New York Times
Sunshine, the Watergate-era rallying cry proclaimed, is the best disinfectant. It is a credo that, 30 years later, is more relevant than ever as the White House and Congress battle over whether records from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force should be made public.
The documents being sought by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, would shed light on the role Enron played in the development of the Bush administration's energy policies. The White House insists Enron had no untoward influence, but Mr. Cheney has admitted that he or his aides sat down some half-dozen times with officials from Enron, a generous donor to the Bush presidential campaign and other Republican causes. The Bush energy plan does many things Enron might have asked for, including easing environmental rules, providing tax cuts to energy companies and opening nature preserves to drilling.
The White House insists that release of the documents would have a chilling effect on the willingness of corporations and private citizens to provide it with the unvarnished truth about matters of public policy. It is highly unlikely, however, that the sort of special interest groups that appear before these task forces are such shrinking violets that they would suddenly refuse to lobby the White House if their identities were revealed.
No more convincing is the White House's claim that the GAO's request is a "partisan fishing expedition." ...
The GAO is prepared to argue in court that the administration's secrecy runs afoul of Congressional investigative prerogatives and of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a 1972 law enacted to bring greater openness to federal government deliberations. Almost 60 percent of Americans, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll, believe the Bush administration is hiding something about Enron. As the public ponders what deals the administration and Enron may have been making in the shadows, it is more important than ever to let the sun shine in.
Boston Globe
The Enron scandal has cast into sharp relief the Bush administration's secret list of private-sector officials who spoke with its energy task force last year. Until now, the list's biggest source of embarrassment had been expected to be the absence of representatives from consumer or environmental organizations. The task force produced a policy that had the fingerprints of the oil, coal, power, and nuclear industries all over it, including a plan to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
By claiming a right to confidentiality and stonewalling all efforts to learn the names of the industry honchos who offered their advice, the task force chairman, Vice President Dick Cheney, has been able to keep this one-sidedness from becoming public. But any chance the administration could brush aside challenges to its effort to leave the country in the dark collapsed along with one of the biggest players at the table, the bankrupt energy broker Enron.
Last Friday, Congress's chief investigator said he was hopeful the administration would agree in the next several days to supply the information he had requested. If not, Comptroller General David Walker, who served in both the Reagan and first Bush administrations, said he would consider taking the administration to court. Walker, who heads the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, should do that immediately. ...
On Sunday, Cheney said Walker had decided in August to back off in his quest for the information and is pursuing it now because of the Enron connection and pressure from congressional Democrats. Walker called Cheney's remark ''absolutely false'' and said he was prepared to sue in September but delayed action until after the Sept. 11 crisis had abated. Cheney should stop impugning Walker's motives and hand over the list of who had the administration's attention when it put together its ''made in Houston'' energy policy.
Baltimore Sun
Vice President Dick Cheney isn't doing his boss any favors these days. But he's certainly raising the volume on questions about who he has done favors for.
Even before the spectacular collapse of Enron Corporation and the allegations of scandal that followed, the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, was looking into whether corporate campaign contributions had unduly influenced the development of national energy policy.
Mr. Cheney was chairman of the group formulating the policy, and he or his staff met with Enron officials at least five times.
Now, Comptroller General David Walker, head of the GAO, wants to see the records of those meetings.
Clearly, whether Mr. Cheney allowed executives from Enron, a major political donor, to essentially provide a blueprint for the administration's energy policy is a separate issue from the company's present legal and financial troubles.
But Mr. Cheney's refusal to turn over the documents requested by the GAO is doing more to link George W. Bush's White House with Enron's scandal than any evidence so far has succeeding in doing. He's playing a dangerous game, and the president is unwise to follow his lead. ...
But Mr. Cheney's reason for refusing to cooperate is more than just politically troubling -- it's outrageous. ...
Mr. Cheney's pleas for concealment also ring hollow coming a scant two years after his party conducted an exhaustive exposé of Bill Clinton's sex life -- which had nothing to do with national policy -- before Congress.
Mr. Walker, the comptroller general, is mulling plans to take Mr. Cheney to court to force him to turn over the records.
If that fails, congressional committees investigating the conflict-of-interest allegations could subpoena them.
