The Method to Cheney's Madness

Why, in 2003, did Vice President Cheney suddenly become so dead-set against reporting how his office handled government secrets?

Cheney's refusal to abide by reporting requirements that apply to everyone else in the Bush administration -- and the audacity of his excuse, that because he is also president of the Senate, his office is not really within the executive branch -- led to a bunch of unflattering front-page headlines this morning.

But let's assume there's a method to his madness. Perhaps Cheney is rejecting this oversight because he doesn't want people to know what he and his aides have been doing with classified information. Or perhaps he believes in principle that he shouldn't be subject to constraints that apply to others in the executive branch. Maybe both. I'm betting on both.

Cheney's particular sensitivity to releasing information about his handling of government secrets is not exactly surprising. And while he apparently had no problem filing reports in 2001 and 2002, he stopped doing so in 2003 -- a game-changing year in a lot of ways.

As I wrote in my March 31, 2006, column, investigative reporter Murray Waas has developed a compelling case that the use and abuse of classified information has been key to the White House's success not only in contriving a bogus case for war in Iraq, but in keeping charges of deception from becoming a major issue in the 2004 election -- and, arguably, to this day. Time and time again, in a strategy that most likely owes its existence to Cheney, the White House has selectively leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served its political agenda -- while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit it.

Also, starting in early 2003, Bush granted Cheney broad new powers to personally classify and declassify material, as I wrote in my Feb. 17, 2006 column. Bush's move, ironically, came in the very same order that Cheney is now in part resisting.

On March 25, 2003, just days after ordering U.S. troops into Iraq, Bush signed an executive order amending Executive Order 12958, which President Clinton had signed in 1995, and which laid out a host of rules about the classification and declassification of secret information.

Bush did not change the requirement that federal agencies report at least once a year on their implementation of those policies. Nor did he change the definition of who was covered by the reporting requirements. That continued to include any "entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information."

But Bush did make one major change: Giving the vice president all the same classification powers as the president. Clinton's order had assigned those powers only to the president, agency heads and their specifically designated subordinates. Bush's order added one more party: The vice president. Or, in the precise and possibly telling words of the order: "[I]n the performance of executive duties, the Vice President."

In a Feb. 15, 2006, interview on Fox News, Cheney asserted that he had the authority to declassify government secrets, but refused to say whether he had ever done so. From the transcript:

Brit Hume: "Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?"

Cheney: "There is an executive order to that effect."