Editorial: The ugly side of secrecy

Monday, June 25, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.

A congressional investigation has shown that Vice President Dick Cheney has routinely resisted federal efforts to monitor his office's handling of classified documents, and that Cheney even suggested abolishing the unit that investigates such matters after it sought to examine his methods.

Documents released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., say that for four years Cheney has refused to cooperate with inquiries by the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office. The National Archives is charged under presidential executive order with collecting data on classified documents. Its security oversight office monitors the classification and declassification of such documents.

In addition to refusing to answer the security oversight queries, the vice president's office in 2004 denied auditors' permission to conduct an on-site records inspection - the kind of inspection that other offices of the executive branch routinely experience, the congressional documents show.

In blocking inspectors' access, Cheney has said that the executive order regarding oversight does not apply to the vice president's office because the Constitution gives it legislative status in addition to executive status.

Still, other White House offices, including the National Security Council, cooperate with the inspections, The New York Times reported in a story on Friday. Waxman told the Times that the vice president's desire to act with such unprecedented secrecy "is absurd," as is his reasoning that "he's not part of the executive branch."

The vice president's reluctance to bear the same scrutiny as other government officials is exacerbated by the fact that the vice president's office has one of the worst records in history of keeping classified information secret.

Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., has been sentenced to prison after being convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying to authorities during an investigation about a leak that revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Wilson, which violated her classified status. The leak occurred after Wilson's husband publicly criticized the Bush administration.

A Washington, D.C. , lawyer, who served in the Justice Department under previous Republican administrations, told the Times that the office of the vice president is "not an agency" but is "an extension of the vice president himself." And, unfortunately for the American people, in Cheney's case that extension is an office of arrogance in which the vice president believes he is above the law.