Memo Stirs Questions Over Fund-Raiser’s Solicitation

An internal Democratic National Committee memo released Friday indicates that fund-raiser John Huang solicited a $250,000 contribution from a South Korean company, even though he should have known that the firm could not legally give money in U.S. election campaigns.

In a handwritten note, Huang said that Cheong Am America Inc. was seeking a U.S. partner to establish a plant to make giant video display screens in Southern California.

“If this is done, the manufacturing facility is going to be in the city of Carson,” Huang wrote to committee Finance Director Richard Sullivan in a memo that appears to be a briefing on the prospective donor. “The initial investment will be around $150 million.”

The note seems to contradict Huang’s more recent comments about the contribution. In response to written questions in October, Huang said: “I was under the impression, from discussions with the representatives of the company and other persons familiar with the company, that the company had already commenced actual operations in the U.S.”

An American subsidiary of a foreign company cannot legally make a political contribution unless the money comes from revenues generated in the United States.

John K. H. Lee, the chairman of Cheong Am, contributed $250,000 on behalf of the company so that he and four others involved with the firm could meet President Clinton at a Washington fund-raising event last April 8. In a thank you note to Clinton, Carson Mayor Mike Mitoma, who arranged the contribution and attended the fund-raiser, said that Lee “was honored that you were interested in his project and the jobs it will create.”

The donation became the first of several returned by the Democrats in recent months after The Times reported in September that the money came from Cheong Am’s parent company in South Korea rather than from the subsidiary, which was yet to generate any funds.

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The Cheong Am documents were included in about 3,000 pages of documents concerning Huang’s activities that were released by the committee Friday. They were simultaneously turned over to the House Government Reform and Oversight civil service subcommittee, one of several panels investigating Huang’s activities.

At the same time, the DNC increased the figures for the amount of money that Huang had raised during his 10 months as DNC finance vice chairman. Huang, a former Commerce Department official, raised about $3.4 million. Previously the committee had said that he had brought in $2.5 million.

Since the furor over foreign-linked contributions began in the fall, the DNC has returned nearly $1.5 million in illegal or improper donations, including $1.2 million brought in by Huang.

Also included among the DNC documents was a copy of a memo written to Vice President Al Gore’s office three days before a fund-raiser that he attended at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights. Gore has said that he was unaware it was a fund-raising event. The DNC subsequently said that it was improper for a fund-raiser to take place at the temple, which enjoys tax-exempt status.

Although the memo to Gore’s office does not explicitly describe the event as a fund-raiser, it does say that the function was sponsored by the Democratic Finance Committee. It also notes that participants were required to pay a minimum of $2,500 to be a part of the sponsoring group.

Meanwhile, Clinton on Friday said that it was “clearly inappropriate” for a Chinese weapons dealer to attend a White House reception last February at the invitation of an old Clinton friend from Little Rock, Ark., who also raised money for the party.

‘I’m disappointed that it happened,” Clinton told a news conference. “We must have better screening systems. We will have.”

The White House disclosed Thursday that Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, who once ran a Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, where Clinton ate while he was Arkansas governor, brought Wang Jun, head of a weapons trading firm owned by the Chinese military, to a political reception with the president last Feb. 6.

White House officials have said they were not aware at the time that Wang was chairman of the Poly Group, whose subsidiary, Poly Technologies Inc., is a major vendor of missiles and other weapons. Representatives of Poly Technologies were charged in May in San Francisco after a 16-month U.S. sting operation in which 2,000 Chinese-made assault rifles were shipped into the United States. Wang was not among those charged.

Wang came to the White House at a sensitive time in U.S.-China relations. A short time earlier, the Navy had learned that Beijing had sold cruise missiles to Iran.

Clinton recalled that the event attended by Wang was a small group discussion over coffee with people from “different walks of life.”

“I’d talk for five or 10 minutes and then we’d . . . go around the table and let people say whatever they wanted to say,” Clinton said, adding that he does not recall Wang speaking during the meeting.

“I can tell you for sure nothing inappropriate came from it in terms of any governmental action on my part,” Clinton said.

The Wang visit was the latest example of ways in which Clinton’s friendship with Trie has proved an embarrassment for the White House. Trie, who sold his restaurant in 1991 to enter the international trading business, also was responsible for bringing in more than $600,000 in contributions to the president’s legal defense fund, which were either returned or rejected. Trustees of the fund said that they refused to accept the money because the source of some donations could not be firmly established.

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In addition, Trie, who has traded on his friendship with Clinton since entering the world of international deal-making, also brought the Democratic Party a $15,000 contribution from a foreign corporation. That illegal contribution is among the money the party has since returned.

The newly released DNC documents also show that Trie played a previously unknown role in soliciting a controversial $325,000 contribution from Yogesh K. Gandhi, which was later returned because the true source of the money could not be verified.

Huang previously had been credited with raising the money from Gandhi, a distant relative of India’s Mohandas K. Gandhi. Yogesh Gandhi is president of the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation in Orinda, Calif.