White House Helped Boost Trie Onto Asia Trade Panel

A glimpse at the background of Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie reveals that the Taiwanese immigrant worked at his Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, Ark., before opening a small consulting office in Beijing in late 1992 when his friend of 13 years, Bill Clinton, was elected president.

But his resume became much grander after a major make-over by the Clinton administration’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

In papers prepared by the agency, Trie became an authority on international trade relations and a key player in building economic bridges between the United States and Asia.

Trie possesses “special expertise” and “substantial knowledge and/or experience” on U.S. barriers to Asia markets, one USTR document declared. His participation on a White House advisory panel on trade with Pacific nations was proclaimed “essential to the United States.”

A certain amount of puffery is not uncommon in Washington, particularly for political appointments made to myriad boards and study groups created to explore policy issues.

However, newly available records obtained by The Times show that the White House went to extraordinary lengths to promote and place Trie, now a central figure in federal and congressional probes into allegations of espionage and illegal fund-raising, on the Presidential Commission on U.S. Trade and Investment Policy.

To give Trie the position, according to e-mail messages, Clinton signed an executive order in January 1996, expanding the membership of the commission, which was already full. Then Trie was able to serve even though U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky refused to sign a required waiver discounting any problem with potential conflicts of interest, according to government memos marked “highly confidential.”

White House and USTR officials could not explain why similar waivers were granted to all 19 commissioners except Trie and one other member.

Trie also was allowed to continue on the panel through April even though he stopped participating last September. He is now believed to be in China.

Trie’s placement on the trade commission has taken on significance as investigators reconstruct his ascension from a small-time entrepreneur to an international trader suspected of obtaining huge amounts of improper or laundered overseas money for the Democrats’ and Clinton’s campaign coffers. The question is whether the administration helped turn Trie into an illicit fund-raiser, knowingly or not, by providing him with the credentials to flash his government clout.

Trie’s appointment to the commission “looks kind of opportunistic in that it would promote his ability to draw in money to the Democratic Party,” said Herbert Alexander, a USC political science professor and expert on campaign finances. “And don’t forget, the bottom line for this administration was bringing in the money.”

After gaining the nonsalaried position, Trie mingled with CEOs and leading experts on Pacific Rim trade, attended periodic meetings to discuss policy recommendations, accompanied fellow commissioners on a fact-finding trip to Asia (participants paid their own expenses), and boasted to potential clients about his position as a Clinton appointee, panel members said.

As he trolled for business investments, he also amassed money for the president and the Democratic Party. In the spring of 1996, he delivered envelopes stuffed with $639,000 in checks to the president’s legal defense fund, some allegedly from camouflaged sources. He also escorted the head of a Chinese arms company into the White House to meet with Clinton.

The Democratic National Committee has since returned $645,000 in suspect contributions that Trie either donated or solicited. Trie and a former DNC fund-raiser, John Huang, are now the central targets in the inquiry into illegal overseas donations, investigators say.

Trie, 46, is believed to be in China and could not be reached for comment. His attorney in Washington, Reid Weingarten, also was not available.

One administration official conceded that Trie received special treatment from the White House but said the motive was benign. “Going back to the days when he ate in his restaurant in Little Rock, President Clinton has had a soft spot in his heart for Charlie Trie,” the official said.

However, it is clear that Trie himself was not shy about trading on his standing with the president.

A week after he was elected in 1992, Clinton wrote Trie a letter wishing him “success in your new venture”--the opening of a branch of his new company, Daihatsu International Trading Inc., in China. Trie used the letter in his efforts to open doors and attract clients both in this country and overseas; in 1994 he attached a copy of it to an unsuccessful proposal to develop a hotel project in Little Rock.

Initially, Trie’s name did not appear on any nomination lists in 1995 when the U.S.-Pacific trade panel was created by legislation sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) as part of the agreement to form the World Trade Organization. The purpose of the commission was to provide expert advice to Clinton on ways to open markets in China, Japan and other Pacific nations to U.S. businesses.

