Democrats Seeking Release of Withheld Roberts Documents

Some Democrats believe this is the only way to build a case that Roberts is too conservative on issues such as abortion and civil rights to sit on the Supreme Court, according to two senior Democratic leadership aides. It also provides Senate Democratic leaders a way to pacify the liberal special-interest groups that want Roberts defeated and fear that party leaders are not aggressively challenging his nomination.

This approach is colliding with Bush's preference, long predating this Supreme Court fight, to enhance presidential power -- often by claiming privilege for sensitive documents and conversations. The Bush team, for instance, is refusing to make public Roberts's documents for his tour as deputy solicitor general in George H.W. Bush's administration, an effort to keep confidential litigation deliberations in cases involving the federal government. The White House also has the legal right to review the 2,100-plus yet-to-be-released documents and can claim executive privilege to keep them private, according to Fawcett, the assistant archivist for presidential libraries at the National Archives.

"The administration remains committed to providing all the material that is appropriate to give to the Judiciary Committee," said Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman. "We look forward to facilitating the release of these additional documents as they move forward through the . . . process."

Many withheld documents seem to clearly fit within the privacy exemption, including a memo from November 1984 detailing Roberts's holiday plans. In other instances, archivists are keeping documents on controversial issues of the 1980s -- or portions of those documents -- secret, for reasons that are not self-explanatory.

One file withheld, regarding the Iran- contra affair, was a draft memo from Roberts to his bosses with the heading "re: establishment of NHAO" -- referring to the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office.

The office was one of the ways the Reagan administration got around what were known as the Boland amendments, which prohibited U.S. intelligence agencies from spending money to overthrow the Sandinistas. The office was a way the administration could get funds to the contras for nonmilitary purposes, but once there the money was used for all sorts of things.

The only document authored by Roberts regarding Bob Jones University was also withheld. The Reagan administration reversed a long-standing Internal Revenue Service policy to deny tax-exempt status to the university because of its racially discriminatory policies, and Democrats want to know what Roberts had to say in the 1980s about this situation. Apparently unbeknownst to archivists, the memo was previously released to the public, but does not appear to contain information that would hurt his chance of confirmation.

Staff writers Jo Becker and R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.