General Accounting Office report says vice president's unwillingness to cooperate stymied efforts to learn details on the drafting of the energy plan in 2001.

…Comptroller Gen. David M. Walker, who heads the nonpartisan GAO, acknowledged Monday that the report would likely end the matter, as far as the watchdog agency is concerned.

"This is the first and only time that we have not been able to work out a reasoned and reasonable accommodation to get information that we need to do our job," Walker said in an interview. "We hope and expect that this is an isolated instance, but only time will tell."

Walker also defended his efforts to get the information. "National energy policy is a very important issue," he said. "It's not just what you're proposing but how you propose it. Process does matter."

…In its 26-page report, the GAO "pieced together" some information about the task force's dealings from thousands of pages of records that the Energy Department and other agencies — but not the vice president's office — were ordered to release last year under the Freedom of Information Act.

Those documents showed that industry groups and companies — including the American Petroleum Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute and ChevronTexaco Corp. — provided substantial input in drafting the president's energy plan.[p6: and we trustthese corporations to put the public before crass profits, right?]

"The extent to which [the ideas of outside groups] were solicited, influenced policy deliberations or were incorporated into the final report is not something we can determine based on the limited information at our disposal," the GAO report concluded. [p6: I think we can make a pretty good guess, though]

The GAO said it also was unable to determine how much the task force's operations cost taxpayers. Cheney's office provided the agency with 77 pages of information, but the GAO complained that many pages contained information "of little or no usefulness."