Think Progress

The Roberts Papers: What Is The Administration Hiding?

By Judd Legum on Jul 26th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

The Roberts Papers: What Is The Administration Hiding?

President Bush will release most of the documents related to Roberts’s work in the Reagan administration but not those with “national security implications”

Today in the White House Press briefing, a reporter asked a very good question about this issue:

QUESTION: Can I just ask a quick follow-up on that? Do you consider Iran-Contra a national security issue?

MCCLELLAN: I haven’t even thought about that, to tell you the truth.

This really goes to the larger question: is the White House’s quixotic selective disclosure policy designed to cover-up damaging information?

Comments
19

17 Responses to “The Roberts Papers: What Is The Administration Hiding?”

gregg says:

Well, McClellan says he hasn’t thought about it but I bet someone else in the White House has…
July 26th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Clandy Stein says:

Make this assumption:

The Bush administration withholds documents only because they know their revelation will damage the neocon cause, ergo, they fear the public reaction when informed of how this “transparent” administration works and what it truly believes, ergo, their refusals provide concrete evidence that they have something to hide. Roberts is no liberal dark horse. He is a party clone, beholden to corporate and religious extremist interests. This is the info that Bush does not want revealed.

In other posts the neocon trolls boast about how they will hold the reins of power forever. This is clearly another example of neocon shortsightedness. They only focus on the now. Even Social Security proosals are focused on the now. While Republicans seem to be looking forward, what they’re doing is trying to enrich themselves now because they know they won’t be around to pay the piper in forty or seventy years.

Bottom line: If Bush had nothing to fear, if he was totally comfortable with his choices, he would never withhold documents that have nothing to do with national security. Because Bush withholds documents as a matter of routine, using “executive privilege,” as Cheney did with his energy task force, he demonstrates a paranoid secrecy and a fear of being found out.

Expect neocon trolls, who haven’t a clue what is in those documents, to preemptively declare they are meaningless. When they do, make sure to point out that they are traitors to the ideal American process of government in which the government is always held accountable to the citizenry.
July 26th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
Darth Filibustrous says:

Abrams, Negroponte, Poindexter, Reich are all BushCo top guns …

… Robert Earl, who actually DESTROYED national security documents during the Iran-Contra scandal, is now working as chief of staff to acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

So when finally legal advisor to Reagan gets his natural nomination to the Supreme Court, you’ve gotta ask, well what’s new? It’s all in the family.
July 26th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Sandinista says:

Olly North is on PRIMETIME TV …
July 26th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
cynical ex-hippie says:

Sell weapons to our enemies… get your own show on Fox!
July 26th, 2005 at 4:07 pm
Don Davis says:

There is one simple solution if the Senate were populated by honorable men instead of a majority of obsequitious sycophants. The Senate merely has to say, and mean, “Turn over everything or we won’t even vote–he is out.” No harm can be done if the documents reveal nothing improper or worse. Clandy Stein is entirely correct. In this case the presumption of guilt must take precedence.
July 26th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Christopher says:

John Roberts did NOT work in any national security capacity.

Furthermore, there is no attorney/client privilege at play either because as solicitor general, his clients are the citizens of the USA.

So many secrets swirling about the Bush administration.

. . .
July 26th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
Don says:

Noam Chomsky: “What are the Iran-contra hearings about? What they’re about is the fact that the government was driven underground. Well, why was the government driven underground, why didn’t they just come out and do everything up front? They couldn’t. They couldn’t because they were afraid of their own population. . . .It’s very rare that a government has to go this deep underground in order to carry out its terrorist activities [Note: Nicaragua and thousands of its people were destroyed in this illegal undercover war].”
Well, Noam it’s not so rare anymore — as is evidenced at the Rove thread at this site, and in the Roberts nomination. In this case the Congress is Constitutionally charged with ‘advice and consent,’ but how can they perform their Constitutional duties without information? Roberts has virtually no judicial record, so whatever record he does have is important, especially if he’s going to write decisions which will kill thousands of American women and girls. Would the information harm the administration? Not if it acted properly. Are documents from the Solicitor General’s Office privileged? Why should they be — there is no lawyer/client relationship. I believe that the Solicitor General is the Nation’s lawyer, not the President’s. Of course, I’m not a lawyer like Roberts, who has a net worth of over $3 million partly as a result of lobbying for price supports on peanuts. I do enjoy them, though.
July 26th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
Alonso Quijana says:

