More on Darth - Froomkin on Friday

i missed this last friday, but, as usual, dan froomkin's insight is not to be missed...

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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."

[...]

[W]ouldn't it be in character for him and his top aides to maneuver to establish the vice presidency as a uniquely powerful and unconstrained force?

well, of COURSE, it's in character, perfectly in keeping with the megalomaniacal and fundamentally evil nature of the man... why would we expect anything less...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet