Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991 TAG: 9102170019
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
But after six closed-door meetings over two weeks, the committee has found that the case against four other senators is less convincing, and it remains divided along partisan lines over whether and how to punish them.
In an investigation that began more than a year ago, the committee has been examining allegations that the senators did special favors for Keating and his troubled savings and loan because he was a major campaign contributor.
Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan Association, of Irvine, Calif., was seized by the government in April 1989, at a possible cost to taxpayers of more than $2 billion.
Aside from Cranston, D-Calif., who has declared that he will not seek re-election next year because of prostate cancer, the evidence against Sens. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., and Donald Riegle, D-Mich., is considered strongest.
But officials say it now is increasingly unlikely that the committee will recommend that those cases be sent to the full Senate for punishment.
A more likely course, they say, is that the panel will send letters to the two senators criticizing their conduct.
Such an action would be among the milder steps the committee could take. The most extreme penalty, expulsion, is rare and not considered realistic in these cases.
The two remaining senators, John McCain, R-Ariz., and John Glenn, D-Ohio, are not considered as culpable, but the disposition of their cases may hinge on how the three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee resolve their political differences.
McCain is the only Republican under investigation, and some Democrats on the ethics panel are reluctant to clear him.
Political considerations aside, the deliberations have been complicated by other issues that have little to do with the specific evidence presented against the senators.
The committee members are seeking to strike a balance between protecting their colleagues in the Senate "club" and responding to the weeks of televised hearings that heightened public expectations that the senators would be punished.
The committee members say they hope they can decide the cases in the next few weeks.
While Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., who heads the committee, had vowed that the panel would make "five independent decisions," congressional officials say politics have clearly clouded the deliberations.
The committee, in turn, is distressed that some senators may have crossed the bounds of propriety in lobbying panel members.
by CNB