Sedative Withdrawal Made Rehnquist Delusional in '81

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment on any documents released by the bureau. "We don't expand beyond what has been released, because that's all the information that's been released pursuant to the law," he said.

However, Bresson denied that the FBI's background investigations for judicial nominees are partisan in any way.

"We are not political; we are apolitical. We're just trying to find the facts," he said. "It's a very rigorous process that involves investigating both people who are going to say very favorable things and people who may not. We don't make suitability judgments. . . . We report the facts to the agency that has requested the background check, in this case the White House."

The files indicate that in 1971, the Nixon administration was deeply concerned about hostile witnesses to Rehnquist's confirmation after the Senate's rejection of two previous Supreme Court nominees, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.

In an October 1971 memo, an aide to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst had telephoned to request a "criminal background check" on two Phoenix residents who were expected to testify against Rehnquist's nomination.

The Post reported at the time that the FBI was stirring controversy by questioning potential witnesses against Rehnquist, including Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe. When a Harvard official complained that the interviews were "seriously intimidating," Kleindienst wrote back that the questioning was impartial and that "any assumption that interviews were conducted with a view toward 'intimidation' is completely unjustified."

In 1986, the FBI files show, Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the FBI to interview witnesses who might testify about allegations that Rehnquist had "challenged" blacks waiting in line to vote in Phoenix in 1962. Rehnquist was a legal adviser to the local Republican Party at the time.

Thurmond's request was relayed to the FBI by John R. Bolton, who was then an assistant attorney general and who recently stepped down as ambassador to the United Nations after the Senate did not act on his nomination. Although an FBI official warned that the bureau might be accused of "intimidating the Democrats' witnesses," Bolton approved the request and wrote that he would "accept responsibility should concerns be raised about the role of the FBI."

Bolton said in a telephone interview yesterday that there was no political bias in the investigation, because the request actually came from Senate Democrats.

"The Democrats wanted the FBI to interview these people who had raised questions about what Rehnquist had done," he said. "It was an unusual request. It stretches the whole concept of a background check. But Thurmond and the other Republicans on the committee at the time felt we should go ahead because there wouldn't be anything to it and Rehnquist would go ahead and be confirmed."

And that, Bolton added, is what happened. "The FBI didn't find any evidence that Rehnquist had intimidated voters," he said.

Staff researchers Robert W. Lyford and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.