From The Washington Post via Kevin Drum:
One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country’s biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.
British Petroleum representatives dropped by on March 22, one of about 20 oil and drilling companies to get meetings. The National Mining Association, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and the American Petroleum Institute were among three dozen trade associations that met with Cheney’s staff, the document shows.
Cheney’s refusal to turn over this sort of pedestrian information was always a sign of an imperious attitude.
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Pedestrian perhaps, but remember back then the White House was trying to pretend Ken Lay was just some dude who sent checks to the campaign and maybe once posed for a quick photo with the Prez.
Plus, that was during the innocent “pre-9/11″ era when America did not torture prisoners, deny habeus corpus rights, invade other countries, lie to the world, allow foreigners high-level access to the White House, blow the cover of our own spies, etc. Back then we could actually worry about small stuff like whether industry was unduly influencing policy rather than wondering if the Vice President has any respect for country and Constitution whatsoever.
The whole question of executive privilege can get pretty thorny with questions about national security and such. But meeting with some people in the energy industry? That’s a pretty darned weak thing to protect under the penumbra of executive privilege. That’s why I say it was pedestrian. I mean, if that meeting is protected, then every meeting is protected and there’s no accountability for government at all.
I’ll pass on the rest of your comment.
Nobody reads this blog.
Tell that to Sitemeter.
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