WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats accused Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith of flip-flopping Tuesday after he defended fellow Republican Trent Lott on the Senate floor.

Smith, a longtime Lott friend and ally, said Lott's 2002 racial comments - which led to his ouster as Senate majority leader - were misconstrued by a news media that displayed a "wolfpack" mentality.

"I was half way around the world when an event befell Trent Lott that shook me deeply," Smith said, as he and other senators praised Lott, who is retiring at the end of the month. Smith was referring to comments Lott made in December 2002, when the Mississippi Republican praised former Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential candidacy.

"I watched over international news as his words were misconstrued, words which we had heard him utter many times in his big warmheartedness trying to make one of our colleagues, Strom Thurmond, feel good at 100 years old. We knew what he meant. But the wolfpack of the press circled around him, sensed blood in the water, and the exigencies of politics caused a great injustice," Smith said.

Lott was forced to step down as GOP leader following the controversy. He was reinstated as a party leader in 2006, in part because of a speech Smith made on his friend's behalf to fellow GOP senators.

"It was a wrong," Smith said of Lott's fall, "but it was a wrong that was righted."

Democrats immediately pounced. They accused Smith, who is running for re-election in 2008, of revisionist history and noted that Smith was among those who criticized Lott in 2002.

"However they were intended, Senator Lott's words were offensive and I was deeply dismayed to hear of them," Smith told The Associated Press on Dec. 17, 2002. "His statement goes against everything I and the people of Oregon believe in. "

Smith later called Lott's remarks "very unfortunate and hurtful," adding that Lott did the right thing in stepping down.

"Gordon Smith has a long history of pandering to different audiences and saying different things to different groups, but flip-flopping on segregation is a new one even for him," said Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

"In 2002 he thought Lott's remarks were wrong, and that Lott made the mistake himself, and today he's blaming it on the press," Miller said. "I don't think most Oregonians would agree."

Smith, in an interview Tuesday, said he was "trying to express respect and admiration for a retiring friend." Smith said he was "speaking from the heart" - not reading from a speech - and may have misspoke as he addressed fellow senators.

"I was speaking extemporaneously," he said.

"What I was trying to express in my speech is that I am proud of what (Lott) has done" since the controversy, Smith said. "He has apologized. Every day he has labored in the Senate to regain the trust and respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and he has done that. He has become a model for achieving honorable compromise and bipartisan legislation for the American people."'

"I believe in honor and redemption and now (Lott) leaves on his own terms and in his own time."

Lott, 66, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, said last month he is retiring after a 35-year career in Congress.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)