WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Congress took its first step toward revamping lobbying law on Tuesday, as a Senate committee unanimously approved modest curbs on privately financed trips and the special-interest provisions known as earmarks.

But the measure did not include the tough restrictions that some lawmakers had proposed.

Nearly two months after the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal rocked Capitol Hill, the 17-to-0 vote in the Senate Rules Committee demonstrated just how hard it might be to reach consensus on changes in lobbying law.

Intense disagreements remain, particularly about private and corporate travel, and they do not always pit Republicans against Democrats.

The Republican-controlled panel, for instance, rejected two proposals offered by the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. One would have required senators to reimburse corporations for travel on their jets. Senators now pay the equivalent of first-class fares, which generally cost far less.

The other proposal would have doubled, to two years, the current ban on former senators' lobbying their colleagues after leaving public office.

Mr. Santorum, asked later whether his colleagues were backing away from tough changes, said, "To some extent, they certainly did today."

In the House, the Republican leadership is considering a one-year moratorium on privately financed travel, even though the new majority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, has been cool to the idea.

Mr. Boehner, conducting his first regular briefing with reporters since being elected leader, said Tuesday that his colleagues wanted time to determine how to regulate private trips, allowing legitimate fact-finding excursions to continue while banning lavish junkets.

"There has to be a level of trust between the American people who sent us here and the Congress," he said, adding that changes in lobbying law were "an essential first step in what I view as a long process."

The House is likely to take up measures in the next few weeks. The Senate could act as early as next week.

The measure that the rules panel approved on Tuesday is not the only bill working its way through the Senate. On Thursday, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is to draft its own version.

The chairwoman of that committee, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said she, like Mr. Santorum, advocated reimbursement for corporate travel.

Another leading Republican, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, said such a provision would make it nearly impossible for him to travel in his state, where airline service is limited and voters are scattered across a vast expanse.

The panel chairman, Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said afterward that he saw Mr. Stevens's point.

"Somebody's got to look at this in a way that deals with reality and makes sense," Mr. Lott said. "Do we want to artificially make people pay more, which would force working-class senators not to be able to travel, and the rich guy to travel at will?"

Under the measure adopted on Tuesday, senators would be required to receive advance clearance for privately financed trips and would have to disclose all travel on corporate jets. The measure would bar retiring senators from negotiating for work with business until their successors had been named or elected.

The bill tries to rein in earmarks, the pet projects that lawmakers sometimes insert in bills at lobbyists' behest, by subjecting them to a 60-vote threshold. If an earmark is challenged and does not receive 60 votes, the Senate would strike it from larger legislation.

The panel did not take up a proposal by Senator Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota, for new restrictions on the legislative activities of lobbyists who are elected to Congress. Mr. Lott ruled the proposal out of order, saying it did not fall under the committee's jurisdiction, and advised Mr. Dayton to keep working on it.

"This was a good give and take," Mr. Lott said afterward.

Democrats, whose alternative measure was rejected by a party-line vote, thought there was more give than take. They calculated that it would be better to vote with Republicans on the rules panel and later press their alternative when the bill reaches the full Senate. The Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said later that the party-line vote "speaks volumes."

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Lobbying reform bill goes to full Senate absent ethics office provision
Joshua Pantesco at 3:58 PM ET March 02, 2006

SAN DIEGO, March 3 — After acknowledging that he had "made a very wrong turn," former Representative Randy Cunningham was sentenced in federal court here on Friday to eight years and four months in prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in return for smoothing the way for government contracts.

The government, which called the misconduct unprecedented for its "depth, breadth and length," said the sentence was the longest ever handed down for a member or former member of Congress in a federal corruption case.

In a halting, cracking voice before journalists, friends, political associates and others, Mr. Cunningham, 64, stood before the judge and largely read from a statement as he pleaded for leniency and, turning to prosecutors, apologized for his crime.

"I rationalized decisions I knew were wrong," said Mr. Cunningham, a Naval pilot ace in the Vietnam War and "Top Gun" instructor who parlayed those experiences into a powerful political career. "Before there must be forgiveness, there must be redemption. No man has ever been more sorry."

Judge Larry Alan Burns of Federal District Court said the former congressman's conduct, which prosecutors said included keeping a "bribe menu" with the prices of influence, undermined faith in government and wasted tax dollars. In addition to some cash payments, Mr. Cunningham bargained for gifts like a sport utility vehicle, a Tiffany statue, Bijar rugs and candelabras.

Judge Burns said Mr. Cunningham, an eight-term Republican from Rancho Santa Fe who represented the northern suburbs of San Diego, could have retired to business long ago if he wanted to make copious money but instead engaged in bid rigging and badgering officials and other witnesses to help cover his tracks.

"You made a wrong turn and continued for three to five years," Judge Burns said, referring to what prosecutors documented as the period of misconduct. "I wonder how far you would have gone.

"You undermined the opportunity and option for honest politicians to do a good job."

