NEWS ANALYSIS : Administration Ethics: What Went Wrong? : White House: Clinton team entered office promising corps of public servants free of greed. But with officials being probed, experts are wondering why.

The young Clinton Administration roared into Washington a little over two years ago promising to chase avaricious pols from high office and replace them with the most ethical corps of public servants in American history.

Today, one former Cabinet official is under investigation by an independent counsel, two sitting Cabinet members are under review for such probes and Clinton himself is awaiting developments in the inquiry by the Whitewater independent counsel.

A number of lesser officials--including the second-ranking Treasury Department official, the third-ranking officer of the Justice Department, the White House counsel and a top White House aide--have left under legal or ethical clouds. Several others, following the time-honored Washington tradition, served briefly and then bolted for the private sector, where their government connections would be highly valuable.

Just since the first of the year, the White House has had to hire three lawyers to handle legal and congressional inquiries into top Administration officials. That amounts to nearly a third of the staff of the White House counsel’s office.

What gives?

Administration defenders say that Washington has become so partisan and so scandal-obsessed that the most minor of peccadilloes is blown up into a federal case. What are routine political disputes are transformed into police stories, they insist.

“What happened? I think it is a sign of our times that people can kick up a cloud of dust, allegations can swirl and that they get a great deal of attention by those on the Hill and those of you who follow these matters,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

Some point to the much higher ethical standards expected of government officials now.

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“I’m astounded at the high standard of behavior imposed on members of the executive branch. It’s much tougher than for the judiciary or Congress,” said White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva, who also has served a decade in Congress and almost 15 years as a federal judge.

But others reply that former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy’s acceptance of Super Bowl tickets from a large business that his agency regulated, and Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown’s labyrinthine business dealings would always have attracted scrutiny--and show that the Clinton team is clearly much better at setting high standards than at living up to them.

Even if the Administration’s original intentions were sincere, the follow-through has been spotty. And the result has been an Administration now pocked with agencies heavily absorbed in their top officials’ problems and a White House manning a never-ending investigation watch to respond to the newest trouble as soon as it erupts.

Despite the lofty 1992 rhetoric, “in reality, this Administration is very similar to all the others,” said Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington watchdog group.

“They actually think this is Camelot revisited, they think they’re doing the right thing for the country and they’re smarter than their predecessors. That leads to hubris and that leads to blind spots and poor judgment. It’s not surprising, but it’s inevitable,” Lewis said.

What surprises some ethics experts is not that there have been infractions, but that they have been so incessant and so banal.

“If they were truly smarter, you’d think they’d be more creative,” Lewis said.

Causing particular distress now are the problems of Brown, who--despite drawing widespread praise for his work as commerce secretary--is under fire for revealing only the most minimal information to Congress about his extensive business affairs. Brown has maintained that he has disclosed everything necessary and has no conflicts of interest, but Republicans are pressing for answers about benefits he received from a former business partner after taking office and about a newly revealed role in a company that won a telephone contract at Los Angeles International Airport.

That confrontation seems to be growing more intense, with congressional hearings possible.

At the same time, the FBI is probing whether Brown’s Cabinet colleague, Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, misled federal investigators during his pre-nomination interviews about payments he made to a former mistress.

Further darkening the ethical cloud, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown filed government expense records showing he took 20 government trips to his hometown of Chicago in his first 20 months. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena also drew attention over a Los Angeles transit pension-fund contract that his former investment company landed after he assumed office.

If the Justice Department concludes its current preliminary reviews of the Brown and Cisneros matters by deciding to seek independent counsels, the Administration will have set a lofty record for concurrent investigations of that stature--four.

Both Republicans and Democrats wonder how the Administration would be able to function and advance its policy agenda in the second half of its term if that comes to pass.

Already, some are examining the record of travail for lessons to learn for the future.

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Martin Shefter, a political scientist at Cornell University and the author of “Politics by Other Means,” said it is clear that Clinton and his top lieutenants, even as they were declaring their higher ethical standard, did a poor job of carefully vetting candidates against it as they hurried to fill top Administration jobs and put forth the most diverse Cabinet in history.

“In Ron Brown’s case, they overlooked a lot of his business dealings because they wanted him regardless,” Shefter said.

Following the November, 1992, election, Clinton and his transition director, now-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, put heavy pressure on themselves to fill Cabinet jobs before Christmas and to put together a Cabinet that “looks like America.”

They also limited themselves by seeking new faces and compelling stories, leading them to favor such candidates as Espy, a Mississippi congressman who was not well-known and had not undergone the kind of scrutiny a Cabinet-level job brings.

There was also a desire to avoid people too closely associated with the Jimmy Carter Administration or tied to traditional Democratic Party interest groups, ruling out a substantial number of tested candidates. On the other side of the coin, Democratic control of the Senate meant that most appointees would not face tough questioning and presumably would be easily confirmed.

These considerations helped shrink the pool of stainless candidates and, exacerbated by sloppiness, led to some unpleasant surprises--such as the discovery that Atty. Gen.-designate Zoe Baird had failed to pay taxes on her child’s nanny.

“Clinton didn’t spend enough time putting his team together. That’s where he lost his presidency,” said executive recruiter Pendleton James, who was Ronald Reagan’s personnel director during the transition and his first two years in the White House.

“If you want to control policy, you have to control appointments, and (Clinton) didn’t. You cannot bring people in helter-skelter, looking just at diversity without looking at their backgrounds,” James said.

And since then, critics say, Clinton has not done enough to underscore to his top aides that even the appearance of questionable motives would not be tolerated.

Lewis cited the cases of White House legislative affairs director Howard Paster and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Roy Neel, who left office after barely a year for lucrative lobbying and public relations jobs. Only a few years ago, Reagan’s Administration had been lambasted for “revolving door” staff moves.

“Clinton gave them a big hug when they left,” Lewis said. “There was no admonishing word to the rest of the staff. The word was sent out implicitly to all employees that this was acceptable behavior.”

Even if Clinton’s top team has not lived up to its initial promises, some do question whether they actually deserve the independent-counsel-level attention they have been getting.

“Look at what we’re doing to ourselves: We’ve got a President with two independent counsels in existence and possibly two coming. It’s just unnecessary,” said Joseph DiGenova, a Republican who is finishing a stint as an independent counsel in a George Bush Administration case.

Lloyd N. Cutler, a longtime Democratic legal eminence in Washington and Clinton’s White House counsel for a time last year, said that as the potential investigations in Clinton’s ranks multiply, he wonders where it will all end.

“The public assumes if you go into government you’re either a crook or a fool,” he said. “How are you going to run the country that way?”

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this story.