A Victory for Secrecy

The White House won big yesterday, gaining judicial protection from demands that it disclose information about Vice President Cheney's secret energy-policy task force.

Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei write in The Washington Post: "A federal appeals court in Washington dismissed a lawsuit yesterday that sought to force Vice President Cheney to turn over records of private meetings his office held in 2001 to shape the administration's energy policy.

"The unanimous ruling was a major legal and political victory for the White House, further solidifying the president's power to deliberate and seek advice behind closed doors without disclosing details. The court's eight judges supported the Bush administration's contention that forcing the executive branch to produce information about its internal policy deliberations is unnecessarily intrusive and violates the president's constitutional powers. . . .

" 'Bottom line: This is a significant win for those who believe the presidency needs more power and has lost power over the past 30 years,' said American University's James A. Thurber, who is writing a book on presidential power."

David Stout writes in the New York Times: "The decision could be the last word in a case that reached the Supreme Court last spring, only to be sent back to the lower courts. And it comes as Congress is weighing energy legislation that Mr. Bush says will combine efficiency with environmental protection, and that his critics say is a gift to the energy industry. . . .

"Details on the evolution of energy policy seemed to be potentially damaging for the Bush administration in the 2004 election, given Mr. Cheney's former role as the president of Halliburton, the giant oil-services company, and Mr. Bush's former friendships with executives of Enron, the energy trading corporation that collapsed amid scandal.

"But in a 7-to-2 ruling on June 24, the Supreme Court effectively postponed the resolution of the lawsuit until after the election."

You may also recall: "When the case was before the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia drew criticism for refusing to remove himself after going duck hunting with Mr. Cheney in early 2004. Justice Scalia said in a memorandum that he 'never hunted in the same blind with the vice president.' "

The general issue at hand was whether representatives of the energy industry were de facto members of Cheney's task force.

David G. Savage writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Outsiders may have met with Cheney's task force, but they were not members of it, Judge [A. Raymond] Randolph said. All the members of the task force were Bush administration officials, and therefore, the National Energy Policy Task Force was not governed by the open-disclosure rules of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, he said.

" 'The outsider might make an important presentation, he might be persuasive, the information he provides might affect the committee's judgment,' Randolph wrote. 'But having neither a vote nor a veto over the advice the committee renders to the president, he is no more a member of the committee than the aides who accompany congressmen or Cabinet officers to committee meetings.' "

But the case was never fully presented to the courts. Yesterday's ruling was about a preliminary request for discovery of minutes and other documents that would have shown who attended the task force meetings -- a necessary first step in determining if fuller disclosure was warranted.