The many secrets of Dick Cheney

At the very least, the Bush administration has done wonders for the careers of constitutional scholars. Nary a month goes by when there isn’t some sort of controversy about what the White House can or can’t assert, who they can or can’t lock up, and which laws they do or don’t have to respect. Behind many of these constitutional dust-ups lurks Vice President Dick Cheney, either as the person in question, or as the architect of administration policy.

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Which is why it’s laughable that the most powerful veep in U.S. history claims that he has a particularly unique perch—part of both the executive and legislative branches—that allows him to essentially do whatever he wants. His special status makes him immune to pesky things like executive orders, particularly those that might dent his penchant for secrecy. The latest outrage: In response to a 2003 executive order that requires all entities within the executive branch “that come into the possession of classified material” to report how much information they are keeping secret, Cheney simply hasn’t complied. He hasn’t reported for years the number of documents his office is stamping confidential, and he’s gone so far as to suggest that the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), charged with keeping track of the information classified by the government, be abolished.

The 2003 executive order in question clearly gives the ISOO the authority to conduct on-site inspections (which Cheney wouldn’t allow) and to demand annual reports on how many documents were being classified (which Cheney wouldn’t file). The order gives classification powers to the veep that are identical to those of the president—as long as the veep is acting “in the performance of executive duties.” So, why doesn’t Cheney comply with the order?

The obvious answer is that Cheney simply considers his actions above public purview. And he’s the extreme end of a larger problem: Since 1996, the number of federal documents stamped secret each year has nearly tripled, even if you don’t count the OVP’s double-secret files.

It’s a dangerous trend. As Jacob Shapiro, a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, argues in the latest issue of FP, the dramatic rise in government secrecy over the past few years leaves some of the country’s best minds—security analysts, professors, and researchers outside the government—in the dark. So, while Cheney’s office argues that secrecy keeps us safe by preventing information from falling into the wrong hands, classifying such an extraordinary amount leaves us more vulnerable. At the very least, Cheney should be letting us know how many secrets he’s actually keeping.