Would the nation be shocked to find that a committee of politicians shaping energy policy had been influenced by a deep-pockets energy company? Probably not, but that doesn't make it right.
However, it's altogether possible that the harm to the presidency may well come less from the reality of the conflict than from the vehement attempts to keep the evidence under wraps.
Mr. Cheney should be able to relate to that; something similar happened, oh, about 30 years ago.
Dallas Morning News
The escalating stare-down between Vice President Dick Cheney and the General Accounting Office is on the verge of being waged in a federal court. Congress' investigative arm has threatened to sue for documents related to the Bush administration's development of an energy plan. To that, Mr. Cheney has all but said "see you in court."
For months, Mr. Cheney has refused to release records of his energy task force, despite growing public perception that oil and gas interests improperly influenced U.S. energy policy. Such perceptions can harm an administration, even one that enjoys overwhelming approval for the war against terror.
The GAO contends that since the task force spent taxpayer dollars, the body has a legal right to demand information about the role energy interests, including Enron, might have played in developing energy policy. The vice president, however, insists that the GAO's jurisdiction extends only to agencies created by statute. "That's not me," Mr. Cheney said in a weekend television interview. "I am a constitutional officer, and the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office."
Regrettably, the vice president continues to offer a legal explanation to an accountability issue. The administration is fully within its right to pursue an energy policy, but the public and other non-energy stakeholders also have a right to know whether conflicts of interest played a role. We thought the same with Hillary Clinton's health policy task force. ...
The administration should be perfectly candid about its energy policy deliberations. Now, not later.
Los Angeles Times
Vice President Dick Cheney may be spending too much time in underground bunkers. His refusal to hand over information to Congress about secret meetings of his energy task force last spring with corporate executives, including Enron's, suggests that he has become blinded to the fact that democracy relies on open government.
On television this past weekend, Cheney inflated his position into a mini-constitutional crisis, declaring he is determined to stem the erosion of executive power that has taken place over the past three decades. But even leading Republicans -- including Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of a House committee that is investigating Enron -- are now calling on Cheney to cough up the documents, and his stonewalling is fueling the perception that the administration has something to hide. ...
Long before Enron imploded, we called on Cheney to come clean about the energy task force. Now, and with good reason, the pressure on him has multiplied. Enron was the biggest corporate donor to the Bush campaign. No fewer than 17 provisions in the final energy task force report would have benefited the company. One, added at the last minute, for instance, urged President Bush to push India to increase oil and gas exploration -- a possible boon to Enron's money-losing natural gas plant in Dabhol, India.
At Enron, executives were able to escape accountability through bluster or obfuscation. The public should hold the executive branch to a higher standard. In attacking Congress, Cheney is behaving as though the best defense is a good offense. But on Sunday he looked as feeble as the San Diego Chargers.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are wandering into dangerous political territory in their dispute with the General Accounting Office. The nonpartisan GAO wants documents from Cheney's energy task force meetings, especially documents concerning Enron's participation and possible influence; Cheney refuses to release them. If the White House and the Congress are not careful, they could find themselves locked in the sort of futile embrace the Clinton administration experienced over Whitewater. No one would benefit from that diversion; there are too many important issues Washington needs to tend, not least the war against terrorism.
A parallel can be drawn between the Enron question domestically and the treatment-of-prisoners issue internationally. In both cases, the administration has displayed a deafness of tone in its actions and statements that has unnecessarily squandered the broad support it developed following Sept. 11. If that support continues to erode, the White House could find itself isolated and weakened both at home and abroad.
It's not immediately clear who's right about Cheney's claim of executive privilege over the energy task force documents. But this is clearly not a partisan witch hunt. ...
The GAO's Walker now is threatening to sue the White House for the documents. Such a suit, the first of its kind, might be necessary, but it would also be regrettable. The country does not need that sort of protracted constitutional confrontation.
Cheney is the focus just now, but Bush is president. He goes before the nation tonight to give his annual State of the Union address. We hope he uses the occasion to tell Congress and the American people that on Enron and on a whole raft of important domestic concerns, he aims to cooperate with Congress rather than play the game of hardball that Cheney signaled over the weekend. Compromise, gentlemen, is honorable.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
