Cheney Should Stop Stalling
February 11, 2002
By JOHN W. DEAN
B EVERLY HILLS, Calif.
Vice President Dick Cheney's
posturing about his energy task force
has a familiar ring to someone who
served in the Nixon White House. It is
the sound of someone who has
something to hide.
It was during Watergate that I first
came to appreciate the power of the General Accounting Office over the executive
branch. H. R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, called me to say that the
accounting office wanted to examine the White House's books and records. The
president didn't want them sniffing around. How could we stop them?
The short answer was we couldn't stop them - we could only delay them. And that
is precisely what Mr. Cheney is attempting to do with his misguided efforts to
prevent the accounting office from seeing some records pertaining to the meetings
of his energy task force.
Mr. Cheney says he is refusing to provide the requested information as a matter of
principle. But as a matter of law, it is clear that the General Accounting Office has
a right to the information.
Some three decades ago, I convinced Mr. Haldeman that the office's auditors were
not partisans looking for dirt. And the president relented when I explained that to
litigate the G.A.O.'s authority would bring only negative publicity and defeat. The
audit proceeded, and nothing whatsoever came of it.
Mr. Cheney has spent enough years on Capitol Hill and in
the executive branch to know that the G.A.O.'s auditors
and examiners play it straight, and that David M. Walker, the comptroller general
of the United States, is no exception. And that's why his snub of the accounting
office's request for limited information about the work of his energy task force is
surprising. He has said he wants to "protect the ability of the president and the
vice president to get unvarnished advice from any source we want."
The accounting office, however, has not asked that he disclose the "unvarnished
advice" - only the names of those who provided it. The vice president has already
revealed he, or members of his staff, met on at least five occasions with ENRON
officials.
Yet rather than give out any more names, the vice president has challenged the
accounting office's authority to request this information. Thus the G.A.O. must sue
to resolve the question.
If the vice president does not believe, as a matter of principle, that the General
Accounting Office should have oversight power, he should try to sell Congress on
changing the statute that empowers it. That he has not done, perhaps because he
knows such an effort would be futile.
Richard Nixon was most vocal about maintaining this or that principle of executive
authority when he had the most to hide. I cannot but wonder what truly motivates
Mr. Cheney's newfound interest in litigating principles of executive versus
legislative authority. On the surface it appears he has decided he is better off
taking the political fallout from resisting the accounting office's request than he
would be if he disclosed the information.
I can only speculate as to why he is stonewalling. But I don't need to speculate
about the effect of his stonewalling. It places the vice president, knowingly or not,
in cover-up mode.
In fact, much of the Watergate cover-up was simply stalling. The goal was to push
any potential problem beyond the 1972 election, and in that we succeeded. Later
Mr. Nixon would try to stall until he completed his presidency, but he failed.
The Bush administration's stalling strategy appears to be very simple: Delay
disclosing the requested information by contesting the accounting office's
authority. It will take months, if not years, for that lawsuit to work its way through
the lower federal courts before it can ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court.
Then, after losing in the Supreme Court, the administration can still delay release
of the information by mounting another fight over executive privilege - which the
president has not yet invoked. All this litigation will certainly get the
administration safely past the 2004 election.
Of course, there is another possibility. Mr. Cheney may believe that the five
conservative justices who put him in his current job will again assist the
administration.
Such a remarkable political win in the Supreme Court, effectively neutering the
oversight authority of the accounting office - and, by extension, that of Congress
- would amount to a seismic realignment of power in Washington. Before Bush v.
Gore, I would have considered such a ruling an impossibility. Now I am not so sure.
John W. Dean served as White House counsel from 1970 to 1973 and is author, most
recently, of ``The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That
Redefined the Supreme Court.''
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