http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/washington/19energy.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1184875206-bsLiyV+CqvOXpxo8Zd6iVwNew Glimpse at Players in Group Led by Cheney
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: July 19, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 18 — For six years, Vice President Dick Cheney has guarded the secrecy of the discussions and participants in his energy task force, which produced a report in May 2001 calling for accelerated development of domestic oil and gas supplies to deal with the nation’s energy needs.
Now, thanks to an unidentified former White House official who provided The Washington Post a partial list of individuals, companies and groups that met with the task force, it is possible to identify with greater precision who may have influenced its deliberations.
The list bears the names, The Post reported Wednesday, of nearly 300 people and organizations that met with the vice president or his staff during the months that the task force was preparing its report. It is not, however, the complete accounting that Congress and some environmental groups have demanded.
It has long been known that the oil industry was well represented at the task force meetings and found a receptive audience in Mr. Cheney, who had spent five years as chief executive of Halliburton, a leading oil-field-services company. He was given the energy assignment by President Bush, who himself had had a career in the oil business.
Virtually every major oil and diversified energy company, from British Petroleum to Enron to Reliant Energy, participated in one or more meetings of the Cheney group, according to the list. Trade groups and lobbyists representing industrial energy users, pipeline companies, utilities and mining concerns were also amply represented at multiple task force sessions. By contrast, leaders of 13 environmental groups were invited to a single session late in the process, weeks after most of the industry representatives had been heard.
Employees of companies that participated in the deliberations have given millions to Republican candidates and causes since 1999 and have been among the party’s largest donors over that period, according to campaign finance records. And employees of the companies on the new list contributed more than $570,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaigns of 2000 and 2004, the records show.
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