Cheney, Energy Task Force Defies GAO

by Danielle Knight

David M. Walker, comptroller general of the accounting office, known here as the GAO, said he would ask a federal judge to order Cheney to provide Congress with the identities of energy industry executives who helped the administration formulate a national energy strategy released in May.

"Failure to provide the information we are seeking serves to undercut the important principles of transparency and accountability in government," Walker said in a statement yesterday.

The lawsuit was the first by the GAO against a federal official for failing to cooperate in a Congressional inquiry, said the statement. Non-governmental groups also have legally challenged White House secrecy in drawing up the energy strategy.

Cheney and President George W. Bush have refused repeated requests since April to hand over any documents relating to the task force. The administration has argued that it has the right to keep the documents secret to preserve the confidentiality of White House meetings with non-governmental experts.

Walker disagreed. "The information we are seeking is clearly within our statutory audit and access authority," he said, adding that contrary to previous reports, the GAO was not seeking the minutes of those meetings, nor related notes of Cheney's staff.

According to Walker, his staff wants lists of people with whom each member of the task force met, including the date, subject, and location of each meeting. He told reporters he would hire an outside law firm to represent the GAO, which will file its suit in Federal District Court in the District of Columbia in coming weeks.

Claire Buchan, a spokesperson for the White House, said the Bush administration would strongly contest any GAO lawsuit in court. "We have said that we fully expected this and we will see them in court," news reports quoted her as saying.

The GAO began its pursuit of the task force records last spring at the request of several Democratic lawmakers -- chiefly, Representatives Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan -- who said they believed the task force was biased toward the oil industry. Dingell argued that the Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that meetings of non-governmental advisers be conducted in public to avoid the appearance of secret favoritism.

The White House has acknowledged that Cheney's task force met six times last year representatives from Enron, the Houston-based energy firm that went bankrupt in November and is now the subject of Congressional and government investigations.

In response to criticism that environmentalists had been shut out of the task force's closed-door sessions, Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, said last week the Sierra Club, a prominent national environmental group, met the task force repeatedly.

However, Carl Pope, executive director of the advocacy group, said the meetings only took place in June and July, after the administration had released its energy plan.

While Cheney and other members of the administration said this week Bush's energy plan includes 11 of the 12 policy recommendations put forth by the Sierra Club, environmentalists strongly disagreed. The administration's plan includes the construction of 1,300 new coal-fired power plants; increased oil exploration, including in pristine areas; and reduced environmental regulations for the energy industry as a whole.

"If the Bush administration really thinks their energy plan includes 11 of 12 Sierra Club solutions, then Arthur Andersen must be checking their math," said Pope, referring to the accounting firm that has been implicated in the collapse of Enron.

In early August, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved Bush's energy plan. The measure must now pass through the Senate.

Before the GAO announced it would sue the administration, the Sierra Club filed its own suit last week in San Francisco federal court, demanding that the White House give a full accounting of which private industries participated in the task force.

The environmental group's lawyers had sent requests for information on the task force under the Freedom of Information Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act to Cheney and others in the administration.

Yesterday, another environmental group filed a legal motion against the administration. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asked the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia to order the Energy Department to hand over the task force documents within 10 days.

The advocacy group had filed a Freedom of Information Act request nine months ago seeking the names of individuals, companies, and groups that helped develop the administration's energy policy, but the Energy Department never responded.

"The public has a right to know who's responsible for an energy plan that reads like a wish list for corporate polluters, even if it is embarrassing to those in power," said Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney at NRDC.