Michael Mukasey, the White House's nominee for attorney general (left), has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee but is caught in a struggle between Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and the White House over information that Leahy is demanding. AP Photo by Susan Walsh

by James Oliphant

As surprises go, this might match Boston being up 2-0 in the World Series: Patrick Leahy isn’t satisfied with the White House.

Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, came across a bit with Leahy’s Senate Judiciary Committee this week, handing it some previously classified documents about the administration’s terrorist interrogation tactics.

But apparently, at least one of those documents was fairly useless. Leahy (D-Vt.) wants the full, unredacted version of a March 2003 memo sent to Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes from John Yoo, a then-Justice Department lawyer who was an architect of some of the government’s more aggressive antiterror policies.

Leahy also wants more information about the administration’s stance toward abusive interrogation procedures after former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales took office in 2005. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that after the Justice Department publicly denounced using torture in interrogating detainees, it secretly reversed itself under Gonzales. Leahy says that the committee has been given no information on that assertion.

“I remain deeply troubled by the Administration’s attempts to justify the use of harsh interrogation techniques and even torture, and I intend to get to the bottom of what this Administration’s legal policy has been on this issue, and what it is today,” Leahy wrote Friday in a letter to Fielding.

This is just one front in an escalating series of firefights between the Judiciary Committee and the administration. Leahy has been pressing for documents relating to the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program, as well information about alleged politically-motivated hiring and firing practices at the Justice Department under Gonzales.

The White House has conditioned the release of wiretapping documents on providing the telecom companies that cooperated with the NSA with blanket immunity from civil liability.