Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, said the Senate Ethics Committee will look into mortgage loans he received from Countrywide Financial Corp.

Sen. Conrad is among numerous politicians and other prominent people who received home loans, sometimes on preferential terms, from Countrywide on orders from the company's chairman and chief executive, Angelo Mozilo. Those loans were known internally as being for "Friends of Angelo," or FOA.

Last week, Sen. Conrad said a review of a $1.2 million loan he received in 2002 to buy a vacation home in Bethany Beach, Del., indicated he received a discount of one percentage point on fees, a finding confirmed by a person involved with that transaction. The senator has said he didn't ask for a discount or know he received one at the time.

Sen. Conrad said he also has discovered that Countrywide made an exception to its normal practices in 2004 in making him a $96,000 mortgage loan backed by an eight-unit apartment building he owns in Bismarck, N.D. According to Sen. Conrad, Countrywide typically made loans only on properties with four or fewer units. Sen. Conrad has said he will seek refinancing on the property from another lender. He also has said he believes he may have overpaid for the Bismarck loan.

To offset the discount on the 2002 loan, Sen. Conrad last week said he was donating $10,500 to Habitat for Humanity, a charity that builds homes for low-income people.

On Tuesday, Sen. Conrad said the ethics panel is "welcome to all the documents I have." He added that he welcomes the committee's inquiry.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, also has acknowledged receiving mortgages from Countrywide. Sen. Dodd told reporters Tuesday he would be happy to cooperate with any inquiries from the ethics committee. He denied he sought special treatment from the lender.

"The rates that we received were not some cut-rate deals at all but rather standard rates that you negotiate out there, well within the range that people were being offered," Sen. Dodd said. He said Countrywide informed him and his wife that they were being placed in a special program but that he assumed that was because they were longtime customers.

James Johnson, a former chief executive of Fannie Mae, resigned last week as an adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama after Wall Street Journal reports about loans Mr. Johnson received from Countrywide. Mr. Johnson's lawyer has said those loans were made on normal terms.

Bank of America Corp. plans to acquire Countrywide, the nation's largest home-mortgage lender by loan volume, which has been weakened by a surge in defaults during the past year.

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com

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