Reading Room Document

Congressional Access to Presidential Communications

This opinion concludes that the president has the constitutional authority to assert an absolute executive privilege to protect information on sensitive national security matters. The opinion further concludes that even if the president determined that disclosure of his communications would not adversely affect the national security, these communications would nonetheless be protected by a qualified privilege, and hence could be withheld from Congress unless there were an essential legislative need for them. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at https://justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/pages/attachments/2014/12/30/1989-12-21_-_pdaag_luttig_-_cong_access_to_pres_communications_ocr.pdf.

December 21, 1989