We as spiritual beings or souls come to earth in order to experience the human condition. This includes the good and the bad scenarios of this world. Our world is a duality planet and no amount of love or grace will eliminate evil or nastiness. We will return again and again until we have pierced the illusions of this density. The purpose of human life is to awaken to universal truth. This also means that we must awaken to the lies and deceit mankind is subjected to. To pierce the third density illusion is a must in order to remove ourselves from the wheel of human existences. Love is the Answer by means of Knowledge and Awareness!

GAO To Cheney - You Are Lying
NationalReview.com
2-2-2

The head of the GAO says the vice president is "misrepresenting" the facts... 
  
I'm still hopeful we can work something out," says GAO chief David Walker of 
his dispute with Vice President Dick Cheney. Walker was speaking Thursday 
evening, two days after announcing his decision to sue Cheney for 
information about outsiders who were consulted by Cheney's energy task 
force. But Walker says it will be a few more weeks before a lawsuit is 
actually filed, which means there is still time to work out a deal. 
  
There are several reasons for the delay. One, it will take a while for the 
GAO's newly hired outside lawyers " led by a former Reagan Justice 
Department official " to get up to speed on the case. Two, Walker will be 
traveling overseas and doesn't want the suit to be filed while he's gone. 
And three " "the most important reason," Walker says " he wants to give the 
White House time to reconsider some of its statements about the case. 
  
So far, there's no evidence the White House is interested in doing so. And 
while Walker says he wants to reach an agreement, he is also ratcheting up 
the rhetoric in the already-tense case. In an interview with National Review 
Online, Walker in essence accused Cheney of lying about the GAO's demands. 
"There have been material misrepresentations of facts coming out of the 
White House in recent weeks," he says. In particular, Walker points to a 
statement Cheney made in a television interview last Sunday. "They've 
demanded of me that I give Henry Waxman a listing of everybody I meet with," 
Cheney told Fox News, "of everything that was discussed, any advice that was 
received, notes and minutes of those meetings." 
  
"That was a very critical and highly material misrepresentation," Walker 
says. "If we were asking for that, I'd understand where they are coming 
from. But we are not." 
  
Indeed Walker is correct, although there is a little more to it than that. 
At one time, the GAO did ask Cheney specifically for notes and minutes, 
among other things. In a letter sent to Cheney last July 18, the GAO 
demanded "the following information with regard to each of [the task force] 
meetings: (a) the date and location, (b) any person present, including his 
or her name, title, and office or clients represented, (c) the purpose and 
agenda, (d) any information presented, (e) minutes or notes, and (f) how 
member of [the task force], group support staff, or others determined who 
would be invited to the meetings." 
  
It was a wide-ranging request, and a month later Walker backed off the 
demand for notes and minutes. "Even though we are legally entitled to this 
information," Walker wrote to Cheney on August 17, "we are scaling back the 
records we are requesting to exclude these two items of information." While 
Cheney's recent comments on television gave the unmistakable impression that 
GAO is still demanding the notes and minutes, Walker wants to make it clear 
that the GAO is not. "There should be no confusion about that," he says. 
  
Meanwhile, Walker says the GAO is being scrupulously fair in its handling of 
the energy-task-force issue. Responding to (Link) an issue raised in 
National Review Online Thursday, Walker says there is a "fundamental 
difference" between the Cheney case, in which the GAO plans to sue the White 
House for refusing to provide information to the GAO, and an earlier 
investigation of the e-mail system in the Clinton White House, in which 
then-Vice President Al Gore also refused to provide the GAO with requested 
information. In the Gore case, the GAO, while expressing frustration with 
the vice president's secretiveness, did not sue or threaten to sue. 
  
"While it is not uncommon for us to have difficulty in getting information 
in White House matters, in that particular case [Gore], we never had a 
situation like we have with the energy task force, where there is an 
outright refusal to cooperate and provide information," Walker says. "We did 
not get everything we would have like to have gotten [from Gore], but we got 
all we needed to get an answer to the questions we were asked to address." 
The Cheney situation, Walker says, is far different. "This is more than 
difficulties. This is just an outright, 'Leave us alone.'" Nevertheless, 
Walker concludes, he applied the same standards in both cases. "I am 
absolutely dedicated to being even handed," he says.  

*****

Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2002
Enron: What Should Cheney Do?
The GAO sues for access to White House documents. We talk to experts about 
the scandal — and Cheney's choices BY JESSICA REAVES


Vice President Dick Cheney is the latest victim of the widening Enron 
sinkhole; his defiant refusal to reveal the names of people he met with 
while planning the administration's energy policy has the General Accounting 
Office in a litigious mood. Wednesday GAO Comptroller David Walker announced 
his office was suing the White House for access to energy task force 
documents. 

Cheney wasn't budging before the suit was announced and he's not budging 
now. "The fact is, Enron didn't get any special deals," Cheney told ABC's 
"This Week." "Enron has been treated appropriately by this administration." 

The GAO begs to differ, demanding details about the Vice President's 
meetings with Enron brass. The big question: Did Cheney respond to Enron 
requests for help by changing U.S. energy policy? And if so, was there 
anything wrong with that? If Cheney has his way, we may never know — White 
House officials are talking executive privilege and the Vice President isn't 
talking at all. Is this a case the White House can win? Or is the Bush 
administration going to get a very public, very damaging slap on the wrist? 

The legal landscape 

There's a precedent for Presidents and their staff refusing to provide 
information about what goes on behind closed doors in the White House — and 
for Supreme Court overruling them: The Nixon tapes and Watergate. Reviewing 
Nixon's refusal to turn over tapes of private conversations, the Court, in 
its only decision on executive privilege, ruled that while the President 
must maintain a certain degree of privilege, the specifics and criminal 
nature of the Watergate case rendered that privilege secondary to the 
public's right to know. On the other hand, while Enron is under criminal 
investigation, Cheney himself is not — a key distinction between this 
standoff and the Watergate scenario, in which members of the executive 
branch were directly linked to criminal charges. 

