Friday, June 22, 2007

Waxman Goes After Cheney For Being Above the Law

A year ago I blogged VP not an Executive Branch Entity? about a story that the office of the VP was not following a directive for all executive branch offices to file reports with the National Archives about the number of documents they classify and declassify. Unfortunately the original source link is no longer working.

Yesterday Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Governmnet Reform Committee, sent a letter to Cheney with the long history of issue and requesting the answers to four questions by July 12th. My favorite line in the letter was "Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information." Given this and the fact that his office hasn't answered previous requests by the National Archives in the last year (and Gonzales' office didn't answer a request for clarification on the issue) I doubt Cheney's office will respond.

Cheney's original argument is that his office isn't part of the executive branch so the executive order doesn't apply. Cheney has futher requested changes to the National Archives that would eliminate the Information Security Oversight Office that's making the request and would prevent the National Archives from appealling disputes to the Attorney General. Scummy isn't it?

It's also a bit hypocritical. Remember that during Plames civil suit "Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit." Last I checked, the President was part of the executive branch, even if the Vice President isn't. Can't we please impeach this Napoleon?

When White House spokeperson Dana Perino was asked about this today, she danced around it and called it "a little bit of a non-story".

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