WASHINGTON -- The hunt is on for a missing file folder from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' work on affirmative action more than 20 years ago during the Reagan administration.

The folder was supposed to be released Monday, but the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., reports it disappeared after two Bush administration lawyers reviewed it and returned it to the library staff in July.

Allen Weinstein, head of the National Archives that oversees presidential libraries, said the Reagan library staff apparently misplaced it and that copies of the lost file have been found and reconstructed "to the best of our knowledge."

Still, the Archives inspector general has been put on the case, and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will conduct Roberts' confirmation hearing, has asked the Justice Department inspector general to investigate, too.

What motivates these latter-day Sherlocks is fear of the dog that doesn't bark but could well bite on a politically freighted issue.

Roberts' views on affirmative action are far from incidental, even as a young lawyer working in the Reagan Justice Department and White House from 1981 to 1986. Back then, the administration was engaged in its own civil war over "racial preferences" and whether President Reagan should repeal Executive Order 11246.

Under that1965 order issued by President Lyndon Johnson -- and a major expansion of the order in 1972 by the Nixon administration -- federal contractors and others receiving federal money must take "affirmative action" to make sure they don't discriminate by race and sex.

Although the repeal campaign by some Reagan administration officials eventually died, the missing folder apparently contains memos addressing how the Reagan White House should respond to a letter complaining about whether a possible Reagan revision would roll back that longstanding White House policy, Weinstein said.

All this occurred against a backdrop in which the Reagan White House and Justice Department actively pressed the Supreme Court to cut back affirmative action's use in consent decrees and court orders won by previous administrations.

Thus, any role Roberts played in those years that helped to shape Reagan affirmative-action policy takes on added importance.

Roberts' views on affirmative action are also important because he would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She sided with the majority in a 5-4 decision upholding affirmative action's continued use in college admissions.

Senate Democrats plan to ask Roberts his views when confirmation hearings start Sept. 6.

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