WASHINGTON — Attorney-general nominee Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearing this week may become more contentious because the White House has refused to provide copies of his memos on the questioning of terror suspects.

"We go into the hearing with some knowledge of what has occurred because of press reports or leaks, but without the hard evidence that will either exonerate or implicate Judge Gonzales in this policy," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said yesterday.

Durbin and other Democrats plan to question Gonzales on his involvement in the crafting of policies concerning questioning of suspects — policies the Justice Department has since backed away from.

The Justice Department asserted in 2002 that President Bush's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties. Gonzales, while he was White House counsel, also wrote a memo to Bush on January 25, 2002, arguing that the war on terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners ... "

Durbin, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, says the White House has refused to give those memos to Democrats so that they can determine exactly how the policies were crafted. "We asked them to produce the memos that they have and can release that were given to Judge Gonzales or were generated by him, and so far they have not claimed executive privilege but have refused to produce this documentation," he said.

The White House says it has shared several documents with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and plans to work with Democrats to see if their questions can be resolved.

The Justice memos have since been disavowed, and the White House says the United States has always operated under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment.

But critics say the original documents set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.