“quixotic selective disclosure policy”? Amigo, you need to check your dictionary, and brush up on your Cervantes.
July 26th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
fake but accurate says:

Moving the Goalposts
That’s what the Democrats are trying to do, on several fronts, in connection with President Bush’s Supreme Court nominations. One instance of this is their demand that the administration turn over memos, etc., relating to Judge Roberts’ service as a deputy Solicitor General. This has never been done; the only prior such request, to my knowledge, was in connection with Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the Court of Appeals, which was declined. At that time, every living Solicitor General, Democrat and Republican, joined in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting the administration’s position. Here is the text of the letter, which was signed by Seth Waxman, Walter Dellinger, Drew Days, Ken Starr, Charles Fried, Robert Bork and Archibald Cox:

We write to express our concern about your recent request that the Department of Justice turn over “appeal recommendations, certiorari recommendations, and amicus recommendations” thal Miguel Estrada worked on while in the Office of the Solicitor General.
As former heads of the Office of the Solicitor General – under Presidents of both parties – we can attest to the vital importance of candor and confidentiality in the Solicitor General’s decisionmaking process. The Solicitor General is charged with the weighty responsibility of deciding whether to appeal adverse decisions in cases where the United States is a party, whether to seek Supreme Court review of adverse appellate decisions, and whether to participate as amicus curiae in other high-profile cases that implicate an important federal interest. The Solicitor General has the responsibility of representing the interests not just of the Justice Department, nor just of the Executive Branch, but of the entire federal government, including Congress.

It goes without saying that, when we made these and other critical decisions, we relied on frank, honest, and thorough advice from our staff attorneys, like Mr. Estrada. Our decisionmaking process required the unbridled, open exchange of ideas – an exchange that simply cannot take place if attorneys have reason to fear that their private recommendations are not private at all, but vulnerable to public disclosure. Attorneys inevitably will hesitate before giving their honest, independent analysis if their opinions are not safeguarded from future disclosure. High-level decisionmaking requires candor, and candor in turn requires confidentiality.

Any attempt to intrude into the Office’s highly privileged deliberations would come at the cost of the Solicitor General’s ability to defend vigorously the United States’ litigation interests – a cost that also would be bome by Congress itself.

Although we profoundly respect the Senate’s duty to evaluate Mr. Estrada’s fitness for the federal judiciary, we do not think that the confidentiality and integrity of internal deliberations should be sacrificed in the process.

The administration is producing something like 75,000 pages of documents pertaining to Judge Roberts’ service in other roles. The Democrats’ demand for the memos, etc., that Roberts wrote while a member of the Solicitor General’s office is apparently predicated on the idea that they will show what he “really” thinks on topics like abortion. In fact, though, they would show only what Roberts thought the law was in a particular area, how he thought particular issues should be argued, or how he evaluated the potential for success of a particular argument in a particular court. The Democrats are smart enough to know this, so I suspect that their real purpose is to make a request they know the administration cannot accede to, simply to create the illusion of controversy over Judge Roberts’ nomination.

http://powerlineblog.com/
July 26th, 2005 at 5:19 pm
PrahaPartizan says:

Well, it certainly looks like it’s time to dust off the slogan championing “Full Disclosure or Filibuster”. Let Roberts decide which he chooses. He must choose.
July 26th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
Marie says:

There is a lot of historical research on the Bush appointees to various high places within his administration — they all have a connection to the 2000 election in Florida. Bolton, Roberts, Gonzales, and many others were all figures in that fiasco.
July 26th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Ryan Neat says:

Powerline is a slanderous piece of crap. They constantly lie and misrepresent every story in the headlines.

If this were Gore pushing a pro-gay rights liberal the goal posts would be shoved up the bum of the candidate. FBA, you’re always fake and never accurate – thanks for the consistency…
July 27th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
fake but accurate says:

Ryan Neat, yes powerline just runs around forging memos from the 70’s with microsoft word and trying to use them to defame the president during a war and an election. Wait, they helped point out that the memos were fake, it was SeeBS and Rather who broadcasted that tripe, under instuction of the DNC. I can see how you wouldn’t like the truth, so now your saying that letter is fake? Because powerline published it you can discount it? Well, it’s not, and you all do push pro-gay agendas, until you find a gay conservative, then it’s time to bash them, like the conservative blacks, and women. You are only as accepting as it serves your purposes, hypocrites. Back to the subject, why now do you feel you have a right to records never used before? Because you are special, and even if you lie and forge to get your way, it’s OK, as long as you get your way.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
fake but accurate says:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — All seven former solicitors general of the United States signed a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy Tuesday urging him to drop his request for confidential documents in his probe of judicial nominee Miguel Estrada.

Leahy, D-Vermont, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee which considers the nominations of federal judges, has demanded Justice Department documents containing the internal recommendations made by Estrada when he served in the solicitor general’s office during Janet Reno’s tenure as Attorney General.

Late Tuesday Leahy’s spokesman David Carle said the senator’s office had not yet received the letter but will look for it Wednesday morning. Carle also defended Leahy’s request for the documents.

Three of the solicitors general served under Democratic administrations, four under Republican presidents.

“Any attempt to intrude into the Office’s highly privileged deliberations would come at the cost of the Solicitor General’s ability to defend vigorously the United States’ litigation interests — a cost that also would be borne by Congress itself,” the former officials said in a copy of the letter obtained by CNN,.

The Justice Department’s solicitor general decides when and how to appeal cases on behalf of the government, and represents the interests of the entire government including both the Executive Branch and the Congress in federal courts.

“Although we profoundly respect the Senate’s duty to evaluate Mr. Estrada’s fitness for the federal judiciary, we do not think that the confidentiality and integrity of internal deliberations should be sacrificed in the process,” the letter concluded.

Several weeks ago the Justice Department refused to release the documents. Carle defended Leahy’s request, saying, “similar requests have been made on earlier occasions, and the Justice Department response to Senator Leahy several weeks ago grossly misstated the facts and ignored precedent.”

Leahy argues that such records are needed to check Estrada’s fitness, and that similar processes were followed in the investigations of Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and William Rehnquist.

The letter was written by Seth Waxman, the last of three solicitors general under the Clinton administration. The letter was sent on behalf of Waxman, Walter Dellinger, and Drew Days of the Clinton administration; Kenneth Starr from the George H.W. Bush administration; Charles Fried who served under Ronald Reagan; Robert Bork who also served under Reagan; and Archibald Cox who served under President John F. Kennedy.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/26/solicitors.general.estrada/

from cnn.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
fake but accurate says:

SEN. HATCH: Many. Okay. Well, let me say that many believe that, but he must not have seen the letter from the solicitor generals. All seven living former solicitors general wrote to the committee expressing their concern about this request and defending the need to keep such documents confidential. The letter was signed by Democrats Seth Waxman, Walter Dellinger and Drew Day, three excellent solicitor generals, as well as by Republicans Ken Starr, Charles Fried, Robert Bork and Archibald Cox, all of whom have excellent credentials.

The letter notes that when each of the solicitors general make important decisions regarding whether to seek Supreme Court review of adverse appellate decisions and whether to participate as amicus curiae in other high-profile cases, they, quote, “relied on frank, honest and thorough advice from their staff attorneys like Mr. Estrada,” unquote.

The letter explains that the open exchange of ideas which must occur in such a context, quote, “simply cannot take place if attorneys have reason to fear that their private recommendations are not private at all but vulnerable to public disclosure.”

Their letter, these former solicitors general, Democrat and Republican, concludes that, quote, “Any attempt to intrude into the office’s highly-privileged deliberations would come at a cost of the solicitor general’s ability to defend vigorously the United States litigation interests, a cost that also would be borne by Congress itself,” unquote.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit a copy of this letter for the record at this point, if I can.

SEN. SCHUMER: Without objection.

http://rpc.senate.gov/releases/2003/Estradamorninghearing.htm

the senate record.
Who is wrong now ryan? Powerline was right as rain.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
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December 1st, 2005 at 3:54 am

The Roberts Papers: What Is The Administration Hiding?

The Roberts Papers: What Is The Administration Hiding?

17 Responses to “The Roberts Papers: What Is The Administration Hiding?”

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