L.A. BRONCOS FAN
07-26-2005, 06:02 PM
John Roberts and Iran-Contra
NEW YORK Virtually giving up, at last, on getting Press Secretary Scott McClellan to comment on the Plame/CIA leak affair, reporters at today's White House briefing concentrated on another hot issue, the Democrats' attempt to get the White House to release more of a paper trail on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.
The White House says it will hand over more than enough documents, while the Democrats want more.
One emerging hot button issue revolves around the holding back of Roberts documents from his days in the Bush I administration as a deputy in the Solicitor General's office, on grounds of client-attorney privilege. Of particular interest here, for some Democrats, is what advice Roberts might have offered leading up to President George H.W. Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and others in the Iran-Control scandal.
But some feel that that client-attorney privilege argument may not hold, legally, so the White House may also be prepared to deny documents on “national security” grounds. This prompted perhaps the most pointed question of today's briefing (from a “Dana,” presumably Dana Milbank of The Washington Post), who asked near the end of the session, “Do you consider Iran-Contra a national security issue?”
“I haven't even thought about that, Dana,” McClellan replied, “to tell you the truth.”
Here are excerpts from the official transcript related to the Roberts documents:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000991994
NEW YORK Virtually giving up, at last, on getting Press Secretary Scott McClellan to comment on the Plame/CIA leak affair, reporters at today's White House briefing concentrated on another hot issue, the Democrats' attempt to get the White House to release more of a paper trail on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.
The White House says it will hand over more than enough documents, while the Democrats want more.
One emerging hot button issue revolves around the holding back of Roberts documents from his days in the Bush I administration as a deputy in the Solicitor General's office, on grounds of client-attorney privilege. Of particular interest here, for some Democrats, is what advice Roberts might have offered leading up to President George H.W. Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and others in the Iran-Control scandal.
But some feel that that client-attorney privilege argument may not hold, legally, so the White House may also be prepared to deny documents on “national security” grounds. This prompted perhaps the most pointed question of today's briefing (from a “Dana,” presumably Dana Milbank of The Washington Post), who asked near the end of the session, “Do you consider Iran-Contra a national security issue?”
“I haven't even thought about that, Dana,” McClellan replied, “to tell you the truth.”
Here are excerpts from the official transcript related to the Roberts documents:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000991994