Anchorage Daily News

WASHINGTON - Throughout his four-week corruption trial, Sen. Ted Stevens has sat quietly, listening to testimony from tradesmen about free home repairs and gifts, silent as the star witness told jurors that the Alaska Republican was merely "covering his ass" when he asked for bills.

But by late this afternoon, jurors had gotten a taste of the cranky 84-year-old senator who once called himself "the meanest man in town."

"Aren't these e-mails really what you're doing, you're covering your bottom?" asked Brenda Morris, the lead Justice Department prosecutor on his case, asking Stevens about how he handled a 2004 press inquiry into who paid for his renovations.

"My bottom wasn't bare," Stevens snapped back.

Stevens spent a grueling day on the witness stand, beginning with his lawyer guiding him through nearly four hours of testimony in the morning and early afternoon. In the final hours of the day, Morris spent more than an hour on follow-up questions.

The senator stuck with the two prevailing themes of his defense: that he wanted none of the gifts he had been given, and that his wife was responsible for the home renovations that led, in part, to his federal indictment. Stevens is accused of failing to disclose more than $250,000 in gifts - including free labor - that helped double the square-footage of his modest A-frame cabin in Girdwood.

Stevens, whose 40-year career in the Senate has given him a temperament more accustomed to being the one doing the questioning, bristled at having to wait to be asked. He wasn't always able to control himself, and he made his disdain for Morris clear by occasionally responding to her questions with inquiries of his own.

"I think you better rephrase your question; your question is tautological," he lectured Morris in response to a question about renovations to his deck.

Stevens testified he and his wife wanted none of the gifts and that they were especially annoyed when they returned to their newly renovated home in 2000 and found that Bill Allen, the chief witness against him, had replaced their furniture with used stuff of his own.

"If you didn't want all these items, why didn't you just ask for your key back?" Morris asked. "Why didn't you take away his key?"

"He was a good friend, and I trusted him," Stevens said of Allen, former chief of Veco Corp., an oilfield-services company and one of the largest private employers in Alaska. "He did things I didn't like and I asked him to change and he said he would. But he didn't."

Earlier in the day, under questioning by his own lawyer, Stevens had accused Allen of lying to jurors about conversations the two had when they were still friends.

Allen testified earlier in Stevens' corruption trial that he never gave Stevens invoices for work done on the senator's home in Girdwood, even though Stevens asked for them. Allen, who pleaded guilty last year to bribing Alaska state lawmakers, agreed to testify in Stevens' trial and two others in exchange for leniency in his own sentencing.

Stevens disputed Allen's account of a 2006 conversation in Arizona, where they were both vacationing on their annual "boot camps" - get-togethers in which they would drink wine and walk in the desert to shed weight. Allen testified that he and Stevens talked about the need for the senator to receive invoices for the Veco work on the house. But Stevens denied the conversation.

"That's just an absolute lie - I heard it," Stevens said, referring to Allen's courtroom testimony. "It's just an absolute lie."

Stevens also disputed Allen's account of a conversation the two had in Alaska at a restaurant owned by a mutual friend in Girdwood. Stevens told him he was aware that his friend had done more work on the house than he was letting on, Allen testified.

That was "another falsehood," said Stevens.

Stevens also expanded on the "teepee" theory his lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, first introduced in the opening day of the trial. His wife was responsible for everything inside the teepee, Stevens said.

"What goes on inside" was up to Catherine, Stevens said. "Outside is my business."

When Stevens described his initial vision for renovating their cabin by adding a garage and a bunkroom on the first floor, he testified that it wasn't what his wife wanted and, therefore, they came up with a more elegant design.

"When she said she didn't like that plan, there was a new plan, and there was no argument," Stevens said. "And I wasn't unhappy about it. I was happy about that."

Catherine was in charge of all of it, Stevens testified. She obtained the line of credit, maintained the checkbook for their house-related expenses and received all of the bills. She paid them all too, Stevens said.

"She got all the bills and paid all the bills," he said.

Yet Stevens himself demonstrated extensive knowledge of how much money was going into the project. He asked his old law school friend, George Reycraft, to dissolve a trust worth about $50,000 to devote to the renovations. He instructed his bookkeeper to open up a bank account with $10,000, and he and his wife took out a line of credit together.

Stevens - and not his wife - also met with the Veco engineer who drew up the plans for the house. Once the drawings were complete, he wrote a note to the engineer asking for a bill, telling him that "under Senate rules, I must pay you for what you have done," and adding, "Now I want you to give us a bill for your work."

He never got a bill from Veco or the engineer, John Hess, Stevens testified today, and could not find any record of Hess replying to his letter.

Stevens' wife had a differing version of the story Thursday, when she testified. Hess' design was drawn up before they hired their main contractor, Christensen Builders, but Catherine Stevens testified she thought they were paying for the plans through Christensen Builders.

"I assume that it was part of the contract when we were paying for the construction of the chalet," she testified Thursday.

"You just took a drawing from someone you never met?" asked the prosecutor.

"Yep," said Catherine Stevens.

The trial, which began Sept. 22 with jury selection, is likely to conclude Monday.

The jury could begin deliberations as soon as Tuesday.

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