The privilege, however, is best known for the unsuccessful attempts by former Presidents Nixon and Clinton to keep evidence secret during impeachment investigations.
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales recommended Bush invoke the privilege earlier this fall.
Aware the White House was considering such a new policy, members of Congress have raised concerns that it will hinder lawmakers from giving proper oversight to federal prosecutions, noting scandals in the past would never have been exposed if Congress had been kept from sensitive documents.
"If this unprecedented policy is permitted to stand, Congress will not be able to exercise meaningful oversight of the executive branch," Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said recently.
Burton is chairman of the House panel that has been trying to obtain documents from various federal cases in which lawmakers want to examine the conduct and decisions of prosecutors and FBI agents.
WAS INVOKED BY THE VERY FIRST PRESIDENT!
I hate to hear of Rep. Burton LYING.
Here is George Washington on "executive privilege:" Click here
'The House of Representatives established an investigative committee on March 27 1792, "to call for such persons, papers and records, as may be necessary to assist their inquiries." (20 5 Annals of Congress (1796), 771, 782-783.)
The investigating committee requested from the president Washington the testimony and documents regarding St. Clair's failed expedition. This was the first time Congress tested what is now known as executive privilege and Washington set the benchmark for all future presidents.
Washington noted the group's determination:
"We had all considered, and were of one mind, first, that the House was an inquest, and therefore might institute inquiries. Second, that it might call for papers generally. Third, that the Executive ought to communicate such papers as the public good would permit, and ought to refuse those, the disclosure of which would injure the public: consequently were to exercise a discretion. Fourth, that neither the committees nor House has a right to call on the Head of a Department, who and whose papers were under the President alone; but that the committee should instruct their chairman to move the House to address the President. (20 5 Annals of Congress (1796), 773.)'
Thomas Jefferson:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1220.htm "With respect to papers, there is certainly a public and a private side to our offices. To the former belong grants of land, patents for inventions, certain commissions, proclamations, and other papers patent in their nature. To the other belong mere executive proceedings. All nations have found it necessary, that for the advantageous conduct of their affairs, some of these proceedings, at least, should remain known to their executive functionary only. He, of course, from the nature of the case, must be the sole judge of which of them the public interest will permit publication. Hence, under our Constitution, in requests of papers, from the legislative to the executive branch, an exception is carefully expressed, as to those which he may deem the public welfare may require not to be disclosed." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hay, 1807. ME 11:232
"The respect mutually due between the constituted authorities, in their official intercourse, as well as sincere dispositions to do for every one what is just, will always insure from the executive, in exercising the duty of discrimination confided to him, the same candor and integrity to which the nation has in like manner trusted in the disposal of its judiciary authorities." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hay, 1807. ME 11:233
Hopefully Bush doesn't join the list of criminal-cover-ups and instead is being shrewd. As one poster below said, "He's playing it close to the vest."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! There's no more "meaningful oversight" of ANYTHING anymore. Phrases like that may work in Constitutional Republics, but they're meaningless in What's Left of America. The powers that be do whatever they wish. They ignore the Constitution itself, let alone "Congressional oversight." LOL