White House Contests Post On Providing Visitor Logs

The Bush administration asked an appeals court yesterday to overrule a federal judge and allow the White House to keep secret any records of visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney's residence and office.

To make the visitor records public would be an "unprecedented intrusion into the daily operations of the vice presidency," the Justice Department argued in a 57-page brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The government was responding to an October order, by U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, to release two years of White House visitor logs to The Washington Post. The Post, researching the access that lobbyists and others had to the White House, sought Secret Service records for anyone visiting Cheney, his legal counsel, chief spokesman and other top aides and advisers.

In his ruling, Urbina questioned the government's primary argument against releasing the records: that the logs are protected by Cheney's right to executive privilege.

The government's response was twofold, focusing largely on the ownership of the records.

Attorneys for the Justice Department called Urbina's decision "flatly inconsistent" with his ruling's acknowledgment that the Secret Service had only limited and temporary control over the visitor logs. Because the records are ultimately controlled by the vice president's office, the Secret Service is not authorized to release them, the government said.

Moreover, Congress has excluded presidential and vice presidential records from the public's reach -- making the visitor logs untouchable, the government said.

An attorney for The Post said he had not seen the government's response and declined to comment.