Federal Court Takes Control of Packwood Diary Tapes : Probe: Judge orders lawmaker to turn over recordings after accusations of tampering surface. Senate ethics panel expands its investigation.

Presented with accusations that Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) altered tapes and transcripts of his personal diary in the midst of a Senate inquiry, a federal judge Thursday ordered all of the material turned over to the court for safekeeping.

The tapes were delivered late Thursday afternoon.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson came as the Senate Ethics Committee decided to expand its investigation of Packwood to determine whether he had tampered with evidence or attempted to obstruct the year-old inquiry.

Jackson deferred a decision on the larger question of whether Packwood should be compelled to comply with an Ethics Committee subpoena to turn over thousands of pages of diaries from the last five years.

The committee subpoenaed the diaries on Oct. 20 as part of its investigation into charges of sexual harassment and official misconduct against the 61-year-old lawmaker.

The latest accusations in the case came from Packwood’s former Senate secretary, Cathy Wagner Cormack, who has transcribed the diaries since Packwood began recording them in 1969. In a sworn statement, she described recent alterations.

While she was vague about precise dates, Cormack told Senate investigators that Packwood acknowledged altering some of the tapes and revising transcripts when he was facing the prospect of the subpoena.

Packwood’s attorneys have acknowledged that some of the transcripts do not accurately reflect the original tapes.

Acting on a request from Senate lawyers, Jackson signed an order directing that Packwood’s original recordings of his memoirs, along with all copies and transcripts, be delivered to the clerk of the court by the close of business Thursday.

The court also was told that Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.), chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the vice chairman, have authorized the wider inquiry.

Packwood, originally accused of making unwanted advances to 26 women over a span of two decades, was not in the courtroom during the arguments over the subpoena.

Nor has he commented on the statements by his former secretary that he revised some of the tapes and rewrote some of the entries after the Senate inquiry began.

Packwood was represented by his new lawyer, Jacob A. Stein, a specialist in criminal cases who has defended well-known Washington figures in the Iran-Contra and Watergate investigations.

While he did not contest the judge’s order to turn over the original tapes to the court, Stein contended that Packwood’s diaries were constitutionally protected from the Senate subpoena by the Fourth Amendment ban against unreasonable searches and the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

But in urging the court to enforce the subpoena, Senate Legal Counsel Michael Davidson said the framers of the Constitution gave unlimited powers to the House and Senate to investigate misconduct and to discipline their own members.

“The process should be given an opportunity to work,” he said.

The Senate ethics panel also put into the court record a 173-page deposition by Cormack, the only person known to have transcribed Packwood’s tapes, concerning the senator’s unusual recent interest in altering some portions of his diaries.

“As best I can recall, he said something about the possibility of a subpoena, and he didn’t want me to have anything in my possession if that were to occur,” she said in describing how Packwood this fall took back copies of diary tapes.

When the tapes were returned about a week later, she said, she noticed revisions had been made.

“A difference in background noise or, you know, just a difference in volume,” she said, explaining how she knew changes had occurred. “There might have been a break which was irregular.”

Later Cormack said she asked Packwood if he was making the changes.

“He basically confirmed that,” she testified. “We didn’t have a long conversation about it. . . . It was sort of a body language thing, but he knew that I knew.”

At other times, she added, Packwood would edit the transcript and ask her to retype a page with his revisions.

“On a few occasions, he would dictate, on a separate tape, a few changes and give me the pages (to be revised),” she said. Most of the revisions took place in the last half of October, Cormack said.

The Ethics Committee decided to issue its subpoena for Packwood’s diaries, covering the period from 1989 to the present, after he stopped cooperating with its investigation.

The senator, who initially offered the diaries to prove his contention that his relationships with women had been consensual, balked when committee staff lawyers demanded entries concerning his reported request to lobbyists to employ his then-estranged wife, Georgie, in hopes of reducing support payments to her if they were divorced.