Packwood

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge took control of Sen. Bob Packwood's diaries yesterday amid strong new accusations by the Senate that the Oregon Republican tampered with the material at the center of an ethics investigation.The senator's legal troubles escalated yesterday as the Senate Ethics Committee's leaders said they had formally broadened the panel's probe to cover the issue of whether he tried illegally to "obstruct" the Senate by changing diary tapes or typed transcripts.He is already under investigation on charges that he made unwanted sexual advances toward more than two dozen women and gave a lobbyist special help in exchange for a job for his wife, so that he would pay less in alimony when they divorced.

WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist put an end yesterday to Sen. Bob Packwood's efforts in the courts to keep his private diaries out of the hands of Senate ethics investigators.Pointedly, the chief justice said that evidence that the senator may have tampered with the audiotapes and written transcripts of those diaries appeared to put all their contents within the reach of the Senate Ethics Committee."Surely," the chief justice wrote in a three-page opinion, the committee "has the authority to investigate attempts to obstruct" its inquiry into charges of misconduct against the OregonRepublican.

Washington -- THE DIARIES of Bob Packwood reveal a sordid personal story that the public was never meant to hear.But the diaries also tell another story that was never intended for citizens to know. It's the story of how our elected leaders in Washington are perpetrating a giant fraud on the people in order to raise and spend tens of millions of dollars in corrupting campaign contributions.These donations, as large as $100,000, $200,000, even $2 million, come from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bob Packwood appears to have tampered with the tape-recorded diary being sought by Ethics Committee investigators, Senate lawyers charged yesterday.They asked the U.S. District Court here to seize immediately from Mr. Packwood the diaries and all other materials subpoenaed in the Senate committee's probe of charges that he engaged in sexual misconduct and sought favors from lobbyists.The request raised the question of whether Mr. Packwood, an Oregon Republican, had obstructed justice by altering the tapes.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bob Packwood was on the verge of resigning from the Senate 10 days ago when the Justice Department suddenly subpoenaed his personal diaries, signaling the possibility of a criminal charge in his future. So the embattled Oregon Republican suddenly changed his mind on the theory, his Senate friends explained, that he would be in a better position as a senator than as an ex-senator to defend himself.Now we know why. The files of the Senate Ethics Committee show Packwood had raised $279,000 in contributions to his legal defense fund in the first nine months of the year -- an amount any private citizen facing similar troubles would be hard pressed to match.

WASHINGTON -- While the politicians in the U.S. Senate wring their hands over what to do about the complaints of sexual misconduct against Sen. Bob Packwood, lawyers here and in Oregon are laboring nights and weekends on an increasingly complex array of legal woes surrounding him.Even if the just-reelected Oregon Republican is given his Senate seat Tuesday, over protests of many homestate voters and women's activists, and even if the Senate is unable or...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bob Packwood, under siege in a year-old sex scandal, was close to resigning from his seat last night just as the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation of him.After an Oregon TV station reported yesterday that the Republican senator was quitting, his lawyer, James F. Fitzpatrick, told reporters here: "The senator has not resigned. The matter is currently under consideration. I don't know when any decision will be made."Asked specifically if resignation was one of the options being reviewed, Mr. Fitzpatrick indicated that it was. Mr. Packwood said last night that he did not expect to make an announcement this weekend.

WASHINGTON -- To the surprise of no one, Sen. Bob Packwood has decided he won't insist on public hearings before the Senate Ethics Committee on charges of sexual harassment and official misconduct that have been hanging for 30months.Further, there appears to be considerable sentiment in the Senate for the committee not to exercise its option to conduct such hearings before ruling on the case. Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi said the other day that he opposed hearings because they could be, as he put it, "embarrassing to the Senate."

Washington. -- Lurking just below the surface of the tedious legal arguments and lurid sex talk that dominated the Senate's debate over Sen. Bob Packwood's diaries last week was the enduring legacy of Anita Hill.Not that the painful episode two years ago -- when the all-male Judiciary Committee was pilloried for its crude handling of Ms. Hill's sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- was a decisive factor in the diary matter, or even a particularly relevant one.But it contributed mightily to setting the scene for the Packwood drama, and it haunted the entire debate.

WASHINGTON -- In politics as in prizefighting, a familia complaint from the loser after the verdict is in is often "We wuz robbed." Candidates and their managers, just as fist fighters and their corner men, can frequently be counted on to claim that a low blow or some subterfuge has resulted in their being jobbed.So it is with the group of 250 Oregon voters who complained to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee that Republican Sen. Bob Packwood in effect hit them below the belt in his successful re-election campaign against former Democratic Rep. Les AuCoin last November.