View Full Forums : Rehnquist: Party boy on the bench


Panamah
01-05-2007, 10:48 AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4447021.html
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice William Rehnquist took a powerful sedative during his first decade on the Supreme Court and grew so dependent on it that he became delusional and tried to escape from a hospital in his pajamas when he stopped taking the drug in 1981, according to newly released FBI files.

The files also show that during both of Rehnquist's confirmation battles — when he was first named to the court by President Nixon in 1971 and when President Reagan nominated him as chief justice in 1986 — the Justice Department enlisted the FBI to find out what witnesses lined up by Senate Democrats were prepared to say.

Tudamorf
01-05-2007, 02:36 PM
One doctor said Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his hospital room plotting against him and had "bizarre ideas and outrageous thoughts," including imagining "a CIA plot against him" and "seeming to see the design patterns on the hospital curtains change configuration."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/01/03/national/w170750S43.DTLPrior to his hospitalization, Rehnquist occasionally slurred his speech in his questions to lawyers at Supreme Court arguments. Those problems ceased when he changed medications, the doctor said.In one previously secret memo from 1971, an FBI official wrote, "No persons interviewed during our current or 1969 investigation furnished information bearing adversely on Rehnquist's morals or professional integrity; however ..." The next third of the page is blacked out, under the disclosure law's exception for matters of national security.
The documents show that the FBI was aware in 1971 that Rehnquist had owned a home in Phoenix with a deed that allowed him to sell only to whites. The restrictive covenant was not disclosed until his 1986 confirmation hearings, at which Rehnquist said he became aware of the clause only days earlier.Abuse of the FBI by the executive, corruption, coverups. What else is new?