Leahy Presses Bush
Administration to Release Alito Information Being Withheld
WASHINGTON (Wednesday, Dec. 7) –
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member of the
Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday sent the following letter to
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seeking documents relating to
the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito. Leahy is seeking
documents that were withheld from a recent public request under
the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. The Bush
Administration cited statutory exceptions to FOIA as the basis
for withholding this information from public release. In his
letter, Leahy noted that these FOIA exceptions do not apply to
the Senate in its role of reviewing the President’s
nominations. Leahy urged the prompt release of these materials
to the Committee. The text of the letter is below.
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December 7, 2005
The Honorable Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Gonzales:
Thank you for providing us with
copies of the materials relating to Judge Alito which the
Department of Justice recently released to the public pursuant
to a private party’s Freedom of Information Act request.
We appreciate your courtesy in
providing this material, but I write today on behalf of
Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee about those
documents that were not provided. The press reports that
various materials were withheld from the FOIA response based on
statutory exceptions under FOIA, but the Senate, in the exercise
of its constitutional function of advice and consent for
Presidential nominations, is not subject to those exceptions.
Nevertheless, in the interest of
expediting this matter and avoiding any need for delaying our
proceedings, we request that you immediately supplement the
material already provided as follows:
-
To the extent any document was withheld from the
FOIA response due to a privacy concern, please obtain a privacy
waiver from the nominee and provide it to us. If there is still
some reason (such as the privacy of a third party) for
requesting confidentiality as to any particular information
within a document, the particular information could be treated
as “committee confidential” in the usual manner.
-
To the extent any document was withheld because it
is classified in whole or in part, please provide the
unclassified portions in unrestricted form, and an unredacted
version by the normal means for delivering classified material
to the Committee.
-
To the extent the President intends to seek to
assert some purported privilege as to a particular document,
please provide all portions of the document as to which the
purported privilege does not apply, including the date, title,
subject, author, and addressee of the document, and indicate the
precise nature of the privilege you seek to assert as to each
other portion, specifying in detail the nature of the omitted
portions which you contend gives rise to the purported
Presidential privilege. As you know, although you have
reportedly asserted an attorney-client privilege in respect to
some materials in the private FOIA request, that privilege is
not applicable to a nomination proceeding under the Senate rules
and practices.
-
If there are any other documents responsive to the
FOIA request which you have withheld on some other basis, please
provide them under seal, with a transmittal memorandum
explaining why you believe they merit committee confidential or
other restricted treatment.
For us to remain on the proposed
schedule for this nomination, we will need your promptest action
on these suggestions.
Sincerely,
PATRICK LEAHY
Ranking Member
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