Lieberman in Eye of Inquiry’s Storm

WASHINGTON —  Unlike some of his Democratic colleagues on the Senate panel probing campaign finance abuses, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut does not squirm when talking about embattled former fund-raiser John Huang. He does not hem and haw, clear his throat or say the man who raised tainted contributions for the Democratic National Committee may have engaged in wrongdoing.

“Scandalous” is Lieberman’s blunt description of Huang’s activities during the 1996 campaign. And such bluntness has not gone unnoticed.

After two weeks of testimony, the most talked-about figure on Capitol Hill in the congressional hearings is not Huang or any of the DNC brass, but the scholarly ex-attorney general who has put his party affiliation to the side.

By pursuing an independent line of inquiry and eschewing the partisan role-playing of other panel members, Lieberman, 55, is making news, affecting the course of the investigation and raising the anxiety level of other Democrats.

“Joe scares us,” is what one White House official told a member of the senator’s staff.

Lieberman’s stance contrasts with the combative approach of Sen. John Glenn of Ohio, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Glenn, while insisting he is not sticking up for Huang, has used his questions to attempt to poke holes in the evidence presented by the other side.

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The committee is focusing on Huang because the DNC has returned nearly half of the $3.4 million he collected for the party over questions about the money’s origins. Much of the inquiry centers on whether the funds illegally came from foreign sources and whether Huang served as an agent for those interests. Thus, testimony on Thursday detailed Huang’s extensive contacts with his former Indonesian employer, the Lippo Group, while he worked at the Commerce Department.

Republicans pounced on the testimony, terming the contacts suspicious. Glenn declared the investigation was “out to get Mr. Huang.” Lieberman steered clear of conclusions, saying Huang’s Lippo contacts “are a concern to me” but cautioning, “There’s a lot we don’t know.”

Lieberman’s questioning is not the only sign of his independent streak. Earlier in the investigation, when partisan tensions were at their height, Lieberman was the lone Democrat to vote to give immunity in exchange for testimony to two minor figures.

And this week, when disagreement broke out over whether the committee chairman, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), had exaggerated when he said there was a secret Chinese plan to influence U.S. elections, Lieberman stepped in as referee.

Glenn had accused Thompson of hyping the Chinese plot to gain partisan advantage. Lieberman, in turn, arranged a special intelligence briefing on the matter. He then issued a statement saying the evidence showed there was a Chinese plan but that it had focused on congressional, not presidential, campaigns and may not have been carried out.

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Glenn and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) met with Lieberman in an attempt to keep him in the fold. But Lieberman still went public with his assessment that the two parties were not as far apart as it might have appeared.

“I don’t think we have anything to be defensive about as a party,” said Lieberman, explaining his philosophy while at the kitchen table of his Georgetown home. “I think we should do a stand-up, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may investigation. I want to know what happened. We know enough to know that some of what John Huang did is wrong.”

Interestingly, Lieberman is playing a role similar to the one his predecessor, former Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., did during a Senate probe of the Watergate scandal. Weicker, whom Lieberman defeated by a razor-thin margin in 1988, acted as an independent-minded Republican in the inquiry of a GOP White House.

What makes Lieberman’s approach all the more delicate is his friendship with both Vice President Al Gore, who attended a Buddhist temple fund-raiser in Hacienda Heights that will be examined later, and his Connecticut colleague, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, who was the DNC’s general chairman during the last campaign.

Lieberman says he will continue to ask tough questions, even if they involve sorting through Gore’s role in the Buddhist temple episode. And he says that Dodd ought to be called as a witness if investigators believe he can shed light on the affair.

All this is not to suggest that Lieberman, chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, has forgotten his party affiliation. He says his true goal for the hearings is to lay the groundwork for a complete overhaul of the campaign finance system, which he calls the most scandalous thing of all.

And when the hearings shift next week to an examination of GOP wrongdoing, Lieberman said he will be disappointed if the curiosity GOP senators have displayed so far suddenly dries up.

“I hope that my Republican colleagues are as vigorous and focused in their questioning of Republican wrongdoing as they were” as they looked for Democratic misdeeds, Lieberman said. “None of us should be defense attorneys in all this.”

Times staff writers Mark Gladstone, Glenn Bunting and Alan C. Miller contributed to this story.