Review of Cheney Files Incomplete

WASHINGTON —  Government attorneys admitted Thursday they haven’t completely reviewed documents from Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, despite claiming that they “all involve sensitive communications between and among the president and his closest advisors” that should be kept secret.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered task force documents to be made public by Nov. 5 and said he was shocked the Justice Department attorneys had not examined all the documents after asserting for more than a year that each of them involved confidential information.

“That is a startling revelation,” Sullivan said, after rejecting the Bush administration’s claim that he lacks authority to order the papers’ release.

The judge directed the government attorneys to either produce the documents or supply a list of each one being withheld, and an explanation of why it is so sensitive.

“It’s like everyone else has to do,” Sullivan said in explaining why the task force should have to provide papers on its inner workings. Sullivan said his intent was “to carve out a middle ground because obviously the battle lines have been drawn.”

The judge said he wanted the documents or the list by Nov. 5 -- election day -- but gave the government an opportunity to first file objections.

He set another hearing for Oct. 31 but said that a federal appeals court may end up deciding the issue.

Shannen W. Coffin, a deputy assistant attorney general, said attorneys for the White House “haven’t completed a document review” and that “we’re not going to ask our clients to complete the review” because doing so would be “too burdensome.”

Sharply questioned by the judge, Coffin tried several times to explain himself more fully, then said he had misspoken.

“We have done a review. We haven’t completed it,” he said finally. “We haven’t done everything necessary for a [document] production.”

In court papers the Justice Department handed out at Thursday’s hearing, the government asserts that the task force documents involve “sensitive deliberations at the highest levels of the executive branch, including presumptively privileged presidential communications.”