Cheney says energy panel input should remain secret

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended President Bush's right to refuse to identify the executives the White House met with in formulating the administration's energy policy.

Amid the Enron scandal, Congress' investigative arm will soon decide whether to sue to force the White House to turn over documents on the meetings last year with representatives of energy companies. They included the now-collapsed Enron Corp., a Houston-based company with ties to Bush.

Cheney acknowledged that the dispute "probably will get resolved in court." Last week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had left open the possibility of a compromise.

"The ball is in the White House's court," Comptroller General David Walker, who heads the General Accounting Office, said in a telephone interview.

The White House said recently that representatives of Enron, an energy trader that was ranked as the seventh-largest U.S. corporation, met six times on energy issues last year with Cheney or his aides. Thousands of employees and big and small investors nationwide lost fortunes in Enron's plunging stock as the company spiraled into the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2.

The Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron and its longtime auditor, the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating since Oct. 31. Eleven congressional committees also have opened inquiries.

Cheney also defended the conduct of Army Secretary Thomas White, a former vice chairman of Enron's energy services division, which reportedly was one of the units used to conceal the company's losses.

Presidential privilege

White has "always conducted himself in an ethically fine manner," Cheney said. "There's no evidence to indicate anybody did anything wrong in the administration."

Cheney's statements on two Sunday talk shows raised accusations by some Democrats of White House stonewalling and the prospect of a battle over presidential privilege reminiscent of the Clinton administration's bitter Whitewater disputes with Republican lawmakers.

Two days before Bush's State of the Union address, Democratic Party leaders said the White House is making a mistake and predicted that Enron would be a looming issue in this year's election campaigns.

Battle with Congress

"The American people have a right to know what the facts are," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I think the administration needs to open up, to be willing to be forthcoming with all the information regarding these circumstances."

Cheney insisted that providing the list of industry executives would harm his ability to receive advice in the future.

"Now that would be unprecedented ... in the sense that it would make it virtually impossible for me to have confidential conversations with anybody," he told "Fox News Sunday."

"You just cannot accept that proposition without putting a chill over the ability of the president and vice president to receive unvarnished advice," Cheney said.

But Walker, the GAO chief, said he was not seeking any records of discussions between Cheney and his aides. "This has nothing to do with his constitutional position as vice president," only as head of the energy task force, he said.

Cheney's comments ratcheted up the months-old dispute between the White House and Congress' GAO over documents related to his task force that formulated a pro-industry national energy policy last May. The administration has refused to fully disclose its contacts with the energy industry.