WASHINGTON - A large accounting firm accused William H. Webster, chairman of the government's new accounting oversight board, of making "false and misleading statements" last week about what he knew of the financial problems of a company whose audit committee he headed.

Webster denied the accusation by the accounting firm, BDO Seidman, which was raised in a federal lawsuit made public yesterday, and he defended his work for the company, U.S. Technologies, which has been accused of fraud. But he said that he nonetheless was considering whether to step down from the oversight board, a decision that he plans to make after today's election.

"I'm not the only one who can do this job," Webster, a former director of the FBI and the CIA, said in an interview yesterday afternoon. "I'm monitoring this. I have one concern: that these allegations and these articles and the publicity have raised problems for the board. If I conclude my ability to serve impedes on the ability of the board to function, I will step aside. This is not a job I sought. I won't stay beyond the time I'm useful."

The debate over Webster's appointment has led to the emergence of other criticism about his activities in the decade since he retired from the CIA.

Pitt's problems grow

Meanwhile, the political problems of Harvey L. Pitt, who as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission championed Webster's appointment to the oversight post, also grew. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, who has been one of Pitt's strongest allies in Congress, asked him to resign in a telephone call yesterday.

Schumer - who during confirmation proceedings last year hailed Pitt, an accomplished securities lawyer, as the "Zeus of the field" - said Wall Street was being harmed by a leadership vacuum at the SEC that was encouraging state prosecutors to take on the financial services industry and fragment its supervision.

"I called Harvey this morning and told him to step down," Schumer said. "He said he wishes I didn't, but he understood. I told him there are bigger stakes than the individuals."

Before his appointment to the accounting industry oversight board, Webster told Pitt that he had headed the audit committee of U.S. Technologies and that the company was facing accusations of fraud. But those facts did not emerge until after the SEC voted to install Webster as the oversight board's chairman, and the two men have come in for criticism since the disclosure last week that Pitt never shared the information with the other four members of the commission or the White House.

Claire Buchan, a spokeswoman at the White House, which recruited Webster for the job, declined to comment about the BDO Seidman lawsuit. Christi Harlan, a spokeswoman at the commission, said Pitt "believes that Judge Webster is a man of proven integrity who will make an excellent chairman" of the accounting oversight board.

As head of the audit committee at U.S. Technologies, Webster fired BDO Seidman in August of last year as the company's outside auditor. In the firm's lawsuit filed Friday against U.S. Technologies, Seidman asked for permission to disclose confidential details of what it had told Webster and the two other members of the company's audit committee before they dismissed it.

"BDO seeks to deny and refute the false and misleading statements made by and/or attributed to William Webster by using confidential records obtained in the course of performing auditing services for UST," the lawsuit said.

Webster said he had no objections to Seidman, the nation's sixth-largest accounting firm, making public any information it had about the company. He was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but the case added to his political difficulties by putting him directly at odds with a major accounting firm that the oversight board is supposed to regulate.

Moreover, if the records are disclosed, they could provide further fodder for critics of Webster's appointment, should they show, as Seidman executives suggest, that Webster failed to adequately respond to warnings of financial problems at U.S. Technologies. The virtually insolvent company and its chief executive, C. Gregory Earls, are under a criminal fraud investigation.

Seidman has said it was dismissed as the outside auditor for U.S. Technologies on Aug. 16 of last year after complaining about serious deficiencies in the company's internal financial controls. Webster and another member of the audit committee have responded that they fired Seidman for being too expensive and too slow in conducting audits.

In the interview yesterday, Webster repeated comments he made last week that he has no recollection of being informed about financial problems at the company by Seidman before its dismissal.

"They were charging $700,000 for performing auditing services for a company whose revenues were around $2 million," Webster said. He said he acted vigorously and properly to clean up the problems of "an incubator Internet company that was being run by a bunch of kids."

In a letter to the audit committee May 9 of last year, Seidman accountants said that because of a "lack of adequate financial and accounting infrastructure," significant trans-actions were not properly re- corded. But it also noted that the errors were corrected during the audit process. The letter, which has not previously been made public, also recommended that the company hire a more experienced chief financial officer. Webster said the company did so.

Tensions continue

But the tension between U.S. Technologies and the audit firm continued, internal documents indicate. In an e-mail message sent to Seidman on Sept. 6 of last year, a lawyer for U.S. Technologies complained that the accounting firm had decided to file a letter at the SEC "that suggests a disagreement" between the company and the accountants.

In the filing, Seidman said it had "communicated a material weakness in internal control to the audit committee and management" that the company had "deficiencies in recording material transactions timely, and in the organization and retention of financial documents and accounting records."

Webster is under investigation by the SEC over his conduct at U.S. Technologies. Pitt is the subject of three inquiries for failing to tell the other commissioners about the issues at the company.

Last night, Pitt abruptly canceled a speaking engagement in New York for today, saying he had encountered a "scheduling conflict" after confirming to reporters earlier in the day that he intended to appear before a conference of financial executives. The SEC also announced that its chief accountant, Robert K. Herdman, who is also being investigated for his role in Webster's selection, had canceled speaking engagements this week.

Reacting earlier in the day to Schumer's call for Pitt to step down, Harlan, the commission spokeswoman, noted that Pitt "serves at the pleasure of the president."

She said, "The chairman intends to lead the commission in implementing the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms and continue the aggressive enforcement agenda of the past year," referring to the corporate and accounting law adopted last summer.