Washington ? Casting aside Howard Dean’s plea to tone down their criticisms, the other Democratic presidential candidates said Monday that revelations the former Vermont governor had an energy task force that met in secret like the Bush administration is further proof he is ill-suited to challenge the president next fall.

“The more we learn about Howard Dean’s record as governor, the more difficult position he’ll be in to criticize the Bush administration,” Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said, responding to an Associated Press story Sunday.

AP reported that though Dean has demanded the administration release the secret deliberations of Vice President Cheney’s 2001 energy policy task force, Dean as Vermont governor convened a similar group in 1998 to restructure the state’s electric utilities that met in secret, to the dismay of state legislators.

Dean called the comparison “laughable.”

But Lieberman said he feared voters would not see much difference between Cheney and Dean.

“This is going to hurt our party and nominee. We’re not going to win the confidence of voters if we practice the same policy of name calling and secrecy engaged in by the Bush administration,” Lieberman said.

“Before Dick Cheney ever did it, he (Dean) tried to hide information about his own energy task force,” the Connecticut Democrat said.

Lieberman’s comments came just hours after Dean, exasperated by a string of critical news articles and rival attacks on his record, criticized Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe for failing to rein in the other Democratic candidates.

“What’s happening is, in their desperation, those guys have thrown their positive agenda out the window. I can’t imagine it’s going to help them. It might hurt us but it can’t help them,” Dean said in a stop Sunday in Iowa.

“If we had strong leadership in the Democratic Party, it would be calling the other candidates and saying somebody has to win here.”

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Debra DeShong rejected Dean’s claim that his rivals’ criticisms have been unfair, saying “Democratic primaries over the last 20 years have been just as tough and just as vigorous.”

“All of the Democratic presidential candidates including Governor Dean have been vigorous about drawing distinctions among themselves,” she said.

Several of the Democrats reacted to the AP story.

In an interview, former House minority leader Dick Gephardt said he feared Dean’s record as governor was too similar to that of Bush.

“It is another example of why Howard would have a hard time going up against George Bush. I mean here he is complaining about secrecy in their administration with the Cheney task force and then it turns out he was doing the same thing in Vermont,” Gephardt said.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry also took a swipe at Dean on the secrecy issue. He renewed his call for Dean to unseal some 145 boxes of his official gubernatorial records, which the governor declared secret for the next 10 years before leaving office in January.

The AP story is the latest in a string “confirming that ‘People Powered Howard’ was close to special interests as governor of Vermont,” Kerry said. “Howard Dean could answer many of the questions raised over the last two weeks about his record by finally opening the 145 boxes of his gubernatorial records currently under seal.”