WASHINGTON -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, yesterday told Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers that her written answers to questions about her legal and White House career experiences were "insufficient."

Harriet E. Miers

Mr. Specter told reporters the committee needed "amplification on many, many of the items" in the 64-page questionnaire Ms. Miers submitted to the panel on Tuesday.

"Certainly, it was inadequate," Mr. Leahy said of her submission. "I don't know of anybody who would tell you in the committee that they were satisfied with the responses." He said the responses he heard ranged from " 'incomplete' to 'insulting.' "

The request by Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy for additional information came as two conservative senators on the committee, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., were pressing the White House to provide more "non-privileged" documents from Ms. Miers' service in the Bush administration.

Mr. Brownback noted that the committee was accorded far more access to policy documents that recently confirmed Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration than they are getting now.

"We're all searching for a fuller picture," Mr. Brownback said. "I'd like to see more released by the White House.... I want to know what more we can about the policy development that she was involved in, similar to what we had for John Roberts."

During a news conference yesterday in which Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy also announced that the hearings would begin on Nov. 7, Mr. Specter noted that when Ms. Miers was asked about civil cases she had handled and to provide documentation to accompany the questionnaire, she gave the committee only "a skimpy little group" of papers -- a sharp contrast to the thick binder of her legal writings that Mr. Specter's staff was able to gather on their own.

"No reason we should know more about her cases than she does," Mr. Specter quipped, and said he blamed both the White House and Ms. Miers for the incompleteness of the questionnaire.

White House spokesman Allen Abney said the White House had received the Specter-Leahy letter and would respond soon.

"From the first day when she was nominated," Mr. Abney added, "Ms. Miers told Sen. Specter that she had years of files to go through and that she would work to complete the questionnaire as quickly as possible, but that it was likely that she would have to send follow-ups to provide additional information."

But in the letter, Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy zeroed in on the lack of information Ms. Miers offered about the policies she helped develop while in the White House as staff secretary, deputy chief of staff for policy and counsel to the president -- much of which her defenders say may be subject to executive or attorney-client privilege.

Though the questionnaire asked Ms. Miers for reports, memos or policy statements she helped develop or prepare in "any public office" she has held, the nominee did not even mention her service in White House in her response. Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy reiterated that they expected Ms. Miers to provide more of those documents.

"This question was designed to help the committee learn more about your experience with constitutional law," Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy wrote, "and if most of it was gained during your years in the White House, it is important that we know more about the specifics of that experience."

Mr. Leahy added that he was troubled that Ms. Miers had not provided any detail about cases that might come before the Supreme Court in which she would have to recuse herself because of her work in the White House.

Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy also emphasized their intention to figure out why there are so many conflicting accounts of what assurances White House officials and friends of Ms. Miers have given conservative leaders about how she might rule. In their letter, they asked Ms. Miers to help them in that quest.

Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy also asked Ms. Miers to provide more information about why she was suspended from the District of Columbia Bar for nonpayment of dues and whether she appeared in any courts in the District of Columbia during the suspension period. They asked her to provide information that would help them "understand the facts and circumstances" of her suspension.

In the questionnaire, Ms. Miers had said the nonpayment of dues was an oversight she had remedied immediately.