House Votes to Renew Law on Independent Counsels : Investigations: The 356-56 vote comes after Democrats block GOP attempt to fully extend measure to members of Congress.

The House, capping a highly partisan two-day debate, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to renew the Watergate-inspired law that authorizes independent counsels to investigate alleged wrongdoing by top federal officials.

The measure, approved 356 to 56, would re-establish for five years a mechanism for insulating such investigations from the political pressures that could be brought to bear if the Justice Department investigated officials of the same Administration.

The legislation passed only after a test of wills in which Democrats beat back a Republican attempt to equally apply the law not only to the President and other senior executive branch officials, but to members of Congress as well.

Hoping to draw Democratic votes from the ranks of reform-minded freshmen, GOP leaders argued that the low esteem in which Congress is held by voters would be further depressed if the lawmakers did not vote to fully apply the law to themselves.

“Here’s your chance . . . to reform the way this place works,” Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said in an appeal to the chamber’s 110 freshmen lawmakers. “The American people want us to be covered by this law.”

Democrats denounced the Republican proposal as a thinly disguised attempt to politicize the statute and render it unworkable. They defeated a substitute bill offered by Hyde, 230 to 188.

Like the expired law it replaces, the new legislation will require the Justice Department to conduct a preliminary investigation if the attorney general receives “specific and credible” information alleging criminal wrongdoing by any of 60 senior executive branch officials, including the President.

If the investigation finds “reasonable grounds” to believe that further investigation is necessary, the attorney general is required to ask a special three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals to appoint an independent counsel.

Also like the old law, the measure would allow--but not require--the attorney general to seek appointment of an independent counsel to investigate members of Congress.

The House bill must be reconciled with similar legislation passed by the Senate last November, but the differences between the two bills are minor and should pose no obstacle to final passage, sponsors of the legislation said.

First approved in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal that drove former President Richard Nixon from office, the independent-counsel law was meant to circumvent the conflict of interest that an attorney general might face if called upon to investigate the President, vice president or other senior officials.

Since then, there have been 13 independent-counsel investigations, although few convictions.

The most famous case--independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh’s $37-million investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal--proved to be the law’s undoing.

Angered by what they charged was a partisan inquiry, Senate Republicans blocked renewal of the law when it expired in December, 1992.

But President Clinton’s election, and questions subsequently raised about the First Family’s involvement in the troubled Whitewater Development Corp. in Arkansas, focused new attention on the need for an independent-counsel statute, and Republican objections diminished.

“You can believe that we want a strong independent council’s office . . . now that the folks from Arkansas are in charge,” Hyde said.

In the debate over fully extending the law to members of Congress, Democrats argued that such coverage was unnecessary because the Justice Department can--and has--investigated members of Congress without raising conflict-of-interest concerns.

“There has been no hesitancy to prosecute members of Congress,” said Rep. John Bryant (D-Tex.), who argued that the Republicans need only “purchase subscriptions to daily newspapers” to know that the Justice Department is vigorously investigating the activities of lawmakers.

Democrats also suggested that requiring appointment of an independent counsel any time one of Congress’ 535 members is accused of criminal misconduct could result in so many investigations that the law would prove unworkable.