WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan Friday released his hold on a senior justice department nominee, clearing the way for a confirmation vote next week.
Up to five-and-a-half hours of floor debate will precede next Tuesday's roll call vote on the nomination of Alice Fisher to be the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Criminal Division, aides of both parties said, adding that she was expected to easily win confirmation.
A GOP Senate staffer said the chamber's Republican leadership had forced Levin's hand through a parliamentary maneuver, and pledged to keep working on another nomination the senator has blocked -- that of Kenneth Wainstein to be head of the Justice Department's new National Security Division.
"Watch this space," the staffer told United Press International when asked about the Wainstein nomination.
Levin has held up the confirmation of Alice Fisher for more than two years, because he believes the administration has stonewalled his requests for documents and interviews about her role in the handling of detainee abuse reports from FBI agents at Guantanamo Bay.
At the time, Fisher was chief of staff to the then-head of the Criminal Division, Michael Chertoff, and Wainstein was the general counsel at the FBI. Democrats believe they played a role in determining how the complaints from FBI personnel were dealt with.
Democratic staffers say Levin believes that without the materials he has asked for the Senate cannot adequately do its oversight of the administration's conduct of the war on terror or properly consider the nominations.
"There's a lot of smoke," said a senior Democratic Senate staffer of Fisher's role, "and unfortunately, we are going to be forced to take a vote before we find out whether there's any fire."
The staffer added that the senator planned to use the floor time to press his case that "this stonewalling is part of a pattern of the administration stymieing legitimate oversight."
No one from the Justice Department returned e-mails or phone calls by press time.
Fisher was given a recess appointment last summer, along with two other officials Levin had held up. But because the Wainstein appointment is to a new position, a recess appointment -- originally designed so that vital offices which suddenly became vacant could be filled while the Senate was not in session -- cannot be used in his case.
