Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., says the White House should hand over the documents.
She means the ones Congress is seeking about the role Enron and other energy producers played in shaping the administration's energy policy.
I can't decide whether her position is outrageous or merely amusing. She and her husband, you'll recall, took precisely the opposite stance when they were in charge and trying to overhaul the nation's health-care system.
In those days, she thought secrecy was just fine.
She was wrong then. But she's right now.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney should give up the goods. They're fighting a battle they're sure to lose, and deservedly so.
This confrontation between branches of government predates the fall of the Houston-based energy giant by many months. Now, though, it has become deeply entwined with the Enron saga.
Early last year, Bush put Cheney in charge of developing an energy policy. The vice president set up a task force and consulted privately with an undisclosed number of people, many of whom, apparently, were big-time players from the energy industry's mainstream. Environmentalists and others fumed about being shut out.
House Democrats critical of the process asked the General Accounting Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, to find out how the Cheney task force had gone about its business.
Investigators weren't after meeting notes or transcripts. They just wanted to know who'd been consulted and how often.
Even so, Cheney refused, saying that complying with the request "would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch."
The situation seemed about to reach full boil when Sept. 11 happened. Out of respect for the administration's need to focus on war and recovery, the GAO backed off. There the matter might have died had it not been for the Enron scandal, which made the length of the company's tentacles a Washington obsession.
On Jan. 3, the vice president's counsel acknowledged that Cheney had met once with Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman at the time, to discuss energy policy and that task force staffers had huddled with Enron officials on five other occasions.
But that revelation didn't satisfy Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee. He demanded more information about the contacts, including e-mails and telephone conversations, and what actions Enron requested.
To bolster his case, Waxman has highlighted 17 points on which the Cheney energy policy either dovetails with Enron's positions or would have benefited the company.
The congressman hasn't made accusations about what, if anything, the administration might be trying to hide but has noted the "unfortunate appearance that a large contributor received special access and obtained extraordinarily favorable results."
Daniel Walker, who leads the GAO, has promised a final decision by Feb. 9 on whether to take the extraordinary step of suing the administration.
The folks at the White House say this is a partisan fishing expedition and that there's a principle involved that they can't get worthwhile policy input if every conversation has to be made public. I understand.
But the GAO isn't asking for the details of conversations. And the administration has already undermined the principle of executive privilege by citing it in a case in which neither national security nor the public interest is threatened.
The way to undermine the principle even more is to get embroiled in a legal fight. Lose in court, and the damage might be severe.
For Bush and company, the prudent thing to do at this point is to reassert the rightness of their cause and then provide information on a voluntary basis.
There is, after all, another principle involved: That in a democracy government should be as transparent as possible.
Larry Eichel is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His e-mail address is leichel@phillynews.com.
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