WASHINGTON — Lindsey Graham is a freshman U.S. senator — among the most junior members of the Armed Services Committee — but he speaks with a unique authority as the panel investigates the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

That is because South Carolina’s Graham, a Republican, also is a military judge with more than 20 years of service as an Air Force prosecutor and defense attorney.

And that expertise has his colleagues — Republicans and Democrats alike — looking to him for incisive questioning of witnesses and pulling him aside to explain some of the finer points of the code.

“Senator Graham’s experience as a JAG (judge advocate general) officer with both prosecutorial and defense experience has given him a special insight into the issues that we’re confronting,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who also sits on the committee. “His questions have been very pointed and helpful in sorting out the situation we’re investigating.”

For more than four years, Graham served as a chief Air Force prosecutor in Europe, handling everything from rape to murder cases.

“No one else on the committee has his knowledge of military law,” said U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

His experience, Graham said, makes him angry both at those who are criticizing President Bush over the prison scandal and those who think what happened in Abu Ghraib prison was anything less than — in his words — “perverted.”

At the same time, Graham expresses confidence in the military’s ability to right the situation.

“I can tell you from personal experience that our military legal system will stand behind a whistle-blower.”

HE WAS IN THAT ROLE

Graham should know: He was that whistle-blower in a case handed to him during his early days as an Air Force defense attorney. Of the scores of cases he has handled, he said, this is the one he has thought about most lately.

It was 1984, and a young Air Force captain had been accused of using marijuana. Tests showed it in his blood.

Graham, then a baby-faced defense attorney assigned to Shaw Air Force Base, was appointed to defend him.

He won an acquittal for the captain and eventually appeared on “60 Minutes,” explaining widespread flaws in the Air Force’s drug testing system, a system that eventually would be dismantled.

But an insider’s knowledge of military justice alone has not raised Graham’s profile during the internationally broadcast hearings on Abu Ghraib.

As anyone who watched him as a young congressman during President Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal remembers, Graham has cultivated a gift for boiling down messy scandals into folksy sound bites.

“Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?” he asked as the House Judiciary Committee debated impeaching Clinton.

READING PEOPLE WELL

Graham grew up in Seneca in a mill village where his parents ran The Sanitary Cafe, a bar. He learned the art of conversation as a child, helping out behind the bar. He was the class clown in high school and a psychology major at USC who read people well.

In private practice, he talked to jurors as if they were sitting in The Sanitary Cafe, just having a conversation.

Graham used that same regular-guy tone Friday during the first installment of the prison abuse hearings. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sat before the Armed Services Committee, and Graham, straightforward and simply, asked Rumsfeld the question on everyone’s mind: “What do you say to those people who are calling for your resignation?”

Rumsfeld said he was in charge and capable of remaining in charge.

Before the committee hearings Tuesday, Graham defended Rumsfeld.

“Secretary Rumsfeld has to manage the whole war. It would be unfair for him to take a fall if this is just a limited activity of a few people or a prison poorly run.”

‘BLUE-COLLAR WORLD’

Unlike other Republicans on the committee, Graham has not supported Rumsfeld unconditionally. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, he berated Vice President Dick Cheney for suggesting that the Senate leave Rumsfeld alone.

And repeatedly, Graham has warned that it better not just be the lower-ranking soldiers responsible for humiliating Iraqi prisoners who lose their jobs and do their time.

That is only fair, said Graham, a fairness built into the Code of Military Justice he says must be reflected in the prosecution of these soldiers.

“Probably the core issue here is, we just don’t want a bunch of privates and sergeants to be the scapegoats here,” he said on “Meet the Press.” “Most of my friends entered the military as privates and sergeants.

“I grew up in a blue-collar world, and I’m just concerned that when big things happen, that little guys don’t take the fall.”

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com