This Isn’t Kid-Glove Time

Senators are entitled to respect for what they are--moving parts in the machinery of democracy. But they are not entitled to kid-glove treatment for just anything they do. There are now enough serious questions about precisely why four senators met with the chief savings and loan regulator on April 2, 1987, for the Senate’s Select Committee on Ethics to abandon the kid gloves and get answers to those questions. If it requires appointment of an independent counsel, the committee should not hesitate.

Two elements have honed the edge on the questions the committee needs to ask. One is testimony by Edwin J. Gray, who was then chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. The other is some apparent shifting around in the recollection of one participant in the meeting, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), of what went on during the meeting.

Gray contends that the senators wanted him to withdraw a regulation that was opposed by Charles H. Keating Jr., former head of Lincoln Savings & Loan or Irvine and a major campaign contributor to Cranston, and Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio).

Cranston originally said he was astonished that Gray would say such a thing; later he said that there might have been some such discussion. Cranston also said the Gray either misunderstood what happened at the meeting or made up his version.

What is involved here goes beyond the question of who is telling the truth and who is not. What is wanted is a far sharper picture of the relationships between politicians and savings banks during years when the banks squandered billions of dollars, money that taxpayers will spend years making up. We may be old-fashioned, but getting that picture would seem to be worth any trouble the Ethics committee might have to go to.