By Phil Shenon
Washington - The nomination of Richard C. Holbrooke as chief United States delegate to the United Nations has been delayed in- definitely while the Justice Department reviews his financial disclosure statements and investigates his contacts with former State Department colleagues after leaving the department two years ago for a job on Wall Street.
Clinton Administration officials said the investigation began when the State Department's Inspector General received an anonymous letter several weeks ago alleging that Mr. Holbrooke may have violated Federal ethics laws by lobbying American diplomats overseas on be- half of his investment banking firm, Crédit Suisse First Boston.
Federal law bars former Govern- merit officials from lobbying former -colleagues for one year after they leave office. The Justice Department said in a statement that "the department is reviewing Mr. Holbrooke's financial disclosure reports and his contacts with State Department officials following his departure from government."
The White House said Mr. Holbrooke, a former Ambassador to Germany and the architect of the 1995 Dayton peace agreements that brought an end to the war in Bosnia, has denied the allegations and is cooperating with the investigation.
Both President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright issued statements of support today for Mr. Holbrooke, who is now vice chairman of Crédit Suisse, and said they would push forward with the nomination.
"I look forward to a prompt resolution of this review and submission of his nomination to the Senate," the President said. "Ambassador Holbrooke has made remarkable contributions to our nation's security in this Administration and in previous Administrations."
Mr. Holbrooke declined requests today for an interview. But an adviser to Mr. Holbrooke, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that "there's absolutely nothing to these allegations."
The adviser noted that while Mr. Holbrooke left the State Department in February 1996 to join Crédit Suisse - he stepped down from the post of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs - he was asked by President Clinton to remain a special Government envoy to the Balkans. In that unpaid post, Mr. Holbrooke repeatedly visited with State Department officials in Washington and ambassadors and other senior diplomats at American embassies throughout 1996.
"So Dick had legitimate business to carry on with the State Department," the adviser said. "There is a suggestion that he was somehow conducting business for Crédit Suisse in his contacts with the State Department. But Dick was always very careful about separating that."
The adviser said that Mr. Holbrooke has provided the State and Justice Departments with copies of his travel logs for 1996 that showed' which American embassies he had visited that year. Investigators, he said, have since contacted the embassies for paperwork that might indicate the nature of Mr. Holbrooke's meetings in the embassies.
It was not clear why Mr. Holbrooke's financial disclosure statements were under scrutiny. In a 1996 disclosure statement to the Office of Government Ethics, Mr. Holbrooke cataloged million of dollars in assets, including stock holdings in some o the nation's largest corporations, ineluding American Express, IBM and H. J. Heinz Company.
Congressional officials said that the Senate Foreign Relations Cornmittee, which must review the nomination, had no evidence to substantiate the allegations contained in the anonymous letter.
But they said the delay by the White House in filing formal nomination papers for Mr. Holbrooke meant that the United States would be without a chief delegate at the United Nations for the rest of the year.
Senator Jesse Helms, the NorthCarolina Republican who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had set a deadline of today to receive the papers if the White House hoped to have Mr. Holbrooke confirmed this year. In a statement last month Senator Helms's office said that he would not "rush the nomination through at the last minute." "Senator Helms has a number of important issues to go over with Mr. Holbrooke, including the status of the U.N.-State Department reform legislation," the statement said. "The Administration is mistaken if they expect the committee will rubberstamp Mr. Holbrooke's nomination." The previous chief delegate to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, is now Energy Secretary.
In joining Crédit Suisse a week after leaving the State Department in February 1996, Mr. Holbrooke followed a well-trodden path between Washington and Wall Street.
Senior Government officials, particularly those with experience in foreign affairs and finance, often landed good jobs on Wall after stints in government.
Jeffrey Shafer, a former senior official in the Treasury Department in the Clinton Administration, is now a vice chairman at Salomon Smith Barney, a subsidiary of The Travelers Group. Robert Hormats, who worked at the State Department and in the Trade Representative's Office in the Carter and Reagan Administrations, is vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, a subsidiary of Goldman, Sachs & Company. This was Mr. Holbrooke's second stint on Wall Street. He had worked for several years as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers after leaving his job as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs throughout the Carter Administration.
Crédit Suisse declined to provide a list of the company's Clients who have worked with Mr. Holbrooke since 1996. But a spokesman, Edmund Pendleton, said that among the company's American clients, Mr. Holbrooke had done business with "some media companies, biotech and financial companies.
