http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8569Spotlight on the Dark Side: The Cracks in Cheney's World
by Gary Leupp | Jul 7 2007
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This is a very dangerous man at a very dangerous time. But he is not invulnerable. Investigative journalism is weakening his position. So has the Libby Affair, and the controversy over his refusal to comply with the law on this matter of classifying information. According to law, agencies of the executive branch are obliged to report annually to the Information Security Oversight Office within the National Archives about the security procedures they are applying. That means, as I understand it, filling out a form concerning how much material is being marked secret, for what reasons, where the material is stored, who has access, etc. The law allows for on-site inspections of offices by oversight office personnel. In 1995 President Clinton signed Executive Order 12958 which established this procedure; Bush modified it in Executive Order 13292 of March 2003 to give the vice president the same powers to classify as the president. In other words, Bush signed the order to strengthen Cheney's position and to cloak himself even more heavily in secrecy. But the law still requires cooperation with the oversight office.
In 2001-3, Cheney's office did cooperate. But since 2004, Cheney has refused to answer the office's questions. In that year he had his staffers physically bar overseers from conducting an on-sight inspection of his office. That was a first in the history of the oversight office and prompted its director J. William Leonard to protest. Cheney responded through his chief of staff David S. Addington (who has become Libby's successor) that his office was not "an entity within the executive branch." That claim, only recently publicized, has drawn statements of outrage and, perhaps more troubling for Cheney, outright hilarity. Last month Addington wrote Sen. John Kerry a new justification for Cheney's refusal to comply: the OVP is not an "agency" such as those referred to the executive order's text.
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is very disturbed about this and reports that Cheney is even trying to abolish the bothersome Information Security Oversight Office itself. He has protested in a long detailed letter to Cheney and requested an answer to Congress by July 12 to a long list of pointed questions. A refusal to answer could lead to a constitutional crisis.
One would hope that the criminal war in Iraq would have produced some sort of showdown by now, but perhaps lawmakers will become more exercised about Cheney's defiance of the law, and contempt for themselves, than about his role as architect of the war. Kings are as likely to be overthrown for disrespecting parliaments as conducting unpopular foreign wars.
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Then there's the not unrelated issue of the Libby pardon. (Yes I know it wasn't officially a pardon but a commutation of his jail sentence. Some think he's been punished enough by the fine he still has to pay, but that will be paid by supporters. And he'll lose his legal license. Gosh.) Here's a man who conspired with his boss to discredit a man who had revealed one of the key lies behind the war on Iraq, and his wife who was one of the key CIA operatives actually investigating Iran's nuclear program (rather than making up stuff about it). Bush commuted his sentence without even conferring with the Justice Department, a first for him and departure from procedure. The result of another White House private luncheon?
Only 20% of Americans polled support Bush's decision to spare him jail time. Most of them presumably associate Libby closely with Cheney. Most too have to associate Cheney with Bush, although I don't think enough people realize how much power he's exerted in the administration. We may learn more about Cheney's input into Bush's decision about Libby's fate in the coming days.
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