Bush refuses to reveal Enron data

Washington: US President George W Bush has defended his refusal to turn over to the Congress information about contacts between Enron and the administration's energy task force, saying the request was "an encroachment on the executive branch's ability to conduct business," The New York Times has reported.

"We're not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded," the president said. "It's not only important for us, for this administration, it's an important principle for future administrations."

The president's comments, which were similar to remarks made over the weekend by Vice-President Dick Cheney, makes a constitutional showdown between the White House (www.whitehouse.gov) and the general accounting office, an investigative arm of the Congress, all but inevitable.

The accounting office has sought White House records about a series of meetings last spring between the vice-president's energy task force and executives from Enron, an energy trading company, and other companies.

David M. Walker, who as comptroller-general of the United States heads the accounting office, said in an interview after the president's remarks: "Once the administration decided to create this task force and put the vice-president in charge, we believe that changed the matter to clearly give the Congress and the GAO right of access."

Walker added: "If all you have to do is create a task force, put the vice-president in charge, detail people from different agencies paid by taxpayers, outreach to whomever you want and then you can circumvent Congressional oversight, that's a loophole big enough to drive a truck through."

Walker said he will decide by the end of the week whether to sue the administration and suggested that such a move was a near certainty. "The accounting office is not seeking details like the minutes of meetings or notes of conversations but wanted to find out who met with whom, when and about what."

Bush took strong exception to the characterisation by some Democratic lawmakers that the proposals recommended by the energy task force in May reflected a "wish list" for Enron. "Well, Enron went bust," Bush said. "Shortly after the report was put out, Enron went broke, and it went broke because, it seems like to me — and we'll wait for the facts to come out — it went broke because there was not full disclosure of finances."

Repeating a regular theme of the White House, he described Enron's downfall as "a corporate governance issue" and not a political scandal affecting his administration. Nonetheless, there were signs that the administration remained as preoccupied as the rest of Washington with Enron.