Secrecy, Energy Policy & the Bush Administration
On June 10 and 11 more than 90 citizens attended two public forums in Rochester and Minneapolis to learn about a Sierra Club lawsuit that is attempting to force the Bush Administration to publicly reveal information about its secret Energy Task Force. Participants were treated to a first hand account by Sierra Club attorney Sanjay Narayan of the Club's efforts to cast light on the Energy Task Force.
Shortly after taking office, President Bush appointed an Energy Task Force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, to develop a new national energy policy. Throughout early 2001, a long string of energy company executives, including such notable faces as former Enron CEO Ken Lay, participated in extensive meetings with the task force. Environmental and conservation leaders were permitted one, 10-minute meeting with the Vice President two days before the final report was unveiled. Not surprisingly, the final report read like an energy company wish list, with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for coal, oil and nuclear power interests; and a broad rollback of protections for clean air, clean water and public lands — including the opening up of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and millions of acres of other wild lands for oil drilling and coal mining.
What the legal case has made clear is the unprecedented effort the Bush Administration is making to conceal their activities from public scrutiny. In effect, the Bush Administration lawyers have attempted to argue that neither the courts nor Congress have the power to investigate the activities of any public official or body designated by the President. This argument turns the Constitutional concept of checks and balances on its head. Fortunately, to date the courts have rightly seen this as an illegal power grab. Before being heard at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Washington D.C. District Court and the Court of Appeals both threw out the Administration's argument as being without merit. In April 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case. They are expected to make a ruling by the end of June.
You can learn more about the Sierra Club versus Cheney, et al. at http://www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/cheney_case/