Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force Ordered to Cough Up More Documents

by Mary

A US District Judge ordered the executive branch to release more documents relating to Dick Cheney's secretive energy task force. Government officials in the Energy department, the Interior department and other federal agencies have been ordered to release a number of documents relating to the energy task force including correspondence between the task force and the agencies and the records from the task force director. This order was separate from the upcoming Supreme Court ruling where Cheney is the plantiff and his good pal Antoine Scalia claims he cannot recuse himself because it is essential he is available to cast a tie breaking vote if it is a split decision. (Nice, huh?)

The groups that have been battling to open up the task force records believe these documents can go a long way towards seeing whether energy lobbyists were involved in creating the energy policy of the administration. So even though Cheney thought he had the case whipped by having his pet judge in his back pocket, this set of records could expose much of the inner workings and perhaps provide enough evidence that the task force was not protected from public scrutiny by being made up solely of government agency workers, but also included corporate lobbyists. And remember the last round of documents released had those lovely Iraq maps and how Iraq would be "harvested" after Saddam was gone. It should be interesting to see what gets exposed this round.