Bush Gets One-Two Punch on Energy

The Bush administration’s contacts with energy industry lobbyists and campaign contributors, including Enron Corp., came under increased scrutiny on two fronts Wednesday.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, asked the White House to disclose its contacts with Enron as part of a congressional probe into the energy giant’s collapse.

And environmentalists asked a federal judge to order a hearing on what they call “stonewalling” by the Energy Department in the release of documents related to the administration’s meetings with industry groups during drafting of a national energy policy.

“Too many watchdogs failed to bark” during the Enron debacle, Lieberman said. “I will not hesitate to ask for anything that helps us to investigate . . . what the federal government might have done to prevent, or at least anticipate, Enron’s demise.”

The White House is reviewing Lieberman’s letter to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., said spokeswoman Anne Womack. But, she added, “I think the American people are pretty sick and tired of these kinds of open-ended fishing expeditions.”

Lieberman also asked the U.S. archivist for information on contacts between federal agencies and Enron dating back to 1992, a period that would cover the Clinton administration.

The Bush administration has acknowledged that Enron officials met six times with members of the energy task force, including once with Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed it.

In court papers filed Wednesday seeking a contempt-of-court ruling, the Natural Resources Defense Council accused the Energy Department of delaying the release of the documents in order to engage in “spin” control. The council had sued for access to the papers, which it first sought almost a year ago under the Freedom of Information Act.

In response, Energy Department spokeswoman Jeanne Lopatto said the department met the midnight deadline, adding: “I suspect NRDC may be upset because their photo op was disrupted, but that’s not contempt of court.”

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that also sued for access to energy documents, plans to ask a court to force the administration to justify why so much information was deleted from the documents and why 15,000 pages were withheld. The Freedom of Information Act allows the government to withhold information that relates to the government’s “deliberative process.”

Lieberman’s letter and the new court filing were the latest rounds in the legal and political fight over the role played by special interests in shaping the task force’s work.

Critics of the administration’s policy have seized on documents showing that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, a key task force member, held numerous meetings with industry representatives but none with environmental groups while the plan, released in May, was being drafted.

Environmentalists contend that the administration’s plan, now before the Democratic-controlled Senate, is tilted toward energy production, while they favor more emphasis on conservation.

“The Bush administration did develop an energy policy that was clearly written by the utility industry and oil and gas companies,” said Debbie Sease, the Sierra Club’s national legislative director. “The House passed a bill that was just as bad or worse. The Senate started out with a good bill . . . but it’s being picked apart, vote by vote, to the point that unless it gets fixed, it’s not going to be acceptable energy policy either.”

Officials at the Natural Resources Defense Council asserted that the documents released this week show “the oil companies seem to be putting words in our president’s mouth,” as the environmental group’s lawyer, Sharon Buccino, put it.

The council produced a “suggested” presidential executive order written by the American Petroleum Institute on March 20, 2001. API’s language--seeking to require federal agencies to assess the effects of proposed regulations on energy supplies--turned up in an executive order issued by President Bush two months later, the environmental group said.

Complaining about the industry’s influence, the council also cited a March 2001 e-mail from a lobbyist for the Southern Co., an electric utility, seeking a review of the new source review provision of the Clean Air Act. This requires plants to install state-of-the-art pollution control devices when they renovate their plants in a way that increases pollution.

The administration’s energy plan later called for a review of the rule.

The administration contends that its energy plan is balanced, including some measures sought by environmentalists and omitting many sought by industry. An Energy Department spokesman said, for example, that API made 25 recommendations, but only four were included in the energy plan.