John Huang: the Phantom of a Congressional Opera

The most fascinating and mysterious character to emerge from the first two weeks of Senate hearings into abuses, and possible corruption, of election campaign fund-raising has been the man who isn’t there.

John Huang has not testified, and probably will not, but we’ve learned quite a bit about the former Commerce Department official and onetime Democratic National Committee fund-raiser. For one thing, he must have been one of the busiest people in Washington.

This week the focus shifts to Republican fund-raising and allegations that the GOP too got money originating in Asia. But it will take a while to shake off the unanswered questions about Huang.

We knew already that while at the DNC, he raised about $3.4 million for the 1996 elections. Nearly half of that has been returned because of questions about its origin, especially whether it came from foreign sources, a violation of law.

At the hearing we learned that Huang made 400 or more telephone calls from the Commerce Department to his former employer, the Indonesian-based Lippo Group. Was he checking on whether his favorite plant was being watered or something else? Witnesses testified that Huang left his Commerce office two or three times a week to make telephone calls and pick up faxes at the office of a firm that once had dealings with Lippo.

Huang also visited the White House 52 times after President Clinton took office and before he, Huang, left Lippo to work at Commerce. Once, after he moved to the DNC, Huang was registered at a World Bank seminar as a representative of Lippo. Someone’s honest mistake?

When not so engaged, Huang was receiving 37 intelligence briefings from the CIA and perusing as many as 550 secret documents containing economic and political intelligence on Taiwan and China. This would have been of keen interest to Lippo, which was involved with a Chinese government-owned firm.

One wonders what Huang did in his spare time. Clearly, he was a champion hustler. But was there something more sinister to it, as Republicans allege? Was he slipping secret economic data to Lippo that made its way to the Chinese government in return for secret campaign contributions? We don’t know because there are major gaps in the evidence.

Presumably we’ll hear more about Huang later in the summer.

In the meantime, where has Huang been? Sources say he’s in seclusion at his Glendale home, possibly following the Senate hearings on television. Perhaps he has reacted with laughter, anger, outrage, disdain or all of those. Is he captivated by the fact that he’s the center of the saga or fearful of being found out and prosecuted? Perhaps his personal testimony would fill in the blanks, connect the dots. But then, maybe not.

It might even be that if John Huang stood before the committee and told his own story, he wouldn’t be a fascinating or mysterious character after all. Just sleazy.