May 22, 2001
Mr. David S. Addington
Counsel to the Vice President
Office of the Vice President
Old Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20501
Dear Mr. Addington:
We are in receipt of a copy of your letter to Anthony Gamboa, General Counsel of the General Accounting Office (GAO) dated May 16, 2001. As you are aware, the GAO has accepted our request for a review of the President’s Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG). The details of that request were provided to you and to Andrew Lundquist, Executive Director of the NEPDG.
We are dismayed by your lack of full cooperation with GAO. Indeed, we are astounded by your questioning the authority of GAO to conduct an investigation. As you are aware, the ability of Congress to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch activities has been long established, and includes the ability to examine all deliberations. The GAO acts as the investigative arm of the Congress. Certainly the Vice President, who served as Secretary of Defense, must be aware of the role of GAO in the investigation of Executive Branch deliberations. You certainly must be aware of investigations of the Clinton Administration, such as the Travel Office, in which members of the President’s senior staff were interviewed by GAO.
In your letter, you state, "It appears that the GAO may intend to intrude into the heart of Executive deliberations, including deliberations among the President, the Vice President, members of the President’s Cabinet, and the President’s immediate assistants, which the law protects to ensure the candor in Executive deliberations necessary to effective government." We are not aware of any such law which is applicable to Congressional investigations. Perhaps you are referring to Executive Privilege. As you are aware, in some limited circumstances involving direct communications with the President, the President has invoked Executive Privilege. Since by precedent, this privilege can only be invoked by the President himself, we do not interpret your letter as invoking Executive Privilege. If that is your purpose, we wish to receive such clarification from the President directly.
As matters stand now, we have written to Mr. Lundquist on April 19, 2001. This was followed by a nonresponsive reply in the form of a letter from you to Chairmen Tauzin and Burton, with an attachment from Mr. Lundquist, on May 4, 2001. This was followed by a subsequent letter to Mr. Lundquist on May 15, 2001, renewing our requests contained in the April 19, 2001, letter. We have received no further reply.
It is a shame that the Vice President’s Energy Task Force has begun deliberations on the National Energy Policy with such a determined attitude of secrecy and stonewalling. We in Congress, and the public at large, have the right to know how the energy policy was developed, including what special interests were consulted, what influence they had, and how competing interests were reconciled.
We call on you to immediately provide full cooperation to the GAO investigation.
Sincerely,
JOHN D. DINGELL
RANKING MEMBER
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HENRY A. WAXMAN
RANKING MEMBER
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
cc: The Honorable W. J. "Billy" Tauzin, Chairman
Committee on Energy and Commerce
The Honorable Dan Burton, Chairman
Committee on Government Reform
The Honorable Anthony Gamboa, General Counsel
General Accounting Office
http://www.house.gov/commerce_democrats/press/107ltr58.htmCheney's Lawyer Addington
Penned Key Torture Memo
by Jeffrey Steinberg
David Addington, the General Counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, was the actual author of one of the now-infamous White House "torture memos" that claimed for President Bush the authority to violate the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, in the so-called "war on terrorism." The immediate result of this Hitlerian document was the scenes of inhuman torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and the as-yet untold tales of similar torture at other secret prison locations in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in other countries around the world.
The revelation that Addington was the author of the Jan. 25, 2002 draft memorandum for the President, first appeared in a July 3 report in Newsweek online. An unnamed aide to White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales told the magazine's Daniel Klaidman, "The memo was actually penned not by Gonzales but by Dick Cheney's top lawyer, David Addington, a hard-charging hawk."
This news service has independently confirmed the accuracy of the Newsweek story, through several intelligence and legal community sources, familiar with the deliberations that preceeded the writing of the January 2002 document, which President Bush approved.
According to one specialist in military law, familiar with the proceedings, Addington participated in all of the meetings that led to the drafting of the memo. Another intelligence community source confirmed that Newsweek had obtained on-the-record statements from Bush White House officials close to General Counsel Gonzales, in anticipation of an Administration effort to spike or discredit the story. One week after the Newsweek release, the Bush White House has made no effort to challenge the account of Addington's role.
Prior to the Newsweek posting, senior U.S. military and intelligence sources had singled out Addington as a key player in the Cheney circles, who aggressively promoted the trashing of international law in the war on terror.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3128addington_memo.htmlBy Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 11, 2004; Page A21
Since he took office, Vice President Cheney has led the Bush administration's effort to increase the power of the presidency. "I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job," he said after a year in office, calling it "wrong" for past presidents to yield to congressional demands. "We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years."
Cheney has tried to increase executive power with a series of bold actions -- some so audacious that even conservatives on the Supreme Court sympathetic to Cheney's view have rejected them as overreaching. The vice president's point man in this is longtime aide David Addington, who serves as Cheney's top lawyer.
In Profile
David Addington
Title: Counsel to Vice President Cheney.
Education: Bachelor's degree, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service; law degree, Duke University School of Law.
Age: 47.
Family: Wife; three children.
Career highlights: Senior vice president and general counsel, American Trucking Associations; partner, Holland & Knight; counsel, Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell; president, Alliance for American Leadership; general counsel, Defense Department, 1992-93; special assistant to the secretary of defense; special assistant and then deputy assistant to President Ronald Reagan for legislative affairs; counsel, House committees on intelligence and foreign affairs, 1984-87; assistant general counsel, CIA, 1981-84.
Where there has been controversy over the past four years, there has often been Addington. He was a principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects. He was a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts.
Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy. He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information. And he was a main backer of the nomination of Pentagon lawyer William J. Haynes II for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Haynes's confirmation has been a source of huge friction on Capitol Hill.
Colleagues say Addington stands out for his devotion to secrecy in an administration noted for its confidentiality. He declined to be interviewed or photographed for this article, and he did not respond to a list of specific points made in the article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22665-2004Oct10.htmlMajority Leader Daschle Holds Regular News Conference
The final issue I wanted to mention was also related to the need for more information, and that has to do with the increasing evidence that there has been a much more consequential connection between Enron and the administration than what we have been led to believe. I have a letter dated January 3 from David Addington, David Addington, a counsel to the vice president, which indicated that at least on January 3 they said there were six contacts between the administration and Enron during this period and since this particular administration has come to office. Well, now we have a letter dated January 22, and this is to Senator Lieberman from the administration, which says that there were 24 contacts between the administration and Enron. And this is before, of course, the information that needs to be provided as a result of the subpoena has been given to the committee. So there's been a four-fold increase in the reported number of contacts between January and May already, and we're only getting started. What is the right number? Is it four times 24?
more
http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/releases/2002530A37.html
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