Fund-Raiser Huang Surfaces, Testifies

Democratic fund-raiser John Huang emerged from hiding Tuesday and insisted that his evasion of a subpoena in recent days did not mean he wanted “to run away from the issue” of his past activities as a Commerce Department official or a Democratic Party fund-raiser.

Huang, who is at the center of a controversy over illegal campaign contributions, testified for more than four hours behind closed doors in a freedom-of-information civil suit brought by a conservative legal organization seeking to show that Commerce Department trade missions overseas solicited money for the Democrats.

A videotape of his testimony released later showed he took the position that he never acted illegally or improperly. He denied that there were any fund-raising aspects to overseas trade missions in which he participated.

Even as Huang surfaced for questioning, Republicans stepped up their assault on the issue of Democratic fund-raising. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and four Republican House committee chairmen asked Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to apply for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate not only Huang’s activities, but also a variety of other alleged improprieties by Democrats in raising funds from foreign sources.

The Republicans accused Huang of “the apparent deliberate flaunting of federal election law . . . with the apparent cooperation of President Bill Clinton, Vice President [Al] Gore and the Democratic National Committee.”

McCain and the four House chairmen--Bill Thomas of Bakersfield, William F. Clinger Jr. of Pennsylvania, Benjamin A. Gilman of New York and Gerald B.H. Solomon of New York--told Reno that the Justice Department could not be counted on to carry out an inquiry “that will be considered fair and free of outside influence.”

For that reason, they called on Reno to ask a special federal court to name an independent counsel. Reno gave no immediate reply.

Huang, of Los Angeles, resigned from the Commerce Department in December to join the staff of the Democratic National Committee--where his fund-raising activities led to questions that forced him into hiding earlier this month. At the DNC, Huang solicited more than $800,000 from Asian interests that violated or may have skirted the prohibition on foreign contributions to American political campaigns.

He was not asked about his DNC activities Tuesday because the Judicial Watch civil suit is limited to Huang’s work at Commerce, and his lawyers raised objections to questions they felt went beyond that.

On the subject of his work at Commerce, Huang said he had “played a very passive role” in the trade missions at issue in the lawsuit. “The whole Commerce Department objective was to try to help American business overseas,” said Huang, who was a deputy assistant secretary in 1994 and 1995.

Judicial Watch attorney Larry Klayman said he may have more questions today if a federal judge permits them.

Huang said he never traveled on any of the foreign trade missions, which were led by the late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, and described his only role as participating in “preparation meetings” at the department before some overseas trips.

While at Commerce, Huang said, he also never had sought to advance the interests of the worldwide Lippo Group, in which he had been an executive before joining the government. Lippo Group is an Indonesian conglomerate founded by the wealthy Riady family, who have been longtime Clinton supporters.

Huang did acknowledge that over the years he had met “quite a few times” at the White House with the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and members of the Riady family. He did not describe the purpose of those meetings or say what had been discussed.

While hiding from public view, Huang said, he felt encouraged when Asian American friends told him that Mrs. Clinton had said: “John’s a friend of mine. We all support him.”

Huang insisted that he had not been dodging federal marshals who last week tried to serve him with a subpoena in the Judicial Watch suit, but rather was avoiding “harassment” by news media representatives seeking to question him about his fund-raising.

“I didn’t think it was the proper time to show up,” he said, adding that he spoke by phone from time to time with Democratic committee officials who did not press him as to his whereabouts.

Huang, who was a high-ranking official with Lippo Group banking enterprises for nine years, said he accepted the Commerce Department position in 1994 because “as a member of the Asian American community, we have so few working for the government.”

He charged that press reports about his fund-raising “have tainted the reputation of anyone in our Asian American community.”

In calling for the appointment of an independent counsel, the Republicans cited a number of questionable contributions, including:

* $450,000 from Arief and Soroya Wiriadinata, an Indonesian couple who lived in Washington’s Virginia suburbs before returning to Indonesia at the end of last year.

* $325,000 from Yogesh Gandhi, a great-grandnephew of Mahatma Gandhi.

* $250,000 from a South Korean company called Cheong Am America.

* $140,000 from individuals at a fund-raiser in April at a Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights.

In a related development, the Democratic committee continued to delay filing a preelection report that would disclose contributions or expenditures made during the first 16 days of October.

However, the DNC did file with the Federal Election Commission what party representatives said was a comparable set of “raw data.” Ann McBride, president of Common Cause, the nonpartisan citizens lobby, termed illegal and “outrageous” the Democrats’ failure to file a formal preelection disclosure report.

Times staff writer David Willman contributed to this story.