There's no indication prosecutors are investigating Doolittle in connection with Wilkes or Cunningham, and the nine-term lawmaker may be guilty of nothing more than a poor choice of friends. But his favors for and from Abramoff leave him the only sitting member of Congress still under investigation in a scandal that netted a dozen convictions, including a guilty plea from now imprisoned former Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.

"I'm the only one of the congressmen mentioned that hasn't retired or left and therefore the focus seems to be on me," Doolittle, 56, said recently on a talk radio show in Sacramento. "If you really want to get a congressman, I'm the one that's left."

Doolittle himself had arrived on Capitol Hill as a brash young conservative several years before, joining the "Gang of Seven" freshman Republicans who broke open a House banking scandal. He ran for a second term in 1992 on the slogan "Taking on Congress," and complained that "the system ... has lulled people into unethical conduct."