Unfortunately, the Watergate precedent may not hold up. "Legal scholars 
generally agree the Nixon case wasn't very well reasoned, and actually 
provided very little guidance for future cases," says Northwestern School of 
Law professor Bob Bennett. Generally, a certain allowance of privilege is 
given to situations that appear to concern issues of national security or 
deliberative privacy. Is this one of those cases? 

Philip Melanson, professor of law at the University of Massachusetts at 
Dartmouth, doesn't think this has anything to do with national security, and 
believes that fact could be hurting the White House's case. "While it's true 
that deliberations in the White House certainly have some valid claim to 
executive privilege, allowing the White House to be this secretive about 
public policy that has nothing to do with national security seems to be 
pushing the envelope of executive privilege." 

Then there's the deliberative aspect of executive privilege, generally 
considered to be less politically resonant than the national security claim 
— but important nonetheless, says John McGinnis, a visiting professor at 
Northwestern and a former Justice Department official who has served as an 
advisor on issues of executive privilege. "I certainly think Cheney is able 
to point to a long history of executive branch precedent, in which the 
President claims privilege in deliberations," McGinnis says. "Cheney can 
argue that high-ranking members of the executive branch must be able to have 
candid conversations without fearing disclosure." 

The political aftershocks 

Then there's the political calculus of the midterm elections. Voters will 
probably be willing to cut Cheney and the administration some slack if there 
is a clear-cut reason for secrecy. Otherwise, Cheney and the GOP could take 
a pounding in the press. "Everyone is very sympathetic to issues of national 
security," says Melanson, "especially in times like these. But when it comes 
to issues of domestic policy that affect a controversial matter, I think the 
public right to know and even the doctrine of executive privilege suggests 
some information should be forthcoming." 

Some argue there's nothing wrong with the Cheney-Enron interactions, even if 
the worst-case scenario bears out. This argument is, essentially, so what if 
Enron lobbied Cheney to change the wording in the administration's energy 
policy in a way that helps Enron? That's what lobbyists are for, right? 
"That's what politics are all about," says Steve Milner, managing partner 
for Squar Milner, a CPA and financial advisory firm in Newport Beach. "The 
problem is when there's a quid pro quo: I give you money in direct exchange 
for what I want." Proving that, of course, becomes very problematic, 
especially since Enron gave to very nearly everyone on the Hill over the 
past decade. 

But even if it's legal, is it good PR? Is Cheney making a major public 
relations mistake by withholding any information? Spilling the beans, says 
Melanson, is almost always the best option in cases like this. "History 
shows that the public does not abide secrecy when there's a domestic scandal 
going on — even if there was no wrongdoing," he says. And, he adds, there is 
still time for the Bush administration to reverse course. "What the White 
House should have done, and still can do, is say, okay, we still believe our 
claim of executive privilege, but things have changed in this case, and so 
now we're willing to make this information available." This is the "we're 
bigger people than you are" tactic of backtracking gracefully. 

Bennett believes that's the road Cheney will take — even if it takes him a 
while to start moving. "Eventually Cheney will give in to a certain degree, 
because I think he'll comes to understand that he's playing with political 
fire. He doesn't look good, regardless of how principled he hopes this makes 
him appear."

*****

Judge Orders Cheney To Explain Task Force Secrecy By Susan Cornwell
2-2-2

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge has ordered Vice President Dick 
Cheney's energy task force to explain the constitutional argument behind its 
refusal to release details of its meetings, a group suing for the records 
said on Friday. 
  
The White House has acknowledged that representatives of failed 
energy-trading giant Enron Corp. were among industry experts the task force 
met with last year while it was formulating the Bush administration's energy 
policy. 
  
But the administration has refused to release other details of the task 
force's operation, such as the names of people it consulted, saying this 
would harm the president's constitutional right to get candid advice. 
  
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday ordered the energy task force 
to explain this argument by next Tuesday as part of a case brought by 
Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm. 
  
Judicial Watch filed suit last July against the National Energy Policy 
Development Group that was chaired by Cheney, demanding the administration 
release records on who the task force met and when, and minutes of the 
meetings held. 
  
"This order shows the court is taking our case very seriously," Larry 
Klayman, chairman and general counsel of the group, told Reuters. 
  
There was no immediate reaction from the White House. 
  
GAO ALSO INTENDS TO SUE 
  
The General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, said this week 
it also would file a lawsuit for energy task force records, setting up a 
possible constitutional clash between the executive and legislative branches 
before the third branch of government, the courts. 
  
But the GAO has scaled back its demands and is no longer seeking minutes of 
the task force meetings. Judicial Watch, arguing for transparency in 
government, has maintained its demand for minutes and notes. 
  
Sullivan, in an order handed down on Thursday and released by Judicial 
Watch, said the task force's lawyers had provided "insufficient guidance to 
the court to analyze the constitutional concerns implicated by potential 
discovery in this case." 
  
Accordingly, he ordered that by close of business Tuesday the task force 
lawyers should file a brief explaining "in what way would allowing limited 
discovery into the ... specific types of information and documents violate 
Article II of the United States Constitution." Article II states the 
president's powers. 
  
Sullivan asked Judicial Watch to respond to the administration's arguments 
by Feb. 8. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 12. 
  
Judicial Watch is widely described as a conservative watchdog group, and it 
dogged the administration of former President Bill Clinton in court for years. 
  
Two environmental groups are also seeking the Cheney energy task force 
records in court. The Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit against 
the Energy Department in December, and the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit last 
week.