WASHINGTON — The senator who will lead Democratic questioning of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. told Roberts on Monday that he intended to explore his views on the Bush administration's policy on torture.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, met for more than an hour with Roberts and gave him a copy of a highly controversial 2002 memorandum written by Bush administration lawyers that provided legal arguments for when torture might be appropriate.
Leahy said that even though Roberts had nothing to do with the document, known as the "Bybee memo," he would like Roberts to discuss the arguments in it and to ask him "in what areas, if any, is the president considered to be above the law."
Leahy also complained about the continued absence of documents relating to Roberts and affirmative action that went missing from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after they were reviewed by Bush administration staff members.
An investigation by library officials has failed to find the memo Roberts wrote on the subject, along with supporting material.
"I don't think anybody would have found that acceptable from the Clinton administration," Leahy told reporters. "I don't find it acceptable from the Bush administration."
The Reagan library acknowledged the absence of the documents when it released a large tranche of Roberts-related papers Aug. 15 and started an investigation into the disappearance.
White House officials, asserting that Leahy had no grounds for complaint, provided a copy of an Aug. 15 statement from the archivist of the United States saying that the contents of the affirmative action file had been reconstructed from copies of the documents filed elsewhere.
But Leahy said the only evidence of what was in the file came from notes taken by a Bush administration official who perused it as part of a White House vetting process.
Under rules established in 2001 by an order from President Bush, the White House has the right to review all documents from previous administrations before they are released to Congress or the public.
Roberts' Supreme Court nomination is the first since the president implemented the rules, and the result has been that all documents requested by Congress as part of Roberts' confirmation process have had to undergo a review by administration officials.
