Uncle Dick’s “Rogue Nation” and America’s “Family Jewels”

June 23rd, 2007

Well — Dick Cheney has pretty much issued his “declaration of independence” from United States government, hasn’t he? Not only does Uncle Dick declare no oversight applicable to himself, Dubby joins him. Can’t be plainer than that, citizens — dictatorship in a red, white and blue wrapper.

“This is a very rocky path, and if it’s Constitutional, then I’m a banana.”

~ Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe, to Keith Olbermann

Below, a collection on Dick and Dubby, and toward the bottom, the CIA is releasing information from the archives that should pretty much INSTRUCT THE NATION in what “United States interests” actually means. If our mythology is still in tact at the moment, it won’t be for long.

The Cheney and CIA codeword “Family Jewels” reads, links and articles, below — we’ll start with an Olbermann video. The Froomkin articles will give you links to more, if you’re interested.

Jude

Olbermann: Dick Cheney is a “Rogue Nation” [VIDEO]
President Bush has sunk so low he doesn’t even run his Vice-President.
Adam Howard, Alternet
June 23, 2007

In the video… [open link] Keith Olbermann deduces that since Dick Cheney insists that he is not subject to the laws of the Executive Branch and since he is not a legislator or a judge, that he must be a “rogue nation” and we should “invade him”. While this recent Cheney attempt to prove he is above the law is so ridiculous that it’s amusing at first, until you realize that he’s completely getting away with it. ++

No veep is an island
Cheney has been instrumental in eroding privacy rights for all Americans — except himself.
Los Angeles Times Editorial
June 23, 2007

VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney’s refusal to comply with a presidential order regulating the handling of classified information might be scary were it not so ludicrous.

Cheney’s rejection of mandatory inspections required of all federal offices to make sure they are properly protecting top secret documents defies basic standards of good government and common sense. And his argument that he needn’t comply because his office isn’t part of the executive branch is specious. Moreover, after clashing with the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office, which conducts the routine inspections, Cheney’s vindictive staff reportedly tried to abolish the unit. That’s like trying to disband the Internal Revenue Service for demanding a tax audit. Has the veep taken leave of his senses?

Unfortunately, Cheney’s behavior is entirely in keeping with his long-standing views on executive powers, executive privilege and the divine rights of vice presidents. He also has championed policies that have shredded American privacy rights in the name of national security, with methods that have included warrantless wiretaps, e-mail and postal-mail snooping, monitoring library withdrawals, mining data on the telephone and buying habits of millions of citizens and the expanded use of national security letters. But Cheney has been vigilant in defending his own privacy rights. The vice president’s office has been operating in stunning secrecy for six years.

For example, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), Cheney refuses to follow an executive branch ethics rule requiring him and his employees to disclose travel paid for by special interests. In fact, he won’t even disclose who some of his employees are — though the salaries of these political appointees are paid for by public funds. Contrary to White House practice, the vice president’s residence won’t release the names of those who come to visit. Cheney has even succeeded in getting President Bush to give him the power to prevent the release of vice presidential papers after Cheney leaves office.

Cheney’s inventive argument is that because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his is “a unique office” that is not part of but rather “attached to” the legislative branch. Yet the vice president is funded and housed by the executive branch, travels on Air Force Two, enjoys Secret Service protection and seldom appears in his (mostly symbolic) Senate office. And he has never subjected his staff to the even more restrictive Senate rules on handling classified material. Apparently, Cheney sees himself as a fourth branch of government that enjoys all the authority of the presidency but is bound by none of its rules.

On Friday, the White House defended Cheney yet again, saying the president never intended the veep to have to comply with the presidential order. Bush should stop enabling his errant No. 2 and enforce the rule of law. ++

Is Dick Cheney Trying to Create His Own 4th Branch of Government?
Dick Cheney is trying to create a new legal status for himself. This latest development raises serious new questions about Cheney — and who, if anyone, has authority over his actions.
Naomi Seligman Steiner, Alternet
June 22, 2007.

