3 Congressmen Face Sex Improprieties Probes

WASHINGTON —  The House ethics committee has voted to investigate three lawmakers accused in complaints of sexual improprieties.

The committee voted in a secret session Thursday to conduct preliminary inquiries into the conduct of Reps. Gus Savage (D-Ill.), Donald E. (Buz) Lukens (R-Ohio), and Jim Bates (D-San Diego). The congressmen were formally notified of the vote today.

Three House Democrats filed a complaint against Savage after news accounts said a Peace Corps volunteer complained the lawmaker fondled her while he was traveling in Zaire.

Since the incident, the State Department inspector general has sent investigators to collect information on Savage’s actions during other official foreign travels.

News accounts this week said that when Savage was in China as part of a delegation from the House Science and Technology Committee, he revised his schedule and went to Hong Kong and South Korea for shopping and sightseeing.

Before going to Hong Kong, Savage locked himself in a hotel room to protest the U.S. Embassy’s failure to immediately get him on a flight, the accounts said.

Savage told reporters two weeks ago, “I did nothing, that’s what I did. This lie was leaked by the State Department for political reasons.

“They tried to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King with a lie. . . . I’m in good company.”

The House Republican caucus, composed of all Republicans, asked the ethics panel to investigate Lukens, who was convicted in Ohio on a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the unruliness of a child. Lukens was sentenced June 30 to 180 days in jail and fined $1,000 for having sex with a teen-age girl.

Lukens has said his conviction is no worse than drunk driving or shoplifting. He has criticized House Republican leaders for seeking the ethics investigation.

The complaint against Bates was filed last year by two former aides, who alleged that he sexually harassed female members of his staff and pressured congressional employees into doing campaign work.

The newspaper Roll Call, which covers congressional affairs, quoted a number of former Bates staffers last October, who described him as orally abusing staff members, harassing female aides, throwing temper tantrums.