The President was heading to Alabama today, and the noon briefing was handled by Dana Perino. At the very end of the briefing, Ms. Periono was asked a question involving a spat between the National Archives and the VP's Office:
Q This is from the House Oversight Committee, this is Waxman's people. The committee says it has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the Presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts his office is not "an entity within the Executive Branch."
Is that right? Is his office not an entity within the Executive Branch?
Her answer was in the form of "I have to get back to you on that."
So what was all the hubub, or was this just a rumor that the reporter is seeking to confirm?
It seems that this is real, and what a controversy it is. There has been some reporting that ever since I. Scooter Libby has disappeared, the Vice-President has lost his cred within the Executive Branch. That appears to be wrong, a rumor probably generated by Lord Vader himself in order to throw off unwanted media attention, which appears to be an easy thing to do these days.
According to Henry Waxman, the Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last summer the National Archives complained that the VP sought exemption from an executive order that establishes procedures to deal with classifying and declassifying national security information, despite the fact that his boss supported the order.
In 2006, the Archives, per the order, sent two letters to the VP (here and here) seeking entrance into the VP's office for an inspection, and at that time the VP made a whopping assertion: "The Office of the Vice President is not an entity within the executive branch" and not subject to the order. If you can believe this, the VP's Office actually claimed that the "reporting requirement does not apply [because the Office] has both legislative and executive functions(!)." This is a stunning argument coming from this particular VP. Why? First, it might have been a substantive argument 75 or 100 years ago, when the Vice President clearly was more a legislative agent than an executive one. But no one in their right minds would think that the VP today serves as a legislative agent. He is there to cast ties in the Senate (in support of Executive policy) and to advance the President's preferences inside the Congress. But dual loyalties? Wow. Second, this particular VP has openly demonstrated his disgust for the Congress, going out of his way to maximize presidential power at its expense. I can only imagine the chuckle he and his staff had when they made this particular argument.
When the VP's Office refused the repeated requests for inspection, the Archives requested that the Justice Department (with a letter that went right to AG Gonzales) resolve this constitutional question of whether the VP is an Executive Branch officer (the letter actually asks the AG to engage in the academic exercise of supposing that if the VP's staff support him in an executive capacity, then doesn't that make his Office an Executive Branch entity?). Rather than resolve the question, the AG recommended to President Bush that he abolish the office within the Archives seeking the information. Just classic stuff. Seriously.
Let's hope that Ms. Perino gets back to us real soon. I for one am waiting like a kid before Christmas to hear this one!
