U.S. & World

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Sen. Ted Stevens blamed his friend, an overzealous contractor, for the legal mess that has the senator on trial for corruption Thursday.

The Senate's longest-serving Republican, Stevens is accused of lying on Senate forms about more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts he received from a longtime friends, oil contractor Bill Allen.

During opening statements, prosecutors described Stevens as a crafty politician whose decades in office schooled him in the art of concealing gifts and favors.

But in the first public defense of the Alaska senator in the lengthy FBI investigation, his attorney painted a different picture, putting the blame for the ordeal squarely on Allen, the government's star witness.

The case has weakened one of one of the Senate's most powerful Republicans and a patriarch of Alaska politics for generations. He is now such a political liability that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin refused to endorse him in his tight re-election battle.

"Ted Stevens' trial started a couple of days ago," Palin said Thursday. "We'll see where that goes."

The key to the case is a complicated 2000 home renovation project in which Stevens' small chalet outside Anchorage was jacked up on stilts and a new first-floor was built. Rather than hiring a construction contractor, Stevens relied on Allen, the chairman of oil services firm VECO Corp., to manage the project, hire carpenters and review the bills.

Prosecutors say Stevens never paid Allen or VECO employees for their services, part of a long pattern of freebies he is accused of concealing. Allen gave Stevens a gas grill, a generator, a complicated exterior rope lighting system and sweetheart deal on a car.

Before a packed courtroom, and with dozens of others watching from an overflow room, defense attorney Brendan Sullivan said that Stevens paid every bill he received for the home project -- $160,000 in all. He described Allen regularly going overboard with his giving and said Stevens had no idea his friend wasn't sending him bills for all the work.

"You cannot report what you don't know," Sullivan said. "You can't fill out a form and say what's been kept to you by the deviousness of someone like Bill Allen."

As for the grill, rope lighting and other gifts, Sullivan said Stevens "didn't want these things, he didn't need these things and he didn't' ask for these things."

Prosecutor Brenda Morris told jurors that wasn't true. She said Stevens knew he wasn't getting all the bills and was quite experienced at hiding favors.

"You do not survive politics in this town for that long without being very, very smart, very, very deliberate, very forceful and, at the same time, knowing how to fly under the radar," Morris told jurors.

Prosecutors began their case by calling a VECO architect to the stand to testify that he met with Stevens about the home project. Morris said several VECO witnesses would tell similar stories to rebut the claim that Stevens didn't know what he was paying for.

"We reach for the yellow pages, he reached for VECO," Morris said, "and the defendant never paid a dime."

Just as Stevens relied on Allen for such favors, prosecutors say Allen tapped the senator for help winning government grants and navigating Washington's bureaucracy.

Stevens is not charged with accepting bribes, however. He is charged with concealing the gifts on Senate financial documents. He faces up to five years in prison on seven counts of making false statements.

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