Senators ‘Refine’ Request for Rehnquist Memos

Senate Judiciary Committee members have “somewhat refined” their request for Justice Department memoranda written by Justice William H. Rehnquist, but no breakthrough in the deadlock over the White House claim of executive privilege for the sensitive documents is likely this weekend, negotiating sources said Saturday.

The materials were written by Rehnquist from 1969 to 1971, while he served as assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel--a post known as “the attorney general’s lawyer”--under former Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell.

Under the pared-down request, the senators who are considering Rehnquist’s nomination to be chief justice are no longer seeking any memos he wrote on the Supreme Court nominations of Judge Clement F. Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, which were both rejected by the Senate. They also have narrowed the quest for “civil rights and civil liberties” memos to more specific matters, the sources said,

But the senators, including Joseph R. Biden Jr.(D-Del.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), are still seeking data on domestic surveillance matters involving Rehnquist.

Sticking to Position

Terry Eastland, the Justice Department’s chief spokesman, said Saturday: “We’re sticking with our position” that the sought-after materials are internal department documents, particularly sensitive because the head of the office of legal counsel provides legal advice to the President through the attorney general.

But Democrats and Republicans on the committee are hopeful that scaling down the request and perhaps making the materials available only to a limited number of members will break the deadlock.

A similar request is likely when the committee turns Tuesday to the nomination of Judge Antonin Scalia as an associate justice. Scalia held the same Justice Department post as Rehnquist during the Administration of President Gerald R. Ford, when such ticklish legal matters as the pardon of former President Richard M. Nixon were considered.

Kennedy Deed Restriction

Meanwhile, Rehnquist’s denials of knowledge that two dwellings he has owned were covered by restrictive racial and religious covenants were matched by similar denials by Kennedy after it was disclosed that his brother, former President John F. Kennedy, had bought a house in the Georgetown district of Washington in 1957 that was restricted by a covenant from resale to “persons of the Negro race.”

The magazine U.S. News & World Report reported discovery of the covenant in its Aug. 11 issue, but said it had found no proof that John Kennedy was aware of the covenant on the house he bought as a senator. Edward Kennedy said in a statement Saturday that he had no personal knowledge of the covenant’s existence.

At last week’s hearings, Rehnquist, pressed by Democrats including Kennedy, denied knowing that a house he bought in Phoenix in 1962 came under a covenant seeking to bar its sale to nonwhites, or that a vacation retreat he bought in Vermont in 1974 came under a covenant barring sale to “any member of the Hebrew race.”