Boosts From Above Aided Huang’s Rise Up the Ladder

David J. Rothkopf, then a deputy undersecretary of Commerce, had never heard of John Huang when he learned in late 1993 that the Los Angeles-based executive of an Indonesian conglomerate was in line to join the department.

But Huang’s background looked like trouble to him. The Indonesian Lippo Group’s financial interests were powerful and far-flung. And small banks, like the one Huang once worked at in Arkansas, were already enmeshed in political controversies with the administration.

But Rothkopf learned from his boss that it would do no good to object. “I got the distinct impression that this was a done deal,” he said.

It would not be the last time that Huang’s high-level connections would prove beneficial. In mid-1995, officials at the Democratic National Committee, including Chairman Donald L. Fowler, were not impressed when they heard that Huang, now a mid-level Commerce appointee, wanted to move over as a full-time fund-raiser for the 1996 campaign.

But after a meeting in the Oval Office involving President Clinton, top Lippo executive James Riady and presidential aide Bruce Lindsay, wheels were set in motion that shortly turned Huang into a DNC finance vice chairman.

Huang, of course, became a prodigious Democratic fund-raiser in 1996 and since has emerged as the pivotal figure in a national controversy over improper foreign influence in American politics. The official explanation of Huang’s controversial activities is that they were an isolated side effect of a massive fund-raising machine pushed to take in too much money too fast.

But Huang’s Washington career shows a number of intriguing elements that suggest a more complicated picture. These include the timely appearance of unseen hands to lift him over obstacles in his path, the intervention of high-level help to finesse reluctant peers and bosses and a relentless blindness to the warning flags fluttering around his government and campaign work.

At one point, White House aides got word that Huang “was playing a little fast and loose” with conflicts of interest at the Commerce Department, according to one source. On the campaign trail, fund-raising events that normally hosted citizens were instead full of foreign visitors. And Clinton himself would, on at least one occasion, find himself at a reception in which few others could speak English.

Yet Huang proceeded on unhindered.

Documents May Shed Light on Controversy

Federal and congressional investigations now underway are probing the donation controversies, and whether illegal foreign interests or governments--particularly the Chinese--were secretly promoting and assisting Huang. More than 10,000 pages of documents relating to his tenure at the DNC, expected to be released Monday, may shed more light on these questions.

But available evidence already shows why suspicions are afoot that Huang did not act independently.

Huang’s entry into Democratic campaign circles came in part through his association with the scion of the Lippo empire, James Riady. Born in China and raised in Taiwan, Huang went to work in the mid-’80s for Lippo, which has major banking, real estate and other interests in Indonesia, China, Hong Kong and the United States. Huang rose to become Lippo’s top U.S. representative in Los Angeles.

In concert with Riady, Huang began to contribute to Democratic campaigns. In 1992, a good friend of Riady’s, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, ran for president, and Huang pitched in to raise money in the Asian American community for him.

When Clinton was elected, Huang moved to make the jump into federal government too. In 1993, Huang wrote to the White House expressing interest in the National Security Council, the State Department and the Commerce Department.

Late in 1993, he was recommended by the White House personnel office to become deputy assistant Commerce secretary for East Asia and the Pacific.

Rothkopf, who was two steps up the ladder at the Commerce Department, met with his boss, Undersecretary Jeffrey E. Garten, to discuss Huang’s work with Lippo and the conglomerate’s past stake in a bank in Arkansas, the Worthen Bank. At the time, Clinton’s association with other Arkansas financial institutions was under investigation by an independent counsel.

“My concern was that Lippo, through its involvement with Worthen Bank and potentially through other activities, might prove to be a lightening rod,” Rothkopf said. “I felt this might be a distraction from the policy agenda we had laid out.”

But he said he “got the distinct impression that this was a done deal. But it was unclear to me at what level it was done.”

Even today, the answer remains unclear. But the Riadys boasted to acquaintances that they had gotten Huang placed; a Los Angeles friend said Huang told him that Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic Party chief and Clinton friend who had become Commerce secretary, helped him land the post.