This post, written by Naomi Seligman, originally appeared on CREW

The Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, is trying to create a new legal status for himself. This latest development raises serious new questions about Cheney — and who, if anyone, has authority over his actions. In Cheney’s mind, it seems no one does.

CREW just issued this news release asking these new questions that need to be answered about Dick Cheney:

In light of new revelations that Vice President Cheney is claiming that his office is not subject to an executive order governing the handling of classified information because as president of the Senate he has both legislative and executive duties, CREW asks if Vice President Cheney is attempting to create a fourth branch of the government?

Under his argument, if Mr. Cheney is not subject to executive branch security requirements, surely he must be subject to Senate rules.

To safeguard sensitive information, in 1987 the Senate created the Office of Senate Security, which is part of the Secretary of the Senate. The Security Office’s standards, procedures and requirements are set out in the Senate Security Manual, which is binding on all employees of the Senate.

So, if Mr. Cheney is a member of the Senate, he must adhere to the following:

* a requirement that any of his staff needing access to classified information undergo a security clearance and complete written non-disclosure agreements;

* physical security requirements, that the Security Office is empowered to implement, including any necessary inspections; and

* investigations of suspected security violations by employees, such as the security violation committed by Scooter Libby when he unlawfully disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, then a covert CIA operative.

In addition, Mr. Cheney and his staff would be subject to investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, which has the responsibility to investigate allegations of improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate, including violations of law and the rules and regulations of the Senate.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Mr. Cheney’s arguments raise new questions:

Since there is no fourth branch of government to which Mr. Cheney could belong, by claiming the Office of the Vice President is within the legislative branch does Mr. Cheney agree that he is subject to Senate security procedures?

Mr. Cheney’s office refused to describe its 2003 classification activities to the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), but is he now willing to describe them to the Senate Security Office?

If Mr. Cheney does not believe that NARA’s Information Security Oversight Office can conduct on-sight inspection of Mr. Cheney’s office to see how sensitive material is handled, does he agree that the Senate Security Office can conduct such an inspection?

We’d really like some answers. ++

White House defends Cheney over security secrets
Raw Story
Friday June 22, 2007
[open link for article]

Bush claims oversight exemption too
The White House says the president’s own order on classified data does not apply to his office or the vice president’s.
Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times
June 23, 2007

WASHINGTON — The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, President Bush’s office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn’t specifically say so, Bush’s order was not meant to apply to the vice president’s office or the president’s office, a White House spokesman said.

The issue flared Thursday when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) criticized Cheney for refusing to file annual reports with the federal National Archives and Records Administration, for refusing to spell out how his office handles classified documents, and for refusing to submit to an inspection by the archives’ Information Security Oversight Office.

The archives administration has been pressing the vice president’s office to cooperate with oversight for the last several years, contending that by not doing so, Cheney and his staff have created a potential national security risk.

Bush amended the oversight directive in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to help ensure that national secrets would not be mishandled, made public or improperly declassified.

The order aimed to create a uniform system for classifying, declassifying and otherwise safeguarding national security information. It gave the archives’ oversight unit responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of each agency’s classification programs. It applied to the executive branch of government, mostly agencies led by Bush administration appointees — not to legislative offices such as Congress or to judicial offices such as the courts.

“Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government,” the executive order said.

But from the start, Bush considered his office and Cheney’s exempt from the reporting requirements, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in an interview Friday.

Cheney’s office filed the reports in 2001 and 2002 but stopped in 2003.

As a result, the National Archives has been unable to review how much information the president’s and vice president’s offices are classifying and declassifying. And the security oversight office cannot inspect the president and vice president’s executive offices to determine whether safeguards are in place to protect the classified information they handle and to properly declassify information when required.

Those two offices have access to the most highly classified information, including intelligence on terrorists and unfriendly foreign countries.

Waxman and J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, have argued that the order clearly applies to all executive branch agencies, including the offices of the vice president and the president.

The White House disagrees, Fratto said.

“We don’t dispute that the ISOO has a different opinion. But let’s be very clear: This executive order was issued by the president, and he knows what his intentions were,” Fratto said. “He is in compliance with his executive order.”

