Dick Cheney, based on nothing but on-the-job performance, is unlikely to receive kind treatment from historians, but The Examiner noted today there’s another reason for scholars to get frustrated with the Vice President.
Anyone awaiting an anthology of Vice President Dick Cheney’s papers might be in for a disappointment.
Speaking on Friday at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., Cheney said that because he served as President Ford’s chief of staff, “researchers like to come and dig through my files, to see if anything interesting turns up.”
“I want to wish them luck,” he quipped, eliciting laughter from the crowd, “but the files are pretty thin. I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble some day, just don’t write any.”
That’s cute, but it’s also incomplete. Cheney actually writes memos all the time, but he’s come up with a special classification for his materials that mandates that his memos be treated as if they were actually classified.
Stealth is among Cheney’s most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped “Treated As: Top Secret/SCI.” Experts in and out of government said Cheney’s office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to “sensitive compartmented information,” the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words “treated as,” they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause “exceptionally grave damage to national security.”
Across the board, the vice president’s office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that “the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch,” and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.
In the usual business of interagency consultation, proposals and information flow into the vice president’s office from around the government, but high-ranking White House officials said in interviews that almost nothing flows out. Close aides to Cheney describe a similar one-way valve inside the office, with information flowing up to the vice president but little or no reaction flowing down.
Of course, some written materials may, despite Cheney’s wishes, someday see the light of the day. Perhaps that’s why there are industrial shredders stopping by the Naval Observatory?