“We had hoped our Committees’ subpoenas would be met with compliance and not a Nixonian stonewalling that reveals the White House’s disdain for our system of checks and balances…The veil of secrecy you have attempted to pull over the White House by withholding documents and witnesses is unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government by and for the people that has been a hallmark of the Republic.” In a “barbed” letter to the administration, Judiciary Committee Chairmen Conyers and Leahy demand that Dubya explain his rationale for executive privilege (which he invoked earlier in the week to thwart subpoenas concerning the persecuted prosecutors case.) Thus far, the White House has described the letter as “another overreach.“