Fratto conceded that the lengthy directive, technically an amendment to an existing executive order, did not specifically exempt the president’s or vice president’s offices. Instead, it refers to “agencies” as being subject to the requirements, which Fratto said did not include the two executive offices. “It does take a little bit of inference,” Fratto said.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ government secrecy project, disputed the White House explanation of the executive order.

He noted that the order defines “agency” as any executive agency, military department and “any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information” — which, he said, includes Bush’s and Cheney’s offices.

Cheney’s office drew criticism Thursday for claiming that it was exempt from the reporting requirements because the vice president’s office is not fully within the executive branch. It cited his legislative role as president of the Senate when needed to break a tie.

At a Friday news conference, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said constitutional scholars could debate that assertion.

But, she said, Cheney’s office is exempt from the requirements because the president intended him to be.

Cheney’s office did not comment Friday.

Several security experts said they were not aware that the president had exempted his own office from the oversight requirements.

But they said it fit what they saw as a pattern in the administration of avoiding accountability, even on matters of national security.

“If the president and the vice president don’t take their own rules seriously, who else should?” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute at George Washington University in Washington that lobbies for open government.

“If they get a blank check, it’s a recipe for disaster. I can’t think of a quicker way to break down the credibility of the entire security-classification system.”

Blanton noted that the White House had acknowledged that a substantial number of in-house e-mails had disappeared in recent years, at a time when investigators wanted to review them for possible evidence of inappropriate leaks of classified information.

“If there are all these great safeguards in place, then where are the e-mails?” Blanton asked.

Waxman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote an eight-page letter to Cheney on Thursday in which he complained that the vice president had refused to adhere to the executive order. Waxman, citing the criminal investigation of Cheney’s office related to the leak of a CIA agent’s identity, suggested that the vice president’s office was a national security risk.

He also accused Cheney or his staff of trying to have the archives’ watchdog unit abolished after its director, Leonard, pressed for more oversight and for a legal opinion from the Justice Department as to whether the executive order applied to the vice president’s office.

Perino denied that attempts were made to abolish the unit.

A spokeswoman for the archives, Susan Cooper, would not comment Friday on whether the archives’ watchdog unit ever tried to inspect the president’s executive office or obtain annual classification reports.

Fratto said that he was not aware of such an effort but that it would be rebuffed. “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals, but the executive order does not grant them that authority,” Fratto said.

He noted that the oversight requirements did, however, apply to the National Security Council, the president’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet officials.

Fratto said that the White House and Cheney’s office had a legal obligation to adhere to the executive order’s guidelines regarding the proper handling of classified documents, even if they didn’t have to submit to oversight by an outside agency. ++

The Method to Cheney’s Madness
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
6/22/07
[open link for article]

Cheney: Neither Here Nor There?
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
6/23/07
[open link for article]

C.I.A. Chief Tries Preaching a Culture of More Openness
MARK MAZZETTI, NYT
June 23, 2007

WASHINGTON, June 22 — William E. Colby faced an uneasy decision in late 1973 when he took over the Central Intelligence Agency: whether to make public the agency’s internal accounting, then being compiled, of its domestic spying, assassination plots and other misdeeds since its founding nearly three decades earlier.

Mr. Colby decided to keep the so-called family jewels a secret, and wrote in his memoir in 1978 that he believed the agency’s already sullied reputation, including a link to the Watergate scandal, could not have withstood a public airing of all its dirty laundry.

So why, at a time when the agency has again been besieged by criticism, this time for its program of secret detentions and interrogations since the Sept. 11 attacks, would the current director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, decide to declassify the same documents that Mr. Colby chose to keep secret?

In an appearance Thursday where he announced that the “family jewels” would be released next week, General Hayden said it was essential for the C.I.A., an organization built on a bedrock of secrecy, to be as open as possible in order to build public trust and dispel myths surrounding its operations. The more that the agency can tell the public, he said, the less chance that misinformation among the public will “fill the vacuum.”

