PizzaGate: Cheney serves up a cold pie to the GAO...

[TruthIsAll]

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/dean/20030829.html

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GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress
By JOHN W. DEAN
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Friday, Aug. 29, 2003

This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.

The report - entitled "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy" - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.

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The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate "all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money," so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.

To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.

Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.

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The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false.

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Moreover, it turned out, as the Report reveals, that the documents that were turned over were useless: "The materials were virtually impossible to analyze, as they consisted, for example, of pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature or purpose of the expenditure." They were further described as "predominantly reimbursement requests, assorted telephone bills and random items, such as the executive director's credit card receipt for pizza."

In sum, the incomplete document production was not only nonresponsive - it was insulting. So the GAO pressed for responsive documents numerous times in different ways: letters, telephone exchanges and meetings.


snip

In other words, if the Vice President is not trying to cover up the fact that he met with big energy interests - including past contributors - and allowed them a large role in settling our nation's energy policy, why all the secrecy ? That is what other observers have suspected - and what has been rumored from the beginning. Thanks to Cheney's obfuscation, we still can't know for certain. Yet thanks to GAO, we do now know for certain that he lied to Congress to cover up something, and there is little doubt in my mind as to what he is hiding.

[TheDonkey]

1. liberal media doesn't seem to care sadly (nt)

[newyawker99]

2. TruthIsAll

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