Cheney Stifled Energy Probe, GAO Investigators Say

August 25, 2003 5:45 PM

Reutersand AP have stories on The final energy report from the GAO on Walker v. Cheney. You can see the Chronology of the GAO's Attempts [PDF] to Obtain Information from the National Energy Policy Development Group, and more at the GAO Site.
The General Accounting Office sued Vice President Cheney last year to obtain a list of officials from Enron and other companies who met with President Bush's energy task force.
Highlights or read the full report: GAO-03-894 "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy"
posted by Blake (16 comments total)

My theory is that there's a lot more here than meets the eye.

Cheney & Co.'s refusal to release this information, and their justifications for it, have always struck me as nonsensical. The conventional wisdom is that they met with energy industry poobahs, and came up with a plan.

Well, of course. You wouldn't formulate a 'national car policy' without talking to bigwigs from GM and Ford, would you? If you were talking about 'national technology policy', it'd only be reasonable to meet with people from large technology companies: that's where the expertise is. So in talking about an energy policy, you would meet with people from Exxon, Amoco, and so on.

Some people on the left would holler about this, complaining about the administration's failure to include various environmental groups, but somehow it strikes me that the Bush administration wouldn't particularly give a damn about this. When the opposition complains no matter what you do, there's no real point in even trying to cater to their wishes.

So it seems extremely unlikely to me that the energy policy task force information has been kept secret to conceal any influence of large American oil companies over the government's policies. I mean, really: it's not like keeping this information secret has led people to believe that they were meeting with the Sierra Club and Greenpeace.

Unfortunately, the opposition has so completely adopted the idea that Bush, Cheney et al. are Eeevil that they don't look behind the sheer arrogance of the vice president's actions for a motive. Usually when the government is attempting to keep secrets, an enterprising reporter will put together at least a large portion of the story.

Whatever else you think of him, Dick Cheney is no moron. I don't think he'd expend this much political capital out of sheer arrogance, just to prove the point that he can keep information secret if he wants to. There's a secret here that's important enough to be worth that political capital, and closely-held enough that none of those enterprising reporters have dug up anything meaningful (assuming that they're making the attempt).

We've become used to 'national energy policies' -- or national policies of any kind -- being useless things, with far-off goals like increasing average MPG by 2.3 miles in the next twenty years, or 'encouraging alternative energy sources' (whatever that means), or attempting to convince everyone to use fluorescent lights. These policies generally involve regulations that will enrich campaign donors, and subsidies and platitudes that will get the rabble to shut up, or at least sit down.

If we consider that it's possible to formulate a policy that will actually make a real difference, though, and if we think about what such a policy might entail, there are a lot of things that might explain Cheney's behavior.

The real short-term energy challenge facing the United States, isn't that we don't have enough fluorescent lights or that we drive too many SUVs; those are longer-term problems, if they're problems at all. The problem right now is that a very large portion of the world's easily-used energy reserves are controlled by a cartel of countries which, by and large, hate the U.S., despite the fact that it is their biggest customer. The United States has enough money to buy the oil it needs, but the fact that the market for energy isn't a particularly free one make the U.S. vulnerable to economic attacks from those who exert disproportionate control over the energy markets.

My guess: the 'national energy policy' is to bring about the destruction of OPEC, and that the information about the energy policy group's meetings would allow this to be deduced with some degree of certainty.
posted by tino at 6:41 PM on August 25, 2003

what about iraq?
posted by amberglow at 7:03 PM on August 25, 2003

Tino, this might be the motive you're looking for.
posted by ook at 7:47 PM on August 25, 2003

(Or to expand on that, because Subtlety Doesn't Pay on the Internet™:

Note the large parcels of Iraq earmarked by the task force, before the war, for "production sharing". Note how now, after the war, those production sharing agreements coming to highly profitable fruition for the very same folks who happened to be on that task force.

Funny old world, innit?)
posted by ook at 8:02 PM on August 25, 2003

My theory is that there's a lot more here than meets the eye.

Cheney & Co.'s refusal to release this information, and their justifications for it, have always struck me as nonsensical.

