The Nine [111]
In this spirit, Scalia embraced the hunt. His trips to the Fifth Circuit ignited a passion for the sport, and in time he turned his chambers into a veritable museum of taxidermy, with his kills mounted and displayed on the walls. For behind his desk, Scalia borrowed a magnificent Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from the Smithsonian. But the painting was overshadowed by the gigantic head of an elk whose nose reached practically across the room as if to make the acquaintance of the first president. And on the small table in front of the sofa, where Scalia entertained visitors, was a smaller but even more provocative display—a wooden duck, a reminder that the justice had become perhaps the best-known duck hunter in the country.
Dick Cheney was the executive branch counterpart to Nino Scalia, an object of loathing and suspicion among their political adversaries. The case before the Supreme Court that brought them together revealed a great deal about contemporary Washington.
A few days after George W. Bush took office, Cheney set up a task force on energy with himself as chair. About five months later, the task force issued a report, then went out of business. Two public interest groups, Judicial Watch, a conservative outfit, and the Sierra Club, the liberal environmental organization, sued the vice president, demanding that he release all of the work papers and communications produced by the task force. Cheney refused, claiming that the executive branch had the right to keep such records confidential.
It was difficult to imagine a controversy with lower stakes. Like most other task force reports in the capital, this one was quickly forgotten, its recommendations largely ignored. The fact that Cheney’s group conferred with many energy companies was widely known, completely expected, and entirely proper. Not even the plaintiffs seriously suggested that the task force records would reveal any illegality or impropriety. The case was simply part of Washington trench warfare, a process that often includes minor lawsuits like this one, which became known as Cheney v. United States District Court. For two years, the case meandered in deserved obscurity through the legal system.
During this period, Scalia continued his hunting forays through the Southern wilderness. Every December, he went duck hunting in rural Louisiana with Wallace Carline, who ran a company that provided services to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2002, Scalia learned that Carline was an admirer of the vice president, whom Scalia knew from their days together in the Ford administration. At Carline’s suggestion, Scalia invited Cheney to join them. Given the complexity of everyone’s schedules, the trip could not be arranged until January 2004. By coincidence, three weeks before the trip, the Court granted cert on Cheney’s appeal of the case involving the records of his energy task force.
The hunting expedition, which began on January 5, 2004, turned into something of a fiasco. Scalia, along with one of his sons and a son-in-law, bought round-trip air tickets, but Cheney invited them along on Air Force Two for the trip to the small airstrip in the town of Patterson. Residents had never seen anything like Cheney’s entourage. The government had already made two reconnaissance trips in November and December, and then the vice president’s plane was preceded on arrival day by two Black Hawk air combat helicopters that hovered over the landing area, and followed by a second Air Force jet that carried staff and security aides to the vice president. No photography was allowed as Cheney, Scalia, and about thirteen others got into a line of armored sport utility vehicles.
Carline’s compound was usually described as a hunting camp, but it was actually an enormous barge—about 150 feet by 50 feet—that was anchored in the marsh wherever the hunting was best. On top of the barge was a houselike structure with a few small bedrooms, which the group shared in groups of