by David Roknich Dick Cheney has continued to cloak the composition of his 2001 energy task force in secrecy. The Federal Advisory Committee Act says the government must disclose the work of groups that include non-federal employees. A lawsuit is pending to force disclosure. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker suggests that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was may have been planned well in advance of the September 11th crisis - planned for the benefit of US corporations.
Excerpt from "Contract Sport"
The New Yorker (02-16-04)
"...former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney’s newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”
A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were links between Cheney’s Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam. But Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, told me that he regards the document as potentially “huge.” He said, “People think Cheney’s Energy Task Force has been secretive about domestic issues,” referring to the fact that the Vice-President has been unwilling to reveal information about private task-force meetings that took place in 2001, when information was being gathered to help develop President Bush’s energy policy. “But if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.”
It was the General Accounting Office that originally filed the suit to obtain information so they could do the job they're paid to do... they have since dropped out after being threatened with budget cuts by the Republican-controlled congress.
story continues
http://www.thepoliticaljunkies.net/Archived/Year2004/Jun/Wk5/Issues.htm
http://www.wiggin.com/pubs/scupdate_template.asp?ID=832146302004
DOGSPOT
See also:
http://electromagnet.us/dogspot/modules.php?name=News&file=categories&op=newindex&catid=9
http://electromagnet.us/dogspot/modules.php?name=News&file=categories&op=newindex&catid=6
Comments
Re: Secrecy of Cheney's Task Force Challenged in Courts
by Messenger
Cheney is most likely the sleaziest politician the US has ever had! Besides what this documentation reveals, he was in on the Enron rip offs that looted close to 0 Billion in the short time frame of energy de-regulation (which by the way has not been restored completely). All of that money is sitting in the off-shore SPEs that Enron conjured up. But no one is talking about the SPEs for some reason.
All of the law suits currently on the books are for the accounting fraud that took place BEFORE de-regulation when Enron was cooking the books to keep their stock price rising.
When they got de-regulation (with the help of our illustrious VP) it was a gusher of illegal profits that have vanished, and no one is following the money.
Original: Secrecy of Cheney's Task Force Challenged in Courts