My Hearings, Right or Huang

...In the funhouse world of Clinton scandals, this is taken to be exculpatory...

...he made apparently unauthorized visits to the Chinese Embassy...

...They don't want to be here any more than I do, and their solution is to make everyone else as miserable as they are...

...But Lieberman, selfconsciously moderate, calm, and nonpartisan, wants to emerge as the Conscience of the Hearings, the Still Center of the Partisan Turmoil, the Diogenes who goes off in search of an honest man and finds him in the mirror...

...he was hired at Commerce at the suggestion of a Lippo consultant...

...There's this impatience of reviewing the hearings as if it's the latest Star Wars movie, and are people waiting in line, and so forth," Bob Woodward announced on CNN's Inside Politics this afternoon...

...And Sen...

...Outside the hearing room, the ever-reliable Lanny Davis, the White House special counsel, was handing out copies of an editorial from Roll Call, a Capitol Hill paper...

...A story that refuses to die...

...Huang was passing secret information to China...

...Thompson," Lieberman said...

...Might I respectfully suggest to the chairman that this is not the sort of statement that makes a reporter want to leap from his bed each morning and race to the hearing room...

...There is no grand conspiracy theory we're pushing," the counsel repeated...

...That's why we told him all those secrets...

...This is how far we've come: The Clintonites are now passing around clips damaging to their own case to convince reporters that they have nothing to write about, because all the bad stuff is old news...

...he had unusual access to the White House and the president...

...Well, not all of us...

...he used a private office across the street from Commerce, where he quietly received faxes, Federal Express packages, and phone calls...

...When is Senator Thompson going to look at Congress...

...Political operatives often assume reporters are stupid—sometimes a safe enough assumption—but if reporters think you think they're stupid, they will never forgive you...

...Imagine something that could insult the intelligence of Diane Sawyer...

...With luck this will eliminate much of the mind-numbing repetition we sat through last week...

...The Republicans can't long maintain that they're not building a circumstantial case against John Huang, even as they quite publicly build a circumstantial case against John Huang...

...They testified, somewhat undramatically, that Huang received classified information on China, though (unknown to them) he had no responsibilities in that area of policy...

...At a break this morning he went out to face the cameras and announced that intelligence information does indeed show a Chinese plan to funnel money in the '96 elections—as Thompson had said last week, and as Democrats have been reluctant to admit...

...At least 53 articles discuss the ties between John Huang and the White House," said the printout...

...The other Democratic senators are pleased to cast themselves as defense attorneys, intent on controlling the damage and pricking each little balloon of evidence the Republicans manage to inflate...

...he specifically requested intelligence briefings on China that he was not supposed to get...

...Then the worker bees walk through hallways strewn like a battlefield with broken and upended furniture to their cubicles, where they work two or three people to a space, in service of a vain blowhard who will have an aneurysm if he doesn't get that breakout on oil-refinery tax expenditures in time for his speech to the National Wholesalers...

...Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on the New Yorkers, since the Angelenos have beaten them in this story at every turn of events—and the L.A...

...He had prepared a series of charts, which were blown up and presented on easels...

...Jeffrey Garten, who was Huang's boss at Commerce, testified today that Huang was "walled off" from Chinese matters because "he was totally ineffective...

...This is an eight-week effort to look at the process...

...It doesn't matter, though, for today word has come down: Under no circumstances am I to get bored...

...Reporters have pegged Lieberman as the man to watch...

...The Democrats continued their damage control...

...I wanted to make this statement in fairness to Sen...

...It had slipped our notice that Congressional [hearings are] now mainly supposed to serve as bread and circuses for the local sophisticates," said the Journal's editors...

...But if they're having a hard time staying awake, maybe they should give the summer interns a chance to find the relevance...

...Fairness...

...Testifying behind a screen to shield his appearance," the Los Angeles Times wrote, "a CIA agent told Senate investigators Wednesday that he shared classified information with former Commerce Department official John Huang, not knowing that a higher-up considered Huang 'totally unqualified' to handle sensitive foreign trade issues....In the end, the witnesses merely heightened the mystery...

...The best innovation is that, at the close of the hearing, a committee functionary rushes out with a single-page summary of what just happened...

...The sinister implication was unmistakable, but under intense examination by the Democrats, young Cobb denied that there was any implication at all...

...What about those fund-raising scandals...

...You bet...

...No one should be surprised, then, that the press is confused...

...Two of the three network newscasts haven't even mentioned the hearings for two days...

