Reid supports pursuit of energy meeting records

Benjamin Grove

Monday, Feb. 25, 2002 | 10:50 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to step into the controversy over the Bush administration's private meetings with energy industry executives.

Reid says Bush, who this month endorsed the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada, may have changed his opinion about the controversial project after his top energy advisers met in private with nuclear energy industry leaders.

"If the meetings were on the level, the vice president and the president don't have anything to worry about," Reid said in a statement released by his aides.

Bush's energy task force, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, met with energy executives as it drafted its national energy strategy, released in May 2001.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has sued the White House to obtain records of the meetings. Reid, the Senate Majority Whip, plans to file a friend-of-the-court brief backing the GAO's pursuit of the records, possibly this week.

Bush officials will not release the documents of those meetings, saying special interests should be able to offer the president opinions without the opinions being made public.

Aides said Reid's action could generate further controversy about the energy meetings, because the high-profile senator is pointing to a specific example of how industry executives may have used a secret meeting to influence national energy policy.

The 48-member energy task force led by Cheney included 14 notable supporters of the federal plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Nuclear industry officials met with Cheney's group in March, and the national energy policy released a few months later contained tax breaks for nuclear power and a recommendation to "use the best science to provide a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste."

Reid says Bush broke the promise to "use the best science" when the president endorsed the Yucca project before scientific studies of the site were complete.

"It's clear George Bush has flip-flopped on this issue, and I think these meetings may have something to do with it," Reid said in the prepared statement.