Declassified Documents: Energy Policy
Details Of Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force Revealed

Once again, an FOIA request filed by Black Cow Press has yielded delicious insights into what all's going on behind the scenes in D.C. This month we feature a segment from previously unpublished minutes of a 2001 closed door meeting of Vice President Dick Cheney's secretive Energy Task Force.

DICK CHENEY: "...And I'm just telling you that the American people are through with the fossil fuel kick. They want a renewable resource, Ken. And we're going to give it to 'em."

KENNETH LAY: "All ears, Dick."

CHENEY: "One word: Books."

LAY: "I guess I don't follow."

CHENEY: "We could quit oil and coal, cold turkey --I mean today -- if we switched to books for fuel."

LAY: "Books?"

CHENEY: "Hell yes, books! The technology's here. The infrastructure's in place. Take a look at the National Archives: 29 million volumes. We're just sitting on a half million megawatts of power. Hell, there must be 50 megawatts in the works of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn alone. We should be setting up a pilot project with that stuff. Novels, textbooks, historical documents. The sky's the limit."

LAY: "Ah, Dick, that could make some people... uncomfortable. There's a historical antecedent here. People might... well they might think the whole thing smacks of something the Nazis pulled in the '30s."

CHENEY: "Christ, Ken, ain't you ever tore up a little ol' scrap of the Wall Street Journal to kindle a fire in the wood stove or the fireplace?"

LAY: "Mister vice president, I'm from Texas. We don't resort to fire a whole lot down there."

CHENEY: "Well how 'bout when you light your grill? Or did you ever burn a draft card? Heck, I burned at least a half dozen a' those suckers."

LAY: "I suppose I did get a little campfire going on one of our hunting trips with Scalia."

CHENEY: "There! Do you see!? Now what's the difference between a newspaper you incinerated to make that romantic little fire for you, me and the judge, and burning some old book? It's the same thing."

LAY: "I guess you have a point, Dick."

CHENEY: "Course I have a point! Now shut up a second, so I can make this whole thing plain for you." - bcp