URGENT
Sun Sep 10 2000 14:11:31 ET
Filed By Matt Drudge
MAG: MARIA HSIA TALKS ABOUT AL GORE AND THE BUDDHIST TEMPLE
Buddhist temple scandal star Maria Hsia gives her first public
interview since her federal felony conviction!
MORE
The NEW YORKER is set to report that Hsia feels she was convicted
after refusing to testify under pressure from the Justice
Department that Vice-President Al Gore knew the temple event was
a fund-raiser and was perhaps illegal.
Hsia has also been the subject of a criminal tax investigation,
which ended in a mistrial last year.
Hsia makes it clear in her conversation with NEW YORKER's Jeff
Toobin that she does not think Gore did anything wrong.
Gore "shouldn�t feel embarrassed or ashamed of relating to the
temple," Hsia says. "He should feel very proud of himself. He has
a vision of associating all the countries. I�m not surprised he
chose a Jewish Vice-President. He should say, Look, this is no
different from people visiting the black churches or any churches
or a Jewish temple. There�s nothing wrong. He didn�t do anything
wrong. All politicians are cowards. But they could be better
cowards." Hsia came to the United States from Taiwan in the
mid-nineteen-seventies. "We settled in West L.A., where the
Jewish people are," Hsia says. "You know, I�m very Jewish. Jewish
people have a pride in their ancestry and their own people, even
though they are American citizens. It�s what I�ve tried to do
with the Chinese." After her arrival, she began to work as an
immigration consultant. By 1982, she was earning over six hundred
thousand dollars a year. She became active in local
Asian-American politics. In 1989, she helped arrange a trip for
American politicians and Asian-American activists to visit Taiwan
and it was on this trip that she became acquainted with Al Gore,
then a senator. The trip was sponsored in part by Master Hsing
Yun, the founder of the Fo Kuang Shan order of Buddhism.
"I was raised a Catholic, so that visit was really my first
contact with Buddhism," Hsia tells Toobin. But misunderstanding
about the nature of Hsing Yun�s Buddhism "has led to a great deal
of confusion about the saga of Maria Hsia and Al Gore," Toobin
writes. The revival of Buddhism among the Taiwanese, Toobin
reports, is not the kind of Tibetan Buddhism most Americans
associate with the idea and which has drawn the attention of
Richard Gere and the counterculture. Donald Lopez, a professor of
Buddhist studies at the University of Michigan, says, "It�s very
much anti-Communist in spirit, and these Taiwanese Buddhist
temples have become very wealthy. They own land, run businesses,
and encourage their members to be successful out in the world."
Gore visited Master Hsing Yun�s temple on his trip to Taiwan,
where Hsing Yun told him that he had just built the largest
Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere and invited him to come
visit.
In 1996, Hsia was advising the Hsi Lai temple about its unhappy
relationship with its neighbors in wealthy Hacienda Heights,
Toobin reports. Meanwhile John Huang, a Democratic National
Committee staffer who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to
contravene campaign finance laws, helped arrange for Hsing Yun
and Gore to meet at the White House, where, as Huang testified at
Hsia�s trial, Hsing Yun reiterated his invitation to Gore. Huang
asked for Hsia�s help. Hsia tells Toobin, "John was planning an
Asian Democratic National Committee event at Harbor Village"�a
restaurant near the temple that was used for many political
fund-raisers�"and he wanted to do an Asian rally, too. John is
very ambitious. He said the President or the V.P. always goes to
black or Jewish events, but never Asian. He thinks the temple is
an obvious place to do it, because you don�t have anywhere else
with enough space. To me, I don�t care one way or the other,
because I was out of politics at that point." But the
Vice-President, having agreed to come to both events, could not
fit both into his schedule and ticket sales to the fund-raiser
had been modest. The guests who would have been at the restaurant
fund-raiser were invited instead to the rally at the temple.
Toobin reports that the event itself took the shape of the
original rally that was planned, but that it still raised legal
questions about the campaign finance law. Hsia claims she was
aware of the possible complications. "I asked John, �Do you have
to get permission from the D.N.C. to do this, because I know this
is a religious facility?�" Hsia tells Toobin.
"He said the legal people had told him that since all the
politicians do events in the basements of black churches they
don�t see any problem with the temple. So the two events were
combined."
"Whatever the precise nature of the temple event," Toobin writes,
"there definitely was fund-raising going on around it." The day
after the event at the temple, Hsia says, Huang asked her to call
the temple to see if there were any checks to be collected. She
met him at the temple the next day where a temple official gave
an envelope to Hsia, who gave it to Huang. There were a hundred
thousand dollars� worth of checks, mostly from monks and nuns at
the temple, who were reimbursed by the temple for their
contributions. Hsia claims that she didn�t know what was inside
the envelope and that if there were checks, she didn�t know who
wrote them. She also says that she did not know that the temple
had reimbursed its monks and nuns, not only after the Gore event
but at two other Democratic fund-raisers she was involved with in
1996. Eventually, Hsia was charged with making false statements
to the government because the money, which came from the temple,
was reported as the individual contributions of the monks and
nuns who signed the checks. Hsia is expected to face sentencing
this fall, but she "projected an equanimity that she may have
lacked during her days as a go-getter," Toobin writes. Hsia says,
"I believe in cause and effect. I didn�t do anything wrong. I�m
at peace. If I did something not straight, I would go crazy. If I
did something bad, it would drive me crazy. It�s very Buddhism.
My heart is free."
The September 18, 2000, issue of the NEW YORKER goes on sale at
newsstands on Monday, September 11th
END
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