ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: THE BALTIMORE SUN
Democratic fund-raiser John Huang won a top-secret security clearance for a job at the Commerce Department with only a minimal check into his work as an international banker in Hong Kong a decade ago, congressional investigators charged Wednesday.
Huang, a key figure in a mounting controversy over foreign contributions to the Democratic Party, also got an ``interim'' security clearance while still employed by the Indonesia-based Lippo Group six months before actually starting work at Commerce, according to a document made public Wednesday.
No one has charged Huang with any wrongdoing while at Commerce, but the disclosures raised questions about his access to sensitive intelligence and how he was hired for a key international trade post. In his last year at Lippo, he earned close to $900,000 in salary and severance pay.
Huang left Commerce late last year to work as a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser who specialized in soliciting contributions from Asian Americans. After raising more than $4 million, he was suspended by the DNC this month because of his involvement in two episodes: collecting an apparently illegal $250,000 contribution from a foreign donor, and arranging a fund-raising event at a Buddhist temple in California.
Since then, Republican-controlled congressional committees - including the international operations subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which aired the latest charges - have begun to comb his background as an international banker with the $12 billion Lippo conglomerate and investigate his ties to President Clinton's associates in Arkansas.
All appointees with top-secret clearances are required to undergo an extensive check into their backgrounds. The inquiries are supposed to cover the previous 10 years.
But the Office of Personnel Management, which handles background checks for most Commerce appointees, did not arrange for the State Department's diplomatic security agents to conduct interviews in Hong Kong, where Huang worked in 1985 and 1986 as a representative of four banks.
Rep. Larry Combest, R-Texas, chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, charged in a letter to Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor that this was ``contrary to standard procedures.''
Commerce and Personnel Management spokesmen said the background check was as thorough as it was required to be.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB