By Julia Campbell
Court TV

The story is familiar enough. An intern. A politician. And, ah yes, the lawyers.

One of those lawyers in this latest of Washington sagas is Abbe D. Lowell, a criminal defense attorney who has experience when it comes to public officials in trouble, including taking up President Bill Clinton's cause during the impeachment hearings.

This time, the lean, tough-talking Lowell is representing Gary Condit, who until a little more than two months ago was a relatively unknown congressman from California. Then one of his constituents, Chandra Levy, mysteriously vanished and the 53-year-old politician found himself with a household name.

The congressman is not considered a suspect in the 24-year-old intern's disappearance, but press scrutiny has intensified as allegations have surfaced that he had an intimate relationship with the missing woman.

Condit hired the legal power-hitter on June 22 after it became clear the beleaguered lawmaker needed an Abbe Lowell. The lawyer, as the congressman put it, is "an expert in the ways of Washington."

"You can see the difference Lowell has made," says George Stephanopoulos, a former senior Clinton adviser and now an ABC News analyst. "He figured out a way to protect Condit from the wrath of the police and preserve whatever's left of Condit's political viability by mounting a public defense. The only question is: 'Is it too little too late?'"

A career inside the beltway

Lowell, 49, among a handful of top-tiered Washington lawyers, has long been known as the go-to guy for a politician in need of good counsel. His client list has included former House speaker Jim Wright and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.

The Bronx-born lawyer made a national name for himself in the late 1990s as the chief defender of the actions of another politician, Bill Clinton, who like Condit fell into trouble after publicly disclosed dalliances with an intern.

California native Chandra Levy disappeared from her Washington, D.C., neighborhood

As the chief investigator hired in 1998 by the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, which was considering the impeachment of the president, Lowell faced down special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

Colleagues say Lowell fared well during the pressure-cooker days of the impeachment process and came out unsmeared. "The whole process was incredibly intense," recalls Lis Wiehl, a University of Washington law professor who worked with Lowell on the impeachment case. "He is intense. He is very, very bright, very hardworking. He will go to the ends of the earth for a client."

Lowell, now a divorced father of two, first came to Washington from New York in the late 1970s after graduating with honors from Columbia University's law school and working briefly on President Jimmy Carter's first presidential campaign.

He entered Washington's legal-political arena officially after landing a job as a special assistant to former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in the Carter administration. A few years later, as a private litigator, Lowell took on the friendly skies, representing the City of Alexandria, Va., over National Airport's scatter plan. The lawyer won an injunction stopping flights over the suburbs, but lost the case on appeal. Congress later reversed the decision, banning flights over residential areas.

In 1983, Lowell joined forces with Stanley Brand, creating a partnership that would soon earn a reputation for taking on the government and defending public officials with legal troubles. (The two lawyers parted amicably in 1999, with Lowell leaving to join a larger firm as managing director of the Washington office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.)

Abbe Lowell speaks to House Judiciary Committee

Lowell apparently saw the good in defending politicians under fire.

"Anytime you have the great big government with all its resources taking on individuals, you are representing the good guys," Lowell said in an interview with Regardie's magazine in 1989. "They've got the entire weight of a government bearing down on them. I'm just doing what I always did — I'm playing the Equalizer."

Defending a congressman

By many accounts, the congressman made a good choice in hiring Lowell as his counsel.

Condit was fumbling badly before Lowell stepped in. Pressured from both sides, by the police and the missing intern's parents, the gregarious politician shrunk from public view.

Lowell stepped in and began negotiating Condit's interaction with the police, arranging two additional interviews with investigators. According to published reports, it was during one of those sessions that Condit told police he had a sexual relationship with Levy, although he has yet to publicly acknowledge it.

Late Monday, Lowell agreed to allow police to search his client's Washington apartment and collect DNA samples from the congressman. He hedged when asked whether Condit will take a lie detector test, a request made by Chandra's parents, Robert and Susan Levy.

Lowell's role so far seems also to be political, as he fends off a hungry press corps that has latched onto a sensational story during a sleepy summer in Washington. This past weekend, Lowell hit all the Sunday news talk shows staunchly arguing that the press should back off.

"What [Condit] told the police about what his relationships were with her or anybody else is not the news," Lowell said on CNN's ''Late Edition.'' ''You're making it the news. It's not helping find Chandra Levy.''

Lowell argues that the media is invading the Condit family's privacy.

His attack-dog reputation with the press is not unfamiliar. In fact, the same Regardie's piece described Lowell as the "most irritating lawyer in Washington." But his gruff demeanor has not marred the impressions of his admirers.

"I don't remember many cases in which Mother Teresa played a leading role for the defense," said U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., one of the members of the House Judiciary Committee that hired Lowell.

Lowell's experience and skill, both legally and politically, in representing public officials will ultimately be of help to Condit, his peers say.

"The congressman is in a life and death situation in every political sense of the term," said Charles J. Cooper, a former justice department official in the Reagan administration and an acquaintance of Lowell. "He is in a fight for survival. [Lowell] knows how this particular kind of crisis unfolds and the impulses at work on both sides. That is the kind of experience and savvy Condit needs."