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Cheney may fight document release

US Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that the White House was prepared to go to court to fight the release of documents demanded by Congress as part of the investigation into any influence the Enron Corp had in formulating the Bush administration's energy policy.

Cheney said that the General Accounting Office, the agency demanding the documents, was overstepping its authority, and that he had a right to keep the documents secret to preserve his ability to get "unvarnished" advice from outside consultants.

David Walker, the head of the General Accounting Office, responded on Sunday evening in an interview that it was now "highly likely" that he would file a lawsuit against the Bush administration if Cheney did not turn over the documents by the end of this week.

Of the vice president's assertion that the accounting office was overstepping its bounds, Walker, the comptroller-general of the US, replied, "talk is cheap."

It would be the first time in history that the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress, sued another government department for not cooperating with an inquiry.

In interviews on ABC's This Week program and Fox News Sunday, Cheney said that it was the right of the president and vice president to keep secret meetings such as those that Cheney and his energy task force had over the past year with Enron executives as the administration devised its energy policy.

"What I object to, and what the president's objected to, and what we've told GAO we won't do, is make it impossible for me or future vice presidents to ever have a conversation in confidence with anybody without having, ultimately, to tell a member of Congress what we talked about and what was said," Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

At issue is how much Enron, a major contributor to the Republican Party, influenced the administration's energy plan, which eases environmental rules, opens public land to drilling and provides tax incentives to energy companies for exploration.

Enron and the White House have acknowledged that Enron executives met several times with Cheney or members of his staff about energy last year, and documents of the meetings could show whether the Bush administration policy mirrored any specific recommendations of Enron.

A lawsuit would increase pressure on Cheney, who is under criticism from Democrats for his relationship with Enron, the giant energy company that went bankrupt and that has ties to a number of officials in the Bush administration.

"Now, the fact is, Enron didn't get any special deals," Cheney said on ABC. Cheney also said that turning over the documents would be detrimental to the presidency.

"We've seen it in cases like this before, where it's demanded that presidents cough up and compromise on important principles," Cheney said. As a result, he said, "we are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years."

Some Republican strategists have begun to worry that Cheney's stance is contributing to perceptions that the White House has something to hide on the issue. A New York Times and CBS poll published Sunday showed that a majority of Republicans believed that the administration had not been forthcoming on the matter.

Walker said he did not agree with Cheney's position that he was allowed to keep the meetings secret because he is vice president.

"This is not about the vice president's constitutional position," he said. "It's about his capacity as chairman of the national energy policy development group. From day one, this has not had anything to do with the constitutional position of the vice president. I know they want to present it that way because they think people will be more sympathetic, but that's not factually accurate."

Walker said he believes the White House put Cheney in charge of energy policy for that very reason -- to claim executive privilege and avoid oversight of the group by Congress.
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