VP Of Secrets

But to follow that credo into high office in a democratic republic, America’s Vice President Dick Cheney will twist, warp, shred, deny and fool everyone, in everyplace, at any time, always.

His newest ploy might be considered ingenious if it were not an ‘in your face’ insult to every citizen with the ability to comprehend the American system of government.

Cheney declares he is not part of the Executive Branch but is actually a member of the Congress. And, being a legislator, he is naturally not subject to the laws and directives that relate to the Executive Branch, so he need not divulge anything at all to anyone, ever, regarding activities undertaken through the office of the vice president.

Machiavelli would love this.

Yes, if one believes him, he is really just a Legislative Branch animal after all.

People over at the National Archives want his papers and such. They can be committed to history, studied, guarded if need be, but what are they? Are they the documents of a legislator , a member of Congress, or the vice president, a member of the Executive branch?

As vice president, Cheney has one constitutional job: president of the Senate.

That is not a presidential job, so Cheney, now suddenly seeing himself as an employee of the Senate, which pays his salary, declares he is not subject to annual reporting or periodic on-site inspections under President Bill Clinton’s 1995 executive order, renewed and also signed by George W. Bush.

Brilliant!

Cheney apparently even feels confident in thumbing his nose at what can only be assumed were the intentions of George Bush, the president he is supposed to be serving. When it comes to documents he wishes to retain or to have remain secret, Dick Cheney will render nothing to the government at all. With one double-backward maneuver, Cheney hopes to slip from the grasp of government overseers and walk away without any record of what went on behind the scenes in his vice president’s office.

His spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, deadpanned, “We are confident that we are conducting the office properly under the law.”

But they have not been doing that since they were sworn in.

Cheney tried to erase the National Archives’ Security Oversight Office, which is the branch that enforces safeguards for classified information in executive agencies.

He failed.

So, with his arrogance rebuffed, here he stands, reincarnated as a legislator in the Senate who has classified information derived from the activities of the Executive branch and which belong to the nation – not to any individual – yet he refuses to turn such information over, not to anyone, including his supposed boss, Bush the younger.

What astounding heights of arrogance he has reached. Richard Cheney had demonstrated, publicly, that he does not believe in the system of government of the United States that he has in fact sworn to uphold.

Cheney sees himself as above the law, and if not a law unto himself, then perhaps the progenitor of a new, autocratic and authoritarian United States as defined by him and his supporters, who are also hidden from public view.

The Supreme Court will perhaps, in this strange scenario, need to define exactly what branch the vice president occupies! However, since the appointments to that court by Cheney’s running mate, George W. Bush, decisions from the nation’s highest court now seem to reflect a consistent, aggressive five member majority that might well applaud Dick Cheney’s slippery duplicity, since that particular majority seems to share his philosophy and viewpoints.

We may soon learn that Richard Cheney has been successful in creating a new position in the government without a Constitutional Convention.

July 2007