Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2002 | 9:43 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
WASHINGTON -- A federal court ruling Monday that denied the General Accounting Office the ability to sue Vice President Dick Cheney for energy policy documents could have a chilling effect on Congress' ability to get information from government departments, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.
"It sets a terribly bad precedent," Reid said Tuesday. "It is an invitation for subsequent administrations, not just the Bush administration, to keep things secret."
Reid was among the group of Democratic senators who first requested information about meetings Cheney held with corporate executives and lobbyists as the vice president assembled a national energy plan. The plan, released in spring 2001, called for more oil and gas drilling on public lands and included eased regulations and tax breaks for the nuclear industry, as well as plans for more conservation and renewable energy development.
Reid, a longtime foe of the nuclear industry over the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, led the call for the GAO to sue Cheney after the White House refused access to energy meeting documents. A group of Democratic lawmakers wanted to know who Cheney and his aides met with and how they decided whom to invite to the secret meetings.
But U.S. District Judge John Bates, appointed by President Bush, dismissed the GAO suit Monday, saying it was unprecedented in what it was asking the White House to divulge.
The judge ruled that the GAO didn't have the authority to file suit because an official body of Congress -- a committee or a house -- didn't request the information.
Still, Reid decried the decision.
"I feel so strongly about opening government," Reid said. "People get upset locally when three county commissioners meet in private on something like zoning. Here you had the vice president meeting with the largest oil executives and we really don't know who they were and what they talked about. I think that is awful."
Reid in October asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether President Bush was using taxpayer money to pay for his campaign travel.
Bush tirelessly campaigned coast-to-coast for congressional Republicans in the final weeks before Election Day. White House officials say they use taxpayer money to cover the official business travel of the president and that Republican political groups pay for the campaign travel.
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