Congressional investigators are accusing Vice President Dick Cheney of stymieing their investigation into his energy task force by withholding key documents that detailed which corporations helped write the administration’s energy policy.

Without the records the General Accounting Office reports the public may never know the extent that the nation’s energy policy was shaped by oil, coal, nuclear, chemical and natural gas companies. Among the industry executives who met privately with Cheney and aides was Kenneth Lay, the former chairman of Enron.

Among other things, the Cheney-led task force claims it cannot provide a budget of money spent or of notes from any of the 10 Cabinet-level meetings it held in 2001.

Michigan Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat, said “This report is a sad chronicle of the efforts of the office of the vice president to hide its activities from the American people.”