The House ethics committee recommended last night that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) face an unprecedented reprimand from his colleagues and pay $300,000 in additional sanctions after concluding that his use of tax-deductible money for political purposes and inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or . . . reckless" disregard of House rules.

The committee's 7 to 1 vote came after 5 1/2 hours of televised hearings and the release of a toughly worded report on the investigation by special counsel James M. Cole. The recommendation, which followed a week of partisan conflict that has split the House into warring camps, sets the stage for a resolution of this investigation into Gingrich's actions.

Gingrich earlier admitted he had violated House rules and was prepared to accept the committee's recommendation for punishment. If the full House votes as expected on Tuesday, Gingrich would become the first speaker to be reprimanded for his conduct and would begin his second term politically weakened and personally diminished.

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Cole said he had concluded that Gingrich had violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. He said the committee members were reluctant to go that far in their conclusions, but said they agreed Gingrich was either "reckless" or "intentional" in the way he conducted himself.

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Cole made clear he had concluded that Gingrich's activities were not random acts but part of a pattern of questionable behavior. "Over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities," he said.

How sweet a victory it must have been when Newt Gingrich ran former House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) out of town because he made $55,000 off the bulk sale of his book to lobbyists. The trick was turned by Gingrich's insistence that an independent counsel be appointed. As Gingrich put it back in 1988: "The rules normally applied by the Ethics Committee to an investigation of a typical member are insufficient in an investigation of the Speaker of the House, a position which is third in line of succession to the Presidency and the second most powerful elected position in America. Clearly this investigation has to meet a higher standard of public accountability and integrity." Gingrich's words must haunt him now, when his own far more lucrative and questionable book deal has been added to complaints filed with the House Ethics Committee alleging his improper use of political-action-committee and nonprofit-foundation money.

Gingrich has attempted to squiggle out of the book controversy by giving up the $4.5-million advance from HarperCollins, the book publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch...he had met secretly with Murdoch -- Mr. Multinational himself, a man who built his media empire by hustling legislators on three continents -- Nov. 28, three days before he began negotiating the book contract. But when the book deal was announced in December, Gingrich's press spokesman, Tony Blankley, told reporters he didn't know whether his boss had ever met with Murdoch. Why didn't Gingrich step forward then and admit to the meeting if there was nothing to hide? Why was it only after the New York Daily News broke the story that he confessed?

The truth leaked out when a Murdoch spokesman the next day conceded that an NBC lawsuit against the Murdoch-owned Fox network, based on the foreign-ownership issue, was discussed. And two days later, we learned from Murdoch's Washington lobbyist, Preston Padden, who was also at the meeting, that this was not a chance courtesy call but rather was planned to counter NBC's lobbying.

This week, Gingrich was dissembling once again: "They said something to me about, 'We are in this big fight with NBC,' and I said fine. I mean, I don't care. I never get involved in individual cases like that."

In August 1999, Gingrich revealed that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair for the past six years with a House clerk twenty-three years his junior, Callista Bisek. Critics noted that Gingrich's adultery had taken place while he was leading moral attacks against Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. Because of the similarity of the situations, critics charged Gingrich's attacks on Clinton had been grossly hypocritical