Documents released by the Bush administration Thursday in response to a court order shed light on the intense pressure the new president was under.

Two weeks before Bush's decision, lobbyist Haley Barbour virtually papered the White House, from Vice President Dick Cheney on down, with a memo suggesting the president must provide a sound energy policy by not taking action against carbon dioxide.

At the time, Barbour represented the interests of several energy companies that gave substantially to Bush's campaign.

"A moment of truth is arriving," Barbour wrote Cheney on March 1, 2001, in a two-page document on his lobbying firm letterhead that was copied into top White House officials and three Cabinet secretaries.

"The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore," Barbour stated.

The Commerce Department released a copy of the memo Thursday in a court case brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch, which is suing the Bush administration for records about White House energy policy. The memo was one of thousands of pages of documents released by the departments of Commerce, Energy and Transportation.

Late Thursday, White House spokesman Jimmy Orr said Bush was not unduly influenced by the energy industry.

"The president based his decision on what he believes is right for all Americans and has pursued the most aggressive initiative in American history to cut power-plant emissions as well as embarking on a new strategy for addressing global climate change," Orr said. "The president makes his decisions based on merit."

In the memo, Barbour said he was "demurring" on the idea of whether regulating CO2 emissions was "eco-extremism."

But "we must ask, do environmental initiatives, which would greatly exacerbate the energy problems, trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years?" said the former RNC chairman.

Among Barbour's 50 lobbying clients at the time was an industry coalition, the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. The lobbying group – which paid Barbour's firm a half-million dollars last year – was set up by power-generation companies including FirstEnergy, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

FirstEnergy was a top contributor to the Bush campaign.

As part of his presidential campaign, Bush proposed a "four-pollutant strategy" for curbing mercury, smog-causing nitrogen oxide, sulfur and carbon dioxide. The new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Christie Whitman, embraced the strategy, but references to it were removed at the last minute from Bush's first address to a joint session of Congress.

Then in mid-March of last year, Bush changed course.

"For the eight years of the Clinton administration environmental policy prevailed over energy policy," Barbour said in his signed memo to Cheney, with copies to Karl Rove, Bush's top political strategist; chief of staff Andrew Card; Commerce Secretary Don Evans; Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham; and Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

The documents released Thursday also revealed constant contact between Evans and corporate energy executives regarding the Bush administration's energy policy. Evans, the former head of an oil and natural gas company, helped Bush raise a record amount of money during the 2000 presidential campaign.

In the documents, Evans personally responded to letters from top officials at Great Northern Properties, Hunt Energy Services, Fusion Power Associates and Barrett Resources Corp.

Great Northern Properties sent the Commerce Department a full analysis of what should be done to bolster the coal industry.

Copyright 2002 Associated Press

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