Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington(CREW), along with two eminent historians and three organizations of historians and archivists filed a complaint against Vice President Dick Cheney, the Office of the Vice President, the archivist and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), challenging their exclusion of a vast majority of Vice President Cheney’s papers from the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and the obligation to preserve for the American public.
The Presidential Records Act was passed to preserve presidential papers in the wake of the Watergate scandal. CREW says that the 30-year-old act can now be used to protect Cheney’s files regarding national security, intelligence, energy and environmental policy, and domestic wiretapping.
In an executive order issued in 2001, President Bush declared that the PRA applied only to the “executive records” of the vice president. Since that time, the vice president has taken the somewhat novel view that he is not part of the executive and is attached, if at all, to the congressional branch.
In an executive order issued in 2001, President Bush declared that the PRA applied only to the “executive records” of the vice president. Since that time, the vice president has taken the somewhat novel view that he is not part of the executive and is attached, if at all, to the congressional branch.
Even more perplexing, the national archivist takes the view that the congressional records of a vice president are his personal, not presidential, records that he is free to dispose of at will. If these legal positions are followed, Vice President Cheney’s records will not be transferred to NARA for eventual release to the public, but instead will remain under the vice president’s personal custody and control. CREW is also seeking an order mandating preservation of all of the vice president’s records pending the lawsuit.
CREW was previously involved in a September, 2007 lawsuit in conjunction with a suit brought by the National Security Archive to recover and preserve more than 5 million missing White House e-mails deleted between March 2003 and October 2005. In July 2008 a judge ordered the Executive Office of the President to search and preserve e-mails from individual workstations and portable media but excluded forensic copying of the workstations.
Anyone who has dealt with electronic discovery in federal court knows how frustrating this subject matter can be, and what a treasure trove of information can be found on emails and e-documents. I believe the American public deserves to see what went on in the Bush White House and what the vice president was truly doing behind the scenes.
Dick Cheney will fight this battle over electronically stored information to the proverbial gates of hell before he voluntarily gives up a single byte of information to anyone outside of the Bush inner circle.
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