WASHINGTON — In a surprise tribute to Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska in April, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada began with a momentary slip of the tongue. He addressed Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawai'i instead of Stevens, an easy mix-up, he said, because the two men are so close.

"The relationship between Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens, when the history books are written, will be legendary," Reid said on the Senate floor. "They are friends, a Republican and a Democrat, who are like a couple of brothers."

Flowery words are routine in the Senate, where decorum and politeness, at least on the surface, still rule. But the relationship between Inouye and Stevens is exceptionally tight. It began in the late 1960s as a strategic alliance between two young senators who represented the nation's newest states, then grew into a genuine bond as they became masters at directing federal money back home.

With Stevens now under federal investigation in a public corruption probe in Alaska, their partnership, which has helped bring billions in federal money to Hawai'i over the past four decades, may be in peril.

Federal agents have searched Stevens' home in Girdwood, a resort town south of Anchorage, and federal grand juries in Washington and Anchorage are hearing testimony. A Stevens ally and campaign contributor — a former executive at an Alaska energy services company — pleaded guilty in May to bribery involving four Alaska state lawmakers, among them Stevens' son, Ben, a former state Senate president.

Stevens, who is up for re-election next year, has privately asked Republican senators to stand behind him and urged people in Alaska not to judge him until the investigation is completed.

Inouye said his friend has told him he did nothing wrong.

"That's what he assures me," Inouye said in an interview in his Honolulu office. "So far, the senators on both sides have been publicly very cordial and friendly. I don't see any change. They don't shy away like he was a leper."

Inouye, 82, and Stevens, 83, first banded together in the Senate out of necessity. But they found they had common backgrounds.

Both had been decorated for their Army service in World War II. Inouye won the Medal of Honor for his battlefield heroism in Italy, where he lost his right arm. Stevens was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross as an Army Air Corps pilot in China, Burma and India.

They both were lawyers who had been active in territorial politics and were committed to statehood. And they both found they often had to explain and defend the needs of their states to Mainland senators who saw Alaska and Hawai'i as exotic and remote backwaters.

"We had the unbelievable chore of trying to convince our colleagues that we were part of the United States and worthy to be called Americans," Inouye recalled. "Ted and I were involved in this type of battle from day one."

POWER PLAYERS

Although they often disagree on national issues, their partnership for Alaska and Hawai'i has been unshakable, helping to insulate the states from losing out on federal money when political control of the Senate changes. Their seniority on the Senate Appropriations Committee, particularly its defense subcommittee, gives them an ability to steer federal money back home and the internal power necessary to get other senators to go along.

On the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, they are chairman and vice chairman, an unusual power-sharing agreement in an otherwise partisan environment.

They also have crossed party lines to help each other on Alaska's and Hawai'i's federal priorities: Inouye is one of the few Democrats to back oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Stevens is one of a handful of Republicans to support a Native Hawaiian federal recognition bill.

Their success over the years has made the pair often-revered figures back home as federal money helped create modern Alaska and Hawai'i.

In six of the past seven years, Citizens Against Government Waste has ranked Alaska and Hawai'i as the top two states per capita for federal money that is not part of presidential budget requests, or is not specifically authorized, or originates in one chamber of Congress, or serves only local or special interests. In 2006, for example, Alaska received $325 million, or $489.87 per person, in such spending, while Hawai'i received $482 million, or $378.29 per person.

The watchdog group derides the money as "pork," but Inouye and Stevens are proud of the rankings.

Inouye said that, in part because of Stevens, Hawai'i continued to do well when Democrats were in the minority.

"We didn't go down like other Democratic states because Ted Stevens would be the one to tell the other Republicans, give them a break, they need this," Inouye said. "And throughout good and bad times — and by that I mean Democrats in, Democrats out —these programs have been consistent."

Inouye and Stevens often travel on congressional delegations abroad and attend White House or Capitol Hill functions together. Over the past few days, Inouye has been with Stevens at events in Alaska, where he told people the state is fortunate to have Stevens.

PROUD PORK

Senate staff — and a few senators — have remarked on the personality differences between the reserved Hawai'i Democrat and the combustible Alaska Republican. At the tribute in April, which honored Stevens for becoming the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he remembers asking himself when he first arrived in the Senate whether Stevens was ever in a good mood.

Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate aide now with the Center for Defense Information, which studies national security and defense policy, calls Inouye and Stevens "the tag team of defense pork."

