Three Senators’ Keating Talks Held Extensive

Three senators under investigation for their ties to Charles H. Keating Jr., ex-owner of the failed Lincoln Savings & Loan, had more extensive dealings with him than they acknowledged publicly, Senate documents show.

The Senate Ethics Committee documents detail efforts made by Democratic Sens. Alan Cranston of California, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona and Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan on Keating’s behalf. They also shed new light on some of Keating’s fund-raising efforts.

The committee’s special counsel has recommended the probe of those three be intensified. He also proposed the investigation be dropped against Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio), the other members of the so-called “Keating Five.”

The documents, obtained by the Associated Press, show:

--Keating’s fund-raising efforts for Riegle were far more extensive than previously known, and some information in the documents do not match Riegle’s account in statements to the public and the committee.

--Cranston, in a memo, thanked Keating for a $250,000 contribution solicited by the senator for a voter registration project and at the same time expressed his pleasure that Keating met with the top thrift regulator to air his complaints about an examination of his S&L;, Lincoln Savings & Loan of Irvine, Calif.

--DeConcini assisted Keating in his crusade to have former top thrift regulator Edwin J. Gray--referred to by Lincoln’s owner as a “mad dog turned loose”--removed from the examination of Lincoln. After Gray left office, the senator wrote Keating, “Maybe things will change now that he is gone. I sure hope so.”

--A former top U.S. banking regulator, Roger F. Martin, said that just weeks before the government seized Lincoln, he received “highly unusual” calls from Cranston and DeConcini at his unlisted home number urging sale of Lincoln rather than seizure. Cranston’s call came after 10 p.m. and DeConcini’s at 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

“It sounded to me as if they were reading from the same script or memo,” Martin told the committee.

It was previously known that Keating and associates gave $1.3 million to the campaigns and favored causes of the five senators.

Cranston spokesman Murray Flander said Wednesday night there was no connection between any money raised by Cranston and actions taken with regulators by the senator.

The committee is trying to determine whether there was a connection between help the senators gave Keating as Lincoln headed toward collapse and the money he gave.

Lincoln was seized by the federal government in April, 1989, at a potential cost to taxpayers of more than $2 billion, but Keating insisted all along he was treated unfairly by U.S. regulators.

Keating has been in jail in Los Angeles since his indictment Sept. 18 on state securities fraud charges.