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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.
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.
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."
"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."
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.
Meanwhile,
Walker says the GAO is being scrupulously fair in its handling of
the energy-task-force issue. Responding to 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.
"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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