NATION : Senator Lashes Keating 5 Panel

WASHINGTON — Sen. Dennis DeConcini today strongly defended himself against wrongdoing in his dealings with savings and loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. and accused the Senate Ethics Committee’s special counsel of relying on “lies . . . and hearsay.”

“I submit this is disgraceful. I submit there is a bias, and I think it is unconscionable,” DeConcini said of allegations by the Senate committee’s lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, who is presenting the case against the so-called Keating Five.

DeConcini, an Arizona Democrat, was the last of the five senators to offer an opening statement defending himself to the ethics committee. He said Bennett’s evidence “contains hearsay . . . contains rumors, unfounded allegations about all of the senators.”