A High-Voltage Lantos Heats Up Hearings

When his eyes seem to stare right through a witness, when his posture perks up and his speech takes on the formality of a scholar’s, watch out. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) is getting mad.

His angry outbursts from the dais at last week’s House campaign fund-raising hearings--injecting the Democratic viewpoint, or his own, amid all the Republican assertions--became a focal point of the proceedings.

If a GOP legislator exceeded his five-minute time limit, Lantos was ready with a bellow of “Regular order!”

If someone dared question the integrity of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, Lantos let loose both a roar of condemnation against the attacker and sugary sweet praise of a woman he called a “paragon of public virtue.”

The investigation itself, Lantos fumed more than once, is a “theater of the absurd.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), no pushover, is the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. But Waxman was away at the global warming conference in Japan, so the courtly yet irascible Lantos went on as his understudy.

Lantos “made Henry seem like a statesman,” one Republican complained.

With his eyes on the clock and his ears attuned to any affront to the party, Lantos unleashed his king’s English--spoken in his native Hungarian accent--and his aplomb at stringing adjectives into spine-chilling invective.

“An irresponsible, politically motivated, tawdry, partisan request,” the nine-term congressman labeled one GOP demand.

Lantos, 69, always outspoken but little known outside his district, found that television cameras were eating up his high-voltage sound bites. His rhetoric was so shrill that at times it left even some on his own side of the aisle squirming.

In an interview, the onetime economics professor with a doctorate in the subject from UC Berkeley said he would not call himself angry: “I would say ‘outraged at the perpetration of injustice.’ ”

Lantos grew so outraged at one point that he compared an uncooperative witness to former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who misrepresented his Nazi-era war record. Those are fighting words, especially from Lantos, who escaped from a Nazi camp and is the only Holocaust survivor to have served in Congress.

Independent Counsel Donald C. Smaltz was not amused by the remark. “I take umbrage with being compared with anyone in the Nazi party,” he said.

Lantos has alluded to the horrors of World War II before. He once condemned Republicans for “goose-stepping” along in their agenda, a reference that drew cries of protest from the GOP but no apology from Lantos.

Lantos did tell Smaltz he was not comparing him to a Nazi but merely questioning his truthfulness. He proceeded to shout down Smaltz for speaking out of turn. “I do not wish to be interrupted by the witness,” Lantos said.

Democrats concede that they are occasionally uncomfortable with Lantos’ sharp tongue. “Lantos sometimes just needs to take a deep breath and let his outrage pass,” said one White House onlooker who followed last week’s proceedings.

Actually, Lantos does plenty of heavy breathing. Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who is himself no mild-mannered guy, remarked that he could hear the air leaving Lantos’ lungs at an increased clip whenever the red light went on indicating that a Republican’s questioning time was up.

More than once, Lantos alluded to the Justice Department’s investigation of Burton’s fund-raising practices, which stems from a Democratic lobbyist’s charge that Burton strong-armed him for donations.

“I find him to be in that small band of right-wing zealots that are not helpful to a rational dialogue in a deliberative legislative body,” Lantos said of Burton in an interview.

Burton would not comment. No one dared bring up Lantos’ brush with controversy, several terms back, over donations that he funneled into New Hampshire to help elect his son-in-law Dick Swett to Congress.

Lantos has also taken aim at Democratic targets. His grilling of former White House aide Craig Livingstone during an inquiry into the mishandling of FBI files is still recalled on Capitol Hill.

Lantos says it is right and wrong that guides him, not partisanship.

“I am not a Democratic loyalist who follows the party flag right or wrong,” he said. “At my stage in life, with my background, I am very proud of my independence. The one thing that really gets my juices flowing is a pattern of unfairness or injustice.”

Some of Lantos’ GOP colleagues say he simply goes too far. Rep. Chris Cox (R-Newport Beach), vice chairman of the oversight committee, apologized to Smaltz for Lantos’ “character attacks”--saying that he did not speak for the state of California.