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To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (56602)	7/25/2000 11:23:56 AM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 116845

Clinton Can’t Recall $1 Million Riady Offer NewsMax.com Tuesday, July 25, 2000 President Clinton told federal investigators that he doesn’t remember riding in a limousine with James Riady when the Indonesian billionaire allegedly offered to raise $1 million for his campaign. A transcript conveniently released by the White House while the media was almost exclusively focused on the Bush VP pick story, showed that Clinton told the Justice Department's campaign finance task force in sworn testimony, he had no "specific recollection" of any conversation he had with Mr. Riady during the August 1992 ride — saying only that Mr. Riady "sometime in '92 after I became the nominee" had offered to help his campaign. In the 155-page transcript of an April 21 four-hour interview by task force investigators Clinton is quoted as telling investigators that "I don't know whether he ever gave that much money. If he said a million, I'm surprised I don't remember it." ``I don't have a specific recollection of what the conversation was, or this fact of the car ride,'' Clinton said, admitting only that he remembered seeing Riady ``sometime in '92 after I became the nominee,'' and that Riady promised to help his campaign. Clinton told investigators that while he did not remember the $1 million offer, such contributions during presidential elections are commonplace. "Sometimes people give that much money. I know in an election or two ago that one of the Republicans got that much money from one source," Mr. Clinton told investigators. "So, it happens from time to time and it's not unlawful. But I, I just don't remember." The task force is currently investigating the fund-raising activities of Mr. Riady, a friend and supporter of the president for more than 20 years as well as alleged campaign finance abuses by the 1996 Clinton-Gore Re-election Committee and the Democratic Party. Clinton’s testimony was widely at odds with the testimony of former Democratic National Committee fund-raiser John Huang when he was interviewed by the task force last year. Huang, who also worked as a top official at the Commerce Department and at the Lippo Group, a multibillion-dollar banking conglomerate owned by Mr. Riady, said he specifically discussed the $1 million offer with Clinton and insisted that the president never did anything to discourage Mr. Riady from honoring his promise of the million dollar contribution. Huang recalled that after the limousine ride, he met with Riady to arrange for thousands of dollars in donations that ultimately were funneled through Lippo employees. He testified that Riady told him the president was surprised by the $1 million offer, but did not elaborate. "Huang assumed that these people would be 'made good' or 'taken care of' for their contributions because Huang himself had been 'taken care of' for his contributions" to the Democratic Party, according to a transcript of a Jan. 19, 1999, interview of Huang by FBI agents in Los Angeles. The newly-released transcript also has Clinton denying that he took Riady into the White House Situation Room in 1993, on the day that federal agents raided the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Investigators said that Riady told such anecdotes to give Indonesian government officials the impression that his family "had a direct pipeline to the Oval Office." "I don't think I've ever taken anybody to the Situation Room. I think that's highly unlikely," he said, although he couldn’t remember anything that happened that day. "I did my best to go through the day to do my job, do what I was supposed to do." He defended the dozens of White House coffees he attended by top fund-raisers, describing them as innocent activities. "And I still do some of them, but mostly in the late afternoon, unrelated to the DNC," Mr. Clinton said. "I liked them and they were easy on me." Clinton also said he never told Riady he was concerned about payments to former Associate Attorney General Webster L. Hubbell because Mr. Hubbell was a would-be witness in a pending investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. Such a conversation "would have made Mr. Starr happy," he said. ``Webb Hubbell was persistently persecuted by the independent counsel because he would not lie about me or Hillary,'' Clinton said. ``I never worried about what Webb Hubbell would say. If he wanted to say something bad about me, he'd have to make it up.'' newsmax.com