The judge in a civil racketeering suit against cigarette makers said government lawyers may have been subject to “additional influences” when they cut a demand for an industry-funded plan to help smokers quit by $120 billion.

A Justice Department lawyer in his summation Tuesday in the nine month trial asked U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler to order tobacco companies to pay for a five-year, $10 billion cessation program. A government witness in his testimony last month advocated a program that would cost $130 billion over 25 years.

Ted Wells, a lawyer for Altria Group’s Philip Morris USA, the world’s biggest cigarette company, said in his closing argument yesterday that the plan’s reduced scope showed that the Justice Department’s case was “a house of cards.”

Judge Kessler replied, “Perhaps it suggests that there are additional influences being brought to bear on what is the government’s position in this case.”

At a press conference yesterday, four Democratic senators, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Richard Durbin of Illinois, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, said they would ask the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the matter, which Mr. Kennedy called “outrageous.”

Mr. Lautenberg faulted the Bush administration for downsizing the government’s demand that cigarette makers pay for a plan to help smokers kick the habit. He said the decision “reeks of political interference. It reeks of an administration whose heart isn’t really in this case.”

Assistant Attorney General Robert McCallum declined to comment on the decision to reduce the government’s claim.

Two House Democrats, Reps. Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, and Henry Waxman of California, sent a letter to the department’s inspector general yesterday asking him to investigate “whether improper political interference” led to the decision.