WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Bush administration officials, including the energy secretary, had originally agreed that greenhouse gases posed a danger to the public and should be regulated under existing clean-air laws - but later reversed course amid opposition from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the oil industry, a new U.S. congressional report says.

The White House rejected the findings of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. " Chairman Markey's report is inaccurate to the point of being laughable," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "I admire his imagination."

The report offers a look at the breadth of Bush administration support for new regulations before such plans abruptly stopped, although at least one cabinet secretary strongly disputes its findings. It draws heavily on an interview with a former Environmental Protection Agency official who already has told Congress about the role played by Cheney's office. It is also based on confidential interviews with EPA staff and documents subpoenaed from the EPA.

"This is the dysfunctions and motivations of the Bush administration laid bare," said Markey in a statement. "The fact that they can, with near unanimity, completely switch positions on global warming to please the oil industry is shocking, and yet disappointingly predictable."

For months, Congress has been investigating a series of decisions by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, including stopping California from regulating motor-vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions. But new details have trickled out through previous congressional reports showing that Johnson had originally sided at least in part with EPA staff on several fronts, including that greenhouse-gas emissions pose a danger to the public and should be regulated. As a more complicated picture of interagency discussions emerged, the role played by Cheney's office has come to assume a more central focus.

"I don't accept their premise," said Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney's office. The report said that the oil industry argued against regulatory action, had the support of Cheney's office and that the Bush administration ultimately did the oil industry's bidding. "Frankly, that's ridiculous," she said.

Jason Burnett, a former EPA associate deputy administrator who played a key role in coordinating the agency's climate-change activities, told the House committee that people in Cheney's office and within the Office of Management and Budget, a White House organization that coordinates administration policy, felt regulations would reflect negatively on Bush's legacy.

"The concern was over the president's legacy and not wanting to have an increase in regulation, particularly regulation under the Clean Air Act, to be attributed to this administration and to President Bush's legacy," the report said. Burnett didn't return a phone call.

The report for the first time named F. Chase Hutto III, Cheney's energy adviser, as someone who argued against new regulations, along with individuals from Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and the American Petroleum Institute. It didn't identify the individuals from Exxon or API by name. It also says that Bush's deputy chief of staff, Joel Kaplan, along with Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez had originally endorsed an EPA finding that greenhouse-gas emissions endanger public welfare and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Those government officials last week signed a letter saying that the Clean Air Act wasn't an appropriate vehicle for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. A Commerce Department spokeswoman didn't immediately respond. Brian Turmail, a spokesman for Transportation Secretary Peters, said that she "was involved in an intellectual process to explore whether the Clean Air Act was an appropriate vehicle for regulating fuel-economy standards. The decision was 'no.' You shouldn't confuse engaging in an intellectual exercise with supporting the idea."

The Cheney spokeswoman said that "White House staffers are paid to go into a meeting and offer their advice and thoughts, and that's what Chase was doing." Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said he didn't know who from Exxon made the company's case, but that "it's not a secret what our views are." He said that Exxon believes that the Clean Air Act isn't the appropriate way to regulate carbon emissions.

Angela Hill, an Energy spokeswoman, said that Energy Secretary Bodman "has not reversed course," and said that "the Department of Energy believes that the Clean Air Act is fundamentally ill-suited to the effective regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions."

API spokeswoman Karen Matusic said that it isn't unusual for the group to meet with federal agencies "on areas of mutual concern," and that its view that the Clean Air Act isn't appropriate for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions has repeatedly been made public.

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