Secrecy fight puts Bush team in bad light

For months, Democratic critics were frustrated in their efforts to find a fly in the soup in the administration's unwillingness to come clean about who attended private meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney's task force formulating the Bush energy policy in its first days. But with lawsuits breathing down Mr. Cheney's neck and that of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the White House has responded to one court order with partial disclosure of thousands of pages of Energy Department documents on the meetings.

But thousands more were not released, and those that were made public were heavily deleted. So the watchdog group involved, Judicial Watch, will be going back to court for more disclosure.

Also pending is the General Account Office suit for the same information from Mr. Cheney, which the administration is bucking on grounds that the vice president as a constitutional officer is not subject to the GAO's reach.