I just received a one line statement from Tara Andringa, press officer for Sen. Carl Levin, on the will he or won’t he question of whether the senator will release copies of contracts that companies participating in the Troubled Asset Relief Program signed:

Senator Levin intends to release the documents, consistent with Senate rules, after reviewing them for proprietary information.

Levin had to fight to get the documents from Treasury; it’s good news that he intends to release them to the public. He deserves credit for announcing this. One wrinkle worth noting — Footnoted, a blog devoted to reading company disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission, says that these contracts (the same ones Levin got from Treasury) are already filed on EDGAR (the online SEC disclosure site) — they look at one filing here. I pretty quickly managed to find a TARP contract with American International Group here and one with Citigroup here. I also found an agreement between AIG and something called Maiden Lane II LLC for which the Federal Reserve Bank of New York served as controlling party. The New York Fed so far has rebuffed attempts to pry loose information on its own, non-TARP bailout activities (it would appear that this might be one of them).

I think it’s fair to operate under the assumption that Levin will get more information than that disclosed to the public, but I’m not positive about that.

Thanks much to Michelle Leder, editor and founder of Footnoted, for pointing us to the SEC.