"If they get a blank check, it's a recipe for disaster. I can't think of a quicker way to break down the credibility of the entire security-classification system."
Blanton noted that the White House had acknowledged that a substantial number of in-house e-mails had disappeared in recent years, at a time when investigators wanted to review them for possible evidence of inappropriate leaks of classified information.
"If there are all these great safeguards in place, then where are the e-mails?" Blanton asked.
Waxman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote an eight-page letter to Cheney on Thursday in which he complained that the vice president had refused to adhere to the executive order. Waxman, citing the criminal investigation of Cheney's office related to the leak of a CIA agent's identity, suggested that the vice president's office was a national security risk.
He also accused Cheney or his staff of trying to have the archives' watchdog unit abolished after its director, Leonard, pressed for more oversight and for a legal opinion from the Justice Department as to whether the executive order applied to the vice president's office.
Perino denied that attempts were made to abolish the unit.
A spokeswoman for the archives, Susan Cooper, would not comment Friday on whether the archives' watchdog unit ever tried to inspect the president's executive office or obtain annual classification reports.
Fratto said that he was not aware of such an effort but that it would be rebuffed. "I'm not going to get into hypotheticals, but the executive order does not grant them that authority," Fratto said.
He noted that the oversight requirements did, however, apply to the National Security Council, the president's principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet officials.
Fratto said that the White House and Cheney's office had a legal obligation to adhere to the executive order's guidelines regarding the proper handling of classified documents, even if they didn't have to submit to oversight by an outside agency.
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
