White House responds to subpoenas

WASHINGTON -- After a Senate panel voted to issue subpoenas Wednesday, the White House turned over summaries of dozens of contacts between Bush administration officials and Enron executives.

No instance has been found so far of Enron officials asking anyone in the White House for help before Enron's bankruptcy last December, the White House said.

The summaries were provided to the Governmental Affairs Committee hours after it voted to issue Congress' first subpoenas to the Bush White House. The vote was 9-8, along party lines, and some Republicans accused majority Democrats of having political motives.

The panel decided to subpoena President Bush's executive office and Vice President Dick Cheney's office to compel officials to produce relevant documents by noon June 3. The material being sought dates from January 1992, also covering the Clinton administration. Many of the contacts described in the material provided Wednesday were disclosed by the administration early this year when the Enron scandal broke, in response to questions from lawmakers and reporters.

They include a half-hour private meeting on April 17, 2001, that then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay had with Cheney, in which energy policy and the power crisis in California were discussed. Cheney, who headed an energy-policy task force, disclosed the meeting in a PBS television documentary earlier this year.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the committee chairman, was not satisfied with the material provided Wednesday because it appeared to be incomplete, said Lieberman spokeswoman Leslie Phillips.

"It appears the White House is still providing only what it thinks is relevant rather than what the committee asked for," Phillips said. She said the White House still hasn't given Lieberman the assurance he was seeking that it would provide all the material requested by the end of the month.