The judge rejected Mr. Cunningham's request to delay his arrival in prison so he could visit his 91-year-old mother, saying Mr. Cunningham had had months to say his goodbyes.

Judge Burns, in recognition of what Mr. Cunningham's lawyers have described as his failing health, recommended sending him first to a prison medical center for evaluation. He also voiced admiration for Mr. Cunningham's war heroism.

Mr. Cunningham's lawyers had asked the judge for a six-year sentence, citing his military service and what they called health so failing that he may have seven years to live. Prosecutors urged the judge to abide by the 10-year sentence that Mr. Cunningham had agreed to after he pleaded guilty in November and resigned from Congress. Judge Burns noted that the sentence could be reduced by 15 months if Mr. Cunningham behaved well in prison.

Prosecutors said they might also seek a reduction if they are satisfied that he was cooperating with their investigation.

Mr. Cunningham was ordered to pay $1,804,031.50 in restitution for back taxes, penalties and interest owed to the government and was ordered to forfeit an additional $1,851,508, based on cash he received in his crimes.

The extent of corruption stunned his constituents and Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill and, along with the scandal centering on the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, sparked calls to change lobbying rules. The two investigations and others involving lawmakers and senior aides have emerged as major election themes.

Given Mr. Cunningham's focus on funneling federal money to specific projects in exchange for lobbyists' payoffs, his case put particular scrutiny on "earmarking," using measures to direct money to favored projects.

Proposals are circulating in the House and Senate to require more disclosure of the projects and their sponsors and to open opportunities to strip the earmarks slipped into bills at the last minute.

In the weeks leading up to the sentencing, sharper details of Mr. Cunningham's crimes emerged. In court papers, the government said he had behaved like an old ward boss, sketching out a "bribe menu" on a note card with the Congressional seal. One column offered $16 million in contracts in exchange for the title to a boat the contractor had bought for $140,000. The card further detailed how much more contract work could be bought for every additional $50,000 paid to Mr. Cunningham.

The papers document lavish travel on chartered jets paid by contractors with catered meals of lobster, wine and "other extravagances." Bribers put him up at top-of-the-line resorts like the Royal Hawaiian on Oahu, Hawaii and in the Greenbriar Resort in West Virginia.

Mr. Cunningham, the government said, "bullied and hectored" officials standing in his way and tampered with witnesses to have them play down or distort his misdeeds.

The principal co-conspirator in the case, Mitchell Wade, a military contractor who is the founder and former president of MZM Inc. in Washington, pleaded guilty last week in federal court to several charges, including giving Mr. Cunningham $1 million in bribes.

Mr. Cunningham's lawyers in court filings, including a psychiatric report, portrayed his life as disintegrating, saying ailments had left him with perhaps seven years to live.

The psychiatric report, by Dr. Saul J. Faerstein of Beverly Hills, Calif., said Mr. Cunningham suffered depression and suicidal thoughts, in addition to a history of prostate cancer and other ailments.

Searching for an explanation for Mr. Cunningham's conduct, Dr. Faerstein said: "Society needs heroes and wants them to be superheroes. The normal sense of mortality is suppressed in order to fulfill this role."

After the sentencing, two marshals approached Mr. Cunningham and escorted him without handcuffs from the courtroom, one of them guiding him by the waist, patting him on the back and whispering in his ear. Mr. Cunningham will spend perhaps a week or so in a jail across the street before moving to prison, said an assistant United States attorney, Phillip L. B. Halpern, who helped prosecute the case.

On March 23, the government plans to auction some of the antiques that Mr. Cunningham forfeited after pleading guilty, including French armoires, candlesticks, nightstands and a glass buffet.

WASHINGTON, March 4 — The annual gathering of the nation's top pro-Israel lobbying group, which starts here on Sunday, will be addressed by Vice President Dick Cheney and United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton. Politicians are lined up to warn of the threat from Iran and Hamas. Workshops will offer advice on winning the legislative game on Capitol Hill.

But the official program omits a topic likely to be a major theme of corridor chatter: the explosive Justice Department prosecution of two former officials of the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that is ticking toward an April trial date.

The highly unusual indictment of the former officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, accuses them of receiving classified information about terrorism and Middle East strategy from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced based on his cooperation in the case.

The prosecution has roiled the powerful organization, known as Aipac, which at first vigorously defended Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman and then fired them last March. And it has generated considerable anger among American Jews who question why the group's representatives were singled out in the first place.

Aipac would appear to be an unlikely target for the Bush administration; it is a political powerhouse that generally shares the administration's hawkish views on the potential nuclear threat from Iran and the danger of Palestinian militancy. But the case does fit with the administration's determination to stop leaks of classified information.

Some legal experts say the prosecution threatens political and press freedom, making a felony of the commerce in information and ideas that is Washington's lifeblood. Federal prosecutors are using the Espionage Act for the first time against Americans who are not government officials, do not have a security clearance and, by all indications, are not a part of a foreign spy operation.

