I could tell you more. That's all I know about it.''

White House officials have acknowledged that the President met in the Oval Office in September 1995 with Mr. Huang; James T. Riady, a top executive of the Lippo Group, and Bruce R. Lindsey, the White House deputy counsel, in what they described primarily as a ''social visit.'' They said Mr. Huang told the President he wanted to raise money for the Democrats.

Marvin S. Rosen, the finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has told Senate investigators that two months later, Mr. Clinton asked him about Mr. Huang's status, telling him that Mr. Huang had come ''highly recommended.'' Five days later, Mr. Huang accepted a job as vice chairman for finance.

The President said today he had known Mr. Huang since he was Governor of Arkansas. But he portrayed his interest in hiring Mr. Huang as nothing out of the ordinary.

''Most people don't volunteer to help you raise money in this world,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''It's normally an onerous task. And so if anybody volunteered I would have referred virtually anybody's name to the party.''

As he did earlier this year in response to the first suspicions that China tried to use campaign contributions to influence American politics, the President said he did not know whether the accusations were true.China has repeatedly denied the accusations. Senator Thompson offered no details on Tuesday, saying the information obtained by the committee was sensitive and could not be discussed in open session.

Mr. Clinton called the Senator's assertion ''a serious charge,'' adding, ''If any country -- any country -- sought to influence policy through illegal means, including illegal campaign contributions to people running for President or people in the Congress, it would be wrong and a matter of serious concern.''

Mr. Clinton said he expected ''the most vigorous possible investigation by the Justice Department.'' When he had the facts, he said, ''we will act in an appropriate fashion.