GOP Harangues Clinton Over 'Indonesian Connection'

WASHINGTON (All Politics) -- Republicans stepped up attacks on President Clinton Sunday, suggesting a new scandal was developing to "make Watergate look like a tea party," as Dole campaign manager Scott Reed put it.

Reed and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, used Sunday talk show appearances to raise questions about contributions to the Democratic National Committee from members of a family from Indonesia. Notably, Republican candidate Bob Dole did not personally do the mud-slinging here.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars from this Indonesian family have gone to this president's White House and to the Democratic Party," Reed said on "Fox News Sunday."

"A gardener, who lives in northern Virginia, gave them $425,000. Why would they do that?"

The "gardener" was Arief Wiriadinata who, CNN reported Friday, is the independently wealthy son-in-law of an Indonesian businessman. He holds a degree in landscape architecture. Wiriadinata lived in Virginia at the time of the donation, but has since moved back to Jakarta.

CNN found no indication the contribution to the Democratic Party was illegal.

Reed suggested the "Indonesian connection" would bring Clinton down. Gingrich, too, referred to Wiriadinata as a "gardener."

"But you now have a $425,000 contribution from an Indonesian gardener who has left the country and can't be questioned," Gingrich said on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

"I think it's unavoidable that there will be congressional investigations," Gingrich said.

Vice President Al Gore defended the relationship between Clinton and the Indonesians.

"We have abided by every single law, every single regulation. There have been no violations. There have been no charges to the contrary, unlike in the case with the Dole campaign," Gore said.

Clinton campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart, in an apparent reference to Gingrich's own troubles with a House ethics investigation, retorted, "We must be late in the game when Newt Gingrich can stand up as a paragon of ethical standards."

"We've got about three weeks left in this campaign," Lockhart continued. "That's one more day where they don't want to talk about the issues, they don't want to talk about their plans for moving into the 21st century -- and there's very little time left."

Indonesian influence

Wiriadinata's father-in-law, who died last year, was a business partner of Mochtar Riady, the Indonesian billionaire at the center of the allegations. Riady founded and still heads the Lippo Group, a $5-billion Jakarta-based conglomerate with interests in banking, real estate, securities and electronics.

In the 1970's, Mochtar Riady's son, James Riady, worked in Little Rock, Arkansas, at a time when Lippo owned a piece of Worthen Bank there. Clinton became acquainted with James Riady at that time.

Reed and Gingrich pointed to the activities of John Huang, a former Riady employee who now works for the Democratic National Committee, raising money from Asian-Americans. He reportedly has raised $4 million in contributions for the Democrats thus far.

"How many green card holders have been solicited by the Clinton administration and are funneling Asian money from China, from Korea, from Indonesia into the Democratic party to try to buy an election?" Gingrich said.

Both Republicans also brought up a $250,000 donation returned to a Korean company by the DNC after it turned out to be illegal because the company had no U.S. income. Gingrich suggested a possible Whitewater connection.

"You have evidence that this Indonesian billionaire, Mr. Riady, gave $250,000 to Web Hubbell, the deputy attorney general of the United States after he resigned, before he was convicted of a felony," Gingrich said.

Hubbell testified last February at a Senate Whitewater hearing that he did work for an affiliate of the Lippo Group. GOP investigators suggested Hubbell's pay was money to keep him quiet about Whitewater, which Hubbell denied.

"What you have is Indonesian money paying off the Whitewater defendants and paying the Whitewater lawyers," Gingrich said. "You have a scandal that truly would be, I think, unparalleled in American history."

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