"The feeling in the Jewish community is one of indignation at Aipac's being unfairly targeted by federal prosecutors for trying to find out what everyone in this town is trying to find out — what the government is thinking," said Douglas M. Bloomfield, who was a legislative director of Aipac in the 1980's and who now writes a syndicated column on American Mideast policy.

As the marquee conference speakers attest, Aipac's clout has not been visibly diminished by the criminal case. Membership has increased 25 percent in the last two years to more than 100,000, and the budget has grown to $45 million, the group said. "As always, the organization is completely focused on its core mission, the strengthening of the U.S.-Israel relationship," said Patrick Dorton, an Aipac spokesman.

Mr. Bloomfield said he had been told by insiders that the investigation of Mr. Rosen, director of foreign policy issues at Aipac and an influential figure there for more than 20 years, and Mr. Weissman, a Mideast analyst with the group since 1993, had proved a "fund-raising windfall" as donors rallied to offer their support.

But the case has set off alarms among the policy groups, lobbyists and journalists who swap information, often about national security issues, with executive-branch officials and Congressional staff members. They were not reassured by a remark from the federal judge hearing the case, at Mr. Franklin's sentencing in January, that the laws on classified information were not limited to government officials.

"Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by the law," the judge, T. S. Ellis III, said. "That applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."

A January legal brief by lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman — written in part by Viet D. Dinh, a conservative former assistant attorney general in the Bush Justice Department — argued that the charges were a dangerous effort to criminalize conduct protected by the First Amendment. That argument gets fervent support from people who may not share the Aipac officials' conservative views on foreign policy.

"If receiving and passing on national defense information is a crime, we're going to have to build a lot more jails," said Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy at the liberal Federation of American Scientists. "To make a crime of the kind of conversations Rosen and Weissman had with Franklin over lunch would not be surprising in the People's Republic of China. But it's utterly foreign to the American political system."

Peter Raven-Hansen, a law professor at George Washington University, said the case raised several legal issues and undoubtedly would end up in the next edition of his textbook on national security law.

"Leaving aside the idea that this might chill exchanges with the press, this is a guaranteed formula for selective prosecution," Mr. Raven-Hansen said. In other words, he said, so many people have conversations involving borderline-classified information that the government will not be able to prosecute them all and will have to pick and choose, raising a fundamental fairness question.

Justice Department officials will not discuss the case. But in announcing the indictment of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in August, Paul McNulty, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said, "Those not authorized to receive classified information must resist the temptation to acquire it, no matter what their motivation may be."

The inquiry dates back to 1999 when, according to the indictment against Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, they first violated the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to possess and disseminate national defense information without authorization. What remains a mystery is how and when the government first focused on the Aipac employees, and why they were singled out among the hundreds of foreign policy advocates in the capital.

Former and current intelligence officials have said the two men may have stumbled into an American intelligence operation involving electronic monitoring of Israeli interests in the United States. The indictment includes what it indicates is a verbatim quotation from an April 1999 conversation Mr. Rosen had with an official of a foreign country, identified as Israel by government officials who have been briefed on the case.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman are accused of orally passing on to a journalist and to foreign officials classified information about American policy options in the Middle East, an F.B.I. report on the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.

In August 2002, according to the indictment, the two Aipac officials first met Mr. Franklin, who supplied them with more information, much of it involving policy options toward Iran. In pleading guilty, Mr. Franklin said he did not intend to damage the United States but hoped the two lobbyists would be advocates for his views within the administration.

(Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Rosen, and John N. Nassikas III, who represents Mr. Weissman, declined to discuss the case.)

Aipac and its former employees have tussled over legal fees. In October, according to a person who had been briefed about the dispute and who would describe the delicate negotiations only on condition of anonymity, the group offered the men about $800,000 apiece to cover legal fees. But they turned down the offer because it would have required them to give up their right to sue Aipac, the person said.

Though Aipac is not accused of wrongdoing, some lawyers say a trial could prove embarrassing for the group, because it could delve into the inner workings of the organization and the internal roles played by Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman.

"A trial has got to be a concern for Aipac," said Neal Sher, a former federal prosecutor and a former executive director of Aipac. "You don't know what might come out. A trial might reveal its inner workings, its dealings with the government and its dealings with Israel."

Mr. Sher, like other former Aipac officials, said one particularly sensitive point for the group would be any evidence that it ever acted at the behest of Israeli officials. Aipac officials have never registered as agents of Israel and have never been required to, because they have not acted at the "order, request, direction or control" of Israel, said Philip Friedman, the group's general counsel.

But the question of dual loyalty, to the United States and to Israel, became touchy after the investigation was revealed. At last year's conference, the group broke with tradition and did not sing the Israeli national anthem.

This year, officials have said, the tradition will be restored. Both the American and Israeli anthems are on the program.
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