Editorial: Tripping over disclosure rules

Friday, Dec. 16, 2005 | 7:42 a.m.

A recent report suggests that Vice President Dick Cheney's fondness for secrecy extends beyond hiding the locations of overseas prisons where the United States detains terrorist suspects.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research group, Cheney and his staff appear to have "sidestepped" a 1989 federal law regarding travel disclosures by failing to reveal how much it costs when they travel to deliver speeches at universities, trade groups and think tanks and, importantly, who pays for such trips.

In a recent Cox News Service report, Berta Baskin, the Center for Public Integrity's executive director, said the information should have been submitted and made public under the 1989 Ethics Reform Act. Her center's report shows that Cheney has made 275 speeches over the past four years, including speeches at 23 think tanks and trade organizations and 16 universities and colleges, none of which paid for the appearances. By calling the appearances "official business," Cheney has made these jaunts at taxpayers' expense. Typically, the organizations hosting the speeches pay for the trips.

Filing reports to the Office of Government Ethics that detail who paid for travel, food and lodging in connection with speeches is routine for high-ranking federal officials -- including President Bush, whom the report says has filed such documentation. Vice President Al Gore disclosed more than $180,000 in travel from 1997 to 2000 that was paid for by groups outside the government.

Cheney's office claims the law only applies to executive branch department heads and does not include the vice president. But Cox News said Cheney's chief of staff issued a statement saying they will provide the information out of good will.

But this is more business-as-usual than good will. Cheney's penchant for revealing as little as possible to avoid being held accountable has been illustrated on numerous occasions, from his refusal in 2001 to disclose the names of participants in a task force that developed the nation's energy policy to his support for hiding the worldwide locations where U.S. prisoners of war are detained and reportedly tortured. But the public deserves a full and honest disclosure from its second-in-command. A democracy conducted in secret isn't a democracy.