Nothing Sinister in Calls to Huang, Activist Says

WASHINGTON —  In California, she’s a respected political insider--known to almost every Democratic politician, but not to voters.

In Washington, she suddenly has become the focus of widespread attention during the first two weeks of the Senate inquiry into campaign fund-raising abuses.

Her name has surfaced with surprising frequency in the evidence so far presented, and members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee are seeking to determine whether she might hold the key to John Huang’s relationship with the Jakarta-based Lippo conglomerate and his activities as a Democratic fund-raiser.

Now, Maeley Tom has demanded, through a letter to the committee, to step out from the shadows and offer her own account of her ties to Huang, a story that supporters of the 55-year-old Sacramento consultant say reflects a legitimate working relationship, nothing sinister.

In the letter, her attorney said Tom wants to dispel misimpressions created by the hearings, maintaining “it was Ms. Tom’s friendship with Mr. Huang, and their shared commitment to the Asian American community, that dictated their contact.”

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Huang is central to the panel’s inquiry. A former Lippo employee, Huang joined the Commerce Department in 1994 and later became a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee. He brought in $3.4 million for the DNC, $1.6 million of it in suspect foreign-linked donations the DNC has returned.

During the hearings, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly cited two letters written by Tom, who served as a consultant to a Lippo company, as evidence of her close ties to Huang. In the Republicans’ view, her letters, released by the Senate committee, provide a road map to Huang’s activities and his relationship to Mochtar and James T. Riady, who control the huge Lippo conglomerate.

In one 1994 letter, Tom, a member of the DNC’s executive committee, told the DNC chairman that Indonesian financier James Riady wanted to arrange meetings between “business leaders from East Asia” and Clinton administration officials “as a vehicle to raise [campaign] dollars from a fresh source.”

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In a second letter, written to the White House in early 1993, Tom urged Huang’s hiring, saying it was the “top priority for placement” by Lippo. In the correspondence, released this week by the panel, Tom described Huang as “the political power that advises the Riady family on issues and where to make contributions.”

As the committee wound up its second week of hearings on Thursday, a staff counsel added to the intriguing remarks, testifying that Tom had 61 contacts with Huang when he was at the Commerce Department. The contacts were spelled out to buttress Republican arguments that Huang maintained his ties to Lippo even after he joined the government.

But Tom’s attorney, Nancy Luque, wrote Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee, to complain about the panel’s portrayal of Tom as a “Lippo-related individual,” saying it was “inaccurate and misleading.”

Luque said Huang and Tom “have been good friends and fellow Asian political activists for almost a decade, and “it is completely unremarkable that she would have called him 60 times in a year and a half.”

“Any suggestion that she was talking to John Huang about fund-raising, classified information or Lippo business is erroneous,” Luque said in an interview Friday.

As a further step in investigating Tom’s possible role in the scandal, the committee plans to depose her in August. Thompson said he believes Tom’s contacts with Haung are relevant.

“I would suggest that if Ms. Tom either denies these calls or says that they all had to do with totally social matters, the fact is that the records indicate there were 61 calls made.”

Being in the middle of a political tug-of-war at a highly publicized Senate hearing is a major switch for Tom, who is unaccustomed to the limelight.

In the early 1990s, Tom, described by friends as tireless and tough-minded, emerged as one of the most powerful Asian American political figures in California.

With no Asian Americans serving in the state Legislature, Tom played a pivotal role as an unofficial ambassador to California’s growing Asian American constituencies.

As a gregarious political operative, the San Francisco native cobbled together a vast network of insiders who could be tapped for campaign funds or mobilized to press for changes in immigration laws or other policy matters.

“There isn’t much in Asian American politics in California where her name wouldn’t pop up, where people wouldn’t seek her out,” said former state Senate leader David A. Roberti, who hired Tom to run an office of Asian Pacific affairs and later to serve as his chief of staff. She is one of the first women or Asian Americans to reach a top administrative post in the state Assembly. “She’s a walking Rolodex to who’s who in the Asian community,” Roberti said.

Tom has repeatedly turned down requests for an interview.

The roots of the Tom-Huang relationship remain unclear. But friends say Tom may have met Huang around 1990, when Asian Americans united to oppose federal efforts to limit immigration.

As Roberti’s point person on Asian American issues, Tom sought out qualified Asian Americans to serve in state government. By the early 1990s, Tom was backing Huang, a naturalized citizen, for reappointment to a slot on the California State World Trade Commission.

After she left Roberti’s office in 1994, Tom was hired as a senior vice president and director of the West Coast office of Cassidy & Associates, a prestigious Washington lobbying and public affairs firm that represents, among others, Taiwanese interests. She remains with the firm.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this story.