To understand why John Huang could move so freely through the White House, it helps to know that he came highly recommended to his Commerce Department job. In 1994, the White House sent Huang's name to then Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown as a "must hire" because he had "deep Arkansas connections and was well known to the President."
Even before he joined Commerce, Huang enjoyed special treatment from his friends in the West Wing. One favor came in the form of a top-secret security clearance that Huang was awarded while still a private citizen. TIME has obtained an official memo waiving the need for Huang to undergo a full background check before receiving the clearance. "Huang is granted this waiver," says the one-page document signed by the personnel-security chief of the Commerce Department, "due to the critical need for his expertise in the new Administration [by] Secretary Brown."
There was little doubt last week that in his own way, Huang had played a "critical" role in the Clinton Administration. Secret Service logs leaked last week showed that besides raising more than $4 million for the Democratic Party from Asian Americans this year, he was a frequent visitor to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What the records didn't explain is just what Huang was doing during all those visits. Could he have been seeking political favors for big contributors, particularly those with ties to Indonesia, the home of the multibillion-dollar Lippo Group financial conglomerate that was once Huang's employer? Was Huang a rogue fund raiser? Or was he acting at the behest of the White House--perhaps even the President--to bring cash into the Democratic National Committee's coffers?
Questions like these, some of them raised by G.O.P. legislators, prompted Attorney General Janet Reno to order the Justice Department to weigh the possibility of recommending that an independent counsel be appointed to investigate the matter.
Huang is only part of a suddenly visible network of agents who have acted as conduits between a cash-obsessed campaign on one side and deep-pocketed business and foreign interests on the other. The Justice Department is investigating James Wood, an Arkansas lawyer who became the first political appointee to head the American Institute on Taiwan, the unofficial U.S. embassy there. Natale Bellochi, Wood's predecessor as ait chairman, and Taiwan businessmen had reportedly informed the State Department that the Arkansan was improperly using his post to seek campaign donations for Clinton. Wood denies the charge.