Harman Braces for Attack on Foreign Links

Rep. Jane Harman is bracing for an attack by her opponents in the race for governor, who may try to link her with the possible spread of chemical or perhaps nuclear weapons.

When the same charges were made during her three campaigns for her South Bay congressional seat, Harman said that it was her former law firms--not she--that represented the foreign clients accused of such deeds.

But now that she is running statewide, the issue is new to most voters. Her close proximity to controversy is about to get greater scrutiny from a larger audience. And Harman knows her opponents are hoping to make this issue a critical test for her campaign.

“It is fair to investigate exactly what I did,” Harman (D-Torrance) said in a recent interview. “I will defend the truth and we will make clear what I did do and did not do. I think voters are smart and they will make a judgment.”

Two incidents from Harman’s work as a prominent Washington attorney have attracted the most attention.

In one case, Harman registered as a lobbyist for China at a time in 1984 when it was accused of passing nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan.

In 1989, Harman’s employer advertised her political connections when it solicited--and won--a lobbying contract from a German company accused of selling equipment to Libya that went to a poison gas factory.

In both cases, Harman insists she had no knowledge of or role in the matters.

Harman said her assignment in helping China was limited to making introductions to important Democrats--not discussing policy. She also said she never gave permission for her name to be used in soliciting the German company, Preussag.

Harman’s critics in the governor’s race have already questioned whether her role was so minimal. But even if it was, they suggest that voters consider her behavior.

“She clearly was a partner in a firm that represented some controversial clients that she may or may not have been involved [with],” said Darry Sragow, strategist for Al Checchi, one of Harman’s two Democratic opponents.

“Voters will have to sort this out,” he added. “One argument is that if good people don’t stand up and object, bad things happen. And that morally, it is wrong to lobby for interest groups that are suppressing human rights or selling nerve gas.”

Harman’s political opponents have combed through the client lists of both the prominent Washington law firms where she worked during the 1980s.

She joined Surrey & Morse as a partner in 1982. Shortly after that firm merged with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Harman transferred to the new company in 1987.

Jones-Day had hundreds of attorneys and clients all over the world. Harman’s political opponents have tried to link her with several controversial groups, such as the apartheid-era South Africa Sugar Assn. and handgun maker Pietro Beretta.

Harman insists she played no role in those cases, and no evidence has ever shown otherwise.

But in the two situations that have proved most politically problematic for Harman, her employer sought to use her extensive political connections to help it represent a pair of controversial clients.

At the time, Harman was already well known to Washington Democrats. Before joining Surrey & Morse, she served as a special counsel in the U.S. Senate, deputy Cabinet secretary in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and legal advisor to the Defense Department.

Even after she began her private work as an attorney, Harman continued to be a prominent fund-raiser for the Democratic Party. At one point, Jones-Day thought those political connections might help it win favor with Preussag.

Then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) included the German company on his “Roll of Dishonor” in January 1989 for allegedly selling water purification equipment to Libya that was later installed at a poison gas factory. Dole wanted to block the companies on his list from receiving any U.S. business.

Records show that Jones-Day considered Dole’s list to be a business opportunity. Days after Dole’s speech on the Senate floor, the firm said it wrote several companies on the list and suggested that it could help them avoid the sanctions Dole was threatening.

Listed in Pitch to German Firm

In its Jan. 31, 1989, pitch letter to Preussag, Jones-Day listed eight of its employees who might help--including Harman.

“Victor Raiser and Jane Harman, as a result of their fund-raising activities on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, have frequent contact with the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate,” the letter said. “Should this project involve contact with the Democratic leadership, we would expect to involve both Vic and Jane.”

Harman said she “went ballistic” when she learned from a 1989 Washington Post story that her name was connected to Preussag.

When she complained to managing partners at Jones-Day, Harman said they admitted they had erred in not seeking her permission before using her name. The firm also issued a statement during her 1992 congressional campaign confirming that she had no role in the Preussag case and that she was “unaware that her name had been included in a proposal.”

Jones-Day officials responded to a recent inquiry about the issue from The Times by releasing the same 1992 letter.

Harman said she did not think about protesting her firm’s role with Preussag in 1989 because she knew very little about the case.

The Post published details of the Preussag allegations and its contract with Jones-Day in June 1989. But Harman said she recalls thinking at the time that the water purification equipment was for mobile toilets, “like these porta-johns.”

The Jones-Day contract with Preussag ended in 1990.

Since then, Preussag has been implicated in the sale of poison gas equipment to Iraq. It is now a defendant in a lawsuit filed by American veterans of the Persian Gulf War who contend that they were exposed to poison chemicals from Iraq. Preussag states in the suit that the equipment was not intended for weapons.

Harman’s reelection campaign in 1996 was one of the hardest-fought congressional races in the nation. The high stakes brought a national spotlight and a new intensity to the attacks about her legal background.

Haley Barbour, then chairman of the national Republican Party, traveled to Harman’s South Bay district to gain attention for the allegations.

Republican challenger Susan Brooks also questioned Harman’s patriotism, her morals and her Jewish faith at a stinging press conference that included speeches from a Gulf War veteran and a rabbi.

At one point, a campaign brochure pictured a gas mask with the suggestion: “Some people will do anything for money.”

Barbour’s complaint focused particularly on Harman’s work with China. He suggested that her previous work as a registered lobbyist for China was an unprecedented conflict of interest with her current assignment on the House Intelligence Committee.

Harman responds that her work with China was minimal. She said her primary job at both law firms was to provide corporate legal advice on business issues--not politics or lobbying.

Harman said China was one of the few exceptions when she was asked by her firm to make political contacts on behalf of a lobbying client. In that case, she said the firm wanted her help in setting up a meeting between Chinese representatives and California’s Democratic senator, Alan Cranston.

To engage in such communication, Harman had to register with the Justice Department in April 1984 as a Chinese “foreign agent”--a title meaning international lobbyist.

Barely a week later, President Ronald Reagan visited China and announced that the United States had reached an agreement to sell about $20 billion worth of nuclear reactors to China over the next two decades.

‘I Don’t Recall Any’ of Meeting With Chinese

The agreement quickly fell apart in Congress, largely because Cranston and other Democrats charged that China had assisted Pakistan with nuclear weapons technology. The senators also complained that the Reagan agreement did not prohibit China from passing the new U.S. nuclear equipment on to other countries.

The meeting Harman set up between the Chinese and Cranston was held in July 1984, about two months after the Democrats had issued their allegations about Pakistan. The Reagan nuclear agreement was still under consideration in Congress, but it was in jeopardy.

As required by law, Harman reported to the Justice Department that she attended the meeting with Cranston and the Chinese. But she said recently that she does not remember attending it or any of the issues that might have been discussed.

“I don’t recall any of it,” she said. “I was in the corporate part of the law firm. But thinking back on that time, they needed me to meet with Sen. Cranston and I was to arrange meetings.”

Benjamin P. Fishburn III, a former partner at Surrey & Morse who worked with China and attended the Cranston meeting, said he was also uncertain about the topics they discussed. But he agreed with Harman that her role with China was minimal.

“I was casting around about why her name was really involved with China because she wasn’t working on it,” he said. “As best I can tell, other than our request to arrange a couple meetings with Sen. Cranston, I don’t know that she had anything ever to do with that.”

Fishburn was also highly critical of the way Harman and the law firm have been portrayed in the recent campaigns.

“The idea that anyone could be diminished by association with Surrey & Morse is one of the most ridiculous things I can imagine,” he said. “Surrey & Morse, in its day, was one of the finest institutions of its type.”