Keating Five

Sometimes Maryland Rep. Tom McMillen must wish he were back in the National Basketball Association tossing up jump shots for the Washington Bullets instead of taking the flak he's received recently on Capitol Hill.First he was victimized by a furious zone-trap defense thrown up by other Maryland representatives during the drawn-out congressional redistricting dispute that left him bereft of his old district. Now he's been accused of an offensive foul for meeting with a federal savings and loan regulator on behalf of a foundering Annapolis thrift.

WASHINGTON -- A memo written by a lobbyist for Lincoln Federal Savings and Loan, suggesting that four senators may have wanted to avoid congressional hearings, was not used as evidence in the recent Senate hearings on the S&L scandal.The June 28, 1988, memo reported that Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., was "anxious" to contact Representative Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., an influential member of the House Banking Committee, at a time when that committee's staff was pressing to put a public spotlight on Lincoln.

The Senate Select Committee on Ethics says only one of the five senators accused of trying to influence government regulatory policy in behalf of financier Charles Keating transgressed. That was Sen. Alan Cranston, the California Democrat who is ill and has announced he will retire. What was his transgression? He "may have engaged in improper conduct reflecting upon the Senate."In other words, whatever Senator Cranston may have done that corrupted the regulatory process or helped bring about the multi-billion-dollar public bailout of Mr. Keating's scandal-plagued Lincoln Federal Savings and Loan was immaterial.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. initiated a meeting between senators and thrift regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr., a former Keating aide testified yesterday in contradiction of the Michigan Democrat's sworn statement.James Grogan was the first Keating insider to testify in the Senate Ethics Committee hearings, and he did so only under a grant of limited immunity that prevents his statements from being used against him in court.Mr. Riegle, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has told the panel that "I did not arrange the meeting April 2," 1987, between the top thrift regulator and four Senate colleagues -- who were intervening for Mr. Keating's failing Lincoln Savings and Loan.

As a would-be governor of Maryland, Rep. Helen Delich Bentley should give a close reading to what a real governor -- William Donald Schaefer -- has to say about the North American Free Trade Agreement. On the page opposite, Mr. Schaefer says NAFTA is not just a good idea but an "absolute necessity." He poses two rhetorical questions:"Will this agreement create jobs in Maryland? The answer is yes."Will this agreement be good for Maryland economically? Again, the answer is yes."Yet Maryland's Second District congresswoman has become the anti-NAFTA movement's favorite Republican, the one protectionist voice that can be relied upon to bash Mexico as she has bashed Japan for years.

WASHINGTON -- Six members of one of the world's greatest deliberative bodies considered yesterday the question of which U.S. senator had been called a "wimp."At Senate ethics hearings on the so-called "Keating Five," two staffers for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recounted that in March 1987, savings and loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. angrily called their boss "a wimp" for refusing to pressure S&L regulators on Mr. Keating's behalf.Mr. Keating's "wimp" remark made Mr. McCain furious and ended their friendship.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John McCain, nearing the end of his ordeal as a member of the so-called "Keating Five," told the Senate ethics committee yesterday that he'd learned an important lesson from the experience. "You not only have to be careful about how and what you do," the Arizona Republican said, "but you have to be careful about what you appear to do."Because of that, Mr. McCain said, he and four other senators accused of improper conduct in the case may have committed an error of appearance.

Washington -- ONE OF THE by-products of the war in the Persian Gulf is that President Bush is avoiding a whole series of controversies on both domestic and international issues that ordinarily would be politically damaging.The most obvious, of course, is the crisis in the Baltic republics and the Soviet Union. Under ordinary circumstances, the president could expect far more pressure than has been brought to bear so far to identify the United States more clearly with the Lithuanians than he has done.

Washington -- REMEMBER the case of the Keating Five? That was the one in which, among other things, five senators who had received large campaign contributions from a moneybags developer named Charles Keating were called on the senatorial carpet for having interceded in his behalf with federal savings-and-loan regulators. It was supposed to, like Watergate in 1972, trigger real campaign finance reform by providing an example of the corruption of the existing system.Now listen to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, chief opponent of the Democratic-sponsored reform that has passed the Senate and author of a Republican version that failed: "With the Keating case over . . . the momentum of the legislation is not as great as it was last year."

Washington - The presidential contest turned increasingly nasty yesterday as Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain launched new personal attacks ahead of the second presidential debate. Tonight's format, with direct questions from voters, could benefit McCain, who prefers that setting. But this may be the only built-in advantage for the Republican, who trails in polls amid a darkening economic climate. Obama says McCain is desperately trying to distract voters from the economy by employing smear tactics.