It was former President Bill Clinton who personally persuaded him to drop his bid for the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee last fall, Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., says — not incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi or anyone else.

Breaking a six-month silence on an episode that gave the victorious Democrats fits and Republicans an easy mark, Hastings said there would have been “blood all over the floor” had he pursued the prestigious seat.

“Had I had chosen that path, I could have demogogued on a whole set of persons,” said Hastings, the eight-term African-American who reached for the gavel of the Intelligence Committee after the Democrats took control of the House in the November elections.

Pelosi had let it be known that fellow Californian Jane Harman, the panel’s ranking Democrat, would not get the job.

And in the end, Hastings’ own bid would sink in a swirl of controversy over his trial and impeachment on corruption charges as a federal judge in the 1980s.

Hastings, 70, blamed “Democrats in high places,” who harped on the putative embarrassment his impeachment would cause, right at the moment party leaders wanted to focus on their legislative challenges to President Bush.

Hastings said his enemies were “not necessarily Congress people, but people inside the Beltway,” later narrowing it to Democratic “party functionaries.”

But he singled out Harman, “who didn’t only cause consternation with me,” he said, “she certainly harmed her own chances with that kind of overt campaign.”

“During the course of that active campaign,” he said in his Rayburn office, “Jane did and said a lot of things that caused me, uh, consternation — I’m trying to be nice — consternation,” he said.

“I don’t want to get into it” further, he added. “I’m okay now, and it’s better that I leave it.”

But other sources said Harman was telling fellow members of Congress and Jewish groups that she would be “better for Israel” than Hastings.

“I am very surprised at Alcee’s comment,” Harman responded through a spokesman. “I consider him a valued friend and have moved on.”

Hastings says bidding for the Intelligence perch wasn’t his idea: Pelosi had pledged to the Congressional Black Caucus a year earlier that “Alcee Hastings will be chairman of the Intelligence Committee,” he recalls.

“And then we won the majority and the speculation began,” he said, “not just about me, but about a lot of things, in terms of who would be in what committee positions, subcommittee positions and the chairs.”

By virtue of seniority, with Harman cast aside, Hastings was in line to take over the Intelligence panel.

But the Democrats panicked, and conservative activists loudly chortled, over the prospect of Hastings ascending to the committee chair.

A Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, former Navy pilot Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., was going to jail on corruption charges, and Democrats didn’t want that picture blurred by one of their own having ethical problems, no matter that he had been acquitted of taking bribes.

In his interview with me last week, Hastings rued that his accomplishments over 14 years in Congress, and his widely accepted expertise on intelligence issues, “didn’t matter.”

“What wound up happening was, I could never explain, and no one ever cared that, I was found not guilty in a court of law, that I was innocent of what I was charged with. And even though since, including after my removal from office, facts continued to filter out suggesting my innocence, that didn’t matter,” he said.

The Black Caucus dug in for a nasty fight, and the issue turned into a referendum on rookie Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership skills.

Bill Clinton wanted it to go away.

Late in November, he placed a call to the self-made former trial lawyer, who earned a juris doctor degree from Florida A&M in 1963, when segregation was the way of the land.

“We talked to close to an hour and forty minutes,” said the would-be chairman, who added that the affair still “stings.”

“And he was saying, among other things, that, you know, I would force a rift in the party if I was to force the issue. And that sometimes you come out better if you can accommodate the parties that have a direct interest — meaning, specifically, that if you could find a way to say, ‘Fine, pass over me, choose someone else,’ then I would come across better, and be thought better of by Democratic functionaries.”

Hastings folded his hands in front of his trim gray beard. “He was correct. I had had that feeling before speaking with him, but that reinforced it.”

Clinton could not be reached for comment late Friday.

Hastings then called Pelosi and asked for a meeting.

On Nov. 28, he went to the new speaker’s ornate chambers in the Capitol.

“We talked very frankly for all of 40 or 45 minutes,” Hastings recalled. “And I suggested that she pass over me and select someone else, because the party would benefit more without having to live with all the negativity that was going to be surrounding this situation.”

Hastings says he suggested Pelosi appoint him to the Helsinki Commission, an independent federal agency that monitors human rights, as a suitable consolation prize for giving up the chairmanship fight.

