Howard Dean has been a vociferous critic of Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings during the first year of the Bush administration. However, it appears that he shouldn't be criticizing secret meetings to develop an energy plan. From the AP (via Yahoo! News):
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, who has criticized the Bush administration for refusing to release the deliberations of its energy policy task force, as governor of Vermont convened a similar panel that met in secret and angered state lawmakers.
Dean's group held one public hearing and after the fact volunteered the names of industry executives and liberal advocates it consulted in private, but Dean refused to open the task force's private deliberations.
In 1999, he offered the same argument the administration uses today for keeping deliberations of a policy task force secret.
"The governor needs to receive advice from time to time in closed session. As every person in government knows, sometimes you get more open discussion when it's not public," Dean was quoted as saying.
The article goes on to allow Dean to denounce the link, and notes that Dean was on shaky ground to attack Cheney for behavior in which he himself had engaged. It also notes the parallels between both task forces, along with information about donations to both campaigns from energy interests.
posted on December 29, 2003 12:42 AM
