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CounterPunch
December
12, 2002
Cheney's Cover
Up
Nixon Redux
by JASON LEOPOLD
The dismissal of the General Accounting Office
lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney is just another example
of the veil of secrecy that permeates within the Bush administration
and is a grim reminder of the dark days of former President Richard
Nixon, who openly defied Congress during the investigation into
Watergate.
The suit was filed to try and force Cheney
to disclose the names of energy industry lobbyists he met with
prior to drafting the nation's National Energy Policy.
But despite the ruling in favor of the
White House by District Court Judge John Bates, this energy policy
is dead. Any attempt to resurrect the policy in Congress next
year "will be met with numerous Democratic amendments, especially
on drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. Some of
those amendments will fail, some will prevail," said John
Hess, an aide to Senator Barbara Boxer, D-California.
The Cheney policy, in its present form
"is nothing more than a report with a series of recommendations.
Some of these have been included in the energy bills that were
considered by the House and Senate this past Congress. But, since
nothing passed, the bills are dead and have to reintroduced next
year," said Chris Lu, another Boxer aide.
However, there is still the thorny issue
pertaining to disclosure and the GAO said it might appeal the
ruling. On its face, what the GAO requested from Cheney in its
lawsuit filed in January is limited information about the energy
task force, specifically, what process was used in developing
the National Energy Policy, where did the task force get the
information and from whom. That's it. Contrary to what has been
reported in the media earlier this year thanks to the spin job
by Cheney and his staff, the GAO was not interested in gaining
access to the task force's minutes or notes.
The GAO's unprecedented lawsuit against
Cheney was prompted when the Vice President rebuffed Congressman
Henry Waxman, D-California, and the ranking member on the Committee
on Government Reform, and John Dingell, D-Michigan, who asked
Cheney for the same information in May 2001.
At the time, the California energy crisis
was at its peak and many of the policies contained in the report
seemed to benefit energy companies such as Enron (which had not
yet imploded in a wave of accounting scandals) that contributed
heavily to President Bush's campaign. However, the policy made
only scant references to California's energy crisis, which Enron
was accused of igniting, and did not indicate what should be
done to provide the state some relief.
Cheney said the policy focused on long-term
solutions to the country's energy needs, such as opening up drilling
in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve and freeing up transmission
lines. That's why California was ignored in the report. But then
news reports surfaced that former Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay
met with Cheney several times between January and April 2001,
just days before the policy was unveiled. What's more, in January,
the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Lay gave Cheney a memo
outlining eight policy recommendations that would clearly benefit
Enron. Of the eight, seven were included in the policy.
One can only assume that other players
in the energy industry also met with Cheney and received the
same kind of special treatment that was written into the National
Energy Policy. Cheney has refused to identify those individuals
not because it would undermine the administration's ability to
get advice from people but because it would greatly embarrass
the President.
John Dean, former counsel to President
Richard Nixon, wrote in a column on the web site FindLaw in February
"not since Richard Nixon stiffed the Congress during Watergate
has a White House so openly, and arrogantly, defied Congress's
investigative authority. Nor has any activity by the Bush Administration
more strongly suggested they are hiding the incriminating information
about their relationship with the now-moribund Enron, or other
heavy-hitting campaign contributors from the energy business.
Cheney says he is refusing to provide information to the Congress
as a matter of principle. He told the Today Show that he wants
to "protect the ability of the president and the vice president
to get unvarnished advice from any source we want." That
sounds all too familiar to me. I worked for Richard Nixon."
Dean added, "If the Vice President's
position should prevail, it will change the very nature of our
government's system of checks and balances. If GAO is held to
be as restricted as Cheney would have it, such a ruling will
create a black hole in the Federal firmament - a no man's land
where only the President and Vice President can go, unobserved
by their Constitutional co-equals on Capitol Hill," Dean
wrote. "The Vice President can only win if we have another
Bush vs. Gore-like ruling."
Congressman Waxman agreed with Dean's
prediction Monday saying, "The decision is another Bush
v. Gore. It is a convoluted decision by a Republican judge that
gives Bush and Cheney near total immunity from scrutiny. In Bush
v. Gore, five Republican justices gave the election to George
Bush and Dick Cheney. Today, another Republican judge has decided
that, once in office, Bush and Cheney can operate in complete
secrecy with no oversight by Congress."
Nixon would be proud.
Jason Leopold
can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
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