WASHINGTON – The controversial White House energy task force two years ago reviewed Iraqi oil-field maps and "foreign suitors for Iraqi oil-field contracts," reveal documents turned over under court order to a government watchdog group by a member of the task force.

Judicial Watch Inc. first requested the documents under the Freedom of Information Act in the spring of 2001, when Vice President Dick Cheney formed the secret task force. The public-interest law firm has battled the administration in federal court for the information ever since.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton noted the mandated release of the papers "couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time for the administration," given growing questions about the credibility of its prewar claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was tied to al-Qaida – thereby posing a direct threat to America.

"Opponents of the war will argue that Iraq oil was on the minds of at least some members of the task force long before the war," he said. "Supporters might argue they couldn't talk about the Mideast oil situation without talking about Iraq."

Phone calls to Cheney's office were not immediately returned.

Fitton says the White House still refuses to produce the list of corporate and other private task force members who met with administration officials, including Cheney, former head of Halliburton Co., a Dallas-based energy-services firm that recently landed a half-billion-dollar federal contract in Iraq.

The unclassified map of Iraq turned over by the Commerce Department, a government member of the task force, shows the location of "supergiant" oil fields, oil pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a long-time Bush friend from Texas, headed a Denver-based oil company before joining the administration.

Though the papers came from Commerce, Judicial Watch says they were responsive to its request for task-force papers.

"These are task-force documents," Fitton asserted.

Maps of oil-fields in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also were produced.

A separate unclassified document, dated March 5, 2001, lists the names of "foreign suitors for Iraqi oil-field contracts," including Dutch Royal Shell, Russia's Lukoil and France's Total Elf Aquitaine. It notes the Russian and French energy giants signed "production-sharing contracts" in 1997.

"This is a road map to the corporations who were in conspiracy with the regime in Baghdad," Fitton contended.

Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, United Nations sanctions foreclosed the country's lucrative oil fields to U.S. investors. Discussions are under way now to privatize at least a portion of Iraq's state-run oil company, allowing U.S. oil companies to invest there for the first time in more than a decade, administration officials tell WorldNetDaily.

Iraq boasts the world's second-largest proven crude reserves. Its oil fields are highly attractive to U.S. producers, because the crude is not buried as far beneath the surface as in American oil fields, making drilling and other production costs relatively cheap. Also, the crude is considered "sweet," meaning it has a low-sulfur content, which makes it cheaper to refine.

The secret White House task force solicited input from the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

The Baker report, which was submitted to Cheney in early April 2001, recommended considering a "military" option in dealing with Iraq, which the report charged was using oil exports as a "weapon," by turning its spigot on and off to "manipulate oil markets," WorldNetDaily has learned.

The report advised the Bush administration to, at a minimum, bring UN weapons inspectors back to Iraq, and then, "once an arms-control program is in place, the United States could consider reducing restrictions on oil investment inside Iraq" to gain greater control over the reserves, and "inject" more stability into world oil markets.

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