And an Oct. 18, 1993, memorandum to Lindsey, who was Clinton’s first personnel director, indicates that Huang was recommended by Maria L. Haley, who worked for Clinton in Arkansas and was a presidential personnel aide, and Democratic Sens. Paul Simon of Illinois and Kent Conrad of North Dakota. Huang had contributed to both Simon and Conrad’s campaigns and traveled to Asia with Conrad on a 1988 trade mission organized by Lippo.

‘Pushing Papers’ Produces Frustration

Huang, who was given a top-secret clearance, started work at the Commerce Department on July 18, 1994.

His job involved administrative and personnel responsibilities and assisting in expanding U.S. business opportunities in Taiwan. He was privy to regular intelligence briefings and internal information on U.S. trade strategy and the activities of foreign governments and companies.

Huang had a view of high-level trade policy in the making, but friends say he was unhappy at the Commerce Department. “I’m pushing papers,” he told one. During a Los Angeles visit, he confided to another: “If I had been more aggressive, I would have gotten a higher position.”

Huang’s role at the Commerce Department was not considered essential by his superiors either. In fact, after Huang left his position, Rothkopf eliminated it.

Democratic Party officials first began to hear about Huang’s interest in coming to the DNC in mid-1995. The conduit was C. Joseph Giroir, a Little Rock, Ark., attorney who works closely with the Riady family.

Giroir approached DNC Finance Chairman Truman Arnold initially. Shortly thereafter, Giroir spoke to DNC Chairman Fowler and Finance Director Richard Sullivan. Later, Giroir talked to Marvin Rosen, who would take over as DNC finance chairman the following January.

Giroir said he made the overtures at the behest of Huang, not the Riady family.

“I said that John was interested and I thought that he’d do a good job,” Giroir said.

But Fowler took no action. “We had enough people raising money for us,” he said.

But that position soon changed. In mid-September 1995, Riady, Huang and Giroir joined the president and Lindsey, then deputy White House counselor, in the Oval Office for a session that White House officials say was largely social. There, Huang told the president that he wanted to move to the DNC. Later Huang met with Lindsey and Harold M. Ickes, then deputy White House chief of staff, about it.

Several months earlier, sources said, Ickes had been told in passing of potential problems with Huang at the Commerce Department. Jane Sherburne, a special White House counsel, had learned of concerns about Huang’s Lippo connections and that he “could have used a refresher course on conflict-of-interest rules,” sources said. She reportedly passed this on to Ickes, though Ickes said recently that he did not recollect receiving such information.

Regardless, following the September Oval Office session, Clinton personally “asked Mr. Ickes to follow up with Mr. Huang,” officials said, and Huang started at the DNC that December.

Once at the DNC, Huang quickly began to bring in huge sums of money--much of it from Asian American and Asian sources that were newcomers to a party scrambling to expand its fund-raising reach. And much of the money came from donors who were not legal residents or citizens, contributing to the DNC’s current headaches.

All told, the DNC has identified $1.6 million of the $3.4 million that Huang raised as either illegal, improper or sufficiently suspect that it will be sent back to the donors.

DNC officials said Huang had been briefed on the laws.

But some who worked with Huang, and admire him to this day, say the DNC failed to give him the necessary training--especially since Huang had to bridge both his background in the corporate, rather than the political, world and vast cultural differences.

‘Secret Weapon’ Kept to Himself

All agree on one thing: Through it all, Huang was an extraordinarily private man, often speaking on the phone in Chinese, rarely confiding in colleagues and never complaining even though the former bank executive was so embarrassed about his threadbare DNC office he would never meet visitors there.

He lived up to his nickname inside party circles: “Our secret weapon.”

Now investigators in the FBI and Congress are trying to determine who else may have been in on the secret and what was behind it. And Huang, who had told colleagues he hoped after the president’s reelection to move into a more powerful position in the administration, is instead holed up at his Glendale home, facing an uncertain future.

Times staff writers K. Connie Kang in Los Angeles and Glenn F. Bunting and David Willman and researcher Edith Stanley in Washington contributed to this story.