In yesterday’s painfully-amusing White House press briefing, spokesperson Dana Perino argued, without explanation, that the president exempted Dick Cheney from an Executive Order on preserving classified materials. In fact, she got rather specific about it, telling reporters that on page 18 of the E.O., “There’s a distinction regarding the Vice President versus what is an agency.” Perino added that this is “clear.”
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s staff looked at page 18. Take a wild guess what they found.
“No exemption at all for the Vice President on page 18. So we emailed the White House, which referred us to section 1.3 — which is about something else altogether — and 5.2 — which makes no mention of the Vice President. In fact, there is no exemption for the President or the Vice President when it comes to reporting on classified material.
Faiz added that the language of the E.O. is rather sweeping: “Sec. 6.1(b) of Bush’s 2003 executive order governing classified material explicitly states that it applies to any ‘Executive agency…any ‘Military department’…and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.'”
Sounds “clear” to me.
