Editorial: Put an end to bunker mentality

Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002 | 8:42 a.m.

Vice President Dick Cheney uses high-minded rhetoric in defending his refusal to turn over records of secret meetings that his energy task force held with energy executives. Turning over the records, Cheney argues, would create a chilling effect, making it less likely that people in the future would offer "unvarnished" opinions to the president. "What's really at stake here is the ability of the president and the vice president to solicit advice from anybody they want in confidence," Cheney said a week ago. Cheney's argument sounds good, but it falls apart when you examine the Bush administration's hypocritical policy on the release of information involving communications with the White House.

Last week the New York Times reported that two months ago the Bush administration approved the release to Congress of thousands of e-mail messages by top White House aides in the Clinton administration. Some of the e-mails included messages sent to and from Vice President Al Gore's senior aides and outside advisers. In Cheney's world, it would appear that executive privilege applies just to Republican administrations.

The White House's withholding of the names of those who spoke with the energy task force also is selective. For instance, as the Los Angeles Times first reported last summer, the vice president departed once from his pledge to keep secret the names of people who met with his energy task force. That was regarding a May 15 meeting when Cheney and the energy task force sat down with executives who run companies that use alternative forms of energy, such as sun, wind and geothermal heat. Not coincidentally the White House divulged the names of the producers of clean energy sources just one day before Cheney's report formally was released, a period when there had been criticism that the administration had only listened to oil, gas and nuclear power executives. Cheney's hurried meeting with alternative-energy producers was a clumsy attempt to fend off suggestion s that the task force's report was largely written by oil, coal and nuclear power executives. It also demonstrates that Che! ney only cares about executive privilege when it is politically convenient.

Dragging out the matter with the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm that is suing for the release of the energy task force records, is just postponing their inevitable disclosure. The more President Bush and Vice President Cheney strain to justify reasons for secrecy, the worse they look. Bush should spare his administration any further embarrassment and release the names of those people who met with the vice president's energy task force and also disclose what subjects they discussed.