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The General Accounting Office issued a report last week noting that the vice president shaped our energy policy with clandestine advice from "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists."
Cheney and energy: The final report
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- The General Accounting Office yesterday issued its final report on how Vice President Dick Cheney came up with the administration's energy policy two years ago, saying it had to piece together information from other sources because the vice president's task force had been so unresponsive.
The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, plows old ground but for the first time officially confirms earlier news reports and expands on them in saying that the task force received advice from "a variety of non-federal energy stakeholders," with "industry leaders submitting detailed policy recommendations."
The report said that one of the task force's principals, Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, "discussed national energy policy with chief executive officers of petroleum, electricity, nuclear, coal, chemical and natural gas companies, among others."
It also said, "Several corporations and associations, including Chevron, the National Mining Association and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, provided the secretary of energy with detailed policy recommendations."
A spokeswoman for Abraham, Jeanne Lopatto, said he had been assigned to examine energy production. "It should come as a surprise to no one that the secretary of energy met with energy officials throughout the development of the national energy plan," Lopatto said.
The GAO said that the energy task force met with "non-federal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists." But the extent to which they shaped the task force report could not be determined, the report said.
The report said the task force also received information "to a more limited degree" from academic experts, policy organizations, environmental groups and private citizens.
Cheney submitted the report to President Bush on May 16, 2001. It included more than 100 proposals to increase the nation's energy supply, recommending additional oil and gas drilling and saying the nation needed to build 1,300 to 1,900 electric-power plants to meet the projected energy demand over the next two decades.
Some of the recommendations have been incorporated into the administration's energy bill.
The GAO was repeatedly rebuffed by Cheney's office in seeking information about how the energy plan was developed. The vice president's office maintained that executive deliberations are confidential. The agency sued in federal court but lost on jurisdictional grounds.
In February, David Walker, the comptroller general of the United States who oversees the accounting office, declined to appeal that decision, effectively abandoning his agency's effort to obtain information from the Bush administration.
Since then, the GAO has been piecing together information from other sources to complete the request from Congress that it determine with whom Cheney's task force met, how they formulated the energy policy and how much it cost.
Walker, who is in the fifth year of his 15-year term, said in an interview, "This was the first time in the history of the agency that we were absolutely stonewalled and the first time during my tenure that we haven't been able to reach a reasonable accommodation with the subject."
Walker said he would monitor other legal suits that are seeking access to the deliberations of the energy task force and be prepared to take action, if warranted.
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