Vice President Cheney Defied Security Rules; Turned Away Inspectors

Vice President Dick Cheney has exempted his office from a presidential classification order, refusing to make annual reports to the National Archive and turning away classification inspectors, claiming that his office is not an entity within the executive branch, according to letters from the Archive made public today by a Congressional oversight committee.

Cheney's office has a history of selective secrecy and shoddy information security practices, such as unilateral and selective declassifying of documents to suit political purposes and fighting a government sunshine request for energy task force records up to the Supreme Court. Cheney's top aide is facing 30 months in federal prison for lying to investigators about which Administration official outed an undercover CIA operative whose work focused on fighting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The showdown over the executive branch-wide regulations on how to classify, store, handle, and declassify government documents started sometime in 2003, when Cheney's office refused to submit an annual report on its classification procedures, despite the fact that the order was signed by President Bush.

In 2004, when the National Archives told the vice president's office that it was coming by to conduct an on-site inspection, the Vice President's office blocked inspectors from the Information Security Oversight Office, according to a letter (.pdf) sent to Cheney Thursday by Rep[. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Oversight Committee.

Your decision to exempt your office from the President's order is problematic because it could place national security secreats at risk. It is also hard to understand given the history of security breaches involving officials in your office. [...] Indeed, it would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials.

After writing two unanswered letters to the Vice President's office in 2006 asking how the vice president's office isn't part of the White House, ISOO chief William Leonard wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to resolve the dispute.

Gonzales never wrote back, and Leonard told Waxman that Cheney's office's response was to try to change the order to explicitly exempt the Vice President and then to try to abolish the ISOO entirely.

Perhaps Cheney's justification is that the presidency is actually a subset of the vice presidency and therefore can't control it?

Actually it's clear what the argument is. It's been this administration's argument since it took power in 2001.

We are kings and you can't touch us.

The addition here is that "We are kings and even our own rules can't touch us".