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My. bowce fut Miipethe, Jontay, petty, 198 1- + t. editorials The Senate’s Ethics Ordeal The United States Senate’s long ordeal over what to do about the misconduct of | Democratic Sen. Harrison Williams of New Jersey has been ended by Mr. Williams’ resignation from the Senate in the face of an almost certain vote to expel him. Although the resignation has spared senators the unpleasant duty of expelling a colleague who was convicted by a federal jury last May on bribery and conspiracy charges, it has not resolved the problem of what to do about the questionable methods of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI brought about the conviction of Mr. Williams and six other members of Congress through its so-called Abscam investigation, in which the lawmakers were offered money and other inducements to do political favors for fictitious Arab sheiks. Of highest immediate importance to the Senate, however, was the task of dealing with Mr. Williams’ conduct. Although Sen. Williams steadfastly maintained that he had violated neither the criminal law nor Senate rules, the Senate Ethics Committee had unanimously concluded that, apart from his felony conviction, he had not abided by proper standards of Senate conduct. And that . _ judgment was supported by the proven acceptance by the senator of a personal interest in a titanium mine that would have benefitted from Senate activity that he had promised an Abscam agent. That evidence refuted Mr. Williams’ insistence through five days of Senate debate that he had done nothing worse than behave foolishly. Although Sen. Williams offered an unpersuasive Senate defense and failed even to apologize for his shabby conduct, he at least performed the useful service of exacting from the Senate a pledge to - investigate the FBI’s questionable technique of setting traps baited with federal money to ensnare officials who have not been accused of crime. That practice, as we have said before, raises serious questions of public policy: How far should the FBI be allowed to go in artificially creating temptation? Should it be permitted at its own discretion to set up in the lobbies of Congress and offer multimillion-dollar payoffs to legislator. . targets of its own choosing? Might an unscrupulous executive send FBI undercover squads to entrap its enemies in Congress? After Watergate, those questions are not frivilous. They should concern any lawmaker who cares about invasion of privacy, entrapment and other potential abuses of the FBI’s -power. That power, used unscrupulously against the legislative branch, could raise problems of intrusion into the constitutional separation of powers. A portent on the issue is evident in Republican Sen. Larry Pressler’s advertising of the fact that the FBI sent him a letter exonerating him of misconduct in the Abscam affair. Must certification of honesty " by the FBI now be regarded as a badge of acceptability? However the Williams case. _ Comes out on appeal through the courts, the issues raised by it will remain to be examined and resolved by Congress. fee mes