“You have no case.”<\/p>\n
That’s what Vice President Dick Cheney’s lawyers heard yesterday from a federal appeals court as they fought to keep secret who Cheney’s energy policy task force met with in 2001.<\/p>\n
This always struck me as the great White House scandal that couldn’t make any traction. In 2001, Cheney was responsible for overseeing a White House group that was shaping the administration’s energy policy while an energy crisis was wreaking havoc in California. To no one’s surprise, Cheney, presumably with the help of his friends and contributors from the oil and energy industries, ignored environmental concerns and shaped a policy centered on drilling for more oil, not conservation.<\/p>\n
When asked, however, about how the government task force arrived at its conclusions, Cheney wouldn’t share a single detail. No contacts, no meeting notes, no dates, no phone logs were to be shared with anyone, not even Congress. In fact, when the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, asked to see the list of who was consulted during the process, Cheney refused. This led to the first-ever instance of the GAO taking the White House to court to obtain information.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, a federal judge threw out the GAO’s suit, concluding that Congress didn’t have the authority under the separation of powers to ask for the White House information. With the court’s decision, I gave up hope and kind of forgot about the whole thing.<\/p>\n
However, while Congress couldn’t pry details about the secret meetings from Cheney, private groups thought they had a better chance. They may be right.<\/p>\n
The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, two non-profit groups with wildly different backgrounds, filed suit to see if they could learn who Cheney’s task force met with, arguing that representatives from energy corporations may have had undue influence in shaping the administration’s energy policies.<\/p>\n
A federal district court has indicated that the Vice President may be obligated to share some details with the two non-profit groups. In a bid to stop that from happening, Cheney’s legal team asked a Court of Appeals panel yesterday to tell the district court that the administration could keep the information secret.<\/p>\n