Weighing in on the battle between Vice President Dick Cheney and the General Accounting Office over energy task force records, former White House Counsel John Dean said in an op-ed column printed in the New York Times Monday that it could take several years for the dispute to be resolved. Dean, who served under President Nixon, said “as a matter of law, it is clear that the General Accounting Office has a right to the information.” Cheney has refused to turn over records from meetings of the task force which drew up the administration’s energy policy (see Daily GPI, Jan. 29).

Dean said that during Watergate, Nixon’s staff also tried to stop the GAO, the investigating arm of the Congress, from obtaining records. “…we couldn’t stop them — we could only delay them. And that is precisely what Mr. Cheney is attempting to do with his misguided efforts to prevent the accounting office from seeing some records pertaining to the meetings of his energy task force.” Behind the GAO probe are congressmen seeking to determine if task force participants outside government, in particular Ken Lay, had an undue influence on the formulation of government energy policy or appointments.

“Richard Nixon was most vocal about maintaining this or that principle of executive authority when he had the most to hide,” Dean said, adding that Cheney’s stonewalling gives the impression he has something to hide. The goal in fending off the GAO in the Nixon administration was to push any potential problem beyond the 1972 election, and after that past the end of Nixon’s second term. In the same manner “it will take months, if not years” for the GAO’s lawsuit against Cheney to work its way through the courts to the Supreme Court. Even if the administration loses, it can use another route, claiming executive privilege. “All this litigation will certainly get the administration safely past the 2004 election.”

Dean also points out another possibility — that the same Supreme Court that decided the Bush v. Gore election question, could again favor the Bush administration. This outcome “would amount to a seismic realignment of power in Washington.”

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