WASHINGTON — The incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that he would subpoena Bush administration officials if they refused requests for documents and testimony, including two long-sought memos detailing its detention and treatment of terrorism suspects overseas.
The comments by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) represent the strongest and most specific statements yet directed at the White House on the investigative agenda of the Democratic leaders poised to assume control of Congress in January.
Leahy's threat shows the depth of frustration among Democrats who believe the administration has withheld crucial details about some of the most provocative anti-terrorism moves since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I expect to get the answers. If I don't ... then I really think we should subpoena," Leahy said after a speech at Georgetown law school. "If the president wants to claim executive authority, then let him do so, and then we can determine where we go from there."
The remarks signaled a possible legal confrontation with the White House over what Democrats and many legal scholars view as its expansive and unchecked use of executive power. It also marks a possible return to the use of an oversight tool that has been all but forgotten by the Republican-led Congress over the first six years of the Bush administration.
"I'm not trying to set up the idea of a confrontation for the sake of a confrontation," Leahy said. "I hope people will pay attention, will answer questions. We'll try it that way first."
Leahy has his sights set on two administration documents that have been among the most controversial for human rights and civil liberties groups concerned about the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war.
One is a presidential order signed by Bush authorizing the CIA to set up secret prisons outside the United States to house terrorism suspects. The other is a 2002 Justice Department memorandum outlining "aggressive interrogation techniques" that could be used against terrorism suspects.
Though the two documents have been known about for years, the Bush administration has kept them under wraps, only acknowledging their existence this fall after Bush transferred 14 detainees from the prisons to the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for possible trials.
