WASHINGTON — Setting up what could become the first showdown between the Bush administration and the new Democratic Congress, the Justice Department has refused to turn over two secret documents, describing the CIA's detention and interrogation policies for suspected terrorists, to the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who asked for the documents in November, said Tuesday that the department's response suggested that President Bush's promise to work with the new Congress "may have been only political lip service."
Leahy has said he might use subpoenas to get the material.
"It is disappointing that the Department of Justice and the White House have squandered another opportunity to work cooperatively with Congress," he said Tuesday in a statement.
"The department's decision to brush off my request for information about the administration's troubling interrogation policies is not the constructive step toward bipartisanship that I had hoped for, given President Bush's promise to work with us."
The administration notified Leahy on Dec. 22 that it would not release a presidential directive signed by Bush authorizing the CIA to set up secret prisons overseas for suspected terrorists or a 2002 Justice Department legal memorandum outlining "aggressive interrogation techniques."
Leahy waited until the week that Democrats take control of Congress to release -- and denounce -- the response. The department's letter to Leahy was sent during Congress' holiday recess, when most lawmakers were out of town.
The exchange is an inauspicious start to what some lawmakers and administration officials had hoped would be a period of bipartisanship following the November election, in which Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress.
Democrats have pledged stepped-up oversight on a number of matters, including the conduct of the Iraq war, the National Security Agency's warrantless electronic surveillance of terrorist suspects in the United States, and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.
In a letter Tuesday to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, Leahy asked the Justice Department to reconsider its decision. He also told Gonzales he would "pursue this matter further" as part of an oversight hearing that the judiciary committee was planning for the department.