It was this outlook that General Hayden, whose public relations skills are well known in Washington, brought to an earlier job. There, as director of the National Security Agency, he tried to overhaul the N.S.A.’s public image — that of the shadowy, menacing organization portrayed in the movie “Enemy of the State” — by inviting reporters to briefings and authorizing its officials to speak to the author James Bamford for his book on the agency, “Body of Secrets.”

Is next week’s release of documents a reflection of similar openness that he has now brought to the C.I.A., where he arrived little more than a year ago? Yes, says Mark Mansfield, agency spokesman, who adds that since last October the agency has cut by more than half the number of unresolved Freedom of Information Act petitions dating back five years or more, by systematically declassifying volumes of historical material.

Mr. Bamford said one cynical interpretation of the move to declassify the family jewels could be that the agency was looking to make the operations for which it has most recently been criticized seem less nefarious by contrasting them with what went on in the old days. But John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said he saw no motive other than a genuine desire by General Hayden to deal head on with a fundamental tension: the C.I.A. is a secret organization operating in an open society.

Mr. Bamford gives General Hayden credit for being more committed to openness than some of his predecessors. But he is quick to point out that by law, all classified material must eventually be declassified, warts and all.

“If somebody obeys the law, you shouldn’t get a medal for it,” he said. “It’s part of his job.”
Still, pushing for greater openness — “transparency,” in Washington jargon — can be a treacherous path. Mr. Colby, who later in his tenure began a campaign to declassify many of the C.I.A.’s secrets, became an unpopular figure within the agency’s ranks. Many there believed that he, along with some successors who made similar efforts, were conducting little more than publicity campaigns in a rush to reveal the darkest secrets of the past.

General Hayden’s decision to declassify the family jewels now has been greeted negatively by some C.I.A. veterans, who say it could be a blow to the morale of a proud organization afflicted by turmoil during the last five years.

“C.I.A. officers, especially the young officers, want to belong to an organization that has a history and tradition they can look up to,” said one recently retired veteran, who insisted on anonymity because he had been an undercover officer. “If you put something out that says the founders of the agency were a bunch of criminals, that doesn’t exactly help.” ++

CIA Skeletons, The Mortal Sins of Dick Cheney, The Nobility Of Al Gore
Brent Budowsky, Smirking Chimp
Jun 22 2007

Soon, CIA Director Michael Hayden will release documents that describe major misdeeds of the CIA in darker days, after General Antonio Taguba went public in The New Yorker with charges of an Abu Ghraib cover-up.

A great and noble debate will begin in America. Revelations about past and current misdeeds will bring into focus what went wrong in the Iraq war, and why opponents of these policies are voices of American patriotism.

In a recent show Tucker Carlson and a “pundit” ridiculed and demeaned Al Gore. Rather than discussing the profound points he was making in his new book The Assault on Reason, they engaged in cheap ad hominem attacks on Gore as “over the top” and “rage-filled.”

Gore is brilliantly challenging not only policies that violate American principles. He challenges the institutional power structures that corrupt our national debate, have led America into a catastrophic war, and account for collapsing credibility of both political and media elites.

Gore is not the voice of rage; he is the voice of hope, and the leading conviction politician in America whose playing field far transcends conventional politics. Gore leads the fight against global warming and institutions of power, led by big oil, and the corruptions that perpetuate that power.

Gore brilliantly communicates through motion picture documentary, Academy Awards, a global concert reaching 2 million people, and a possible Nobel Peace Prize, while he moves the market with venture capital.

Far more than any national Democrat, Gore is directly challenging the political elites of the status quo that led to the Iraq war, the media elites that became complicit in it, the political elites that defend it, and the character attacks of demeaning and insulting those who oppose it.

Within days, the CIA’s dirty laundry from the darker days will become public, and Americans will connect what happened then with today.

First we read General Taguba charging a cover-up that protected higher-ups in the Abu Ghraib crimes. Soon we will read about how crimes of the past were committed through wrongdoing covered up by secrecy. Today we read about the vice president’s latest attempt to place himself above the law with secrecy in violation of the rules.

