GAO May File Suit Over Energy Papers

Congressional investigators, refusing to back down in a three-month standoff with Vice President Dick Cheney, threatened Friday to sue the White House if it continues to withhold documents detailing how a Cheney-led task force developed its national energy policy.

But the White House indicated no new willingness to turn over the disputed documents to Congress, setting up the possibility of a constitutional clash between the executive and legislative branches.

This is only the sixth time in two decades that the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has issued a report threatening to take an executive agency to court over its refusal to release documents. Never before has the president or the vice president been the target of such a formal demand, officials said.

Cheney’s task force developed more than 100 wide-ranging recommendations this spring on energy production, oil and gas exploration, conservation and related issues. Democrats in Congress charge that it tilted its findings heavily in favor of the energy industry and corporate interests.

Since May, the GAO has been demanding the names of people who met with the task force as it developed its recommendations. But Cheney refused the request two weeks ago, saying the agency was trying to “unconstitutionally interfere” with the workings of the White House.

The latest volley came Friday as the GAO’s comptroller general, David Walker, sent a 10-page report to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) rebutting Cheney’s claims of confidentiality and saying that “we strongly disagree with the vice president’s positions.”

Expanding on demands it made a month ago, the GAO said that “the records we are requesting will assist the review of how [Cheney’s task force] spent public funds, how it carried out its activities and whether applicable law was followed.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), one of two top Democrats who initially requested the material, accused the White House on Friday of “an unhealthy instinct for secrecy.”

“I hope the president will do the right thing and release this routine information,” Waxman said.

The White House gave no indication that it is willing to budge.

“We continue to believe that the comptroller general lacks the authority to pursue this inquiry,” White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said after receiving the GAO report.

Noting that the White House already has turned over about 70 pages of documents to Congress, she added that “we believe that we are being responsive to the GAO in the areas where they have the authority to request the information.”

In his GAO report, Walker said that, while he is hopeful the standoff can be resolved, he is “authorized to bring a civil action” in federal court if the White House does not turn over the requested documents within 20 days.

However, under provisions meant to balance the powers of the executive and legislative branches, the White House could preempt a lawsuit by formally certifying that disclosure of the records would “substantially impair the operations of government.”

That would effectively end the dispute, and it is a tactic that has been employed twice in the last two decades in similar situations.

In 1990, when Cheney was secretary of Defense, he used that argument to avoid giving Congress information on the Peacekeeper missile, officials said.