Former White House aide offers testimony on Lippo

Former White House aide offers testimony on Lippo

WASHINGTON (Reuter): Former White House aide Mark Middleton has offered to cooperate with investigators probing the money trail into the United States from Indonesia's Lippo Group, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said the former right- hand aide to then-Chief of Staff Mack McLarty offered to give narrow testimony in the Whitewater inquiry in exchange for immunity from prosecution. But independent counsel Kenneth Starr's office has so far refused to make a deal.

Middleton, an Arkansas native, left government in February 1995 to work as an international consultant in Indonesia and other parts of Asia. He has been accused of trying to cash in on his connections, visiting the White House 65 times after leaving and bringing potential clients to the White House Mess for lunch, among them the daughter of Indonesian President Soeharto.

Sources familiar with the investigation said Middleton had offered to testify about a dinner that he attended with former associate attorney general Webster Hubbell shortly after he left the White House in 1995.

Middleton has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress, but has said he will assert his Fifth Amendment right against self- incrimination.

Hubbell's wife, Suzanna, and Bernard Rapoport, a Democratic consultant who had hired Hubbell as a consultant, also attended the dinner in question.

At the time of the dinner Hubbell had quit his Justice Department job, had pleaded guilty to defrauding the Rose Law Firm and was awaiting sentencing.

McLarty and others close to the Clintons initiated the effort to find work for Hubbell that ultimately led Rapoport and others to hire him.

Starr is investigating payments Hubbell received totaling nearly $500,000 for work he did after leaving government to find out if the work was orchestrated by the Clinton White House in exchange for his silence on Whitewater matters.

One payment for US$100,000 came in June 1994 from Lippo, one of Middleton's connections in Asia, the Post said.

In a recent interview with the newspaper, Middleton's attorney, Robert Luskin, said that during the dinner one of the Hubbells had asked Middleton whether Lippo intended to continue its financial "arrangement" with Hubbell.

Luskin said Middleton replied that Hubbell would have to pose that question himself to Lippo official James Riady.

Sources told the newspaper that Starr's office was not convinced Middleton had told all he knew about payments to Hubbell or campaign fund-raising abuses. Investigators recently questioned McLarty before a grand jury to question him about efforts to find work for Hubbell.