I was surprised by Dean's comments, too. He's certainly in a position to know about such things.
CNN has finally posted the interview, if you're interested in seeing what he actually said rather than my semi-conscious take on it.
Dean: 'First step' in Enron cover-up?
February 8, 2002 Posted: 1:41 PM EST (1841 GMT)
(CNN) -- The General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, announced recently its intention to file suit against the White House to force it to release notes involving an energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. The fight for the notes began when the GAO requested them last summer and has heated up with the financial collapse of Enron.
The White House maintains that turning over the notes would erode the ability of the executive branch to get advice in private and to deliberate matters.
In a recent article former Nixon White House counsel John Dean wrote, "Not since Richard Nixon stiffed the Congress during Watergate has a White House so openly and arrogantly defied Congress' investigative authority. Nor has any activity by the Bush administration more strongly suggested they are hiding incriminating information about their relationship with the now-moribund Enron, or other heavy-hitting campaign contributors from the energy business."
Dean spoke with CNN anchor Paula Zahn about the battle being waged between the Bush administration and the GAO.
ZAHN: So what do you know that congressional investigators don't know about any culpability on the Bush administration's part?
DEAN: I don't know anything they don't know. What I do know and what's evident to me as somebody who's been there, done that, if you will, is the way this is being handled by the White House right now on requests for very simple and non detailed information at all about Vice President Cheney's energy group. I don't understand, frankly, why he's taken this hard-line stance that he has. It's very difficult for me to accept that it's a matter of principle, because he will take a lot of heat for the position he's in, and he's ultimately, I think, going to lose in court, and people are going to say, hey, what is going on here?
ZAHN: As you know, the vice president has made it abundantly clear that he feels these requests erode executive privilege. Why don't you think that principle should be preserved?
DEAN: Well, Paula, with all due respect to the vice president, what GAO is asking for is not the unvarnished statements of anybody to the president or the vice president. They're merely asking for who met with that committee and where they met and their names, and the name, ranks and serial number. It's not the content of the conversations even involved. So there's even a misrepresentation going on as to what's requested. Not only that, but they're denying that the GAO has authority they've had for 80 years to request this kind of information. This raises questions in my mind.
ZAHN: Do you have a problem with Vice President Cheney and members of his staff having met with people from the energy business?
DEAN: Not at all. They certainly have a right to do that. What they don't have a right to do is, one, is to do it in a illegal fashion, if you will, and that illegal fashion is, if indeed the industry was involved in his task force, then there's a law that applies. It's called the Federal Advisory Committee Act. It's been in commission since 1972, and it's there so outsiders can see what kind of advice is going into making a policy. It's a very fundamental law, and it's one that we can't even tell if it was honored or not, although the vice president's office said it was not. It intentionally set up the committee not to have that kind of law apply. And we don't know, because no one will answer any questions as to who did what and when.
ZAHN: Would you be satisfied if the White House just eventually offers this list of names, or do you want to know about the individual testimony of these players at these meetings?
DEAN: Well, I don't want to know any of this. I'm a spectator, but what I saying is somebody who has sat on both sides of Capitol Hill, if you will, or both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Congress does have a right to this kind of information. They asked for something that is non-invasive, if you will. So it really raises a lot of questions as to why the gauntlets hat been thrown at this point when it really doesn't make sense to do so. The vice president has already told the Congress that he did indeed meet with Enron, or his staff did, on at least six occasions. This is what's being asked for across the board. So why he can't give it for the others is a mystery.
ZAHN: All right. What you're saying, though, is the vice president is entitled, as is the president, to executive privilege. But you're saying the GAO is not asking to violate that, they just want the names of people who participated in these hearings.
DEAN: That's right.
ZAHN: And you respect the right to the administration's right to executive privilege?
DEAN: I do, but only the president has the right to executive privilege, not the vice president. It's never gone that far. It's really a uniquely presidential privilege, and the president himself must invoke it, and there has be no invocation of executive privilege here. What they've said is, we challenge GAO's authority to even ask for this information. That's different than executive privilege. What this appears, Paula, to me to be is the first step of a cover-up. This is the way you start it. You stall, you stall, you stall. You try to get something like this to go on until it is no longer an issue, until something intervenes and replaces it, or the issue becomes moot for some other reason. That's the early signal here.
ZAHN: That's a strong indictment. What suggestion is there that anything is being covered up here?
DEAN: Not an indictment at all. All I'm doing is saying if you look at the facts, and the practice, that's the way it was done in the past. Certainly the way we did during Watergate was to try to stall everything, and this is a stalling action. |
