This diary will be short, as I'm off to work momentarily. Former Vice President Dick Cheney - which rolls so much better of the tongue with the "former" preceding the title, no? - has long been obsessed with secrecy. The past couple days have offered far more evidence of how deep and how lawless his obsession is, with the Times' breaking news that Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about some CIA program. The program began soon after 9/11 and persisted throughout the Bush years. Hopefully this is the straw that broke the camel's proverbial back and we'll start to penetrate Cheney's veil of secrecy. There've been many great diaries about this issue by people who are far better at following a breaking story than am I. So this diary isn't about that.
I've been wondering about the energy plan Cheney devised in early 2001. Yes, the one that we've never even been able to learn which if any (as if that's likely) industry players were involved in formulating the policy, the one Cheney fought all the way to the Supreme Court (and won) to avoid disclosing even the most basic information. We should demand that the new administration release the information on Cheney's energy plan.
The details of how that plan was formulated and who benefitted from it - it's not US consumers paying upwards of $3 per gallon of gasoline this year and over $4 per gallon last year that benefitted from the policy - seem relevant on their own, given the importance of energy issues. And open government demands that we know more about how this secrecy obsessed former Vice President conducted himself during his time in office. We need to know what kind of damage he did in all areas.
With the latest revelations about his secret CIA program and directions to lie to Congress, this may be the appropriate time for a little pressure to release such details about the energy policy.