Vice President Dick Cheney has won his battle to withhold records from the public despite efforts by Congress and other critics who say they should be open to scrutiny.

The Democrats are conceding defeat. The party’s top investigator in the House of Representatives acknowledges that there is nothing more he can do to force the vice president’s hand.

Waxman said that despite Cheney’s turning this administration into “one of the most secretive in history,” there’s not much he or anyone else can do because the administration has only a few more months left in office.

Cheney argues that, as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, he is not exclusively part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the public-records standards that have been applied to past administrations.

Congressional probes, sometimes ignored by the Justice Department, have led nowhere, and prominent lawmakers are throwing their hands in the air.

A leading watchdog group agrees that Cheney will probably leave the White House without turning over the precise number of records he has determined to be classified or a detailed list naming whom he employs.

The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a branch of the National Archives, confirmed that it does not possess any reports about what data Cheney’s office has classified or declassified. The Office of the Vice President (OVP) has previously done so in accordance with an executive order created by President Clinton in 1995, which aimed to create a uniform system of protecting classified information.

Similarly, Cheney’s staff information is not included in the Plum Book, which identifies all presidential-appointed positions. In the last Plum Book, the OVP was listed as Appendix 5, which stated that the vice president is part of neither the executive nor the legislative branch of government.

The Office of Personnel Management confirmed that at this time they do not possess any staff information from OVP for the Plum Book.

In addition, a Cheney aide wrote to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on June 2 that its disclosure requirements for privately paid travel records apply only to those who head an “agency in the executive branch.” In past letters to OGE, Cheney’s staff said he does not head an agency and would not have to disclose.

The aide did disclose, however, as “a matter of comity,” that no staff members accepted trips paid for by outside sponsors.

To find precedents for their position, Cheney staffers have sometimes reached back to arguments made by prior administrations. For example, one such staff letter to OGE cites an opinion given by President John F. Kennedy’s Justice Department in 1961 that states: “the Vice President belongs neither to the Executive nor to the Legislative Branch but is attached by the Constitution to the latter.”

Joel Goldstein, a constitutional law professor at St. Louis University, said that opinion would provide technical support that Cheney’s office was a “hybrid office,” but history since then indicates otherwise.

“This seems to be arguing form over substance. And it’s not even clear that the form is that strong,” said Goldstein, who has studied the vice presidency extensively. “The vice president has migrated closer and closer to the executive branch.”