USA TODAY International Edition
Secrecy shrouds court nominee’s White House job
Parties battle over documents Kavanaugh handled
“It was important that I maintain strict neutrality and impartiality in that role.” Brett Kavanaugh In 2008
WASHINGTON – For three eventful years of George W. Bush’s presidency – involving wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, battles over abortion and immigration, and two Supreme Court vacancies – Brett Kavanaugh held one of the most important jobs in the White House.
But as the Senate considers Kavanaugh’s qualifications for the Supreme Court, his work as staff secretary – described by others who have held the job as the president’s inbox and outbox – remains a black hole.
Republicans are releasing hundreds of thousands of pages from Kavanaugh’s years as a federal appeals court judge, associate White House counsel and aide to independent counsel Ken Starr. Meanwhile, documents that could reach 3 million pages from 2003-06 are being withheld. Republicans say they’re irrelevant; Democrats say they’re irreplaceable.
One thing is clear: Former White House staff secretaries don’t think they were mere traffic cops outside the Oval Office.
“It makes me laugh that they are talking about this job as just a paper-pusher,” says Lisa Brown, who worked
for President Barack Obama. “There’s some truth on both sides of this, but it belies the critical importance of the role to say that the staff secretary documents should be off-limits.”
Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004 that his job was to “give recommendations and advice” while ultimately carrying out directions from superiors. In a speech nine years later, he said his White House experience “helped make me a better student of the administrative process, a better interpreter of statutes.”
Not everyone thinks the Senate must see every speech, schedule and congressional resolution that crossed his desk. James Cicconi, President George H.W. Bush’s first staff secretary, says that would be a “fishing expedition.”
“Literally everything the president sees goes through the staff secretary’s office,” Cicconi says. “The essence of it is to be an honest broker. You’re the president’s protector, in many ways, against bad information or incomplete information.”
At the root of the dispute is the sheer volume of information – several million pages, according to the National Archives and Records Administration. A thorough examination would extend well past the November election, risking Kavanaugh’s confirmation if the GOP loses Senate control.
Some Democrats and their allies have suggested that a compromise could call for releasing anything Kavanaugh wrote, rather than the mundane documents and emails that passed through his hands, BlackBerry, cellphone and computer.
“There’s plenty of times when the way in which you, as the staff secretary, see an issue or perceive an issue is going to matter,” says Todd Stern, who served three years as staff secretary to President Bill Clinton. “I don’t think this is a close call.”
The office of the White House staff secretary was established in 1953. By the time Kavanaugh inherited it from Harriet Miers, whose own Supreme Court nomination in 2005 was withdrawn amid bipartisan opposition, it had become an all-consuming job. Kavanaugh later recalled starting his day with a 6:15 a.m. “fire drill” and checking out after 9:30 p.m.
His three years were full of controversy. Bush signed a partial-birth abortion ban, sought a same-sex marriage ban, expanded Medicare, opposed euthanasia and stem cell research, and failed to partially privatize Social Security or create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
During those years, the administration defended its “enhanced interrogation” of detainees in the war against terrorism; Kavanaugh denied any involvement in the debate over torture during his confirmation hearings for the appeals court. Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. A week later, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died.
Some former staff secretaries, such as Cicconi, say they rarely sought to influence the president. “I can think of only one document where I weighed in with an opinion,” he recalls.
But John Podesta, Clinton’s first staff secretary, penned hundreds of cover memos. On some issues, he says, “I felt like I was an equal to the other people commenting. It just wasn’t uncommon to express my opinion.”