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Thursday, Dec. 20, 2001

That panel is bucking a Dec. 12 decision by President Bush to withhold from Congress a raft of law enforcement documents, some of which are decades old, by citing executive privilege. Committee members said the president received bad legal advice and is abusing his authority.

"The Congress has to exercise its oversight responsibilities in order to protect the American public from malfeasance in government and corruption in government," said Chairman Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. "When an executive order is issued that stops us from our oversight responsibilities, then the very foundations of our government start to be in jeopardy."

Those hearings come as the White House and Department of Justice have asked Congress for boosted authority to fight the war on terror and that authority should come with increased oversight, some House Republicans said.

"When the attorney general indicates that in this time of crisis we need to give expanded powers to police agencies and the Justice Department to help us in our national defense, that is a reasonable request," said Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, R-Ohio. "At the same time, it is a reasonable expectation that there will be additional oversight by the other, co-equal, branches of government."

The Bush administration and the Justice Department in particular have faced scrutiny from members of both parties in Congress for establishing military tribunals and aggressively detaining suspects using immigration law, for example.

Burton said his committee was unlikely to tackle those issues directly. But separately, Burton on Friday also fired off a letter to the General Accounting Office seeking an investigation into whether the department might have artificially inflated the number of terrorist convictions it has claimed. Burton said DOJ's claims might have been "overstated."

The Bush administration, claiming executive privilege, refused Dec. 12 to honor subpoenas from the committee in its investigation of campaign finance violations in the Clinton administration and the use of FBI informants in organized crime investigations.

Justice Department officials said then that the refusal would keep investigations "free from political influences."

Burton says the decision to reject the subpoenas reflects a policy of the Bush administration to refuse cooperation with Congress on criminal investigations, even when the cases are closed.

According to a Bush memo to Attorney General John Ashcroft signed Dec. 12, the requested documents should not be turned over because of the effect making such material would have on internal decision making.

"Congressional pressure on executive branch prosecutorial decision making is inconsistent with separation of powers and threatens individual liberty," Bush wrote.

But lawmakers said the actions by the administration that are covering the FBI's tracks don't look good. "I think now their actions have reached the level of a cover-up," said Rep. John J. Duncan, R-Tenn.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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