Cheney Battles Executive Branch Agency Trying to Collect Classified Data
Vice President Dick Cheney must love his secrets. He doesn’t even like to share with his own team.
Check out the latest: Apparently, Cheney has exempted himself from the PRESIDENTIAL order setting up procedures for protecting classified information, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
For the past four years, Cheney’s office has refused to cooperate with a National Archives and Records Administration office charged with monitoring classification in the executive branch, according to stories in the June 22 Washington Post and New York Times.
Not only did the vice president’s office not comply with a routine annual request for data on staff classification of internal documents, but in 2004, it also blocked an on-site inspection of records that other executive branch agencies go through, according to a letter to the vice president [pdf] sent by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
And after the Archives office continued to complain about the matter, Cheney’s staff proposed eliminating the office.
“I know the vice president wants to operate with unprecedented secrecy,” Waxman told The New York Times. “But this is absurd. This order is designed to keep classified information safe. His argument is really that he’s not part of the executive branch, so he doesn’t have to comply.”