Overlooked yesterday with the excitement surrounding the arrest of Saddam Hussein was word from the Supreme Court that it will hear arguments on the case challenging Dick Cheney’s secret energy policy task force.
News that the high court will consider Cheney’s appeal sets up a fascinating legal showdown, but it wasn’t necessarily good news. In July, a federal appeals court ruled that a lawsuit, brought by the Sierra Club, a progressive environmental organization, and Judicial Watch, a conservative “watchdog” group, could continue despite Cheney’s protests.
For those of us who are troubled by Cheney’s secrecy and wonder exactly how much influence powerful energy lobbyists had over his task force’s recommendations (and why the administration is so desperate to keep the information secret), the appeals court ruling was more-than-sufficient. Had the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear Cheney’s appeal, the matter would have been finished and the lawsuit could have moved forward. Instead, the Court granted cert and agreed to hear the case.
The controversy surrounding the energy task force has been a contentious political fight for nearly three years now. Shortly after getting inaugurated in 2001, Bush placed Cheney in charge of overseeing a White House task force responsible for crafting the administration’s energy policy. Naturally, Cheney developed a policy that called for increased energy production, not conservation, and recommended initiatives such as drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.
We know that Cheney met with his friends and contributors from the oil and energy industries to create the administration’s policy, though no one outside the White House knows the details on how the task force operated because every detail of the working group’s meetings were kept top secret. No contacts, no meeting notes, no dates, and no phone logs were to be shared with anyone, not even Congress.
The GAO did learn, however, that the administration relied heavily on the advice of CEOs and lobbyists for the petroleum, electricity, nuclear, coal, chemical, and natural gas industries while largely ignoring environmentalists, conservationists, and scholars. One of the executives awarded exclusive access to Cheney was Enron’s “Kenny Boy” Lay. The White House resisted cooperating with Congress every step of the way, and, according to Richard Nixon’s former lawyer, may have even broken a few laws along the way.
Specifically, however, the case before the Supreme Court will be helpful in testing the limits of the White House’s penchant for extreme secrecy. Cheney will argue (or more accurately, Solicitor General Ted Olson will argue) that the task force had to rely on confidentiality so that Cheney could hear candid assessments of public policy. Sierra Club and Judicial Watch will insist, as the Washington Post’s Charles Lane explained, that “the involvement of the lobbyists in the energy task force means that the task force is subject to the provisions of a federal law that requires advisory committees to be balanced and open.”
Should be interesting. Arguments will be held in the spring and the decision will probably come no sooner than late-May.