- The head of the GAO says the vice president is
"misrepresenting"
the facts...
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- I'm still hopeful we can work something out," says
GAO chief David Walker of his dispute with Vice President Dick Cheney.
Walker was speaking Thursday evening, two days after announcing his
decision
to sue Cheney for information about outsiders who were consulted by
Cheney's
energy task force. But Walker says it will be a few more weeks before a
lawsuit is actually filed, which means there is still time to work out
a deal.
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- There are several reasons for the delay. One, it will
take a while for the GAO's newly hired outside lawyers " led by a
former Reagan Justice Department official " to get up to speed on
the case. Two, Walker will be traveling overseas and doesn't want the suit
to be filed while he's gone. And three " "the most important
reason," Walker says " he wants to give the White House time
to reconsider some of its statements about the case.
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- So far, there's no evidence the White House is interested
in doing so. And while Walker says he wants to reach an agreement, he is
also ratcheting up the rhetoric in the already-tense case. In an interview
with National Review Online, Walker in essence accused Cheney of lying
about the GAO's demands. "There have been material misrepresentations
of facts coming out of the White House in recent weeks," he says.
In particular, Walker points to a statement Cheney made in a television
interview last Sunday. "They've demanded of me that I give Henry
Waxman
a listing of everybody I meet with," Cheney told Fox News, "of
everything that was discussed, any advice that was received, notes and
minutes of those meetings."
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- "That was a very critical and highly material
misrepresentation,"
Walker says. "If we were asking for that, I'd understand where they
are coming from. But we are not."
-
- Indeed Walker is correct, although there is a little
more to it than that. At one time, the GAO did ask Cheney specifically
for notes and minutes, among other things. In a letter sent to Cheney last
July 18, the GAO demanded "the following information with regard to
each of [the task force] meetings: (a) the date and location, (b) any
person
present, including his or her name, title, and office or clients
represented,
(c) the purpose and agenda, (d) any information presented, (e) minutes
or notes, and (f) how member of [the task force], group support staff,
or others determined who would be invited to the meetings."
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- It was a wide-ranging request, and a month later Walker
backed off the demand for notes and minutes. "Even though we are
legally
entitled to this information," Walker wrote to Cheney on August 17,
"we are scaling back the records we are requesting to exclude these
two items of information." While Cheney's recent comments on
television
gave the unmistakable impression that GAO is still demanding the notes
and minutes, Walker wants to make it clear that the GAO is not. "There
should be no confusion about that," he says.
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- Meanwhile, Walker says the GAO is being scrupulously
fair in its handling of the energy-task-force issue. Responding to (Link) an
issue raised in National Review Online Thursday, Walker says there is a
"fundamental difference" between the Cheney case, in which the
GAO plans to sue the White House for refusing to provide information to
the GAO, and an earlier investigation of the e-mail system in the Clinton
White House, in which then-Vice President Al Gore also refused to provide
the GAO with requested information. In the Gore case, the GAO, while
expressing
frustration with the vice president's secretiveness, did not sue or
threaten
to sue.
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- "While it is not uncommon for us to have difficulty
in getting information in White House matters, in that particular case
[Gore], we never had a situation like we have with the energy task force,
where there is an outright refusal to cooperate and provide
information,"
Walker says. "We did not get everything we would have like to have
gotten [from Gore], but we got all we needed to get an answer to the
questions
we were asked to address." The Cheney situation, Walker says, is far
different. "This is more than difficulties. This is just an outright,
'Leave us alone.'" Nevertheless, Walker concludes, he applied the
same standards in both cases. "I am absolutely dedicated to being
even handed," he says.
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- http://www.nationalreview.com
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