Inouye is "much more even-tempered. He's much more gentlemanly. The style of his personality is completely different from Stevens. He's very reserved, stately and dignified," he said. "Stevens is a scrapper, an ill-tempered scrapper. The effect, however, is the same."

Wheeler wrote critical essays under the pen name Spartacus on what he considered wasteful spending in defense bills, before he was outed and forced to resign from his position as an aide to Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican. He said he recalls attending meetings with defense subcommittee staff before appropriations bill markups and hearing nearly identical statements from Inouye's or Stevens' staff, depending on who was in charge at the time.

"On earmarks, nobody got everything, nobody got nothing," Wheeler said he was told. "We did as well as we could, but remember, if your boss voted against our bill last year, don't expect much help from us."

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an activist group critical of lawmakers' pet projects, known as "earmarks," said Stevens should step down from his powerful committee posts during the federal corruption investigation.

"That would do the whole country a service and it would also help increase the confidence of the public in the Congress," he said.

Inouye and Stevens have defended earmarks as one method of getting federal money for important state projects. Inouye likes to remind people that the East-West Center, for example, was an earmark. "I'm not embarrassed or ashamed by what they call earmarks," he said.

Stevens, according to the Anchorage Daily News, told an Alaska audience this month: "The money will simply go to other states for their needs and ours will go unmet."

But Ellis, who wants more transparency on earmarks, said Alaska and Hawai'i may be at a disadvantage over time by relying too much on Stevens and Inouye to deliver.

"We're not saying that Alaska or Hawai'i shouldn't get federal resources, by any stretch of the imagination. Certainly, I think that they, by being geographically dislocated from the Mainland, unfortunately sometimes they are forgotten or less thought about," Ellis said.

"But that's nothing you couldn't correct for in any kind of formula program or in a competitive award or a merit-based program for awarding funding. Someday, Senator Inouye isn't going to be in office, and neither is Senator Stevens. I would think that Alaska and Hawai'i would be much better served by having a merit-based system that would actually reward strong performing programs rather than having something based on political muscle."

CROSSING PARTY LINES

Ignoring party rules, Inouye and Stevens have contributed money to each other's campaigns. Alaska donors also have given money to Inouye, and a few Hawai'i donors have given money to Stevens, but mostly as tokens acknowledging the friendship, since neither Inouye nor Stevens has faced any serious political challenge.

In the 2004 election cycle, Inouye received $34,700 from Alaska donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which follows campaign spending. The donations include $13,000 from executives or family members from VECO Corp., the Alaska energy services company whose executives were caught up in the federal corruption probe. Bill Allen and Richard Smith, former VECO executives who pleaded guilty to bribery, each donated $2,000 to Inouye.

A VECO Corp. assistant told The Associated Press in a 2004 statement about the contributions that they were made because Inouye "is a friend of Ted Stevens and a friend of Alaska."

Another Anchorage businessman who donated money to Inouye, Ed Rasmuson, was more pointed, telling the AP: "You can't be dumb about it, this is Stevens' best friend in the Senate."

The Northern Lights Political Action Committee, Stevens' leadership PAC, gave Inouye $10,000.

In Alaska, where Stevens is known affectionately as Uncle Ted and the airport in Anchorage is named in his honor, he had been expected to easily win re-election next year to another six-year term before news came of the corruption probe. He was first appointed to fill a Senate vacancy in 1968.

Carl Shepro, a political science professor at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, said political opponents will try to use the federal investigation to weaken him but that he remains popular. "I don't see, in all reality, unless there is a substantial charge levied and he's in court, I don't see that the support for him is going to diminish a whole bunch," he said. "I don't know if you can say he's beloved, but he's certainly viewed as a strong champion of Alaskan issues."

Stevens, speaking to Congressional Quarterly Today in May about his campaign, mentioned his friendship with Inouye as an influence. "I just don't think I'd contemplate running again if Dan wasn't here," he said. "One of (us is) going to leave, and other will hang up his shield."

Inouye would still have his seniority and his ties with other veteran Republican senators if Stevens leaves office or loses re-election. But Inouye has lost two lifelines over the past two years — his wife, Maggie, who died in March 2006, and longtime confidant Henry Giugni, who died in November 2005. He would dearly miss Stevens as his brother in the Senate.

"It will make life a little more challenging," Inouye said. "I'll be candid with you, I'd miss him."

Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.