avid Walker is the kind of guy who rarely wears jeans and if he does, friends say, they're probably ironed. He likes his numbers precise - usually carried out to the fourth decimal place. One of his biggest heroes in life is Elmer B. Staats, the fifth comptroller general of the United States.

Mr. Walker, in other words, might not seem like the kind of person to carry out a rebellion against a sitting presidential administration. But, in fact, he is, of sorts.

As head of the normally obscure General Accounting Office, Walker is leading an effort to try to force Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over records of meetings with Enron and other corporate executives about federal energy policy.

The lawsuit the agency is expected to file against the vice president - the first ever by the GAO against a federal official for access to records - could end up influencing the level of openness in the White House for years to come.

As he sits behind his tidy desk in the GAO building, Walker doesn't seem perturbed - or puffed up - by his moment in history. He doesn't want to be on TV and spurns most interview requests. "I'm just doing my job," he says. "It's not something I was pleased at having to do or wanted to do, but something I needed to do to comply with our governing statute and to do my job in an objective and professional and nonpartisan fashion."

Walker's penchant, almost obsession, with being a straight shooter helps explain why his crusade against the government may not, in the end, be a surprising rebellion at all. On the carpet in his office is the phrase "accountability, integrity, reliability." He had the carpet made when he took over the job in 1998. Among the people he most admires in public life are Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy - neither mealy conformists. A prolific reader, he's currently on "Theodore Rex," a book about Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, and notes with pleasure that three biographies of the man who "said what he meant and meant what he said" just came out.

But his real affection when it comes to public figures lies with Staats, whom he calls "a legend in public service." In the Staats years (1966-1981), the GAO vastly expanded its role beyond the green-eye shade functions for which it had been established in 1921. Instead of just auditing federal agencies, GAO investigators began evaluating the performance of Great Society social programs. That's when the agency evolved into the main engine for congressional oversight of the executive branch - Congress's watchdog.

Now Walker wants to expand that role further. "Our scope includes everything the federal government is doing or thinking about doing anywhere in the world...," he said in a recent speech (all of which he writes himself.) The new GAO needs to be not just oversight, "but insight and foresight," he says.

Still, about 85 percent of the time of the 3,000-member GAO staff is spent running down requests of Congress or fulfilling statutory mandates, Walker says. One of those requests was for more information about Mr. Cheney's energy task force - and here is where all the trouble began.

The initial request came from two ranking Democrats in the House of Representatives, John Dingell of Michigan and Henry Waxman of California, both with a history of challenging executive-branch prerogatives. They wanted the names, dates, discussion topics, notes, and other materials presented at any meeting between task-force members and outside groups, especially energy firms like Enron.

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