It makes perfect sense for this administration, which wants to be as secretive as possible about basically everything, including decisions made by previous presidents, beginning with (coincidentally I'm sure) George H.W. Bush and extending even to Bill Clinton (so as to avoid setting an unpleasant precedent). Not to mention secret trials with secret evidence against terrorists. And notice how few press leaks there are. Like I say, they are obsessed with secrecy about everything.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:12 PM on August 25, 2003

ook: Those oilfield maps are hardly a smoking gun, but they don't contradict my little theory, either.

I am of the opinion that the Bush administration's publicly stated reasons for going to war in Iraq are genuine; Bill Clinton, when he was president, said about the same things about Iraq as Bush & Co. have been saying in the past year. Nobody ever accused Clinton of being a stooge for the oil industry.

If by attacking Iraq you can accomplish a number of major policy goals, though, it all of a sudden becomes a much better course of action.

Every barrel pumped out of Iraq and onto the open market is a barrel of oil that OPEC can't curtail in order to maintain its target prices.

In addition, without the internally-unifying effect of opposition to their neighbor Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia and Iran -- both major oil producers -- find themselves in vastly different political situations. If either of those countries experiences a revolution, OPEC is almost certainly done for.

There are a lot of people who claim that it's all about ooooiiiillll -- 'it' here being the energy policy, the Iraq war, or just about anything else coming out of Washington -- but I'm not one of them. I am willing to concede that 'it' may be in some good part about oil, but not in the way this is usually meant.

It's not about Bush & Cheney's cronies at Exxon, Chevron, and all the other -ons getting rich by controlling the world's oil, cackling maniacally and stroking their cats. I don't know whether anyone has noticed, but Bush, Cheney, and all their cronies are already fabulously well-to-do. If their main object is just to make themselves richer, there are much, much easier and more certain ways.
posted by tino at 8:37 PM on August 25, 2003

Those oilfield maps are hardly a smoking gun, but they don't contradict my little theory, either.

On the contrary: they support your little theory. At least to the extent of suggesting that the Bush administration's publicly stated reasons for going to war in Iraq -- which were, if you remember, protection against terrorism, the threat of WMDs, and (later, after the first two failed to materialize) the "liberation" of the Iraqi people -- are a big steaming load of horse puckey.

Does that mean I think the Bushies are evil moneygrubbing cat-stroking bent-pinky supervillians? Only kinda. I'm sure they think they're doing the right thing for the world (though that whole gobs-of-personal-profit thing can't be too far from the backs of their minds).

Unfortunately, they've so thoroughly convinced themselves that what they're doing is the right thing, they've decided to cut the American voting public out of the democratic process. Which, you know, blows.

I don't care if it's all about oooiiiillllll with the intent of lining their pockets, or all about oooiiilllll with the intent of destabilizing OPEC -- we were told it was all about the terrorists.

And what we're discovering is that it really is all about the terrorists. More and more so, the further we go down this path. Especially if your rosy scenario of mideast revolution and a collapsing OPEC, triggered by an American military presence with the expressed purpose of siphoning off as much oil as possible before the inevitable firestorm, comes to pass -- just wait till we see how much it'll be all about the terrorists then!

There's a secret here that's important enough to be worth that political capital, and closely-held enough that none of those enterprising reporters have dug up anything meaningful

That's the whole goddamn point. That level of secrecy shouldn't need to exist, not about a meeting like this. You don't invite energy executives to the cloak-and-dagger, "let's go destabilize some foreign governments and see what happens" kinds of meetings. That's not the sort of policy that should be set by the people who brought us Enron. (Always assuming, of course, we should be having those kinds of meetings at all.) Nobody here is dumb enough to think Cheney wants these document kept secret out of pure arrogance. He wants these documents kept secret because he's got something to hide.

You deride national policies such as "increasing average MPG by 2.3 miles in the next twenty years" as "useless" and "boring" -- I say, that kind of boring old national energy policy would save a hell of a lot of oil, it wouldn't cost a billion dollars a week, and it wouldn't require killing anybody! Not only that, it wouldn't give anybody out there reason to want to kill us!

Sounds pretty good! Sign me up!
posted by ook at 11:27 PM on August 25, 2003

also, energy is more than just oil, isn't it? what about wind, water, solar, fuel cell, etc? Even coal or nuclear...or that stuff from corn...

