Newt’s Ethical Balancing Act In The Next Few Weeks The House Ethics Committee Will Have To Decide Just How Deep To Delve Into The Speaker’s Past

Sometime soon, perhaps within the next few weeks, House Speaker Newt Gingrich could face the trial of his life.

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which for the past year has been sifting through many of Gingrich’s activities, is expected to appoint an independent counsel to begin the equivalent of a grand jury investigation of several ethics complaints lodged against him.

If the panel grants the investigator wide latitude to delve into Gingrich’s operations involving GOPAC, a political action committee that he used for years to spread the Newtonian gospel, the speaker could be in for a long winter.

The five Republicans and five Democrats on the ethics committee have been quarreling the past few months over the scope of the inquiry.

GOP members, eager to protect their inspirational leader against what one called a “fishing expedition,” are insisting that the independent counsel be kept on a short leash. They would prefer that the investigation be confined to some minor tax and federal election miscues that could, if proved, lead to a mild reproof and no lasting political damage to Gingrich.

Democrats, mindful that Gingrich led the cry for an open-ended investigation of former House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, in 1989, argue that anything less for Gingrich would amount to a whitewash. They are determined to have any counsel dig deeply into Gingrich’s long stewardship of GOPAC.

“Mr. Gingrich controlled GOPAC for eight years or so,” said House Minority Whip David Bonior, D-Mich., the speaker’s chief detractor. “In that period, we can’t be sure because he’s refused to divulge the full story, but we believe he raised between $10 million and $20 million. What was all that money used for? How was it spent? Who benefited? We think people deserve to know.”

The complaints filed against Gingrich run a gamut of issues. One questions a lucrative book deal, later aborted, that he arranged with media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s publishing company at a time that Murdoch had business before Congress. Another complains that Gingrich accepted free television time from a cable company for a conservative college course he designed and taught.

But Gingrich’s allies appear to be most fearful of an inquiry into his years as the head of GOPAC. Critics have alleged that GOPAC helped produce and promote the college course, which was funded by tax-deductible contributions from corporations and advanced a partisan agenda. That could violate House rules and federal law that prohibit corporations from making deductible contributions to advance partisan causes.

Where that inquiry might lead is anybody’s guess.

One senior Republican, who admires Gingrich’s leadership style, said recently that “no one knows for sure where an investigation involving GOPAC would go. I’d say some people are nervous about that.”

For many years prior to 1991, when GOPAC registered as a federal political action committee, it was a vehicle for Gingrich’s drive to recruit and develop a large band of state and local officeholders as a farm team for later congressional bids. Many of the first- and second-term Republicans in the current House are the offspring of that effort.

To finance GOPAC’s efforts, Gingrich raised large sums from wealthy contributors - far more than the amount that would have been allowed by federal campaign law if GOPAC had been registered. Until recently, the identities of most of the contributors and the amounts they gave were kept under wraps. Even today, some critics doubt that the entire list of contributors has been disclosed.

Gingrich argued that GOPAC’s purpose was to “educate” potential candidates and groom them for higher office, not to actually finance their campaigns for Congress. Therefore, he said, there was no legal compulsion to open GOPAC’s books to public scrutiny, as other federal campaign committees must do.

But the ethics committee reportedly has documents indicating that GOPAC’s ultimate purpose was to influence the outcome of federal elections - and that Gingrich acknowledged as much in his many solicitations for money in the 1980s, long before the political action committee registered with the Federal Election Commission. Gingrich himself has said his overriding goal from the start was to lay the groundwork for an eventual Republican takeover in the House.

An examination of GOPAC’s post-1991 filings with FEC also indicate that Gingrich used its ample financial resources for frequent political trips and appearances - along with the financing of seminars featuring national political consultants at vacation spots - and virtually lived out of the PAC for years in the 1980s and early 1990s.

During the year that the ethics committee has been looking into the various complaints, Gingrich has heatedly denied any wrongdoing. He has on different occasions referred to the complaints as “hogwash” and as “baseless and malicious.”

He also insisted that what he has done has followed the letter of the law and that he observed the rules of the House.

The ethics committee felt as early as last May that it needed outside counsel in conducting its inquiry. And it has interviewed at least a half-dozen lawyers for the job. But the dispute over how much leeway to grant the counsel has stymied the process.

“For the institution’s sake, they have to act, one way or the other, in a reasonable amount of time,” said Rep. Julian Dixon, D-Calif., a former chairman of the panel who took part in the investigation that led to Wright’s resignation from Congress. “I’m not privy to what’s going on in the committee now, but I think it has delayed a decision for too long. I guess what saddens me is the appearance of a partisan impasse in a committee that has a tradition of impartiality and overcoming partisanship.”

Dixon believes that both sides “will have to give a little” to enable the panel to work as the House intended.

But that won’t be easy. Gingrich’s adoring disciples in the House - many of whom cite GOPAC as a pivotal force in helping them rise to Congress - are convinced that the complaints are part of a Democratic plot to unhorse him and thwart the GOP’s drive to scale back federal power.

Democrats are certain that Gingrich has planted agents in the committee to short-circuit the inquiry and shield him from political harm.

Bonior questioned whether Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., the ethics chairman who has close ties to Gingrich, is up to the task of judging his behavior.

Asked about that, Johnson snapped: “Clearly, I don’t agree with him (Bonior).”

But some members on both sides of the aisle are whispering about the slow pace of the inquiry, and wondering why it is taking so long to lay some simple ground rules for an independent counsel to collect the facts, examine some documents, and swear in witnesses who might shed light on the case.

MEMO: David Hess writes for Knight-Ridder Washington bureau.