The General Accounting Office (GAO) said Friday it was dropping its year-long legal effort to force the Bush White House to turn over the names of energy executives and companies that may have influenced the drafting of the administration’s national energy policy.

Comptroller General David M. Walker said the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, decided not to appeal U.S. District Judge John D. Bates’s December ruling dismissing the agency’s lawsuit to obtain information from Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed up the task force that developed the president’s energy policy.

The GAO “strongly believes” the district court’s decision was “incorrect,” noted Walker, but further pursuit of the information “would require investment of significant time and resources over several years.” Several private groups — including Judicial Watch, a legal watchdog group, and Sierra Club, an environmental group — are seeking access to the same records in court. This “information will be made available to GAO if they are successful in their cases,” he said.

The Bush White House refused to furnish the sought-after information to GAO on the grounds that it would encroach on the authority of the executive branch. The lawsuit marked the first time the GAO had brought legal action against the executive branch to compel production of information and records. The agency filed the lawsuit against the Bush administration in February 2002, after having had its requests for task force records and documents rebuffed several times by the White House.

“We hope that GAO is never again put in the position of having to resort to the courts to obtain information that Congress needs to perform its constitutional duties, but we will be prepared to do so in the future if necessary,” Walker said in a statement.

The GAO initiated its pursuit of the energy task force records at the urging of Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Dingell (D-MI), who suspected that large Bush campaign contributors, such as former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay, had unduly influenced the drafting of the energy policy.

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