Gore shown on videotape at fund-raiser's trial

Tuesday, February 15th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Al Gore became the featured player via videotape at a criminal trial Tuesday as Democratic Party fund-raising figure John Huang testified of walking into a Buddhist temple and being handed an envelope containing $100,000 in
campaign donations, many of them illegal.

On the videotape shown to a jury in the federal court trial of Democratic fund-raiser Maria Hsia, Gore enters the California temple at the 1996 event and the vice president is seen, though not heard, speaking to a crowd, with a commentator describing the vice
president's remarks in Chinese.

Hsia translated Gore's remarks for the largely
non-English-speaking crowd, according to earlier testimony in the case against Hsia, who prosecutors say engaged in a scheme to
illicitly reimburse contributors to Clinton-Gore '96 and the Democratic Party. Hsia is accused of five felony counts of causing false statements to be filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The videotape of the vice president is the latest reminder of a controversy that has followed Gore since the campaign fund-raising
scandal erupted in 1996. Some of the donors at the temple fund-raiser were illegally reimbursed for their contributions out of temple funds and when questions first arose about it, Gore said he thought he was attending a community outreach event, not a
fund-raiser.

The Gore videotape was played for the jury by Hsia lawyer Nancy Luque to make the point that there was no actual fund raising during the vice president's appearance.

Testifying against Hsia, Huang described how he, Hsia and the head of the Buddhist sect from Taiwan visited the vice president at the White House in the spring of 1996, laying the groundwork for what became the temple fund-raiser.

"The vice president gave the master his (Gore's) book" as a gift and "the master invited the vice president to visit the temple. The vice president said he'd love to go and that he'd
like to bring one of his daughters," Huang testified.

Huang said the temple fund-raiser had been planned as a community outreach event, the same term Gore initially used to describe it. But Huang said the temple event turned into a
fund-raiser when two planned stops by Gore were combined into one because of constraints on the vice president's time.

Huang said he began realizing with some concern that the temple fund-raiser was in danger of producing only meager rewards, $30,000 to $40,000, far less of the $200,000 to $250,000 that usually flowed into Democratic coffers whenever Gore showed up at an event.

Huang said "I mentioned" to Hsia the day after the fund-raiser that "I hoped I could bring back $100,000," and Hsia subsequently told him to meet her at the temple at 10 at night before Huang took the plane back to Washington.

Huang said that when he showed up in a temple reception room shortly before flying out of Los Angeles, Hsia "handed me an
envelope; she mentioned 'this is $100,000,"' Huang testified. "I just took it with me and went with my wife to the airport."

Lawyers for Hsia, an immigration consultant, have described her as a community activist trying to help newcomers to the United States, while Justice Department prosecutors have depicted her as combining her business interests with political fund raising.

Under questioning by prosecutor Eric Yaffe, Huang testified that Hsia recommended that she be seated next to Immigration and
Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner at a Democratic Party fund-raiser at the Hay Adams Hotel attended by President
Clinton on Feb. 19, 1996.

Prosecutors introduced a photograph of Hsia standing next to Meissner at the event.