Seems herr Dick is claiming the VP is not a part of the executive branch of the government, which means he is perfectly within his satanic, svengaliesque rights to ignore a fairly clear order, as noted on Slate:
In early June 2006, J. William Leonard, the National Archives' director of information security oversight, wrote David Addington, Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff, stating that Cheney was "willfully" violating Executive Order 12958, signed in 1995 by President Bill Clinton (see below and on the following page). The order implemented a "uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information." Cheney was also ignoring a 2003 directive by President Bush that specifically requires any agency "within the executive branch" to make records of "security classification activity" available to the Archives.
Of course, Cheney's response was "neh neh neh, you can't make me!" Essentially. The excuse went like this:
Cheney's rationale for noncompliance is that the vice president's office is not an agency of the executive branch. "The reporting requirement does not apply," Cheney's spokeswoman (yes, he has one; her name is Lea Anne McBride) explained last year to the Chicago Tribune, because the Office of the Vice President "has both legislative and executive functions." The vice president's office has made the same argument to keep secret its travel expenses and even the identities of the people who work there.
and even more amazingly, later after several people hadn't respomded to information requests, Cheney's chief of staff "wrote Sen. John Kerry with a new justification for withholding the information: The president's office and the vice president's office are indistinguishable":
The LetterThis, my friends, is some shit. You can check out the actual documents at Slate, and wrap your brain around the phenomenal Dude with 'Tude, Dickfield S Cheney.
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