WASHINGTON - North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad said he personally asked the chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corp. for a mortgage loan for his vacation house, but said he never requested or expected special treatment on its terms.

When the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee was buying the home in Bethany Beach, Del., in 2002, he said, he was referred to Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, which has come under recent, heavy criticism for its mortgage lending practices.

"I called (Mozilo). I said, 'I'm buying this property. Would you be interested in the mortgage?', and he said, 'Yeah. Call these people and we'll take a look,'" Conrad said.

"I deal with the heads of companies every day, and I didn't find it at all unusual. I did not think for one moment, and no one ever suggested to me, that I was getting preferential treatment," Conrad said.

Bethany Beach is a resort community about 120 miles east of Washington, D.C.

Conde Nast Portfolio magazine's Web site reported that Conrad and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, were among a group of public officials who got "VIP mortgages" from Countrywide.

Conrad obtained a $1.16 million loan from Countrywide in 2002 to buy his vacation home, then refinanced twice through the company.

Portfolio reported that an internal e-mail from Mozilo directed that Conrad get a 1 percent interest rate discount when he refinanced $1.07 million in 2004. A 1 percent break would save the borrower about $10,000 annually in interest payments.

Conrad said the terms he received each time he did business with Countrywide were no better than market rates, particularly since he had a good credit and repayment history.

But he said his former loan officer acknowledged to him that Countrywide dropped his rate a full percentage point.

"If they did me a favor, they did it without my knowledge and without my requesting it," Conrad said. "It's an appearance issue, but in terms of substance, I have not done one single thing wrong here."

Countrywide also made an exception in lending Conrad $96,000 in 2004 to buy an 8-unit Bismarck apartment building from his brothers. The company had a policy of only providing loans for buildings of four units or fewer.

"They said they frequently made exceptions, especially for good customers, and I was a very good customer," Conrad said.

An internal e-mail from Mozilo, however, said the exception was "due to the fact that the borrower is a senator," the Portfolio report said.

Countrywide, in a statement, said the company was "very concerned about the improper disclosure of confidential customer information."

"We are aggressively undertaking measures to prevent further disclosure of private customer information," the company said. "We regret any impact this may have had on our customers."

Conde Nast Portfolio's Web site said other participants in the company's VIP program included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.

Lawmakers' participation in the VIP program is coming to light just days after similar revelations prompted Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to ax one of his vice presidential vetters, Jim Johnson, who also apparently benefited from preferential Countrywide loans.

Conrad said it was Johnson who referred him to Mozilo in 2002 when he was seeking a mortgage loan for his Bethany Beach home.

Johnson, the former Fannie Mae executive, did not respond Friday to requests for comment.

A non-government ethics watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote to the House and Senate ethics committees requesting Friday that they investigate Dodd and Conrad, and determine whether any other lawmakers received preferential mortgages through the Countrywide program.

"It's clearly a violation" of Senate ethics rules, which bar lawmakers from getting loans more favorable than those available to the general public, said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. "But it's very hard to know what to do about a violation that the members were unaware of."

Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, has been involved in drafting legislation to help homeowners caught up in the national meltdown of the subprime home mortgage market. The Portfolio report says Dodd, who has labeled Countrywide's lending practices "abusive," has gotten special treatment from the company.

Dodd said he was unaware of the favors. "As a United States senator, I would never ask or expect to be treated differently than anyone else refinancing their home," Dodd said in a statement.

Portfolio reported that Countrywide made two loans at special rates to Dodd in 2003. One was a $506,000 loan to refinance a Washington townhouse. The second was $275,042 for refinancing a loan on a home in East Haddam, Conn.

According to internal documents cited by Portfolio, Countrywide waived three-eighths of a point on the townhouse loan, saving Dodd about $2,000 a year in interest payments. They knocked off one-fourth of a point on the second, saving Dodd close to $700 a year. Both loans were for 30 years, with the first five years at a fixed rate.

"When my wife and I refinanced our loans in 2003, we did not seek or expect any favorable treatment. Just like millions of other Americans, we shopped around and received competitive rates," Dodd said.

Mozilo received a compensation package valued at more than $22.1 million and cashed $121.5 million in stock options in 2007, a year Countrywide posted a loss of over $700 million and saw its stock plummet 80 percent from its peak. The company agreed in January to be acquired by Bank of America Corp. for $4.1 billion in stock.

Countrywide has come under scathing fire from congressional Democrats, including Dodd, for its lending practices, such as providing mortgages with low initial "teaser" rates that quickly ballooned higher than its borrowers could afford.