Foreign Agents Law Part of Fund-Raising Probe

When John Huang and other friends of the Clinton administration brought potential donors with foreign interests to meetings at the White House and other federal offices, they may have run afoul of more than campaign finance laws, according to legal experts.

A Justice Department task force is examining a range of violations that may have occurred as the administration solicited millions of dollars in donations for the 1996 presidential election.

Among the laws being scrutinized is the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires those who engage in political activities or solicit money on behalf of a foreign country, corporation or businessman to register with the Justice Department.

Legal authorities said half a dozen or more intermediaries who arranged meetings with the president or other U.S. officials for foreign-linked donors seem to have engaged in the activities covered by the law. Yet none has ever registered as a foreign agent.

Violation of this law may be another reason that an independent counsel should be appointed to take over the Justice Department’s campaign finance probe, some authorities said.

Huang, the central figure in both Justice Department and congressional investigations of the foreign-money controversy, interceded for officials of the Lippo Group--an Indonesian firm and his former employer--in setting up meetings at the White House and the Export-Import Bank, according to documents and statements by others.

Huang, who is under subpoena by congressional investigators, also is suspected of seeking influence on behalf of China. He has declined to discuss the allegations.

The Justice Department has initiated prosecutions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act only three times in the last 30 years and has achieved no convictions. One case was settled out of court, another was dropped when the prosecutor resigned from his job and the third resulted in a conviction that was overturned on appeal because the statute of limitations expired.

Heather Hunt, an attorney with the Justice Department’s foreign agents registration section, agreed to respond to questions about the law without reference to specific cases or individuals.

“If you’re representing a foreign businessman or acting as an intermediary . . . to influence U.S. policy, yes you’d have to register,” Hunt said.

In most cases, Huang and other friends of Clinton who arranged meetings for actual or potential campaign donors at the White House or elsewhere are not believed to have received a fee for their services. Such people also included Arkansas lawyers Mark W. Grobmyer and C. Joseph Giroir, both of whom interceded with Maria L. Haley, director of the Export-Import Bank and a former Arkansas associate.

“Whether you’re paid or not paid by the foreign interest is not relevant” to a person’s obligation to register as a foreign agent, Hunt said. “Money is not a factor.”

In addition, Grobmyer, a Little Rock attorney and golf partner of Clinton, accompanied members of Indonesia’s Riady family to the White House to meet with the president.

Marshall J. Breger, a law professor at Catholic University in Washington, said the requirement to register “depends on why the intermediary brought a foreign businessman to a meeting at the White House or some other agency.”

“If he can say with a straight face, ‘I just wanted him to see what the Oval Office looked like and to have coffee,’ then that would not require registration under the act,” Breger said.

“But if the purpose of the meeting was to discuss U.S. policy--such as, ‘We would like you to change your policy toward Taiwan, or change your policy granting most-favored-nation status to China’--then that would require registration under the act,” he explained.

“In the real world,” Breger added, “the best evidence that you are seeking to influence policy on behalf of your client is that you are being paid, but there’s probably not that kind of evidence here. And the act doesn’t require something of value.”

He acknowledged that determining what transpired at a private meeting would be difficult in the absence of a transcript of the session. “You’d have a hard time disputing the intermediary who claims, ‘I just brought him in for coffee,’ ” Breger said.

Hunt said a lawyer or lobbyist might not have to register under the act if that person already had registered with Congress as a lobbyist. But in the case of Huang and others, none has ever registered with Congress, according to the latest public filings.

This nonregistered group includes Pauline Kanchanalak, a key figure in the Democratic fund-raising affair, who has openly worked on behalf of Thailand and attended White House coffees where trade policy toward China was reportedly discussed.

The Democratic National Committee returned $253,000 in donations from Kanchanalak after concluding that some of the funds may have come from someone else.

Nor has Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie ever filed foreign agent registration papers. Trie, a former Little Rock restaurateur and friend of Clinton, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Democratic Party last year and escorted a Chinese arms merchant to a White House coffee gathering.

Also failing to register either with the Justice Department or Congress was Johnny Chien Chuen Chung, a Taiwanese American businessman from California. According to recently released documents from the National Security Council, a White House aide said of Chung, “My impression is that he’s a hustler [and] will thrive by bringing Chinese entrepreneurs into town for exposure to high-level U.S. officials.”

Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said: “There’s a presumption that if you’re going to represent a foreign principal and attempt to influence government policy, you have to register.

“My guess is that given all the facts and circumstances in this case, and the desire of the department’s career attorneys to show they can investigate all facets of the matter without giving it to an independent counsel, the foreign agents registration aspect will be looked at without question.”

Charles Lewis, author of “The Buying of the President” and director of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, commented that the apparent violation of registration laws “is another reason that a special prosecutor should be appointed.”

Referring to Huang and others, Lewis said, “It’s pretty apparent they’re doing the bidding of foreign corporations or foreign countries such as Taiwan or China. I’m sorry, but they have to register somewhere for that. That’s exactly what those laws were designed for.”