At Justice, New Pressure To Release Documents

As the Gonzales-era responses lagged, new questions arose. In the past three months, the Senate Judiciary Committee has demanded data on lucrative corporate monitoring contracts that Justice Department officials awarded without competitive bidding. The information has not been provided.

But most of the pending legislative requests cover national security. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) spotlighted the issue in a floor speech nearly three years ago but is still waiting for key policy memos on detainee treatment, aides said this week.

Rep. John Conyers Jr., another Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, last week renewed his request for a complete version of an October 2001 policy memo covering presidential war powers within the United States. "The notion that the President can claim to operate under 'secret' powers known only to the President and a select few subordinates is antithetical to the core principles of this democracy," Conyers wrote.

Some of the information at issue dates to the early months of the Bush administration, when authorities developed a secret electronic surveillance program after Sept. 11, 2001, that allowed government officials to snoop without warrants. Lawmakers have long sought a key legal opinion covering that activity and a later document that amended it.

Justice Department officials have said that they deserve credit, however, for releasing -- last Tuesday -- a 2003 opinion approving harsh military interrogation tactics. "Following a request of Senator Levin, DOD [the Defense Department] conducted a declassification review and determined that it would be appropriate to declassify the memorandum at this time," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.

"The public disclosure . . . represents an accommodation of Congress's oversight," he added. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued to obtain the document under the Freedom of Information Act, maintains that it was released "as the result" of that lawsuit, and that otherwise its existence would not be public.

Other documents requested by Congress could shed light on the reasons the Bush administration fired the nine U.S. attorneys and what role the White House and political appointees may have played. House lawyers recently sued to gain access to that material and to witnesses, after the Bush administration cited executive privilege and refused to hand them over.

But Senate Democratic aides said they doubt that controversial legal opinions drafted after the Sept. 11 attacks and in ensuing years will see the light of day until a new president assumes office in January.