Political Skullduggery

Papers written by now-Chief Justice John Roberts when he worked for the Reagan White House--which "disappeared" while in the custody of Bush White House lawyers--are still missing.

The country has John G. Roberts Jr. as its newest chief justice. What it doesn't have is an answer to the mystery of the missing file of his work papers on affirmative action.

The file, compiled during Roberts's tenure as an associate counsel in the Reagan White House, vanished in July when lawyers from the Bush administration were reviewing the materials at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., as part of a vetting process before Roberts's formal nomination to the Supreme Court.

A newly released report from the National Archives inspector general's office shows that federal investigators failed in their first attempt to nail down what happened to the file, which became a flashpoint in Roberts's otherwise smooth confirmation process.

"This investigation is unresolved and the file is still missing," says the 64-page IG report, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a Washington area researcher and posted Tuesday on the Web site Memory Hole. ". . . The OIG was unable to determine whether the missing file was taken intentionally, unintentionally, or lost."

Investigators did conclude, however, that the Archives staff did not follow agency policies and procedures in providing tens of thousands of pages of requested material to the two lawyers, who were allowed to review the documents in a private office "because it would be discreet and keep them out of sight of the main research room."

The lawyers working for the White House "were allowed to bring personal belongings with them into the room while they worked," investigators wrote. The lawyers also were left alone in the office with the records for as long as 30 minutes while they participated in conference calls with the White House, the report said...

The White House has declined to publicly reveal the identities of the lawyers who conducted the document review, and their names and those of Archives officials were redacted in the IG report.

If someone was looking at some diamond rings at a jewelry store and some of the rings "disappeared" while in the customer's custody, all hell would break loose.

Needless to say, the customer would be telling his story to a judge at his or her trial.