...The tables are littered with sticky Coke cans and cellophane wrappers and crusts of bread...

...What were the bureaucrats supposed to say...

...I think the major reason," Garten said in his deposition, "was that Secretary [Ron] Brown was quite adamant that we have ethnic diversity . . . and I think at that time, we had no Asian Americans...

...Levin took this as further proof that Huang wasn't a security risk...

...From the millions of pages of subpoenaed documents and dozens of depositions, the committee's Republicans have carefully selected a set of facts to present in public: John Huang raised illegal funds...

...Times continues to offer, day by day, the best coverage of the hearings...

...The committee released Huang's Commerce Department job appraisal, and it is a masterpiece of language inflation: "Mr...

...But this is ludicrous on its face...

...I'm not referring to the lovely leafy row-house neighborhood that goes by the name, but to the actual physical institution where the nation's business is transacted...

...But nobody dozed today...

...Joe Lieberman—typically, the only Democrat to make the admission...

...Is it your testimony under oath," thundered Levin, "that there was no intention to create a particularly impression with these charts...

...The Republicans had a good day yesterday—their proof of Huang's $50,000 illegal foreign donation from 1992 made all the front pages—and so the Democrats, with the exception of Lieberman, were even surlier than usual...

...As I have told you and told you," said one counsel, "there is no grand theory we're trying to establish...

...Maybe I've just been overchastened, but it seemed to me that the pace of today's hearings quickened considerably over last week's...

...I thought of this after this morning's hearing, where we heard about the more than 60 visits John Huang made to the White House as a low-ranking Commerce official, sometimes to see Clinton in the White House residence...

...My notes from this point on are just doodles...

...Consider two ledes from this morning's papers...

...He attended diversity and all other mandatory training in FY 1995 and required/ensured that all subordinate supervisors attended...

...This is especially helpful to reporters who tend to fall asleep (I noticed several of them last week...

...The room has a towering ceiling and is dimly lit, lending an air of mystery to the proceedings...

...If there's a theory, it's in your minds, not ours...

...Several documents establish that Lippo shell companies made large contributions to the DNC, even though they were nearly bankrupt...

...As we filed out, a DNC operative cheerfully handed us a stack of news clips and a printout from Lexis-Nexis...

...And the charts insulted the intelligence of journalists as a class...

...It indeed seemed exhaustive, even citing articles from "Ethnic NewsWatch, Filipino Express...

...They had bold-faced titles: "Huang's Access to Classified Information While At Commerce," for example, and several that said: "Huang Fundraising at Commerce...

...The tablecloths, which are meant to lend an imperial touch, are wadded up and stained and mysteriously damp...

...No wonder everyone's so cranky...

...The editorial followed a story in Sunday's Washington Times: "Liberal media yawn at revelations in campaign-fund hearings...

...The DNC is proceeding on the central thesis of Clinton-era scandals: If it's been in the paper, it can't be bad...

...The charts were insulting in another way, too...

...Of course, there are times when I can't blame them...

...The way things are going I may not have to bring in my summer intern after all...

...The funds are needed for: DNC Victory—Contribution," Huang wrote...

...Here's a clear trail of foreign money coming into U.S...

...Why was he hired then...

...Huang leads IEP's diversity group...

...The Republicans brought out one of their own to testify, a young committee lawyer named John Cobb...

...This afternoon, the hearings threatened (cliche ahead) to break down amid partisan bickering...

...From now on, Chairman Thompson will open each hearing with Andrew Ferguson is senior editor of The Weekly Standard a recap of the previous hearing—the way the narrator of The Green Hornet used to announce at the beginning of each episode: "Our story thus far . . ." Thompson and his colleagues have also dispensed with round-robin questioning, so each witness suffers only one lead senatorial questioner...

...Half the shelves are empty, and the rest are stocked according to socialist logic: fifteen cases of Mentos, one tube of toothpaste with the top unscrewed...

...This is lonely territory he has staked out...

...But none of the reporters appeared terribly interested...

...We'd seen enough of Congress for the week...

...Carl Levin's climactic question was typically penetrating: "Did you ever see anything that would lead you to believe that Mr...

...The Republicans have made several procedural adjustments, taking into account the obtuseness of heavy-lidded reporters...

...he worked for a foreign conglomerate, Lippo, many of whose operations are half-owned by the Chinese government...

...The most explosive document, dated from 1992, shows John Huang explicitly requesting $50,000 from his bosses in Jakarta...