He got that appointment, as well as the chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations — which he found pretty ironic.

“It’s kind of funny,” he chuckled. “It’s probably singularly the one way you can get into the [deepest intelligence] secrets, much more than if you were just on the committee.”

Pelosi “did not agree at that time to appoint me to the Helsinki Commission,” Hastings said. “She thanked me, and she hugged me. There was a lot more conversation that took place in those 40 minutes, but I prefer to keep it outside the public realm.”

Now it was time to make a statement. It had become a big issue in the media.

Pelosi wanted Hastings to announce it.

He balked.

“I said to her, ‘No, Nancy, you’re the power, and you have to come out of this strong. So you say that you chose someone else.’ “

Pelosi didn’t like the idea. There was an impasse.

“Then she brought in an aide,” Hastings said, “and we pretty much agreed on the language.”

There would be no press conference.

Pelosi issued a statement announcing Hastings’ withdrawal.

“Alcee Hastings has always placed national security as his highest priority,” it said. “He has served our country well, and I have full confidence that he will continue to do so.”

In February, it would turn out, he resigned that post, in order, he said, to devote all of his time to Helsinki.

Pelosi eventually tapped Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, for the chairmanship.

Shortly after he was picked, the former Border Patrol official from El Paso, a six-year member of the Intelligence panel, couldn’t answer my simple questions about forces opposed to the U.S. in the Middle East.

But Hastings thinks Reyes’ “grasp is growing.”

“He’s working very hard. Intelligence is a steep curve for all of us, all of the time, because of the fluid nature of it,” Hastings said.

“But I get the general sense that his grasp grows every day. I also sense that he knows that it is a tough job — his body language suggests that — that he is very engaged, especially as a member of the ‘Gang of Eight’ [the top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate Intelligence committees], and being involved in the issues that come first to that group.

“I get the general impression,” Hastings said, “that he is on top of the game.”

One of Hastings’ “negativity” issues was his finances.

In his May 2006 personal financial disclosure form, Hastings had listed about $15,000 in assets and over $2 million in debt to his lawyers.

In the intelligence world, a heavy load of debt is a red flag; people have been known to lose their security clearances because of it. The idea is that a person can be tempted to do favors for contractors — or foreign agents — in return for cash.

In his interview with me, Hastings said he had found a formula for ridding himself of such debt: Just drop it from his financial disclosure form, due out in May.

Hastings said the solution had been suggested to him by Terence J. Anderson, his lawyer during the impeachment trial, who is now a professor at the University of Miami School of Law.

“Very recently, as recently as the last three months,” Hastings said, “Terry Anderson told me to take it off my financial disclosure form, for the reason that, first, the statute of limitations has passed on any opportunity to collect the debts.

“And nobody wanted to be paid at this point at all,” he said, “so in my next financial disclosure, I will not carry it.”

A lawyer involved with the decision, speaking only in exchange for anonymity, elaborated on Hastings’ decision. He said “none” of Hastings’ attorneys “had ever sent him a bill. So, it’s not a question of a statute of limitations.”

In effect, he said, they did the work for free. But Hastings estimated the debt on this own and decided to list it in his financial disclosure form.

“It was Alcee’s ‘moral decision,’ ” he said, to estimate the cost of his legal defense “and file it as a financial liability.”

Efforts to get a comment from the Clerk of the House late April 27 were not successful.

Asked for further clarification, Hastings’ chief of staff, David Goldenberg, said, “We do not see a need at this time to run it by the clerk, especially considering that the advice the congressman received from his lead attorney in the impeachment trial.”

Reached in Miami, Anderson would not discuss the case for the record.

I asked Hastings whether any controversy that might be kicked up by his next financial disclosure filing was the reason he very quietly shed his chairmanship of the oversight subcommittee.

“No, it did not at all. I’m sure the right-wingers will use that and anything else they can. But I haven’t evinced any irresponsibility pertaining to [personal finances], nor is there any money-grabbing going on on my behalf.

“You know, if I had set out on a career to be a very wealthy person, with the opportunities I have had,” he added, “I would be a very wealthy person. But I did not.”

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.