"The vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The vice presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch ... and in the executive branch."
Waxman said Cheney's refusal to allow oversight of its classification system was a problem for another reason: The office has had a history of leaks of classified information in recent years.
In his letter to the vice president, Waxman said two Cheney staffers -- including Libby -- have been criminally prosecuted in the alleged illegal disclosure of classified information.
Waxman also said the Libby prosecution uncovered information suggesting that Cheney himself "apparently misused the declassification process for political reasons ... as part of a damage-control effort" to defend the administration's rationale for going to war in Iraq.
"Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information," Waxman wrote.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists: Project on Government Secrecy, said the information that Cheney's office is required to report is essentially trivial, most of it routine data on classification and declassification activity levels.
"But the significance of the dispute is enormous. It reveals with unusual clarity how stubbornly this vice president resists oversight," Aftergood said. "If the executive order on classification can be violated at will, as the vice president has done, then agencies can abuse secrecy to conceal all kinds of mischief, and worse."
Gordon Silverstein, a constitutional scholar at UC Berkeley, said Cheney's claims were all the more noteworthy given his repeated assertions of executive privilege, based on his senior position within the Bush administration, as a reason why he has not had to testify before Congress or provide lawmakers with information on such national security issues as torture, interrogation and CIA renditions of terrorists.
"Here's a guy who raises 'executive privilege' to historic levels to exempt himself from all rules and oversight, and now he says he's not part of the executive branch?" said Silverstein. "Here we have a subordinate part of the executive branch asserting independent constitutional authority even against its own superior. It is flabbergasting."
--
josh.meyer@latimes.com
