Susan Schmidt, Washington – Three months after he left his Justice Department job in disgrace in 1994, Webster Hubbell scheduled a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting in Washington with an old friend just in from Indonesia, James Riady.
A few hours after breakfast, Riady was at the White House, but not for long; Hubbell had his friend penciled in for a midday luncheon meeting at the elegant Hay-Adams hotel.
What Hubbell and Riady talked about, and what transpired in a flurry of meetings Riady had at the White House every day that week, are now at the heart of a mystery investigators are trying to unravel.
Hubbell's breakfast and lunch with Riady, the head of the Lippo Group, a multibillion-dollar Indonesia-based conglomerate, occurred June 23, 1994. That same month, according to knowledgeable sources, a Lippo subsidiary paid Hubbell $100,000. Little work, if any, was expected from Hubbell in return for the money, according to a source familiar with some of Lippo's activities. Investigators want to know whether the payment was intended purely to buy his silence.
The meetings and the money are just part of the mystery surrounding Hubbell and Lippo.
John Huang, the former Commerce Department official and Democratic National Committee fundraiser now at the center of a Justice Department inquiry into questionable campaign activities during last year's presidential contest, helped facilitate the $100,000 Lippo payment to Hubbell, according to the source with knowledge about the company's activities here. Huang's attorneys say their client did nothing improper.
Huang attended several of the White House meetings with Riady that June, including the June 23 White House session that Riady sandwiched in between breakfast and lunch with Hubbell. Two days before that, Riady met with President Clinton, administration officials said. That was just one of 25 visits Riady has made to the White House since Clinton was elected, records show.
Clinton spokesman Lanny Davis said he did not know who Riady saw at the White House each time he visited, but on June 23 he was in the company of Huang and Mark Grobmyer, a Little Rock, Ark., lawyer who has tried to put together several international trade deals, including some with Lippo. Davis could not confirm the reason for the White House visits by Riady and Grobmyer, but he said they appeared to be connected to a briefing on a think tank that studies the presidency.
Investigators in Congress, in the office of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr and on the Justice Department task force created to examine questionable fundraising practices in the 1996 election campaigns are trying to learn more about the payment to Hubbell from Lippo. The Justice Department task force is focusing specifically on whether China tried to influence U.S. elections through Lippo and other companies.
Prosecutors are using grand juries here and in Little Rock to examine the Lippo payment to Hubbell. They are also scrutinizing about a dozen other payments he received after leaving the Justice Department. The payments, which exceeded $500,000, dwarfed Hubbell's $123,000 Justice Department salary. They also were made at a time when he was under intense pressure to provide information about Clinton and his wife to Starr's investigators.
Hubbell was forced to step down from his job as associate attorney general in April 1994 after his former colleagues at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm, where he was a partner with Hillary Rodham Clinton, accused him of stealing from his clients and the firm. In December 1994, Hubbell agreed to plead guilty to mail and tax fraud and pledged to cooperate in the Whitewater inquiry, cooperation prosecutors felt he never provided. Last month, Hubbell completed an 18-month jail term.