President Bush's broad assertion of executive privilege to block a Congressional review of internal Justice Department documents pertaining to F.B.I. misuse of mob informants has inflamed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle -- and properly so.

The president's attempt to interfere with a legitimate inquiry represents a troubling expansion of executive authority. It also recalls the exotic and ultimately unsuccessful privilege claims his predecessor, Bill Clinton, concocted to thwart Congressional and independent counsel investigations.

One subpoena the administration denied was issued by the House Government Reform Committee to assist it in exploring charges that the F.B.I. had long protected two mob informants in New England even as they committed assorted crimes and caused an innocent man to go to jail for murder. Two other subpoenas pertaining to less active committee investigations were also ignored.

In his message instructing Attorney General John Ashcroft to resist the committee's subpoenas, Mr. Bush voiced concern that disclosure of confidential recommendations about whether to bring criminal charges would inhibit candor and risk politicizing prosecutorial decisions. That worry is not altogether frivolous, and Congress plainly needs to tread carefully. But it does not justify a blanket presidential order denying access to records that were routinely made available in the past, especially when those records pertain to investigations that were closed some time ago.

Presidents going back to the dawn of the Republic have periodically felt compelled to withhold certain information from Congress. But it was not until 1974 that the Supreme Court recognized the legal doctrine of executive privilege. Since then, courts have consistently interpreted the doctrine to protect the confidentiality of only a narrow band of high-level deliberations involving the president or at most his closest advisers.

Dan Burton, a Republican and chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and Henry Waxman, its ranking Democrat, do not agree on much. But both men feel strongly, as do we, that Mr. Bush should defuse the present constitutional clash by withdrawing his unwarranted privilege claim.