In a ruling that upholds the public’s right to access government information, a D.C. federal district court ordered the Department of Energy (DOE) on February 21 to hand over documents to the Natural Resources Defense Council that relate to the workings of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force. NRDC sued the DOE under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after originally asking the agency last April for basic information about its role in Cheney’s task force, including details on meetings held at DOE or that the agency participated in. In this press release, NRDC hails the decision and reports that it plans to publicly disseminate “the names of participants, dates of meetings, and the topics discussed.” This victory for the public interest comes just after the General Accounting Office -- the investigative arm of Congress -- filed suit on February 22 against the administration demanding information on participants in White House meetings on energy policy. As OMB Watch reported previously, Cheney, with the backing of the White House, is refusing to meet GAO’s demands for transparency, claiming that he is upholding the right of the White House to receive advice from citizens in private, without those conversations being released to the public. GAO, however, has dropped demands that the White House disclose substantive interactions, requesting instead that it merely list the individuals and affiliated interests it met with as part of the energy task force. Yet the White House has refused this as well. The White House was recently scolded by judges in two separate cases brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative organization, for this resistance. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said “I assume the government is stalling” in one case, and U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman accused the administration of “gamesmanship” when it argued for throwing out the other case, as reported by the Associated Press. The Washington Post recently reported that the White House, undeterred by such criticism, will seek to have the statute empowering GAO declared unconstitutional if it fails in its defense against the GAO lawsuit. This move would sharply curtail the legislative branch’s oversight of the executive branch, which is a valuable tool for public access to information -- especially given the extraordinary amount of influence private industry seems to have over Bush White House.