Clinton Surprised by Donor’s Big Offer, FBI Interviews Find

In interviews with the FBI, fund-raiser John Huang said he was told President Clinton was surprised when Indonesian businessman James T. Riady told him of his plan to raise $1 million in political donations.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Democratic political committees followed the meeting between Riady and Clinton.

Huang, who said he was told about the conversation by Riady, also recounted how Riady came to pay $100,000 in financial assistance to longtime presidential friend Webster L. Hubbell.

The House Government Reform Committee released 300 pages of FBI interviews with Huang on Tuesday, revealing details of what Huang has been telling the FBI for the last year.

In a 17-page analysis, committee Democrats said the interviews demonstrate there is no evidence for the most serious allegation about Huang: that he was a Chinese agent subverting the U.S. election process. The Democratic analysis also said the interview summaries contain no information implicating the Clintons, Vice President Al Gore or any senior Democratic Party officials in improper donations.

“Poor Dan Burton,” White House spokesman Jim Kennedy said of the Republican committee chairman. “Like Al Capone’s vault, his investigation has yielded nothing, and his conspiracy theories lie in ruins.” Kennedy said Burton is “recycling old stories like a guy at a high school reunion, desperately hoping somebody will remember, or care. Nobody does.”

A spokesman for Burton, Mark Corallo, responded: “Apparently, the president and his mouthpiece don’t find anything wrong with James Riady flying in from Jakarta, meeting with the president and promising to give him a million dollars for his campaign . . . apparently Mr. Kennedy would prefer that the American people had never heard about any of this.”

One of the key figures in the fund-raising controversy arising from the 1996 presidential election, Huang worked for the Riady family of Jakarta before getting a job in the Clinton administration, then became a Democratic Party fund-raiser in 1995. He was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate federal fund-raising laws.