WASHINGTON-Greg Simon, telecom lobbyist and former domestic policy adviser to Vice President Gore, last week denied any wrongdoing regarding his 1996 meeting-undertaken at the request of then-White House aide Alexis Herman-with Mobile Communications Holdings Inc. officials who wanted administration help in obtaining a global satellite license.
The Federal Communications Commission in 1995 declined to grant MCHI’s application on financial grounds. But two years later, the firm received a license after the agency waived its financial qualifications.
The Justice Department is probing whether Herman, who became Labor Secretary last year after a rocky Senate confirmation, profited financially from helping MCHI eventually win a big low-earth-orbit satellite license in 1997.
Attorney General Janet Reno is expected to decide next month whether to continue the probe. If she decides to go forward, a special prosecutor could be appointed.
Federal investigators, among other things, are looking into a claim by 42-year-old African businessman Yene Laurent-who had a falling out with Herman’s friend and business associate Vanessa Weaver-that he gave Herman a cash-filled envelope as payment for helping MCHI get a license.
According to Laurent, Herman was part of a scheme in which she would receive 10 percent of fees from the consulting business that Herman sold to Weaver before joining the White House in 1993.
Herman and Weaver, through her attorney, deny all charges of improper conduct. Yene’s credibility has been brought into question by Weaver’s legal team.
Meanwhile, the public specter of yet another federal investigation of a Clinton administration cabinet member, combined with last week’s startling allegations of extramarital sex and obstruction of justice against the president himself, has cast a pall over the nation’s capital.
Simon said Herman, then head of the White House’s office of public liaison, asked him two years ago to meet with MCHI officials.
A meeting was arranged in spring 1996 between Simon, an MCHI lawyer and two or three other MCHI officials, according to Simon. “I have an open door, so people can talk about all sorts of things. That was part of my agenda,” said Simon.
Joe Tedino, an MCHI spokesman, said he has never heard of Simon nor the Singapore businessman, Abdul Rahman, who met Herman in an effort to get help on the MCHI satellite application.
Simon said officials complained that as a minority-owned small business, MCHI had to meet a higher financial threshold than that required of larger firms, such as Motorola Inc., TRW Inc. and Loral Corp., which received big LEO licenses in January 1995.
At the time it awarded those licenses, the FCC declined to grant permits to MCHI and two other companies because the FCC said their financial qualifications were lacking.
Last summer, acting FCC International Bureau Chief Peter Cowhey waived the financial qualifications and granted big LEO satellite licenses to MCHI and another applicant. The FCC ruling was based on the fact that spectrum became available to accommodate MCHI and Constellation Communications Inc. after American Mobile Satellite Corp. withdrew its big LEO application.
Cowhey, now at the University of California at San Diego, could not be reached for comment. Past and present officials in the International Bureau said they were not pressured by the White House in the big LEO licensing proceeding.
Simon said before coming to see him for help, MCHI had taken its grievances to the Small Business Administration
“I told them this is a licensing process at the FCC and we don’t get involved. We can’t get involved,” said Simon.
Simon said he then advised MCHI officials to take their case to the FCC or their congressmen.
“There was nothing else that happened,” said Simon.
