House GOP Leaders Agree to Back Far-Reaching Financial Subpoena : Check scandal: The decision for disclosure of monetary records throws the issue to the Democrats, still opposed to complying.

House Republican leaders, faced with a revolt in their ranks, reversed themselves Tuesday and agreed to support demands that Congress comply with a Justice Department subpoena seeking the financial records of all congressmen who used the scandal-plagued House bank.

Abandoning the objections he had raised a day earlier, House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) emerged from a two-hour closed-door meeting to announce that he supported full compliance with the subpoena issued last week by special counsel Malcolm R. Wilkey.

A retired federal judge, Wilkey was appointed by the Justice Department to investigate the possibility of criminal wrongdoing at the now-closed bank.

“The House should provide Judge Wilkey with the documents,” Michel said grimly. Despite concerns that compliance with the blanket subpoena may violate members’ privacy or get into “sticky” constitutional questions, Congress “cannot stand in the way of full disclosure,” Michel said.

“We don’t really have a choice in the matter,” added Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), another member of the GOP leadership who reluctantly agreed with the decision. “We’re in a situation where the credibility of the institution is at stake and that’s more important than any individual member’s privacy.”

The decision to support full disclosure throws the issue to an increasingly isolated Democratic leadership, which is still opposed to complying, both because it sees the subpoena as too broad and because it fears a damaging precedent that would infringe on congressional prerogatives protected by the separation of powers provided by the Constitution.

Beyond those questions, the majority leadership also fears that Wilkey, a Republican, may be out to do the Democrats political damage in an election year by conducting what House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) has characterized as an “open-ended and undefined inquiry into the general financial activities of all members.”

Foley, who met separately with House Democratic leaders and Michel, refused to comment on the Republican decision other than to say that the issue would be decided in Democratic Party meetings today. But congressional sources said it now appeared inconceivable that the Democrats could continue to refuse to comply with the subpoena.

Wilkey, in a harshly worded letter to all members Monday, said his preliminary inquiry had uncovered evidence that a “classic check-kiting scheme may have occurred” involving at least some checks that members wrote on their House bank accounts.

Wilkey demanded compliance with the subpoena, which seeks to obtain the personal financial records of all lawmakers who used the bank during a 39-month period reviewed by the House Ethics Committee. It found that 325 members had overdrawn their accounts--many repeatedly and for large amounts.

Foley, and initially Michel, objected to the broad sweep of the subpoena, accusing Wilkey of launching “a fishing expedition.” They offered instead to provide the judge with the record pertaining only to the overdrafts that members wrote.

But rank-and-file Republicans, fearing that anything other than full compliance would invite more charges of a cover-up, immediately revolted.