Were any experts on any alternative energy sources invited to this secret shindig?
posted by amberglow at 4:47 AM on August 26, 2003

(*silent internal scream of horror and overwhelming anger at current administration under the power of satan*)

... and we had to sit through years of impeachment hearings because he got a blowjob or two? hey, i'm a woman and i should hope the person on the button gets a few to keep him calm.

where are my court hearings now goddammit? where are my court hearings when they are really warranted? and i'm a screaming irrational liberal because why again?

the power of christ compells you!
the power of christ compells you!
the power of christ compells you!
posted by eatdonuts at 6:36 AM on August 26, 2003

"You deride national policies such as "increasing average MPG by 2.3 miles in the next twenty years" as "useless" and "boring" -- I say, that kind of boring old national energy policy would save a hell of a lot of oil, it wouldn't cost a billion dollars a week, and it wouldn't require killing anybody! Not only that, it wouldn't give anybody out there reason to want to kill us!" - a comment on this: from the late seventies through the mid 80's, US oil consumption and energy consumption overall remained, essentially, FLAT.
The economy grew at a healthy enough pace though. It's just that overall energy efficiency increased considerably. This did not stem, mostly, from Federal policy. It's just that the price of oil went up. And when it when back down again, US energy consumption resumed it's upward climb. But if the late 70's to mid 80's trend had continued, we wouldn't really need any Mideast oil now.

Tremendous gains in energy efficiency are often quite simple and cheap, and as certain as shooting fish in a barrel. Japanese manufacturing uses about half as much energy per dollar of product made as US manufacturing uses, and that's not because the laws of physics are different in Tokyo.
posted by troutfishing at 7:55 AM on August 26, 2003

So, to underscore the point, if the environmental groups (and many other constituencies as well which were excluded from Cheney's little oil-exec lovefest energy policy meetings) - had been asked about Cheney's purported plan to secure Mideast oil supplies through US invasions and occupations, they probably would have pointed out - "Well, you could do that, sure, but it would be a HELL of a lot cheap and easier to spend that $200 billion (or whatever) on invasions and occupations on energy efficiency technology instead.

It would have employed a lot more Americans too. Not to mention helping out with that little Global Warming problem.
posted by troutfishing at 8:02 AM on August 26, 2003

ook:
I don't care if it's all about oooiiiillllll with the intent of lining their pockets, or all about oooiiilllll with the intent of destabilizing OPEC -- we were told it was all about the terrorists.

I don't think you can separate the 'oil' part and the 'terrorist' part. Theoretically anyone in the world can become a terrorist, if they're worked up enough about something. In practice, though, anti-American terrorism nearly always means Arabs, or non-Arab fanatical Muslims who are funded by oil-rich Arabs.

So cutting off or at least kinking a bit the firehose of money into the Middle East is part of the anti-terrorism plan.

The Bushies do think that they're doing good, righteous things here. I agree that they're not very open with the public, even about things that don't need secrecy in order to work. But I'll refer you to my original comment: the opposition doesn't like anything the Bush administration does. They could decide to integrate Greenpeace into the government as a cabinet-level department, and I think you'd still find Joe Lieberman et al. on C-SPAN complaining about how this was typical GOP bad behavior. This is one of the dangers of such hard-line opposition: you cry Wolfowitz! enough times, and nobody will give a damn when you point out that there's actually a problem as, yes, there is in Cheney's secrecy over the energy policy.

And I say that attempting to increase average fuel economy by 2.3 MPG over twenty years is useless and boring because, short of taking over the entire economy, the government doesn't have the power to do this. Our current safety and economy regulations have led directly to the rise of the SUV and the 'luxury pick-up'. Clamp down on those, and the demand will just be met through some other loophole.

An energy policy that rests on 'alternative' energy sources is fantasy; ethanol as a fuel is an enormous subsidy for ADM and the like, not a net source of energy; wind, hydro, and solar power are all great, but unable to provide anything like the amount of energy a modern society requires. Coal is great, but it can be dirty, and trying to power a car from coal is grossly inefficient no matter how you do it. We still have a lot of vehicles that are set up to burn petroleum products.

