Roberts Had Frank Views of Congress

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. criticized Congress while he was a Reagan administration lawyer, saying in documents released Wednesday that a congressman killed in connection with cult leader Jim Jones’ massacre could be viewed as a “publicity hound” and that what Congress did best was “nothing.”

Those two documents were among 420 papers released by the National Archives that originally had been withheld from Congress for privacy and security reasons.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library re-reviewed the papers and released them a week before Roberts’ confirmation hearing. Some material had been blacked out for privacy and national security reasons.

Roberts, an assistant to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding in the Reagan administration, took the Democratic Congress to task for voting to give the late Rep. Leo Ryan the Congressional Gold Medal. Ryan, a Democrat from Northern California, was killed near the Jonestown commune in Guyana in 1978 after he had gone there to investigate whether cult leader Jones was holding people against their will.

Some cult members chose to leave with Ryan, but the party was ambushed; Ryan and four others were killed.

Jones ordered a mass suicide, and more than 900 members of the People’s Temple cult committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced punch. Others were shot by guards.

Roberts told Fielding in a Nov. 18, 1983, memo that he was not certain he would have voted to give Ryan the medal.

“The distinction of his service in the House is certainly subject to debate, and his actions leading to his murder can be viewed as those of a publicity hound,” Roberts said.

Roberts, however, said he had no legal objections to Reagan signing off on legislation for the medal.

In an Oct. 11, 1983, letter to federal appellate court Judge Henry Friendly of New York, Roberts complained about U.S. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger’s plan to set up a new appeals-level court to reduce the Supreme Court’s workload.

The White House counsel’s office was fighting it, Roberts wrote, but the chief justice, congressional leaders and the Justice Department all supported the idea.

“Our only hope is that Congress will continue to do what it does best -- nothing,” wrote Roberts, who used to be one of Friendly’s clerks.

Those statements could come back to haunt Roberts on Tuesday, when he is scheduled to face the Senate Judiciary Committee. He will be introduced by Indiana Sens. Richard G. Lugar, a Republican, and Evan Bayh, a Democrat, as well as Virginia GOP Sen. John W. Warner.

Democrats say they need more documents to judge Roberts’ candidacy. The Senate’s Democratic leadership on Wednesday told the White House that not releasing key Roberts documents was “a failure to respect the role of Congress in our constitutional system.”

Archives officials announced Tuesday that they had found a large volume of unreviewed and unreleased Roberts documents. At least one file on affirmative action is missing, and the White House is refusing to let Democrats see Roberts’ documents from his time in the solicitor general’s office during the George H.W. Bush administration.

“They should be made available to senators,” said a letter signed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and three other Democratic senators.