CIA Agent Says He Gave Huang Classified Data

WASHINGTON — Testifying from behind a screen to shield his appearance, a CIA agent told Senate investigators Wednesday that he shared classified information with former Commerce Department official John Huang without knowing that a higher-up considered Huang “totally unqualified” to handle sensitive foreign trade issues.

CIA official John Dickerson told the Senate committee probing campaign fund-raising abuses that he briefed Huang 37 times on secret matters concerning Asia because he considered him to be a key specialist on that region at the agency. He said Huang--now a central figure in the scandal over improper foreign money and influence in the 1996 U.S. elections--was particularly interested in China and Taiwan.

But Jeffrey E. Garten, one of Huang’s superiors at Commerce, testified earlier that Huang was “totally unqualified” to handle Asia policy and had been specifically delegated to administrative tasks--and “walled off” from China--because of his limited background on foreign policy matters.

The testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee was aimed at probing whether Huang, who as a Democratic fund-raiser after leaving his Commerce post brought in huge contributions from overseas interests, passed classified information to his former Indonesian employer while he had access to U.S. government secrets.

In the end, the witnesses merely heightened the mystery--leaving no clear answers as to whether Huang, currently a Glendale resident well known in California’s Asian American community, was a secret spy or a run-of-the-mill bureaucrat.

Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) said midway through the day’s testimony that he saw nothing to indicate that Huang had acted improperly. That annoyed the committee’s chairman, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who urged Glenn to withhold conclusions until the hearings are completed.

Before Huang went to Commerce, he had been the chief U.S. contact for Lippo Group, a multibillion-dollar Indonesian conglomerate with substantial investments in China and longtime political and financial ties to President Clinton. These various connections have intrigued Senate investigators.

After he became a political appointee at Commerce, Huang continued to stay in touch with his Lippo bosses through hundreds of telephone calls, investigators said. Also, officials said Huang visited the Chinese Embassy in Washington half a dozen times.

“Does that surprise you?” Thompson asked Garten, who had said Huang did not handle policy issues concerning China.

“Yes, it does,” Garten responded.

Garten, the former undersecretary for international trade at Commerce, added: “I was never consulted about who should receive what kinds of briefings, but in retrospect [Huang] certainly didn’t need [classified] information for any of his administrative responsibilities.”

Garten’s concerns about Huang’s qualifications apparently were not shared by Huang’s direct boss, Charles Meissner, who died in the April 1996 plane crash near Dubrovnik, Croatia, that also killed Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and more than 30 others.

A job evaluation of Huang prepared by Meissner said he had done an “excellent job” at the agency. But Garten, who is now dean of the Yale School of Management, said he suspected Meissner “felt sorry for Mr. Huang” because of his limited responsibilities when he wrote the glowing review.

Garten said he specifically altered Huang’s job title so it did not mention any responsibilities in Asia. In a memo to Meissner, Garten said Huang was not “up to handling Asia in any way, shape or form at this time.” However, Meissner had sought a beefed-up role for Huang, and Garten eventually agreed to permit Huang to assist with Taiwan matters as long as he was closely supervised.

Democratic members of the committee raised the notion that Huang had been caught in a turf battle within Commerce.

Dickerson, a CIA agent dispatched to Commerce, testified that it was Meissner who told him to brief Huang on Asia matters because “he considered John Huang his Asia specialist.” Dickerson said he knew nothing about Garten’s concerns when he briefed Huang and passed him 12 completed intelligence reports during Huang’s 14 months at the department.

“I’m assuming he used the information properly and kept it locked up in his safe,” Dickerson said. “I had no suspicion whatsoever that what I was showing him was inappropriate.”

Although Dickerson is not an undercover officer, he requested to be blocked from the television cameras because of past undercover assignments in which he had used aliases.

The makeshift screen used to shield him came from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where it has been used over the past two decades to protect mobsters, whistle-blowers and other informants.

After Dickerson completed his public testimony, the committee convened in closed session to hear more detail from him on what he told Huang.

During the public hearing, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) questioned Dickerson about the kinds of information he hypothetically might have passed along to Huang. That included business opportunities in Vietnam, investment issues in China, updates on the North Korean food shortage and background on the nuclear power industry in Asia.

Emerging from the closed session, senators reacted differently to what they had heard from Dickerson.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Huang “clearly had very widespread access to classified briefings that involved China, including having access to between 370 and 550 classified reports. That’s pretty mind-boggling to me.”

But Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said that while Huang did see sensitive intelligence material, there is “no reason to believe he was doing anything improper with it.”

Other testimony earlier in the day showed that Huang received his top-secret security clearance without a full overseas background investigation that would have looked into his contact with foreign nationals. Paul A. Buskirk, Commerce’s acting security director, said he regretted that was never done. “In hindsight, there was a rock that was not turned over,” he said.

After continuing their look at Huang today, the hearings will shift gears next week to focus on whether the Republican Party, along with the Democrats, received contributions from overseas during the last presidential campaign. The key witness is former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, who founded a GOP-related organization called the National Policy Forum that took in foreign cash.