REAGAN LIBRARY SCRAMBLING ROBERTS NOMINATION PROMPTS FLURRY OF REQUESTS.

Byline: Eric Leach Staff Writer

SIMI VALLEY - More than 5,000 new pages of documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' work for the Reagan administration will be opened to the public Monday at the Reagan Presidential Library.

The library has about 50,000 pages of records related to Roberts' work as associate White House counsel. Roughly 8,000 pages had been released before Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush.

Since the nomination, archivists at the library have been working seven days a week, preparing the documents for researchers on both sides of the debate.

While the Reagan Library in Simi Valley is normally used by professors and authors doing research on Reagan himself, it has become a gathering place for journalists and people from a variety of political groups looking for key facts about Roberts' career.

``Usually we have three or four, and we've had as many as eight or 12, particularly right after the announcement was made that he was the nominee,'' said Mike Duggan, supervisory archivist at the library.

The library has made public 6,800 pages of documents relating to Roberts' work as an associate White House counsel between late 1982 and 1986, plus 1,300 documents related to requests for information from the White House that involved Roberts.

Additional documents about Roberts' service in the Department of Justice during the Reagan administration were released Thursday by the National Archives, and some of Roberts' documents are available through the National Archives site on the Internet at www.archives.gov.

One issue in interpreting the material is whether Roberts is writing about his own personal views or simply formulating arguments as a lawyer on behalf of the Reagan administration.

``In reading any documents that somebody prepares as an attorney, you have to carefully consider the role the attorney was in,'' said Larry Alexander, Warren Distinguished Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.

``Attorneys represent clients all the time whom they don't have any love for or don't approve of in some other sense. Their job is to advise the client on the law,'' said Alexander, who teaches constitutional law.

In the past week, Duggan said, there had been a lull in the research, but that was expected to change dramatically Monday.

``The moment the nomination was announced, it became clear there was going to be high interest in this collection and we would have to get the ball rolling as quickly as we could,'' Duggan said.

``I have had at any given time as many as nine members of my staff working on this basically every day since the announcement. We've never been asked to process this volume of material this quickly.''

He said that that much of the material being released is in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, and these requests are reviewed by the White House.

Before they become available at the Reagan Library, archivists must review and prepare every page, looking for classified information or something that could invade someone's privacy.

``We've done a complete arrangement of the collection and taken steps to preserve the material, so it won't be damaged. We're interested in helping people and want to preserve the records so they are here 60 years from now.

``It is a challenge. It is a lot of work,'' Duggan said. ``But it helps the public become aware that the records at the Ronald Reagan Library are important. We've never had this kind of interest before a current nominee before the Senate for any position.''

In all the Reagan Library contains about 50 million pages of presidential records, of which roughly 10 percent have been released for public research.

Eric Leach, [phone]

eric.leach(at)dailynews.com