Cheney exempts himself from legal privacy rules

June 21, 2007

We know that when it comes to protecting national security secrets, Dick Cheney and his office are hardly diligent. What’s less clear is how, exactly, the Office of the Vice President has gotten away with so much of this, given that executive orders are in place that govern White House conduct and which prohibit the very things Cheney has done.

Three years ago, a fairly obscure federal office responsible for enforcing these orders sought answers about the OVP’s policies. What happened? Well, as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman explained, it’s a funny story.

The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President’s position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President’s staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President’s executive order.

Got that? First, Cheney’s office blocked a legal investigation, declaring itself some kind of fourth branch of the government. (It’s legislative, it’s executive, it’s accountable to no one … it’s the super branch!) Second, when the government agency responsible for enforcing executive-branch rules on classified information went to the Justice Department, Cheney sought to resolve the problem by eliminating the agency.

It’s almost as if the Vice President is the head of some kind of organized crime family. (“It’s a nice office at the National Archives you have there; it’d be a shame if something happened to it.”)

It comes back to Executive Order 12958 (which we’ve talked about on several occasions).

Executive Order 12958, which President Bush has amended and endorsed, directs the National Archives to oversee a uniform system for protecting classified information. A key component of the executive order directs the Information Security Oversight Office within the National Archives to inspect federal agencies and White House offices to ensure compliance with the security procedures required by the President. Acting under the authority of the President’s executive order, the National Archives sought to conduct an on-site inspection of the Office of the Vice President in 2004.

For the first time in the history of the ISOO, the White House blocked the investigation, claiming a self-generated exemption for Cheney. The Vice President was content to pretend the ISOO didn’t exist, until it asked the Justice Department whether Cheney was part of the executive branch. Now, Cheney no longer wants to pretend.

Waxman is urging the White House not to pursue this.

I question both the legality and the wisdom of your actions. In May 2006, an official in your office pled guilty to passing classified information to individuals in the Philippines. In March 2007, your former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements for denying his role in disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent. In July 2003, you reportedly instructed Mr. Libby to disclose information from a National Intelligence Estimate to Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter. This record does not inspire confidence in how your office handles the nation’s most sensitive security information. Indeed, it would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials.

Stay tuned.

I can understand Cheney doing his thing, it’s what evil people do. They do evil shit. But Waxman, and the rest of congress? WTF is up with them asking and “demanding” stuff over and over and OVER with the predictable results of seeing Cheney giving them the middle finger?

WTF?

Can Cheney do anything that would indicate impeachment would be the recommended course, or is that impossible? What exactly does he have to do?

I smell two rats, and Cheney’s only one of them.

  • Does this mean that Cheney’s office can no longer claim executive privilege?

  • Bureaucrats enforcing petty regulations have no power over Darth Cheney. Lawyers enforcing constitutional law have no sway over Darth Cheney.

    I would not be surprised if Cheney hissed, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

  • Steve – if this keeps up, I will need to actually medicate for high blood pressure, because it is revelations like this one that make my blood just boil.

    Am I mistaken that Cheney cited an executive order for his “declassification” of selected portions of the NIE – that he told someone who interviewed him that he had been given that authority by executive order – ?

    So, in keeping with the administration’s penchant for cherry-picking everything from intelligence to legislation, that has now been extended to Cheney choosing when he will be considered part of the executive branch, and thus subject to executive orders, as well as executive privilege (when he can get and disburse information to people of his choosing and to invoke privilege) and when he will not consider himself part of the executive branch (when he is required to disclose information as part of the oversight function and privilege would not apply). He covers all the contingencies, which all come down to: he does what he wants, and defies anyone to do anything about it.

    I have no idea what makes him believe he has the authority to make these kinds of choices, but as long as he is allowed to do so without consequence, you can be sure it will continue.

  • Under which branch of government is the OVP funded? If he’s not part of the executive, his only official duties are to cast tie breaking votes in the Senate and be ready to take over for the Pres. Given how seldom he’s had to execute those responsibilities, give him a small closet in the Senate somewhere and and nix any other funding.

