[Infowarrior] - Agency Is Target in Cheney Fight on Secrecy Data

[Richard Forno]

June 22, 2007
Agency Is Target in Cheney Fight on Secrecy Data
By SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/washington/22cheney.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slo
gin&pagewanted=print

For four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has resisted routine oversight of
his office¹s handling of classified information, and when the National
Archives unit that monitors classification in the executive branch objected,
the vice president¹s office suggested abolishing the oversight unit,
according to documents released yesterday by a Democratic congressman.

The Information Security Oversight Office, a unit of the National Archives,
appealed the issue to the Justice Department, which has not yet ruled on the
matter.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, disclosed Mr. Cheney¹s
effort to shut down the oversight office. Mr. Waxman, who has had a leading
role in the stepped-up efforts by Democrats to investigate the Bush
administration, outlined the matter in an eight-page letter sent Thursday to
the vice president and posted, along with other documentation, on the
committee¹s Web site.

Officials at the National Archives and the Justice Department confirmed the
basic chronology of events outlined in Mr. Waxman¹s letter.

The letter said that after repeatedly refusing to comply with a routine
annual request from the archives for data on his staff¹s classification of
internal documents, the vice president¹s office in 2004 blocked an on-site
inspection of records that other agencies of the executive branch regularly
go through.

The National Archives is an executive branch department headed by a
presidential appointee, and it is assigned to collect the data on classified
documents under a presidential executive order. Its Information Security
Oversight Office is the division that oversees classification and
declassification.

³I know the vice president wants to operate with unprecedented secrecy,² Mr.
Waxman said in an interview. ³But this is absurd. This order is designed to
keep classified information safe. His argument is really that he¹s not part
of the executive branch, so he doesn¹t have to comply.²

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, Megan McGinn, said, ³We¹re confident that
we¹re conducting the office properly under the law.² She declined to
elaborate.

Other officials familiar with Mr. Cheney¹s view said that he and his legal
adviser, David S. Addington, did not believe that the executive order
applied to the vice president¹s office because it had a legislative status
in the Constitution as well as an executive one. Other White House offices,
including the National Security Council, routinely comply with the oversight
requirements, according to Mr. Waxman¹s office and outside experts.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said last night, ³The White House
complies with the executive order, including the National Security Council.²

The dispute is far from the first to pit Mr. Cheney and Mr. Addington
against outsiders seeking information, usually members of Congress or
advocacy groups. Their position is generally based on strong assertions of
presidential power and the importance of confidentiality, which Mr. Cheney
has often argued was eroded by post-Watergate laws and the prying press.

Mr. Waxman asserted in his letter and the interview that Mr. Cheney¹s office
should take the efforts of the National Archives especially seriously
because it has had problems protecting secrets.

He noted that I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president¹s former chief of
staff, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to a
grand jury and the F.B.I. during an investigation of the leak of classified
information, the status of Valerie Wilson, the wife of a Bush administration
critic, as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.

Mr. Waxman added that in May 2006 a former aide in Mr. Cheney¹s office,
Leandro Aragoncillo, pleaded guilty to passing classified information to
plotters trying to overthrow the president of the Philippines.

³Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for
safeguarding classified information,² Mr. Waxman wrote to Mr. Cheney.

In the tradition of Washington¹s semantic dust-ups, this one might be
described as a fight over what an ³entity² is. The executive order, last
updated in 2003 and currently under revision, states that it applies to any
³entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of
classified information.²

J. William Leonard, director of the oversight office, has argued in a series
of letters to Mr. Addington that the vice president¹s office is indeed such
an entity. Mr. Leonard noted that previous vice presidents had complied with
the request for data on documents classified and declassified, and that Mr.
Cheney did so in 2001 and 2002.

But starting in 2003, the vice president¹s office began refusing to supply
the information. In 2004, it blocked an on-site inspection by Mr. Leonard¹s
office that was routinely carried out across the government to check whether
documents were being properly labeled and safely stored.

Mr. Addington did not reply in writing to Mr. Leonard¹s letters, according
to officials familiar with their exchanges. But Mr. Addington stated in
conversations that the vice president¹s office was not an ³entity within the
executive branch² because, under the Constitution, the vice president also
plays a role in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate, able to
cast a vote in the event of a tie.

Mr. Waxman rejected that argument.

³He doesn¹t have classified information because of his legislative
function,² Mr. Waxman said of Mr. Cheney. ³It¹s because of his executive
function.²

Mr. Cheney¹s general resistance to complying with the oversight request was
first reported last year by The Chicago Tribune.

In January, Mr. Leonard wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales asking
that he resolve the question. Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman,
said last night, ³This matter is currently under review in the department.²

Whatever the ultimate ruling, according to Mr. Waxman¹s letter, the vice
president¹s office has already carried out ³possible retaliation² against
the oversight office.

As part of an interagency review of Executive Order 12958, Mr. Cheney¹s
office proposed eliminating appeals to the attorney general ‹ precisely the
avenue Mr. Leonard was taking. According to Mr. Waxman¹s investigation, the
vice president¹s staff also proposed abolishing the Information Security
Oversight Office.

The interagency group revising the executive order has rejected those
proposals, Mr. Waxman said. Ms. McGinn, Mr. Cheney¹s spokeswoman, declined
to comment.

Mr. Cheney¹s penchant for secrecy has long been a striking feature of the
Bush administration, beginning with his fight to keep confidential the
identities of the energy industry officials who advised his task force on
national energy policy in 2001. Mr. Cheney took that dispute to the Supreme
Court and won.

Steven Aftergood, who tracks government secrecy at the Federation of
American Scientists and last year filed a complaint with the oversight
office about Mr. Cheney¹s noncompliance, said, ³This illustrates just how
far the vice president will go to evade external oversight.²

But David B. Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who served in Justice Department
and White House posts in earlier Republican administrations, said Mr. Cheney
had a valid point about the unusual status of the office he holds.

³The office of the vice president really is unique,² Mr. Rivkin said. ³It¹s
not an agency. It¹s an extension of the vice president himself.²