The White House took several months to fill the 15 slots with a blend of chief executives, academics and Asian specialists. Several people knowledgeable about the selection process said Trie was a last-minute addition after he expressed interest. These sources said Trie’s nomination met some resistance within Congress and the administration because of his lack of qualifications.

But White House officials made it clear that Trie’s selection was a priority. “We were told that Trie was a must person and this came directly from the top,” said one person involved.

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Trie also had lined up other support, records show. He was the only candidate also endorsed by the DNC, to which he and his wife had donated generously, and he was sponsored by Ernest Green, an executive of the Lehman Bros. investment firm who is a Clinton friend and who later helped Trie get the Chinese arms company head into the White House.

“Mr. Trie was interested in serving on the commission--his background as an Asian American, his knowledge about Asian issues and the fact that he was well-known to the president as an old friend as well as to other Little Rock acquaintances who served in the White House were all factors in the decision to add him to the commission,” said White House special counsel Lanny J. Davis.

But accommodating Trie required coming up with a seat. Since the White House didn’t want to kick off any of the current nominees, Clinton wound up issuing Executive Order 12987, expanding the board “up to 20” members.

Administration officials said the panel was also expanded for two other candidates, but people familiar with the selection process said the White House was clearly most interested in Trie. Meanwhile, the White House rejected suggestions by Bingaman to add candidates with high-tech experience.

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After the commission was announced in April 1996, it was decided that each of its 19 members still needed waivers in the event that their financial interests in Pacific Rim businesses posed a potential conflict with the panel’s work, USTR records show. The waivers were approved for all but two members.

A May 9, 1996, USTR memo stamped “Highly Confidential” declared that Trie’s interest in Daihatsu and two other companies was such that he had a “disqualifying financial interest.” James C. Morgan, chairman of Applied Materials Corp. of Silicon Valley, was also challenged. The questions about Morgan were eventually resolved. Trie’s were not.

Government regulations permit the disqualification to be excused if the need for a member’s participation is so great that it outweighs the potential for a conflict.

The USTR staff proposed a waiver memo for Trie stating that he has “special expertise vital to the work of the commission and has substantial knowledge and/or experience regarding trade barrier restricting U.S. business access to Asian and Pacific markets.” It adds that Trie’s services are “essential to the United States because the commission’s purpose is to include this very expertise in the advice provided to the president. . . .”

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But Barshefsky wanted to know more about Trie’s Daihatsu International, including whether it was related to a Japanese auto company of the same name, said USTR spokesman Jay Ziegler. (It is not.) Trie’s firm recruits clients interested in establishing joint ventures in the United States and Southeast Asia.

In the end, Trie was able to serve without the waiver. A USTR official explained that the paperwork on Trie and Morgan “fell through the cracks.” The question of Trie’s waiver was under consideration in June of 1996--shortly after the White House had been alerted that Trie had given the president’s legal defense fund the $639,000 in contributions. Barshefsky had not learned of Trie’s controversial actions until they surfaced in news reports last December, Ziegler said.

Since Clinton took office, Trie’s business has prospered. What started in 1991 with small quarters in Little Rock expanded to satellite offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and two other locations in China as well as to a suite at the Watergate in Washington.

Trie’s status as a presidential trade commission member certainly didn’t harm his standing with potential clients in Asia. “He was not bashful about talking about his relationships with the White House,” said former commission member Eugene Eidenberg.

Commission members and staffers recalled that Trie displayed little, if any, expertise and rarely spoke in the meetings he attended before leaving for China when the donation controversy erupted late last year. He later sent a letter to the panel apologizing that the controversy had interfered with its work and saying he would no longer be an active participant. However, he remained a member until it disbanded this spring.

“He was one of the least substantive people but not necessarily the least,” said Nancy Adams, an assistant U.S. trade representative who directed the panel. “I think it’s fair [to say] that people always sort of wondered what Charlie’s role was other than small business.”

Trie’s membership posed an even bigger problem for the commission in April, when his fund-raising role overshadowed the panel’s purpose: the presentation of its 133-page report to Clinton.

Instead of seeking widespread attention, “we downplayed it,” said Vice Chairman Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr. “It was low key.”

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone and researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this story.