  • So we are still trying to find something that falls under “high crimes and misdemeanors” in order to impeach Cheney?

    It’s all there, right under the Dems’ noses.

  • Too bad we didn’t have a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

    Wait… I know, it’s Nader’s fault! No, no, wait… it’s Bill Clinton’s fault! No, it’s the turr’ists fault!

    Ok, I finally got it, it’s the librul media’s fault!

  • I wonder if they tried to impeach Cheney if he would do the same thing — claim he’s not a member of the executive branch and so therefore not subject to impeachment?

  • This is not the first that we have heard about this. The story broke back in February. Here is what CB had to say back then.

    On Monday, we talked about the Office of the Vice President refusing to cooperate with a government directory known as the “Plum Book,” which lists government employees. Federal agencies have to comply by listing staffers in the directory, but Dick Cheney’s office claimed an exemption for itself, arguing that the “Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch.”

    In other words, employees of the three branches of the federal government have to give staff lists for the Plum Book, but the OVP apparently believes it’s not part any of the three branches. At the risk of sounding overdramatic, it’s one of those horrifying arguments that makes me worry about the integrity of our constitutional system.

    Even then it went beyond the Plum Book to the issue of classification.

    An important legal ruling is pending over Vice President Cheney’s refusal to disclose statistics on document classification and declassification activity. The Information Security Oversight Office, which is responsible for the policy and oversight of the government’s security classification system, has asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to direct Cheney’s office to disclose these statistics.

    By the way, what does the Plum Book have to say about Dick’s place in the government?

    The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title
    3 of the United States Code).
    The annual legislative branch appropriations act (see, for example, Public Law 108–83) and the annual transportation-treasury appropriations act (see, for example, Public Law 108–199) provide funds for the Vice President to hire employees to assist him in carrying out his legislative and executive functions. Executive branch employees also may be assigned or detailed to the Vice President (see 3 U.S.C. 112) and the Vice President may employ consultants (see 3 U.S.C. 106(a)). The Office of the Vice President (OVP) consists of the aggregation of Vice Presidential employees whose salary is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate from the Vice President’s legislative appropriation, Vice Presidential
    employees employed with the Vice President’s executive appropriation, employees assigned or detailed to the Vice President, and consultants engaged by the Vice President.
    The numbers, titles and salaries of OVP personnel change with some frequency. The salaries of Vice Presidential employees whose salary is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate from the Vice President’s legislative appropriation cannot exceed a maximum specified by law (see 2 U.S.C.
    60a–1). The salaries of Vice Presidential employees whose salary comes from the Vice President’s executive appropriation also cannot exceed a maximum specified by law (see 3 U.S.C. 106). The authority to appoint, administratively determine the pay of, and discharge Vice Presidential employees rests with the Vice President.
    The current duty station of all OVP positions is Washington, DC.

    There is your answer JoeW: Cheney drinks from both the legislative and executive troughs.
    David Addington and his boys must have scoured the Constition looking for loophole in the way that a Haliburton tax llawyer would scour the tax code.

  • It’s about time the Congress actually DID something about all the crap they’re exposing. I’m getting tired of reading hearing transcripts that sound like Monty Python routines and that lead to no actions.

    Interviewer: I’ve been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.

    Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.

    Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.

    Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.

    Interviewer: Why?

    Stig: Well he had to, didn’t he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.

    Interviewer: What had you done?

    Stig: Er… well he didn’t tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that’s good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn’t *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He’d do anything for you, Dinsdale would.

    Interviewer: And you don’t bear him a grudge?

    Stig: A grudge! Old Dinsy. He was a real darling.

    Interviewer: I understand he also nailed your wife’s head to a coffee table. Isn’t that true Mrs O’ Tracy?

    Mrs O’ Tracy: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

    Stig: Well he did do that, yeah. He was a hard man. Vicious but fair.

    Where is Spiny Norman now that we need him?

  • TTop–article 2 section 4 of the Constitution specifically names the VP as an officer subject to impeachment.

