The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, is preparing to argue in court to force the Bush administration to release records from Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force meetings.

Those documents would reveal to the public the extent of the role Enron played in formulating the Bush administration’s energy policy. Despite the fact that Cheney has already admitted he met with Enron officials several times during the policy-making process, the administration has vehemently denied that Enron had any influence.

Now that Enron has collapsed in what is the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history – and currently under investigation by the Justice Department – the demand for those documents has heightened. And public scrutiny is increasing as well. According to a New York Times/CBS News Poll, nearly 60 percent of the American public believes the Bush administration is hiding something about the Enron fiasco.

Now seems to be the perfect time for the administration to come clean – release the documents, prove they have nothing to hide and continue to distance themselves from the questionable collapse of a corporation with indisputable financial ties to the administration.

But instead, the White House is invoking “executive privilege,” the executive right to withhold such records from the public. It’s Also preparing to fight its case in court.

Hiding behind executive privilege enhances the perception that the Bush administration is hiding something. Enron was a huge campaign contributor to Bush and other prominent Republicans, and while Democrats also received money from Enron, contributions to Republicans dwarfed those to the Democrats.

Because of those ties, the administration must do what it can to distance itself from the Enron collapse. The more it denounces public accountability, the longer it remains veiled in secrecy, sidestepping pertinent questions with an executive principle that conjures up images of Watergate and the Lewinsky scandal, the deeper it will find itself wading in political scandal, the focal point of a growing public cynicism.

Both Cheney and Bush have stood by their argument for stonewalling the GAO’s investigation – the release of such records will have an adverse effect on the ability of future presidents to do their job; corporations and private citizens will be unwilling to consult the president, fearing full public disclosure if any matter of policy may be involved. But to think that all private interests will no longer talk with the President of the United States because one highly questionable set of documents were revealed is a stretch. A very big stretch.

Evidence of impropriety is not the only thing that can do damage to an administration. Just as dangerous is a perception by the public that impropriety exists and a cover-up is taking place. And the only way to squelch that perception is to release the documents. After all, the “I’m not telling” approach leaves a lot of people thinking, “maybe they do have something to hide.”

editorialboard: Andrea Hauser, Tim Paluch, Michelle Kann, Zach Calef, Omar Tesdell, Charlie Weaver