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.