COURT UPHOLDS DEMANDS ON BUNKER DICK TO TURN OVER THE PAPERS!!!!!
After all this time, he finally loses the BIG ROUND to uncover the incredible secrecy and disgusting cooperation of this administration with KENNY LAY and ENRON to bilk the entire nation of BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF $$$$$
Court Allows Suit on Cheney's Energy Panel
The Associated Press
Tuesday 08 July 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court dealt a setback to the Bush administration
Tuesday, refusing to stop a lawsuit delving into Vice President Dick Cheney's contacts with the
energy industry as his task force was drafting the White House's energy policy.
In a 2-1 ruling, the court rejected the government's arguments that the lawsuit would be an
unconstitutional intrusion on the operations of the executive office of the president.
Cheney and administration officials ``have not satisfied the heavy burden'' required for the
appeals court to get involved in the case, wrote appeals judge David Tatel. Appeals judge Harry
Edwards concurred in a separate opinion. The lawsuit had been proceeding in a lower court.
Drafted in 2001, the administration's energy plan favors opening more public lands to oil and
gas drilling and proposes a wide range of other steps supported by industry. It followed months
of discussions by task force members and staff with business executives and lobbyists from the
energy sector.
The groups that are suing -- Sierra Club and the conservative Judicial Watch -- allege that
participants from industry effectively became members of the task force in assembling the White
House's energy policy. The administration says the makeup of the task force was limited to
government officials.
Bush administration officials have not even produced a summary of documents they want to
keep confidential, the appeals court said.
If the administration is so concerned about unwarranted intrusion, it can ``invoke executive or
any other privilege'' in an attempt to keep the material out of the public domain, Tatel wrote.
Judge A. Raymond Randolph dissented, declaring that ``for the judiciary to permit this sort of
discovery'' into the actions of the vice president and other Cabinet-level appointees ``strikes me
as a violation of the separation of powers.''
Federal agencies have disclosed 39,000 pages of internal documents related to the work of
Cheney's energy task force, which itself has turned over no materials.
``We look forward to finally gaining access to the inner workings of the energy task force,'' said
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.
For more on Dick Cheney's secret energy task force. |
