White House Response To Leahy's Letter On Reagan Library Documents

Following is the text of a letter from WH Counsel Harriet Miers to Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), delivered late Thursday, in which Miers guarantees dates by which the Senate Judiciary Committee will receive Reagan Library documents that have been promised to the committee.  The letter responds to Leahy’s letter to the President of Aug. 9.

Responding to the Miers letter, Leahy said:  “I welcome these assurances.  Senators need sufficient time to evaluate Judge Roberts’s record in order to make informed judgments about this nomination.  But I hope that no records will be withheld from the Senate under the broad and undefined ‘constitutionally based privilege’ cited in the White House letter.”

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August 11, 2005

Dear Senator Leahy:

I am responding on behalf of President Bush to your letter of August 9,2005, inquiring about the status of the availability for review of records at the Ronald Reagan Library. I am sending a similar response to Senator Schumer today.

As you most likely are aware, we requested expedited opening of the records in Judge Roberts' staff files at the Ronald Reagan Library. As a result, I am very pleased to report that the files of particular interest identified in your letter of July 26, 2005, should be opened no later than Monday, August 15,2005. With respect to the remainder of the available records at the Reagan Library, we expect the opening process to be complete no later than August 22, 2005. We are grateful to the staff of both the Reagan Library and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), whose efforts have made it possible to significantly compress a time-consuming process that ordinarily takes many months.

As I am sure you are aware, prior to the opening of records such as those you have requested from the Ronald Reagan Library, certain reviews must be completed. First, NARA staff must review every page to determine whether any records must be withheld under law due to concerns such as national security or personal privacy. Then the representative for former President Ronald Reagan and the White House Counsel's Office review the records for possible assertions of Constitutionally-based privilege. Although Constitutionally-based privilege may be asserted to protect records reflecting deliberative processes, we have determined that as a general matter records will not be withheld on that basis. This decision will make available thousands of pages of records related to Judge Roberts' work in the White House Counsel's Office that clearly fall within and could be withheld pursuant to that Constitutionally-based privilege.

We look forward to working with you.

 

Harriet Miers
Counsel to the President
The Honorable Patrick Leahy
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

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[For reference, below is Leahy’s Aug. 9 letter to which the Miers letter responds.]

Leahy Asks Greater White House Cooperation
On Reagan Library Documents
August 9, 2005

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt., ranking member, Senate Judiciary Committee) late Tuesday sent a letter to President Bush requesting greater White House cooperation in supplying documents the White House already has agreed to provide to the panel.  Leahy, writing on behalf of all eight Democratic members of the committee, noted that White House cooperation is essential to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s preparation for the confirmation hearings that will begin Sept. 6.

Leahy’s letter follows up a White House letter delivered last Friday night which responds to the Judiciary Democrats’ request for prioritizing documents from the Reagan Library.  The Friday White House letter reports that Reagan Library officials are prioritizing files on the basis of highest usefulness to the Judiciary Committee before forwarding them to the White House, but the letter does not indicate that the White House is doing the same after its file-by-file reviews are completed.  The new Leahy letter asks that the White House, like the Reagan Library, also focus on priority documents first.  Leahy further asks that documents, once White House reviews are finished, be provided to the committee on a rolling basis to speed the process.  Leahy noted that some of these documents have been selectively provided to the press but not yet to the Judiciary Committee.  Leahy, on behalf of the committee’s Democratic members, also asks the White House for a progress report and timetable on its handling of the Reagan Library documents.  

The text of the letter follows:

[CONTACT: David Carle, 202-224-3693]
 

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August 9, 2005

President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, D.C.  20500

Dear Mr. President:

            I write on behalf of Democratic Members of the Committee on the Judiciary to thank you for your response last Friday to our July 26, 2005, letter.  Our letter had requested that the White House prioritize and provide on a rolling basis selected files relating to the work of John G. Roberts, Jr., in the Department of Justice and in the Office of White House Counsel.  I also write to inquire about numerous pending questions from our earlier correspondence that were not answered in your letter last Friday.  While the information we received from your Office of Legislative Affairs was useful, it did not address many of our questions about the handling, processing, and delivery of those documents to the Committee in time for Judge Roberts’s confirmation hearing.  Timely cooperation from the Administration is essential to the Committee’s preparations for the upcoming hearings.

            We understand that the process of reviewing the approximately 50,000 pages of relevant papers housed in the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, is well underway.  Published reports state that the head of the Library has estimated that such a review would take three weeks, and the National Archive’s website estimates the documents will be made public by mid-August.  Nonetheless, on August 5, 2005, it was reported in the Washington Post that the White House already has possession of some of those “Reagan-era” documents, and that someone in the White House had provided at least two of them to the newspaper.

            In our previous letter, we asked that certain of the files relating to Judge Roberts in the Reagan Library be processed first, because they were of the greatest interest to us and possibly are the most relevant to the confirmation process.  While your letter of last Friday indicates that you have requested that the Reagan Library prioritize the files in which we are particularly interested, we would appreciate a similar assurance that the White House itself will do the same.  We also asked that the documents be produced to us on a rolling basis, as various documents have already been reviewed as required by the Presidential Records Act.  With the Washington Post’s disclosure that the White House is in possession of some of these documents, it appears that this request has also been ignored or rejected.

            We renew those requests and also request a progress report on the work of reviewing the documents in general and the priority files in particular, and a timetable for giving us the priority documents, as well as the remainder of the documents.  We certainly believe that making the documents available to the Senate Judiciary Committee in small batches as they are processed will be easier for all those involved in reviewing the documents than having to copy, read, and analyze 50,000 or more documents at once.  We recognize that the White House must complete its own review after receiving documents from the Reagan Library or the National Archives, but it is clear from press reports that such a review has already begun.  We are especially concerned that upon reviewing these documents someone in the White House provided them to the press but not to the Committee; if there are any other such documents we should receive them immediately.

            Senator Kennedy and Senator Schumer separately wrote to you late last week with their concern that the documents will not be made available to us in time for a meaningful review before the hearing begins on September 6th.  We all share that concern and hope that with your cooperation the Senate Judiciary Committee can begin reviewing those documents that have been processed, and any other documents that have been provided to the press, as they become available. 

Respectfully,

 

PATRICK LEAHY
Ranking Democratic Member

cc: Andrew H. Card, Jr.