America is not the torture nation. From George Washington rejecting torture as commander of the Continental Army to Justice Jackson’s summation at Nuremberg, America has always stood for the highest values of the rule of law and decency.

From the beginning, Dick Cheney has rejected the standards initiated by General Washington, accepted today by commanders throughout every branch of the military services. He rejects the common belief of all of the great religions, except the spiritual advisers to terrorists, that certain acts of barbarism and torture are simply wrong.

While Al Gore’s extraordinary leadership on global warming is profound, and his opposition to the Iraq war from the beginning was wise, his sweeping defense of the Bill of Rights, his honoring of the Constitution, and his objection to torture and barbarism are equally profound.

America has tried Dick Cheney’s way and we have now seen the results. What is most important about the Cheney way is that these are not matters of mere disagreement; these are matters of high principle, high honor and basic Americanism.

These are deviations from time-honored American values, born from fanaticism, promoted through fear, outside the bounds of law and Constitution, protected through falsehood and secrecy, promoted by insults and slanders, too often given legitimacy by major media, deadly to our troops, disastrous to our country, alien to America.

In this perverted world, war hero Democrats are called unpatriotic, while those who level the charge perpetuate scandals of wounded troops and disrespect toward disabled vets.

Those who hide behind the skirt of secrecy for actions that violate the Constitution, the law, and the Code of Military Justice are usually those who never served in the military. They are ignorant of military strategy and contemptuous of military values.

Those of us who oppose these practices speak for the overwhelming majority of our people, speak for the historic traditions of our military, reflect the private views of our commanders, and stand with the traditions of the great religions. Yet the mass media regularly repeat the litany of lies, insults and propaganda against those who speak truth with patriotism.

In my June 20 op-ed in The Hill titled “New politics, new media, new majority,” I suggested, as Al Gore does, that integral to our democratic society are the means of communication that reflect the diversity of our democracy.

Set aside that women (the majority of voters, people and consumers) are excluded from the cable news host lineup. Set aside that Hispanics are completely excluded from the mass media political host lineup (though the object of countless background shots about immigration).

Set aside that progressives who represent far more people than the political right are largely treated as though they don’t exist in the host lineup of the three cable “news” networks.

Set aside that blacks who represent large numbers of Americans are not permitted to be prime-time cable hosts, and forced to endure indignities, until one host made one too many insulting and demeaning comments.

The Bible says the last shall be first. What will happen, I predict, is that the huge numbers of patriotic Americans who have turned to alternative news and activist sources will mobilize and organize into new media and political alignments.
2006 was only the beginning.

This phenomenon of insulting and demeaning majority constituencies will be overpowered by a new phenomenon equal to the impact of the FDR revolution that paralleled the rise of radio, and the Kennedy years that paralleled the rise of network television. The driving power of the Internet, coupled with progressive radio, will further empower each other and lead to dramatic changes in television.

Stay tuned for more next week.

For now, check out the new news sources that will be essential to this transformation, which include Mark Karlin and buzzflash.com; Rob Kall and opednews.com, Bob Parry and consortiumnews.com, Carolyn Kay and makethemaccountable.com, Jeff Tiedrich and smirkingchimp.com, and progressive publicists such as Ilene Proctor, who is a force you want on your side.

Add these powers to mydd, Daily Kos, moveon, digby and other conviction-politics centers and the power of the movement comes into focus.

There is no cable news show on earth that has the power to build an audience as large as these forces, when they converge.

These sources are as essential as Matt Drudge for those who want to know what will be in the news tomorrow, what will happen in 2008.

Predictions: Stephanie Miller will be the next cable star combining progressive Internet with talk radio. Ed Schultz will surpass Rush in every major market. Air America will stage a major comeback. Rupert Murdoch will have to make the biggest decision of his political television career (that’s my teaser for next week).

If you doubt this, look at the ratings for Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and Keith Olbermann. Or ask George Allen and Rick Santorum.

Stay tuned. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves