...Lieberman offered a curt description of the telephone conversation he and Gore had Tuesday. "It was four or five minutes in length -- and too late," he said. He also drew a pointed distinction between Gore's sense of loyalty and his own.

"I don't have anything to say today about Al Gore's sense of loyalty, I really don't," he said, "and I have no regrets about the loyalty that I had to him when I waited until he decided whether he would run to make my decision because that was the right thing to do."

Earlier Tuesday on NBC-TV's "Today" show, Lieberman said he "was caught completely off guard" by the Gore endorsement. "I heard about it from the media," he said.

Lieberman returned repeatedly to the theme that Dean is someone who would reverse the gains Democrats made under President Bill Clinton...