Joseph Bruno says he doesn’t like the recent unpleasantness that has passed over Albany, but if Governor Spitzer wants to put an end to the ongoing saga popularly known as “Troopergate,” he’ll have to start talking — under oath.

“When you say what’s the endgame, it depends on what the truth is, and we don’t know the truth,” Mr. Bruno said in a sit-down interview with The New York Sun this week. “We don’t know the truth because they haven’t been forthcoming. They’ve been covering; they’ve been stonewalling; they’ve been running out the clock.”

In the legislative off-season, Mr. Bruno has activated three Senate committees to investigate various activities of the Spitzer administration. He has brought in new artillery: a prominent Washington lawyer, Joseph diGenova, paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist Senate Republicans in their inquiries. He has happily cast himself into the role of victim to what he describes as the governor’s dictatorial leadership.

A recent poll found that a majority of New Yorkers thinks Mr. Spitzer needs to be more forthright about what he knows about the scheme to discredit Mr. Bruno. But the Siena Research Institute poll also found that only 12% of New Yorkers think that getting to the bottom of the controversy should be a top priority, a sign that the public’s patience has a limit.

Meanwhile, the Democratic establishment, which had been reluctant to stand by the governor, is now lining up behind him in the wake of the announcement yesterday by Albany’s district attorney, David Soares, that his office found no “illegal conduct” by the administration.

Still, Mr. Bruno says it’s not time to loosen his grip. “Everything we’re doing is intended to get at the truth,” he said.

Senate Republicans yesterday immediately announced they would carry on with their investigations. If the state ethics commission, which is conducting its own inquiry, fails to uncover what happened between the governor’s office and the state police, Senate Republicans will finish the job themselves, Mr. Bruno said.

“It isn’t a question of destroying anybody,” he said. “It’s a question of doing what’s in the best interest of the people.

Mr. Bruno reserves his harshest criticism for Mr. Spitzer’s inspector general, Kristine Hamann, who aborted her office’s inquiry into the governor’s office and refused to extend subpoena power to Attorney General Cuomo, preventing him from taking sworn testimony from the executive chamber. She “has been in my mind irresponsible on behalf of the people,” he said, calling her record an “abomination.”

Mr. Bruno had just arrived at his reserved duplex suite on the 45th floor at the Sheraton New York hotel after taking Amtrak’s Hudson line down to Manhattan. He has stopped flying in state aircraft since the governor took a special interest in his schedule, and said he was pleasantly surprised that his train was on time.

“If it comes out of Chicago or somewhere, then we’re an hour and a half, two hours late,” he said. Old-fashioned land travel has its advantages. He can use his cell phone or play poker. “I always win,” he said.

Looking tan and rested, the 78-year-old Senate leader wore an open-collar crosshatch shirt, dark blue slacks, and a braided leather belt. He had taken off his loafers and munched on a plate of fresh figs, pineapple, strawberries, and Gouda in a living room area with a wrap-around view of a large swath of Manhattan.

“Ain’t that beautiful,” he said. “It’s a bit much.”

A Sheraton reservation agent quoted a price of $10,000 a night for the 2,600-square-foot suite. Another agent said the suite wasn’t available to the public but only to large groups at contract rates. Mr. Bruno said his Senate political accounts and not “government money” paid for his weekend stay.

Mr. Bruno came to the city to meet with Mayor Bloomberg and “successful business types” about “mostly legislative stuff, preparing for a budget.”

Senate Republicans, he said, have never stopped focusing on governing. They’ve been holding hearings around the state on economic development and job growth. They are ready to come back to Albany in October to sign into the law all the agreements on capital spending, campaign finance, and property tax rebates for lower-income elderly New Yorkers that were struck months ago in “antebellum” Albany. They are priming for a battle next year over preserving increases in property tax cuts that Mr. Spitzer had promised as a candidate for governor.

He sees the state party returning to its low-tax, less-government regulation, freedom of expression roots. “The party of Lincoln. I see us going back to that,” he said.

Still, Mr. Bruno said, Albany would be more productive if a different man occupied the governor’s mansion. He imagines what life would be like if Mr. Cuomo were governor. “We would get a lot of stuff done,” he said.

Mr. Bruno, a moderate Republican who says the governor “is so far up there on the liberal left … starting with gay marriage,” bestows bountiful praise on the politically ambitious Democratic attorney general.

“He has been fair and diligent and doing a really good job on a lot of fronts,” he said. “I think he has showed a lot of insight, doing the student loans, where there were real abuses, what he’s doing with Medicaid fraud already.

“The previous AG in eight years didn’t scratch the surface on any of it,” he said, referring to Mr. Spitzer. “And Andrew has weighed in, and is going to get some serious results. So I think he’s doing well in terms of governing on behalf of the people and being representative as an advocate on behalf of the people,” he said.

So what about 2010? Does Mr. Bruno, who said he suspected that Mr. Bloomberg might seek the governorship, foresee a match-up between Messrs. Spitzer and Cuomo?

Mr. Cuomo’s “got a lot of charm, and very personable, very bright, extremely articulate, he’s a pretty good package,” Mr. Bruno said. “If I had to guess, someone like Andrew who is positioned where he is at this stage of his life at his age and background and experience, he’ll be a candidate.”