Justice Department attorneys were dealt another blow on Friday when a federal judge ordered the Bush administration to turn over to two Washington, DC-based public interest groups more documents and records related to Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, which developed the national energy policy last year.

At a hearing on the lawsuits brought by Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave the Bush White House 30 days to release the additional documents and respond to interrogatories posed by the groups, which are seeking to identify the companies, trade associations and energy executives who met with the task force and contributed to the development of the administration’s energy policy, The Washington Post reported.

The two groups, Judicial Watch particularly, are convinced the task force documents will show that former energy giant Enron Corp. and other energy companies wielded significant influence over Cheney and his task force during the process while the energy plan was crafted.

Judicial Watch, as well as other groups, already has received thousands of pages of documents from federal agencies that were represented on the Cabinet-level task force, including the departments of Treasury, Energy, Commerce, Transportation, Interior and Agriculture, and the Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Sullivan appeared to be irritated Friday with the government attorneys’ argument that the task force records were protected by “executive privilege” and constitutional claims, and should be kept from public scrutiny, the Post said. The judge has taken DOJ attorneys to task several times in the past for trying to stall progress in the Judicial Watch lawsuit.

The General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) also have brought separate lawsuits seeking the documents and records of the Cheney energy task force.

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