Cranston Seen Maneuvering in Ethics Case : Politics: He is using delaying action and other tactics in a behind-the-scenes effort to have a Senate panel drop charges against him, sources say.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) has been engaged in an intense, behind-the-scenes effort to persuade the Senate Ethics Committee to drop the charges pending against him because of his relationship with former savings and loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr., congressional sources said Monday.

The sources said that Cranston’s strategy includes engaging in delaying tactics, moving to disqualify one new committee member and threatening to resurrect charges that the panel previously had dismissed involving four other senators.

Murray Flander, Cranston’s press secretary, declined to comment on the report. Neither the senator nor his spokesman has been willing to discuss the case or respond to questions about it for several months.

The Ethics Committee announced Feb. 27 that it had found “substantial credible evidence” that the California senator had “engaged in an impermissible pattern of conduct” by soliciting $994,000 from Keating for his political campaigns or for voter registration groups he headed, while intervening with federal regulators on Keating’s behalf.

Cranston, 77, who plans to retire at the end of his fourth term in 1992, has strongly denied the charges. He also has accused the committee of treating him unfairly by singling him out for punishment while dropping charges against four other senators.

It is not known whether Cranston’s tactics have succeeded in persuading a majority of the six-member panel to either drop the charges or reduce the punishment. Earlier this year the committee had been prepared to recommend that Cranston be disciplined by the full Senate.

Among the possible punishments that the committee is empowered to recommend in ethics complaints against senators are expulsion, censure or reprimand. Sources said that the panel never had intended to recommend expulsion in Cranston’s case but they said the committee had been leaning toward some form of public reprimand.

Congressional sources suggest that Cranston dismissed his attorney, William W. Taylor III, partly in an effort to get the committee to delay its decision in his case. Although Cranston is a millionaire, the California senator has said publicly that he was forced to dismiss Taylor because he could no longer afford legal representation.

Sources said Cranston and his supporters in the Senate believed he would have a better chance of persuading the committee to drop the charges if several months elapse between the time the charges were announced and the final decision. Flander denied suggestions that Cranston had dismissed his attorney in an effort to buy time. “Absolutely not,” he said.

For his part, Taylor declined to comment on the issue, citing attorney-client privilege.

Sources said Cranston also sought to have the charges dismissed on grounds that Sen. David H. Pryor (D-Ark.), one of the six committee members who heard the evidence against the five senators during three months of hearings, had resigned from the panel after suffering a heart attack. Pryor was replaced on the committee by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). The committee rejected Cranston’s plea.

In addition, sources said, Cranston sought to persuade committee members to dismiss the charges by threatening to mount a defense that would embarrass other senators by contending that his behavior was no different from the actions of the rest of the Senate.

The four others who were cleared of any serious wrongdoing by the committee, are Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio). Unlike Cranston, all four have indicated that they are likely to seek reelection.

The committee has scheduled two meetings this week to discuss Cranston’s case. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a member of the committee, told the Associated Press that he hopes the panel will decide within the next three weeks whether to recommend that Cranston be punished.

Cranston has admitted that he solicited $850,000 from Keating and his associates for three voter-registration groups that Cranston backed. They also donated $49,000 to Cranston’s election campaigns; $85,000 to the California Democratic Party and $10,000 to a political action committee affiliated with Cranston.

But the senator has denied that these contributions had any connection with his efforts to discuss with federal regulators their investigation of Irvine-based Lincoln Savings and Loan, which Keating owned. The inquiry led to a federal takeover of Lincoln, whose collapse is expected to cost the federal government about $2 billion.