
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993                   TAG: 9310310041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PACKWOOD SUBPOENA MAKES SENATORS NERVOUS

The Anita Hill controversy, the Keating Five and John Tower's confirmation hearings. The Senate has had its share of political anguish, but few issues have caused more discomfort than the Senate Ethics Committee's subpoena for Sen. Bob Packwood's diaries.

When Sen. John McCain was asked how uncomfortable it would be to defend Packwood, he demonstrated his nervousness by breaking into a tap dance for reporters.

"No one wants to appear as if they are covering up any legitimate information," the Arizona Republican said. "We don't know what they uncovered. Senators are extremely nervous about the entire scenario. Whenever you sail into uncharted waters, the passengers get nervous."

What would it be like to support Packwood on Monday, when the Senate will be asked to authorize a lawsuit to force his compliance with the subpoena?

"There is a rather substantial majority of people who are so disenchanted they'd like to throw us all out," said Sen. James Jeffords, R-Vt. "It doesn't take much to push them over the edge. Those are the kinds of things that lead to lynching parties."

The subpoena asks for Packwood's diaries from Jan. 1, 1989, to the present. The committee staff, with Packwood's cooperation, already has reviewed the prior 20 years of the Oregon Republican's diaries.

The accommodation ended when committee staffers discovered potential criminal conduct by Packwood that was outside the original allegations of sexual misconduct and intimidation of witnesses.

The senator's lawyers refused to copy the portions involving potential criminal violations, as they had done with other entries in the diaries.

Packwood has agreed to provide the committee with portions directly related to the original ethics charges. More than two dozen women have accused Packwood of making unwanted sexual advances, including grabbing and kissing, and some of the women contended there were attempts to keep them quiet through threats to publicly disclose aspects of their personal lives.

Committee chairman Richard Bryan, D-Nev., framed the issue so that any senator with a peptic ulcer could only see his condition worsen by defending Packwood's defiance of the subpoena. He said in a public statement:

"The question before the Senate is, will the Senate of the United States back up its own ethics committee, which voted unanimously to ask the Senate to enforce its subpoena of documents from Senator Packwood?"

Several Republican senators last week said they shared Packwood's concern that the committee was sifting through his personal papers in violation of the Oregon Republican's constitutional right to privacy.

But Bryan's disclosure of potential criminality made it harder for those senators to deliver that message on the Senate floor.

The six seats on the ethics committee are the least-popular assignments in the Senate. It often takes weeks of cajoling by the leadership to find volunteers. Senate observers have joked that if the committee loses this fight, there may never be another enlistee.

by CNB