Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to shield the government from giving advocacy groups documents they seek in a suit claiming Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force was influenced by corporations.

A trial judge's order requiring the government to turn over the records would ``open the way for judicial supervision of internal executive branch deliberations,'' U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson said in an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Two advocacy groups, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, are seeking the documents in a suit that claims former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay and other company executives improperly tried to influence administration energy policy. A federal appeals court in April refused to block the document disclosure.

Olson, the administration's chief courtroom lawyer, urged the justices to protect ``the president's vital interest in receiving unregulated and uninhibited advice from his closest advisers.'' U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's order to divulge the material raises concerns about the separation of powers between the branches of government, Olson wrote.

Sullivan ordered the government to disclose the records so he could assess the claims raised by the lawsuit, which is in its pretrial phase.

The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch invoked a federal law that requires executive branch advisory committees to disclose reports and documents unless the committee was made up entirely of fulltime federal officials. The groups say non-government officials such as Lay were, in effect, members of the committee, and therefore its documents must be made public.

The government's legal brief said the groups sought disclosure of task force documents based on an ``unsupported allegation'' that non-government officials served on the task force. The committee was established by the president ``as composed exclusively of government officials,'' the brief said.

Olson said the document disclosure ordered by Sullivan was similar to the release that could be ordered if a court eventually ruled that the government had violated the disclosure law.

Last Updated: October 1, 2003 12:56 EDT