Forget health care. Last week the Beltway crowd wanted to know: who said what to whom in that town house? Did Brown agree to sell his clout to Hao and to Vietnam? A former business partner of Hao’s says he did, and has even told the FBI and numerous reporters that Brown named his price: $700,000 in cash in an offshore bank. Brown last week called the charge “ridiculous,” and issued a flat, outraged denial through the lawyer he recently hired. But the FBI and a federal grand jury in Florida are investigating the case with rising urgency, and Hao himself may be cooperating. According to Miami television station WPLG, the FBI has obtained a copy of a fax Hao sent to Hanoi late last December. Describing the town-house meeting, Hao reported to the prime minister’s office that Brown had agreed to work to ease the trade embargo. Not a smoking gun, perhaps, but a red-hot fax.

The Brown affair threatens the current era of good feeling in the White House. If Brown is indicted, he would automatically become a talking point in the never-ending Perot-Limbaugh harangue against Washington. If he isn’t, there are sure to be more Republican calls for a special independent investigation -an idea that Attorney General Janet Reno rejected last week. Either way, Clinton loses, “This isn’t a fancy haircut; this is a cabinet member,” one Democratic strategist declared.

And not just any cabinet member. A former civil-rights activist, Brown is a Washington power lawyer at the center of the Democratic establishment. A scandal involving allegations of a sellout to the Vietnamese would pose political problems for Clinton, who is already suspect among Vietnam War veterans.

So far Brown has been proved guilty of at least one mistake: ignoring the cardinal Washington rule that if the deed doesn’t do you in, refusing to disclose it usually will. Last July Brown privately told news organizations, including NEWSWEEK, that he couldn’t remember meeting Hao. In August, prompted by stories that the grand jury was on his trail, Brown issued a carefully worded statement denying “any kind of business relationship, any kind of financial relationship, any kind of relationship of any kind on this matter.” Translation: yes. I met him, but we didn’t do a deal. Last week, after The Miami Herald reported that Brown had met with Hao three times, his attorney conceded that Brown had indeed met Hao that often (and had even sent him a Christmas card), but said no money was discussed and no deal was consummated.

Now federal investigators say they are aggressively pursuing the rest of the detailed accusations offered to them months ago by Hao’s former partner, a Vietnamese-American named Ly Thanh Binh. Though he had passed an FBI-administered lie-detector test, Binh alone wasn’t enough to make the case stick. He’s a struggling Florida entrepreneur who had a bitter falling-out with Hao over the terms of their partnership, and who admits that he was not present at any of the meetings with Brown. But an important part of his story-the three meetings-has now been corroborated.

Brown and Hao were brought together by Marc Ashton, a businessman who operated a car distributorship in Haiti. Hao, an economist, had worked as a World Bank official there in the early ’80s, when Brown regularly visited the island as Washington counsel to the infamous Duvalier government. Brown also became close friends with Lillian Madsen, the sister of Ashton’s Haitian wife. It was in Madsen’s town house, with both her and Ashton present, that Brown and Hao met last Christmas.

With Ashton as host, Brown and Hao first met over dinner at a West Palm Beach restaurant last November. Brown had yet to be nominated; it was perfectly legal for him to discuss representing Vietnam, and any other business deal. According to Brown’s attorney, his client was noncommittal as he listened to Hao’s plea for help. in Binh’s account, Brown was anything but noncommittal: in Vietnam, he wanted concessions in oil and gas, banking, tourism, real estate and telecommunications, and a cut of all the business that Hao and Binh’s trading company would generate with his help. in Washington, he wanted to be Vietnam’s sole lobbyist. And he wanted a hand-delivered letter from the prime minister. Vo Van Kiet, confirming that Hao was the government’s authorized representative.

Once Brown was nominated for Commerce, open lobbying and investment deals were out. So in the town house, the deal changed, Binh says: Brown would work for lifting the trade ban in exchange for $700,000 to be deposited offshore, and a secretly paid cut of any development deals Hao and Binh obtained. According to Brown’s attorney, Brown glanced at, but did not accept, an innocuous congratulatory letter from the Vietnamese prime minister. According to Binh, Brown not only accepted the document but drafted a response that spelled out the terms of the deal. Hao was asked to carry it back to Vietnam.

At this point, Binh claims, he got scared. It’s a felony to offer a government official money in exchange for official action - and a felony for the official to solicit such a deal. Brown wasn’t yet in office, Binh says he told Hao, but he soon would be. According to Binh, the tough-minded Hao had no such qualms. A former official in the South Vietnamese government, Hao had saved himself by switching sides during the fall of Saigon. He had forged a friendship with Kiet, then a commander of the conquering communist army. Binh says Hao returned to Vietnam in January and delivered Brown’s letter to Kiet. In Asia, he says, friends of Hao’s made arrangements for money to be deposited in a Singapore bank for Brown. (The Vietnamese government last week denied the charges, and accused Binh of plotting to slow improved relations with the United States.)

In February, after Brown had become commerce secretary, Hao called Binh and asked him to come along on a trip to Washington to see Brown. Binh says he refused. According to Brown’s attorney, Brown met Hao, Ashton and Madsen for lunch in Washington, then gave them a tour of his department. No business was discussed, the attorney says. Binh, who by that time was preparing to take his story to the FBI, doesn’t claim to know what happened during that last meeting.

Brown’s supporters in the White House don’t think he did anything illegal-which they narrowly define as taking the money Even if Brown did discuss a deal with Hao before becoming commerce secretary, it might be difficult for prosecutors to argue that the bribery laws apply to a man who at the time was still a private citizen. But as smart as he is, Brown also has a brazen streak. Last January he took a much-criticized $750,000 “buyout” from his law firm, Patton, Boggs and Blow, after having remained as an uncompensated partner “on leave” during his tenure as party chairman. The same month, he defended plans by corporations to pay $10.000 each to honor him at the Kennedy Center. It took an on-the-record rebuke from President-elect Clinton to derail the event.

The White House is standing by Brown, sort of, for now. At a White House economic ceremony last week, Clinton publicly praised Brown’s work at Commerce, saying that Brown had told him he was innocent and “I have no reason not to believe him.” But if Brown had been counting on an unqualified statement of support, he was looking to the wrong man. Asked if Brown had lost effectiveness at Commerce, Clinton said, mildly, “Not if he hasn’t done anything wrong.” It was the kind of carefully worded, lawyerlike statement that Brown must have recognized with a chill.