Justice Dept. Probes Gifts to Clinton Fund

As the Justice Department launched an investigation into more than $600,000 in questionable contributions to President Clinton’s legal defense fund, administration officials said Thursday that the central figure in the controversy had brought the chief of a Chinese military weapons trading firm to meet the president last Feburary.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said that the president’s aides made a mistake last Feb. 6 when they permitted Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, a Clinton friend and former Arkansas restaurant owner, to bring the Chinese visitor to a political breakfast in the White House residence.

“This is not how we conduct bilateral discussions with the Chinese government,” McCurry said in an interview. He said that White House aides had failed to consider the implications of the visit by the Chinese arms dealer, Wang Jung, before they approved it. But he added that those who attended the session do not remember Wang saying anything.

The invitation of Wang to what was intended as a meeting of Democratic Party leaders with Clinton demonstrates the remarkable influence that Trie, a Taiwanese native, has had at the White House. Although Trie could not be reached for comment, the invitation of Wang likely had some connection to the former restaurant owner’s efforts to cultivate international trading partners in China.

Wang is chairman of Poly Group, whose subsidiary, Poly Technologies Inc., is a major vendor of missiles and other weapons. It is owned by the People’s Liberation Army.

Wang went to the White House for the meeting with Clinton at a particularly sensitive time in Sino-American relations, shortly after it was learned that Beijing had sold cruise missiles to Iran. Wang is the son of Wang Zhen, former vice president of China, and is considered a “princeling,” the child of a powerful Communist Party member.

He Ping (the son-in-law of senior leader Deng Xiopang) is president of Poly Group and is a major general in the Chinese army.

Meanwhile, officials confirmed Thursday that the Justice Department has broadened its investigation of allegedly illegal Democratic fund-raising among Asian Americans to include Trie’s involvement in raising more than $600,000 in donations to the Clinton legal defense fund. The fund was set up to pay the president’s legal bills arising from the Whitewater land development deal and other matters.

Much of the money delivered to the fund by Trie came from disciples of Suma Chaing Hai, the leader of a worldwide Buddhist sect headquartered in Taiwan.

The Justice Department’s decision moves the inquiry a step closer to the president, apparently reopening the question of whether Atty. Gen. Janet Reno will appoint an independent counsel to investigate.

The trustees of the defense fund learned about the Justice Department’s interest in the case Thursday when they received a request to supply investigators with information about the money.

A short time later, White House officials confirmed that they also have received a subpoena from the Justice Department seeking information about the legal defense fund contributions, as well as allegedly illegal campaign contributions from Asian American donors.

“We are cooperating with the Justice Department inquiry and we trust and expect the trustees will as well,” said White House spokesman Lanny Davis.

According to one official, the White House received the Justice Department subpoena about the legal defense contributions “in about the last 10 days”--suggesting that the inquiry was widened even before information on the questionable contributions to the fund was made public.

It was not until Monday that the fund’s trustees announced that they had returned the contributions collected by Trie. They said that much of the money in question was raised at U.S. meetings of the obscure Buddhist sect and they feared that the true source of some of the contributions had been concealed.

Michael Cardozo, attorney for the defense fund, said he was asked for information about the contributions by officials of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which has been assigned by Reno to investigate the Democratic fund-raising case.

Cardozo said that he did not know why the Justice Department is investigating the contributions. He maintained that the funds were returned to the contributors not because they were illegal but because they did not conform to the guidelines set by the legal defense fund.

Justice Department spokesman John Russell declined to comment.

McCurry, discussing the February political breakfast at the White House, said that--when Trie requested White House permission to invite Wang to the meeting with the president--he provided only the sketchiest information about him. He listed Wang only as head of China’s principal investment firm, the China International Trade and Investment Corp.

Because it was an event organized by political aides who were unaware of Wang, he said, the invitation did not receive the scrutiny it would have gotten from White House officials involved in foreign policy. “If he had been identified and [investigated], he would not have been invited to that gathering,” McCurry said.

Times staff writer Rone Tempest contributed to this story from Beijing.