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Goa whitehouse Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory/1231422http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory/1231422
Jan. 30, 2002, 10:25AM
Congress' GAO to sue White
House
over energy plan documents
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The General Accounting Office, the
investigative arm of Congress that's looking into the
collapse of Enron, will announce today that it will sue the
White House for access to documents from President
Bush's energy task force, congressional sources say.
A decision had been expected from GAO Comptroller
General David Walker, leader of Congress's investigative
arm, all week. The GAO wants to force Vice President
Cheney to turn over documents on the meetings held last
year with business executives, including Enron officials, as
the Bush administration crafted a new national energy
policy.
Some of the meetings included officials from the
now-collapsed Enron Corp., a Houston-based energy
broker with deep ties to Bush.
"We have been notified that they will be announcing their
decision today and that their decision is that they will be
moving forward," said the source, speaking on condition
on anonymity.
It would be the first time in the GAO's 80-year existence
that it sued the executive branch. The lawsuit would be
filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
GAO officials were calling congressional leaders at the
Capitol this morning to tell them of the decision. An official
announcement explaining the GAO's reasoning was
expected after noon.
"They said this morning that they're sending the letter up,"
said a House source, also speaking on condition of
anonymity. The letter itself had not yet been delivered to
Congress, the source said.
Although lawyers for the White House and the agency had
continued talks this week, Cheney said on Sunday that the
dispute "probably will get resolved in court."
In resisting the GAO, Cheney insists that providing the list
of industry executives would harm his ability to receive
advice in the future and that the congressional investigators
are overstepping their bounds. GAO, as a congressional
agency, insists it has the authority to request the
information.
Any GAO lawsuit would be highly controversial on Capitol
Hill. The agency's investigation began after Democrats on
April 19 requested that GAO investigate the conduct,
operations and funding of the Cheney energy task force.
On Tuesday, some Republicans had threatened to try to
block the suit.
"I think it may come to that," said Sen. Orrin Hatch,
R-Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
Congress' investigative arm shouldn't be "trying to impose
disclosure on internal White House meetings to determine
policy," Hatch said. "If you have to do that, pretty soon
there wouldn't be any meetings."
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said
Tuesday he and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.,
planned to "talk to the agency."
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he was researching to see
whether the GAO would be overstepping its authority by
taking on the administration. "My concerns are that it
would encroach upon the deliberative process and make it
impossible for the vice president at the direction of the
president to make a recommendation," Specter said. "It's
also a tricky area on executive privilege."
An energy consultant suggested to the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday that the
company may have been using largely secret trades to
manipulate energy markets.
Robert McCullough, a consultant whose clients include
several Northwest utilities, testified that in the week after
Enron announced its bankruptcy, the "forward price" of
electricity in the West fell sharply. Enron had been a key
trader in this market, which is used as a hedge against
future power price changes and is unregulated.
"That certainly raises the question about whether Enron
was manipulating the West Coast market" by keeping
prices artificially high, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in
response to the consultant's testimony.
McCullough said "the clear implication is that Enron may
have been using its market dominance to set forward
prices."
Other energy experts said other reasons may have been
behind the price decline. Lawrence Makovich, a power
industry expert at Cambridge Energy Research Associates,
said it would be impossible to determine simply from the
decline in price whether prices were manipulated.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told the
Senate panel it would investigate Enron's influence on
wholesale electricity prices.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that
then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay gave Cheney a
three-page document last April detailing the energy trading
company's arguments against price caps or other measures
to stabilize electricity prices in California.
"Events in California and in other parts of the country
demonstrated that the benefits of competition have yet to
be realized and have not reached consumers," the memo
said.
The newspaper said some of the positions included in the
memo were included in Cheney's energy plan.
An Enron spokesman told the newspaper that Lay gave
the memo to Cheney. Mary Matalin, an adviser to Cheney,
said the energy plan included input from many sources.
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