Editorial: Sadly, secrecy prevails

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

On Tuesday a federal appeals court ruled that Vice President Dick Cheney can keep secret the records of an energy task force he headed in 2001. Two groups, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, had sought to make public the records from the meetings of the task force, which had helped forge President Bush's energy policy. The appeals court's ruling wasn't a big surprise, however. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court, in sending the case back to the appeals court for a final resolution, made it clear that it sided with the Bush administration's view that the records could be kept secret.

Despite the legal victory for Cheney, himself a former oil company executive, the public is the real loser in this case, since we don't know exactly how the task force operated. What is clear is that environmental groups were shut out of any meaningful input in the process as evidenced by the recommendations favoring those industries -- oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power -- that sat in on the meetings. To get a sense of the arrogance of the Bush White House, Cheney wouldn't even submit to Congress a list of the names of energy executives who attended the meetings. Nevadans in particular had an interest in finding out just what went on in the closed-door meetings so we could determine how crucial a role the nuclear power industry played in establishing the administration's subsequent policy of wanting to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Granted, it's not terribly surprising that energy companies that lavished campaign contributions on George Bush received favorable treatment once he was elected president. Still, the public deserves to know more about money's corrupting influence on politics in this instance. Just how far did the oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power industries go in helping set -- if not actually dictating -- Bush's energy policy? In light of how forcefully the Bush White House has sought to keep the records from the view of the public, the documents must be damning.