The Cheney energy plan does call for more nuclear energy, which surprises me because it's such an obvious and good idea. There are some environmental costs of nuclear power, but they're less than the environmental costs of any other kind of energy. Increased use of nuclear power, once it's been de-bogeyman-ized, is a realistic plan for the medium- and long-terms; but in the short term, we've still got to have that oil.
posted by tino at 8:02 AM on August 26, 2003

The big secret? I wonder about this from 18 months ago:
"Was the Bush White House negotiating with the Taliban to help Kenneth Lay and Enron? Were Cabinet members and the National Security Council running a "war room" to save the company that was the closest friend of the president and vice president? "

Has the Indian energy plant, Afghan pipeline story been discredited anywhere?
posted by ahimsakid at 8:06 AM on August 26, 2003

Here's the last time Dabhol was discussed.
posted by ahimsakid at 8:09 AM on August 26, 2003

I think you'd still find Joe Lieberman et al. on C-SPAN complaining about how this was typical GOP bad behavior

Joe Lieberman's complained about the GOP? THAT'd be new.
posted by Slothrup at 9:05 AM on August 26, 2003

So cutting off or at least kinking a bit the firehose of money into the Middle East is part of the anti-terrorism plan.

I think this is one of those points where rational people can disagree: I believe an impoverished middle east would be far more likely to turn to terrorism, not less -- especially given our methods and behavior at the moment. All we're doing, in my opinion, is guaranteeing that the next generation of Arabs has even more reason to hate us than the current one does. (I'm not trying to blame the victim here, not saying that anti-American sentiment is entirely America's fault... but we certainly seem to be doing our best to encourage it.) But neither of us has a crystal ball, either of us could be wrong. All I'm saying is that this sort of decision should be based as much as possible on the opinions of all Americans, not on the opinions of a handful of energy executives meeting in secret.

you cry Wolfowitz! enough times, and nobody will give a damn when you point out that there's actually a problem

Y'see, I don't think there's a lot of crying wolf, here; I think the administration has set a hell of a lot of wolves loose. If it sounds repetitive that people keep complaining about it, it's because we keep being given ample reason to complain.

They could decide to integrate Greenpeace into the government as a cabinet-level department, and I think you'd still find Joe Lieberman et al. on C-SPAN complaining about how this was typical GOP bad behavior.

Uh, no. This may come as a surprise to you, but "the opposition" isn't so large and vocal at the moment because we're spiteful and bitter, it's because there's such a long list of specific actions by this administration which many Americans strongly oppose. That you so placidly caricature the other side as nothing more than a bunch of whiners complaining for the sake of complaining, suggests to me you've only got the vaguest notion of what the other side is talking about. (And that you use Lieberman, of all people, as your example, suggests it even more strongly.) Neither side has a lock on the truth; that's why open discussion and the democratic process are so valuable.

I say that attempting to increase average fuel economy by 2.3 MPG over twenty years is useless and boring because, short of taking over the entire economy, the government doesn't have the power to do this.

Patently ridiculous. All government activity is at some level an attempt to influence the society being governed. Totalitarian goverments generally try to do it by direct fiat, which doesn't work so well; capitalist ones tend to manage it via economics, which is messy and slow, but seems to generally work. Imperialist governments tend to do it though military action.

If we were serious about reducing our dependency on oil, we could put that billion dollars a week we're currently spending on the war towards subsidies for more efficient vehicles: if the price of a Prius suddenly dropped by half, you're damn well right there'd be an increase in the average MPG on the road. Efficient-vehicle subsidies may or may not be the right way to go about it -- the simplest way to handle it would be to just tax the hell out of gasoline -- but to suggest that the government has no way to influence this sort of change is simply asinine. (See also.)

Re "alternative energies" being a fantasy: at the moment oil is the most prevalent option because oil is the cheapest option. If oil prices were to rise, either because OPEC puts the squeeze on us or because the entire mideast devolves into a warzone and is no longer accessible, then solar, nuclear, hydro, etc would start looking a lot more attractive. (Ethanol and coal, not so much, agreed.)

Yes, there's a changeover cost involved if we move from an oil-based infrastructure to something else -- but I thought we were talking about long-term solutions here. I think you've got it backwards: oil is the quick fix, not the long term solution, because most of it happens to be sitting underneath other countries.
posted by ook at 11:55 AM on August 26, 2003