  • While Cheney is behaving in the same way as CEOs who have made our country what it is today, impeachment is imperative. One can only imagine with horror what will happen if Bush evaporates and this scumbag becomes president.

  • Gosh. You’d think Dick would be more careful. I mean, National Archives and all that—they’d have archived copies of things like—ummm— declassified maps of the DC area with those wonderful little numbers called “GPS Aiming Coordinates” for the Cheney residence. It would be a shame if “that Osama guy who no one cares about any more” got his hands on those numbers.

    But then again, Dick is just, well—“dick….”

  • What dajafi said.

    Defund the warmongers before they start the war with Iran!

    Impeach the war profiteer!

  • It’s almost as if the Vice President is the head of some kind of organized crime family. – Mr. CB

    He hasn’t had the opportunity, but presented with the appropriate circumstances Cheney would demonstrate a mechanically beating heart as black as any totalitarian power freak. He is capable of deeds as historically rotten as any despot that has ever lived. Rather than a crime family, I’d call him and his dastardly cohorts a junta and hear that he’s declared himself and his self recognized gang a separate and much more than equal splinter government.

    What he has accomplished in building his bubble of secrecy and threats has been like shoving a spike into a 4×4 with a bare hand and sheer force of will. He’s slowly jamming himself into the core of the gov’t and the deeper that spike goes in, the more difficult it will be to get out. And after a certain point, anybody trying to take it out will be dead meat on his say so. He wants that so bad. It’s what gets him up in the morning. He really hates this country and wants it to be something very different than it is. Pick your dictator. Any one. Those are Cheney’s true colors.

  • There has been much hand wringing of late about the Vice President’s assertion that he is “so thpecial”, he is part of neither the executive nor legislative branches, even though he draws his considerable budget from one and has responsibilities to both. He claims to be an autonomous body, almost an independent consultant, like a Blackwater Group mercenary.

    The reality is that the Vice Presidency has no power at all. He is a prosthesis, a constitutional balloon the President can inflate or evacuate as he sees fit. Mr. Bush, like most presidents before him, could left the balloon uninflated, and confined Mr. Cheney to a closet, given him a staff of three and a budget just large enough to pay for a Metro pass, and limited him to attending state funerals and college graduations. Even the politically inexperienced Eisenhower kept the notoriously ambitious Nixon on a short leash.

    Instead, Mr. Bush let Mr. Cheney free “reign” to dig holes and bury his bones througout the federal government. Others found this model of leadership so pervasive they copied it. Alberto Gonzales, for example, delegated much of his authority to two junior staffers, then ignored what they did with it. Just as Mr. Bush gave Mr. Cheney a staff, budget and prominence to rival his own, and then shrouded them in secrecy shorn of his accountability. Or, rather, Mr. Cheney took all those things while Mr. Bush quietly hauled himself off to the bachelor end of Seal Beach, leaving us another constitutional crisis to contend with.

  • Well now, here we are at a very interesting juncture. I must say I’m excited about the possibilities that Mr. Cheney’s defining himself as part of the legislature bring about…and I say defining himself simply by the process of elimination- if he’s not part of the executive, then he must be part of the legislative branch…or wait is he claiming to be part of the judiciary? Hmmm.
    At any rate, this means that he has henceforth disabled himself from ever claiming “executive privilege” as he is on record as defining himself as not of the executive. It also allows the Senate to bring him up on ethics charges like any other Senator, which will be almost stupidily easy to do, as he has provided so very much material to be charged for…I would almost hazard a guess that he could be charged with overstepping his legislative power by not releasing full information about his task forces. The way I see it, Dick is giving us his lemons and we should all contact our Senators to make darn sure they make some sour, spoiled lemonade for this fascist to drink with all haste.
    Mr. Cheney’s contempt of our Constitution and thoroughly Un-American behavior should not go unchallenged. We have all the laws we need to send this power drunk freak packing, and in the name of decency and respect for our Constitution, we should all press our representatives to do their duties and protect our Country from anyone who abuses it as Mr Cheney has.
    Long Live the Republic!

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