Judge Orders White House Papers' Release

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Judge Orders White House Papers' Release

Cheney Lawyers to Ask Appeals Court to Keep Energy Task Force Records Secret

By Neely Tucker

Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 18, 2002; Page A06

A federal judge yesterday ordered the Bush administration to turn over key

documents about its energy task force for a second time, while government

lawyers gave notice that they plan to take their case to an appeals court

before complying.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave lawyers representing Vice President

Cheney until Nov. 5 to produce documents that detail the membership rolls and

meeting schedules of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which Cheney

chaired. Sullivan had ordered the same documents turned over in August.

If the government does not produce the documents by the November date, Sullivan

said, the administration must submit a claim of executive privilege and the

reasons for it.

The hour-long hearing, marked by a series of sharp exchanges between Sullivan

and Shannen W. Coffin, the Justice Department attorney handling the case, is

the latest development in one of a handful of lawsuits that have sought to

force the Bush administration to release information about the task force.

The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, the plaintiffs in this case, are two of

several groups that have alleged that the administration improperly met with

private officials from the energy industry last year while shaping its energy

policy. Environmental groups say they were largely excluded from the meetings.

While federal judges in other suits have ordered the Energy Department and other

agencies to turn over tens of thousands of pages of documents about the

meetings, the documents from inside the White House have not been revealed.

The Bush administration has said repeatedly that the separation of powers

doctrine shields those documents from outside review because they might show

the administration's internal, deliberative process.

But it has yet to invoke the principle of executive privilege, either, and that

position drew Sullivan's ire yesterday.

"You have to produce the non-privileged documents and assert the [executive]

privilege for those that are," he told Coffin. "You refuse to assert the

privilege and won't respond to court orders."

Coffin had submitted motions asking Sullivan to reconsider his August ruling and

to issue an order that would ensure the documents remain private pending some

further court ruling. He wrote that producing the documents "would impose upon

the Executive unconstitutional burdens."

"The consideration of undue interference requires special treatment by this

court in this context," Coffin said.

Sullivan rejected the request, and upbraided the lawyer at least twice for

interrupting him, a replay of a similar incident during a hearing in August.

Coffin said the government would likely ask the judge to stay his own order

before the Nov. 5 deadline. He said the government wants enough time to be able

to ask an appellate court to intervene if necessary.

After Sullivan set a series of deadlines for court motions beginning next week,

the hearing appeared to be over.

But when Coffin said government attorneys might need even more time because "we

haven't done a document review of the office of the vice president," it was

Sullivan who interrupted.

"That is a startling revelation!" the judge said twice. "How can you be

asserting this is privileged information if you haven't looked at it?"

"We haven't completed the review," Coffin said. "We've done enough to know our

arguments" are correct, he said. "I misspoke."

"How could you misspeak on something as significant as that?" Sullivan shot back.

Joining in, Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, said, "He made a plain

statement, and now he's backing off it because it's bad press."

"We've made a review," Coffin explained, "but we're not going to ask our clients

to complete that review because it's an unconstitutional burden."

Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/10.22A.cheneys.secret.htm