By Fred Barbash, Peter Baker and Michael Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 3, 2005; 7:42 AM

The White House will announce a nominee this morning at 8:00 a.m. to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, according to an administration official.

There were unconfirmed reports this morning that his choice is White House Counsel Harriet Miers, once Bush's personal lawyer and the administration official coordinating the search for a new justice.

The president will then visit the Supreme Court for the investiture of John G. Roberts, Jr., as chief justice of the United States. Roberts will preside today over the opening session of the new term.

The list of possible choices includes about eight or nine names, including women and minorities.

Miers was the first woman elected president of the Texas Bar Association and was a parner at the Texas law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp before coming to Washington.

Miers's low-key but high-precision style has been particularly valued in a White House where discipline in publicly articulating policy and loyalty to the president are highly valued.

Miers came with him to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president's desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November. She replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, another longtime Bush confidant, who was elevated to attorney general.

"Harriet Miers is a trusted adviser on whom I have long relied for straightforward advice," Bush said at the time. "Harriet has the keen judgment and discerning intellect necessary to be an outstanding counsel."

When he was governor of Texas, Bush once called her "a pit bull in size 6 shoes" for her cool but dogged determination.

Working with her staff of 13 lawyers, and in cooperation with the Justice Department, Miers's office provides guidance on issues from the legal parameters for the war on terrorism to presidential speeches. Her office also takes the lead in vetting and recommending candidates for the federal judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The office also has played a pivotal role in recommending federal appeals court candidates to Bush. Senate Democrats blocked 10 of the president's 34 appeals court nominees during his first term, saying they were too extreme in their conservatism. That prompted Senate Republicans to threaten to change the rules to disallow filibusters of judicial candidates.

Born and raised in Dallas, Miers, 59, is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, where she majored in mathematics. She went on to law school at SMU, earning her law degree in 1970 and going on to clerk for a federal judge in Dallas. In an era when there were few female lawyers, Miers set out for the top.

According to published reports, she was the first woman hired by Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, a Dallas firm whose history extends to the 1890s. She went on to become a top commercial litigator whose clients included Microsoft and the Walt Disney Co.

Miers, who is not married and does not have children, was active in professional organizations and eventually was elected head of the Dallas and Texas bar associations, where she was known for encouraging members to do pro bono work.

Miers met Bush in the 1980s, and was drafted to work as counsel for his 1994 gubernatorial campaign. In 1995, he appointed her to the Texas Lottery Commission. After working as a lawyer in Bush's presidential campaign, she came to Washington with him in 2001.