The Nation - News from June 9, 1989

The Senate committee reviewing the controversial nomination of William Lucas to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division has asked him to provide about 200,000 pages of documents, a Justice Department spokesman said. A committee source denied that that many documents were requested. The source refused to disclose what kinds of documents the Senate Judiciary Committee is seeking “because we don’t want to be unfair to the nominee by raising unfair implications about what we’re looking at.” The department spokesman, David Runkel, said that the amount of paper work requested was “unusual.” Lucas’ nomination is opposed by some civil rights groups on the grounds that he lacks legal experience in civil rights.