Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force Revealed

West Virginia _ and coal _ were barely in the room, it seems, during the once-secret series of meetings that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff held to craft a new national energy policy in 2001.

That according to The Washington Post, which landed the fabled list of meetings from "a former White House official" who supplied it after six years of clamors for it.

The accompanying list of meetings participants _ dozens of meetings involving about 300 groups and individuals _ appears to include only one West Virginia reference: an undated meeting with the staff of U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-3rd.

The document obtained by the Post has Cheney's staff spelling the congressman's name as "Racal."

And other than two references to the National Mining Association, there seems to have been no coal-specific groups or individuals that met with Cheney and his task force. Petroleum interests appear to dominate the list.

Another tidbit: the Post reports that Cheney's staff met with representatives of 13 environmental groups as part of this task force in April 2001. But "by the time of the meeting with environmental groups...the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress."