By John Solomon and Sharon Theimer, Associated Press, September 19, 2006
20 Sep 2006 // The Bush administration told a court this month it shouldn't have to disclose White House visits by two Republican activists entangled in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal because the information was privileged and might reveal how President Bush and his staff get private advice.
However, the administration has now decided to release the White House entry logs for Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed as early as Wednesday evening, settling an election-year legal dispute with the Democratic Party and an ethics watchdog group, officials told The Associated Press.
The logs will show Norquist and Reed attended numerous functions including Christmas parties and policy briefings and met with Bush staff members but had no one-on-one meetings with the president, according to people familiar with the records.
In a court filing earlier this month, Justice Department lawyers representing the administration stated that information about the Norquist and Reed visits should be protected from public disclosure under the doctrine of "deliberative process privilege."
That privilege allows the president and executive branch officials to seek advice and deliberate policy decisions in private without having to disclose such information under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is similar to the executive privilege, a power made famous by President Nixon, that lets a president keep information secret even from Congress or the courts on the grounds that it would hurt his ability to get candid advice.
Executive privilege was the focal point of major legal battles in the Watergate and Clinton impeachment cases.
Bush administration lawyers wrote that Norquist and Reed were "prominent advocates of particular tax policies and other conservative policies" and that releasing information about their White House visits would "inherently reveal the structure and nature of deliberative processes."
"In making decisions on personnel and policy, and in formulating legislative proposals, the president must be free to seek confidential information from many sources, both inside the government and outside," the lawyers wrote in citing a favorable court ruling from 2005 involving Vice President Dick Cheney.
The administration lawyers also argued against releasing information about the White House visits of former federal procurement official David Safavian on the grounds that it would violate Safavian's privacy. Safavian was recently convicted of trying to cover up his dealings with Abramoff.
A senior administration official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the records haven't been released, said the Justice Department never invoked the privilege mentioned in the court filings.
The administration was entering into negotiations to settle the case and only made the filing when the court asked it to outline what legal arguments it might make if the case went to trial, the official said.
The Democratic Party and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had sued the administration to obtain the White House entry logs for Reed, Norquist, Safavian and a few other Abramoff associates between 2001 and 2005.
Former White House lawyer Lanny Breuer, who handled many of President Clinton's privilege claims, said that administration routinely released White House entry records to the public and never "came close to making a claim like the one being suggested in this instance."
Deliberative and executive privilege claims are "designed to protect the advice the president gets. They are not intended to protect the identities of people from whom he gets that advice or when or where that advice was given from a particular person," Breuer said.