After the GAO decided that it would sue Vice-President Dick Cheney over his failure to turn over requested documents to it, the next question that should be asked is:
[b]Where the F*** were you during the Clinton years?[/b]
[size=4]GAO Paper Tiger?[/size=4]
[b]They sue Bush but backed away from Clinton.[/b] January 31, 2002 10:40 a.m.
There's a critical and so far unanswered question about the General Accounting Office's decision to sue Vice President Dick Cheney for information about outsiders who were consulted by Cheney's energy task force: [b]Why has it come to this?[/b]
Cheney's position seems clear enough. The vice president, who has long been determined to preserve executive-branch privileges, appears to believe strongly that the GAO simply does not have the authority to compel him to hand over the information. But what about the other side? [b]Why has the GAO — which has never before filed suit to force a top federal official to hand over information — decided to go nuclear?[/b]
GAO officials, including Comptroller General David Walker, say they simply want to uphold the office's ability to demand access to executive-branch records in the future. But the GAO's position seems baffling in light of its behavior during its last major investigation of the White House.
In the spring of 2000, investigators for the House Government Reform Committee discovered that the White House had misplaced or mishandled hundreds of thousands of e-mails sent to White House staff by people outside the White House between September, 1996 and November, 1998. Some of that material was under subpoena from the Office of Independent Counsel, which was investigating Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky matter, as well as the Justice Department, which was investigating the campaign-finance scandal.
Committee chairman Dan Burton wanted to know whether the loss of the e-mails was the result of mistakes made by White House technicians or whether it was the result of a deliberate attempt to conceal information from investigators. Burton asked the GAO to look into the matter.
The GAO's report, published in April, 2001, is a study in frustration. Clinton White House officials repeatedly refused to provide information that the GAO requested. The White House sometimes gave grossly incomplete answers to GAO inquiries. And on one occasion, Vice President Al Gore did not respond to a GAO request for information until 6:49 p.m. on January 19, 2001 — just hours before leaving office. Even then, Gore's response was to refuse to provide information.
Some examples. The GAO wanted to know whether the White House had told the independent counsel, Justice Department, and other investigating agencies that there was a problem with White House e-mails. White House officials told the GAO that they had written 30 letters to various investigative bodies, notifying them of the problem. "We requested copies of those 30 letters," the GAO report says, "but we were not given copies of any of them. Without complete documentation, we were unable to confirm the Executive Office of the President's claims to have notified officials concerning the effect of the e-mail malfunctions on respective document productions to investigative bodies..." Indeed, the chapter of the report containing that quote is headlined, "Limited Access to Information Prevented Confirmation of the Executive Office of the President's Notification of Appropriate Officials."
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