Cooking Brooke

"I am not going to be run out of office by allegations and misstatements and misconceptions," an impassioned Edward Brooke declared on the Senate floor earlier this month. "Whether I serve in the U.S. Senate again or I do not, I want to live with dignity and self-respect."

Last week Brooke got the opportunity he wanted: a chance before the Senate Ethics Committee to cleanse his name of some of the tarnish accumulated from his messy divorce settlement with ex-Wife Remigia. Brooke's troubles with the committee began in June, when it opened an investigation into whether he had borrowed thousands of dollars, as indicated by a deposition he had given to Remigia's lawyers, and then failed to report the loans to the secretary of the Senate, as required by law. Earlier this month, Committee Counsel Richard Wertheimer resigned, angrily complaining that Brooke's "representatives" had tried to cripple the probe by altering some records and not handing over others that were demanded by the committee.

When the Senator walked into the hearing room last week, he was outraged to find that Wertheimer had prepared a 54-page report describing each suspected violation, and had given copies to reporters but not to Brooke's lawyers.

The report detailed how the committee's staff had compared Brooke's checkbook with other records and found that a number of entries had been obliterated or changed. One of them concerned an Oct. 4, 1972, bank deposit for $27,500 that was originally recorded in the checkbook as a loan from the Bank of Montreal. But when Brooke's lawyers submitted his checkbook to the Ethics Committee, the $27,500 was listed as a return of capital on an investment. Brooke and his lawyers claim that the alteration was made to correct a clerical error.

On the second day of the hearing, Brooke accused Wertheimer of "professional misconduct" in making his charges. Said Brooke to the committee: "My career is in jeopardy, and I just want you to hear the facts and make a judgment." The committee announced that it had "no evidence linking Senator Brooke personally" with altering the documents. The absolution was meaningless, since Wertheimer's accusations were not against Brooke but his representatives.

Nonetheless, Brooke got the local headlines that he wanted; read one in the Boston Globe: PANEL ABSOLVES BROOKE ON ALTERATIONS OF RECORDS. Next day Brooke picked up the pace of his campaign back home, where he lags behind his opponent, Democratic Congressman Paul Tsongas, 37, by eight percentage points in the latest poll. Brooke's most difficult task will be winning back the votes of liberal Democrats, who once supported him but are now drifting to Tsongas, and mollifying the Republicans whom he alienated by supporting busing to desegregate schools, federally paid abortions for poor women and the Panama Canal treaties.

Brooke's backers range from Henry Kissinger to black Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson. But Tsongas has a popular supporter too: Senator Edward Kennedy. In the past, Kennedy has never actively helped Brooke's opponents. But sensing that Brooke is in serious trouble, Kennedy has taped TV commercials in behalf of Tsongas, who in turn backs Kennedy's national health insurance plan. If Brooke loses, he will have one small consolation: the Ethics Committee will probably call off its investigation. Otherwise, the probe will go on.

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