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Cheney’s office dismisses Dems’ outrage on documents |
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By Chris Good
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Posted: 06/26/07 06:20 PM [ET] |
Vice President Cheney’s office Tuesday dismissed Democratic claims that Cheney is putting himself above the law because his office refused to grant access to an oversight agency that is tasked with reviewing how classified information is handled.
“Constitutional issues in government are generally best left for discussion when unavoidable disputes arise in a specific context instead of in theoretical discussions,” Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, said in a letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).
Kerry had joined a growing chorus of Democrats who criticized Cheney’s refusal to submit to Executive Order 12958, signed by President Clinton and amended by President Bush in 2003. The order requires the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) to oversee executive agencies’ handling of classified documents.
According to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Cheney ignored questions from Waxman and the National Archives in 2006. Still unwilling to submit its document classifications to oversight, Waxman said Cheney’s office responded in 2007 by seeking to abolish the ISOO.
Addington echoed arguments from the White House that Executive Order 12958 treats the Office of the Vice President the same as the president — not as an “agency,” and therefore not answerable to the ISOO.
“This legalistic response raises more questions than it purports to answer,” Kerry said. “I am far from satisfied with the response from David Addington, and ask again for the Vice President’s office to plainly answer the question of whether he considers himself outside the realm of agency scrutiny, and what their office is doing to secure our nation’s most privileged information.”
Cheney’s office, in response to the ISOO, had argued that it is not an “entity within the executive branch.”
That argument has generated some backlash, prompting a debate over whether Cheney’s office considers itself part of the executive branch and drawing the ire of Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who has suggested that Congress defund the Office of the Vice President.
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