...Huang managed and directed myriad of issues [sic] which cut across more than one region ensuring the effectiveness and timely execution of the International Economic Policy's programs...

...Do you think I could get a job at the New York Times...

...And of course Huang may not have been...

...Nor am I to count how many civilians are waiting in line to attend the hearings, which I did last week...

...I am assuming he used the information properly,' [the CIA official] said...

...But Levin was understandably incredulous...

...These things," he said, meaning his hearings into campaign fund-raising abuses, "are designed for the most part to be boring...

...As if in testimony to its own refusal to be bored, the Times's lead story that morning—"Huang willing to talk under part immunity"—had already been its lead story five days earlier: "Huang offers Senate testimony under immunity...

...elections," said Sen...

...Instead they said no...

...Sure he nailed her," they seemed to be saying, "and she loved it...

...It's working...

...One, from the Democratic National Committee, demonstrates how a Hong Kong rich guy named Eric Hotung wangled a meeting with the president's national security adviser in exchange for a $100,000 soft-money donation...

...Thursday, July 17 The evolution of scandal in the Clinton era, as a sociological phenomenon, continues to dazzle...

...Then the partisan bickering began in earnest, as the committee decided whether to grant immunity for a series of potential witnesses...

...I don't think most Americans appreciate this...

...Mr...

...The briefing is another of this week's innovations—to fix in everyone's mind the story line the committee is trying to lay out...

...And all of this has been presented after Thompson declared dramatically that a Chinese plan existed to interfere in the American political process...

...But it's worth noting that, in their lede, the New Yorkers deliberately set out not to excite reader interest in the story but to deflect it—a curious news judgment, given the incendiary possibilities...

...With their large graphics of telephones and piles of cash, they looked as though they had been designed by the same fellow who puts smiley-face suns and frowning rainclouds on TV weathermaps...

...The committee unveiled several delightful documents...

...But it began to emerge slowly today what he definitely was: an affirmative-action hire...

...And the snooziness of the New York Times's coverage is reflected by the networks, who slavishly take their cues from the appropriately named Gray Lady...

...any combination for $2.39 a pound...

...We sophisticates may be easily bored, but we're not stupid...

...He raised one above his head like a corner newsboy and called out, "What about Congress...

...When the political worker bees go to the sundry shops to snag a candy bar, they find a store straight out of East Berlin a week before the Wall fell...

...It is customary, according to the Senate's centuries-long tradition of gentility, for a senator to humiliate a staffer only behind closed doors...

...Others itemize the bonus of more than $500,000 that John Huang received from the Lippo Group, his former employers, before he went off to work at the Commerce Department...

...Even more chastening was this morning's editorial in the Wall Street Journal...

...Wednesday, July 16 Sophisticates may complain that the hearings aren't resulting in any revelations, but at lunch today, staring at my runny lump of tuna fish as it wobbled on its whole wheat bread, I had an epiphany of my own: Capitol Hill is a dump...

...Pineapple chunks in sugar sauce, lettuce scraps made of plastic, slimy cucumber slices, piles and piles of beets...

...At last the committee went into executive session to yell at each other in private...

...Deep Throat would feel right at home...

...A pair of bureaucrats who gave Huang intelligence briefings at Commerce were called in to testify dramatically behind a translucent screen...

...Incredibly, however, even on background, the lawyers refuse to acknowledge they have a story line to lay out...

...To wit: A few weeks ago, Clinton defenders gleefully released evidence that Paula Jones had once bragged about her hotel-room encounter with then-Governor Clinton...

...After the hearings, the Republicans held a background briefing for reporters in a hearing room in the Dirksen building...

...Give that man a raise...

...But most Americans haven't been up here for five of the last eight days, as I have, and most Americans haven't been to the salad bar in the Dirksen Office Building cafeteria...

...the White House then pressured the DNC to hire him, after which he continued to raise illegal funds, perhaps Chinese in origin...

...If you get really, really mad at somebody, you call him by his first name...

...And I think people who have been shooting at it ought to be a little more patient...

...Now this from the New York Times: "Screened from public view, an official of the CIA today told the Senate committee examining campaign finance abuses that briefings for John Huang on classified information about Asia had been part of routine procedure at the Commerce Department and had not been sought by Mr...

...The bickering between Arlen Specter and John Glenn grew so heated at one point that Glenn said, "Look, Arlen . . ." This is how the Senate works...