{"id":10961,"date":"2007-05-30T16:35:50","date_gmt":"2007-05-30T20:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10961.html"},"modified":"2007-05-30T16:35:50","modified_gmt":"2007-05-30T20:35:50","slug":"destroying-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/destroying-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"Destroying documents"},"content":{"rendered":"

This<\/a> certainly doesn’t seem kosher.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states.<\/p>\n

The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney’s lawyer says logs for Cheney’s residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah yes, the Presidential Records Act. That would be the law Bush White House officials have been ignoring for years<\/a>, right? But I digress….<\/p>\n

Such a designation prevents the public from learning who visited the vice president.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department filed the letter Friday in a lawsuit by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the AP explained, the Secret Service has provides Cheney’s office with a handwritten log of who visits him at the Naval Observatory. Because the VP is involved in “pending lawsuits,” the Secret Service has been keeping a copy of the visitors’ list, in case it’s ever needed in court.<\/p>\n

But if the news accounts are accurate, Cheney’s office not only wants the records hidden from public view, it also wants the records destroyed altogether.
\n<\/p>\n

“The latest filings make clear that the administration has been destroying documents and entering into secret agreements in violation of the law,” said Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief counsel.<\/p>\n

Regarding visitor information, the Secret Service “shall not retain any copy of these documents and information” once the material is given to the office of the vice president, says the September 2006 letter by Shannen Coffin, counsel to the vice president.<\/p>\n

“If any documents remain in your possession, please return them to OVP as soon as possible,” the letter added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not as if Cheney’s penchant for secrecy comes as a surprise, but what’s the rationale to support this? If the VP believes he should maintain some degree of privacy, and he doesn’t want a list of visitors available to reporters, it’s at least worth debating. But Cheney is going much further — he wants lists of visitors to be secret forever<\/i>. Nothing for the archives, nothing for history, nothing for libraries. No one, Cheney’s office is saying, should ever know who came to the VP’s residence to visit.<\/p>\n

Is it me or is that odd?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This certainly doesn’t seem kosher. A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney’s lawyer says logs for Cheney’s residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}